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Science and Spiritualism: Why were ghost stories so popular in the 1800s? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: we have spoken about film at length, and uh also,
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Speaker 1: Guys in my eye line, what do you want me
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Speaker 1: to do? But you and me were done professionally, That's
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Speaker 1: not true, Casey. On the case, today's episode is a
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Speaker 1: little bit different for us because it's it's almost a
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Speaker 1: compilation episode, is it not something of a mixed tape,
3:37
Speaker 1: as the kids would say, or a horror anthology? Whether
3:40
Speaker 1: or not it is or is not fire, it's up
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Speaker 1: to you to decide, not you, Ben, but you the
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Speaker 1: people right right, not not you know, not you Casey,
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Speaker 1: but you specifically you listening to this today. We're exploring
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Speaker 1: a strange and somewhat extraordinary cultural trend from the eighteen hundreds.
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Speaker 1: So you know nowadays, in these our modern times, we
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Speaker 1: see a lot of cultural trends, right, we see uh,
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Speaker 1: some predictable ones like we've passed Halloween now, so we're
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Speaker 1: going to see a lot of Christmas stuff. I'm sure
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Speaker 1: people's local department stores, especially in the Western world or
4:24
Speaker 1: the Angels fear scramble to uh to populate the shelves
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Speaker 1: with Christmas items right as soon as it's November one.
4:34
Speaker 1: I find it disgusting. I yeah, I find it somewhat disingenuous,
4:39
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I don't think there's any
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Speaker 1: GM or CEO who has this moment where their heart
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Speaker 1: grows three sizes and they say, you know, Christmas, well
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Speaker 1: it should be every day. I don't think they have
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Speaker 1: those moments. I think they just know that for a
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Speaker 1: lot of brick and mortar stores, Christmas is the big
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Speaker 1: opportunity to go from redd ink to the black. But
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Speaker 1: with that being said, these are cultural trends. Well, I'm
5:06
Speaker 1: sure we'll talk about Christmas at length in the following months,
5:09
Speaker 1: in the following episodes. It'll be like two weeks late
5:12
Speaker 1: for Christmas. Yeah, yeah, it'll you know, it might be February,
5:15
Speaker 1: it might be March. We'll get around to it. We'll
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Speaker 1: get there, We'll get there. It might be you know, uh,
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Speaker 1: Christmas episodes, you say, for December. But one of the
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Speaker 1: weird cultural trends of the eighteen hundreds was the proliferation
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Speaker 1: of spooky stories. I like to call it the spooky
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Speaker 1: spirits ghosts. Uh. Some of them were very old legends,
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Speaker 1: sort of regurgitated, remixed for the mix tape. Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: we got we've got your witches, we got your goals,
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Speaker 1: you run of the mill guls. What else we got?
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Speaker 1: We got we've ghost trains, strange super natural events. Of course,
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Speaker 1: they're like vampires suck you by incubie. It's it's strange
6:02
Speaker 1: because the nineteenth century. When we look back on the
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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, a lot of times we think of it
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Speaker 1: as a time of innovative science and pioneering technology. Right,
6:15
Speaker 1: Like one of our favorite guys who's been showing up
6:17
Speaker 1: a lot, your your favorite tortoise eater. You're talking about Darwin. Yeah, yeah,
6:22
Speaker 1: we think of Darwin and stuff like that. Right. The
6:25
Speaker 1: beauty of eating a tortoise is the shell kind of
6:27
Speaker 1: is its own like bowl situation. You just flip it
6:30
Speaker 1: upside down and it's already like in a it's portable
6:33
Speaker 1: kind of situation, and it's kind of a to go
6:35
Speaker 1: box because there's the undershell. If anyone's triggered by this,
6:38
Speaker 1: any tort turtle lovers out there, I apologize. I probably
6:40
Speaker 1: should have done a trigger warning talking about dissecting and
6:43
Speaker 1: eating your beloved pets. But you know what ship is
6:46
Speaker 1: sale that tortoise has swum, that that eight bit teenage
6:50
Speaker 1: mutant ninja turtle has gone down the sewer hole. Yeah
6:54
Speaker 1: was that off, Mike, We're talking about that video game
6:55
Speaker 1: that was off my Yeah, that's fine. We talked. We
6:58
Speaker 1: we talked at length off air about some of our
7:02
Speaker 1: favorite old school any s S and e s Sega
7:07
Speaker 1: Genesis games, and you know, hit us up with your favorites,
7:10
Speaker 1: especially if they're obscure. It's weird, you know, heroes and
7:14
Speaker 1: a halfshell aside. The strange thing about the eighteen hundreds
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Speaker 1: in the Western world, of course, was that while we
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Speaker 1: look back on it as a century built on the
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Speaker 1: concept of reason and deduction and scientific acumen, there was
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Speaker 1: also this huge, profound, abiding interest in the super natural.
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Speaker 1: Uh we see there the the rise of what were
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Speaker 1: they called spirit photographs, for instance, like where you could
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Speaker 1: see like an aura kind of situation, or like a
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Speaker 1: ghostly luminous cloud. We also see this underlying fascination with
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Speaker 1: the other worldly. And it's strange that this happened at
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Speaker 1: the same time that we saw this tremendous UH series
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Speaker 1: of breakthroughs and leaps in the realm of science. So
8:09
Speaker 1: one of the questions that historians asked about this. We
8:12
Speaker 1: saw a really good article on this and thought code
8:15
Speaker 1: dot com was maybe really weird. Things were actually happening
8:20
Speaker 1: all the time, and now with the rise of better
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Speaker 1: communication and better photography, we were able to just document
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Speaker 1: them more accurately. You know, this is interesting to um.
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Speaker 1: A big rise in the popularity of spooky's uh came
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Speaker 1: directly as a result of economic changes in the Industrial Revolution, right,
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Speaker 1: because a lot of folks there was sort of this
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Speaker 1: new middle class that was being created. A lot of
8:45
Speaker 1: folks that had grown up in rural areas moved into
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Speaker 1: cities to potentially become staff for this new middle class.
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Speaker 1: And they were in these kind of alien, kind of
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Speaker 1: creepy environments, right where every little spooky sound or creaky board,
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Speaker 1: you know, could potentially be a signifier of some kind
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Speaker 1: of ghoul. Yeah. Yeah, These servants also, if you think
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Speaker 1: about it, they were kind of expected to be ghost right,
9:14
Speaker 1: they weren't supposed to be heard. They were like what's
9:19
Speaker 1: the old adage scene and not heard. But then sometimes
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Speaker 1: they weren't even supposed to be seen, didn't they have
9:24
Speaker 1: like secret doorways and stuff. Yeah, I mean they essentially
9:28
Speaker 1: haunted these houses as the living um, which makes a
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Speaker 1: lot of sense given the nature of like, for example,
9:36
Speaker 1: the Haunting of of Hill House right on Netflix. That's
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Speaker 1: one of these kind of houses. But there's all kinds
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Speaker 1: of secret passages, and it would have been a house
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Speaker 1: where there would be servants quarters and a lot of
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Speaker 1: like hidden doors and places for folks to be able
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Speaker 1: to slip in and out easily. But when you kind
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Speaker 1: of separate it from the function of it and the
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Speaker 1: slightly offensive booge nous of it all, um, you do
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Speaker 1: get some opportunities to have some pretty creepy s suations, right, yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: This reminds me of Um. One of my relatives used
10:05
Speaker 1: to live in a very very old house out in
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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. And it was a
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Speaker 1: house that had a servants stairway and then servants quarters,
10:17
Speaker 1: and it was very brick and you know, in in
10:21
Speaker 1: young Ben Bolin's mind, it was absolutely haunted. It was
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Speaker 1: terrified there. They raised a kid there, and the kid
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Speaker 1: used to just stare off in a certain corner and
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Speaker 1: have conversations with things that weren't there. So I absolutely
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Speaker 1: believed in this. We also we also see another way.
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Speaker 1: Uh so you mentioned socio economic factors. We also see
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Speaker 1: the way that technology could have accelerated or exacerbated is
10:48
Speaker 1: a better word, this belief in the supernatural. Think about
10:51
Speaker 1: the lighting, right, One of the famous quotes about film
10:56
Speaker 1: is that film is painting with light. We know that
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Speaker 1: lie plays this huge role in our day to day existence.
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Speaker 1: In the eighteen hundreds, lighting was increasingly provided not by
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Speaker 1: candles but by gas lamps. And there's an interesting theory
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Speaker 1: here about how gas lamps could have given rise to
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Speaker 1: more belief in ghosts. A lot of this is coming
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Speaker 1: from a wonderful, uh, wonderful interview with Ruth Robbins, who
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Speaker 1: is a professor of English at Leeds Metropolitan University. Yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: and uh and Robin's cites the fact that the carbon
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Speaker 1: monoxide that gas lights. See this, I I can't ignore this.
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Speaker 1: I know we talked about the term gas lighting came
11:42
Speaker 1: from a play, right, But the idea that the gas
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Speaker 1: emitted from these gas lights would cause you to hallucinate
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Speaker 1: and believe things that weren't really true. That's I mean
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Speaker 1: maybe that maybe it's all kind of bundled in together,
11:55
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of gas lighting someone being to
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Speaker 1: kind of convince them that they that what they think
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Speaker 1: is true is not in fact true. Right, So, yeah,
12:03
Speaker 1: this was a real thing. It could potentially cause people
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Speaker 1: to get a case of the vapors, as it were,
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Speaker 1: and uh and started seeing spooks and inspecters and ghouls
12:12
Speaker 1: and goblins and all that jazz. Yeah, And we know
12:15
Speaker 1: that whatever the case was, whatever the causes were, whether
12:19
Speaker 1: it be a fundamental change in the socioeconomic landscape, the
12:23
Speaker 1: proliferation of carbon monoxide hallucinations, or you know, just a
12:30
Speaker 1: proliferation of ghosts, we know that there was a huge
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Speaker 1: amounts of preponderance of people encountering what they believed were
12:37
Speaker 1: spirits in their daily life by the middle of the
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Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. And we have a specific example, well, we
12:45
Speaker 1: have a series of specific examples for today's episodes. Here's one.
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Speaker 1: In eighteen forty there were these sisters in New York,
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Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters, and they claimed they heard a series
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Speaker 1: of tappings. Didn't we have a story about the cock
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Speaker 1: Lane ghosts back in the day had to do with tappings.
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Speaker 1: And where did this, uh, this obsession with tappings come
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Speaker 1: from then? Right? Uh, the obsession with tappings, it depends
13:15
Speaker 1: are you asking skeptic or you asking a true believer.
13:19
Speaker 1: A skeptic would say tappings are easier to fake. That's
13:23
Speaker 1: also true. Um. But the obsession or the notion of
13:27
Speaker 1: tapping as a form of communication came again from technology,
13:31
Speaker 1: right the the proliferation of Morris code and being able
13:34
Speaker 1: to tippy tap your messages across long distances. Right, absolutely,
13:38
Speaker 1: because maybe a ghost has been uh expelled from the
13:42
Speaker 1: mortal plane for hundreds of years, but they're keeping up
13:45
Speaker 1: to date in the latest technology. And I love that
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Speaker 1: you bring that point up, Noel, because when you think
13:50
Speaker 1: about it, that's kind of like a ghost now choosing
13:54
Speaker 1: to communicate solely through Snapchat and TikTok because of how
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Speaker 1: new the tech is. Absolutely, I mean the Snapchat icon
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Speaker 1: is a spooky ghost in fact, Yeah, think about it.
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Speaker 1: Maybe we are not so far removed from the eighteen
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Speaker 1: hundreds as we would like to as we would like
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Speaker 1: to tell ourselves. So back to the Fox Sisters. Right. Uh,
14:15
Speaker 1: the Fox Sisters have a story worthy of its own episode.
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Speaker 1: But the takeaway from The Fox Sisters that sets us
14:21
Speaker 1: up for the rest of today's explorations is this. Robins
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Speaker 1: says it best I believe when she says, if you
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Speaker 1: can have people communicating from three thousand miles away relating
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Speaker 1: to Morse code words coming across the ocean tapped out
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Speaker 1: Morse code, then it's a small leap of the imagination
14:42
Speaker 1: to tell yourself there's a dead person who I used
14:45
Speaker 1: to know quite well, who is talking to me through
14:47
Speaker 1: Morse code. We can see the internal logic because it's
14:51
Speaker 1: very easy to frame the conversation with yourself as something like, well,
14:57
Speaker 1: the ghost we're always trying to communicate with me. It
15:00
Speaker 1: wasn't until this technology, this code evolved that we were
15:05
Speaker 1: able to successfully do so. So now we're in a
15:08
Speaker 1: situation where science does not negate spiritualism but aids and
15:13
Speaker 1: abets it. It's interesting too, because, like we see it
15:16
Speaker 1: all the time, where you know, with the rise of
15:19
Speaker 1: intellectualism or or science or technology, you kind of have
15:23
Speaker 1: a backlash for a thirst for sort of the old ways, right,
15:27
Speaker 1: And that's sort of what you see a little bit
15:28
Speaker 1: here in that confluence where they kind of bolster each
15:31
Speaker 1: other on the one hand, but also there's sort of
15:33
Speaker 1: like a divide between technology and spiritualism. It's interesting, it is.
15:42
Speaker 1: Let's dive into some of these Spine Team glues from
15:46
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, some of which will doubtlessly be familiar
15:50
Speaker 1: to you fellow listeners. Yeah, this one in particular might
15:53
Speaker 1: be if you're a fan of Holly and Tracy and
15:55
Speaker 1: stuff you miss in history class where they have an
15:56
Speaker 1: entire episode on the bell which and how the bell
16:00
Speaker 1: which um was a source of absolute horror for a
16:05
Speaker 1: Tennessee family. Um. In addition to having a little bit
16:08
Speaker 1: of historical connection with our boy Andrew Jackson Um, this
16:12
Speaker 1: story has proliferated throughout history. Uh and involves a spirit
16:16
Speaker 1: with ill intent in theory that haunted a farming family
16:22
Speaker 1: the bells in northern Tennessee in the year of eighteen seventeen.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is one of those spooky stories that
16:32
Speaker 1: every resident of Tennessee knows, just the way that we
16:37
Speaker 1: all are familiar, or at least all of us in
16:40
Speaker 1: in the eastern part of Tennessee are familiar with the
16:43
Speaker 1: fast food chain pals get there if you can do
16:46
Speaker 1: not delay Back to the Bell family. So in eighteen seventeen,
16:51
Speaker 1: there's a farmer, his name is John Bell. He sees
16:55
Speaker 1: a bizarre creature hunched down in a nearby corn row
17:00
Speaker 1: and he thinks, you know, I'm probably just looking at
17:03
Speaker 1: some large dog. And this creature be a canine or not,
17:09
Speaker 1: stares at Bell and Bell fires a gun at it.
17:12
Speaker 1: The animal runs off. No big wook, right, it was
17:15
Speaker 1: he who walks behind the rose? Uh? It could have been,
17:19
Speaker 1: but probably not because the way he who walks behind
17:22
Speaker 1: the rose is depicted, at least in the Stephen King
17:25
Speaker 1: short story, it's much more of like a uh an
17:28
Speaker 1: elder god entity, so it would be larger. The movies
17:32
Speaker 1: are different. Quick question, can you really ever walk behind rows?
17:35
Speaker 1: Don't you walk between them? Well, if you're mortal, yeah,
17:39
Speaker 1: mortal man can only walk behind a row the outer
17:44
Speaker 1: last lex and then it's behind several rows unless there's
17:48
Speaker 1: a single line of exactly so as you say, ben, um,
17:51
Speaker 1: he he did take his He shot his shot a
17:54
Speaker 1: couple of times, and the creature vanished, and he didn't
17:57
Speaker 1: really think much else of it. Um. But then there
18:00
Speaker 1: became this Uh, what's described, um in various sources as
18:05
Speaker 1: a beating sound, which is akin to a tapping. It's
18:10
Speaker 1: more of an urgent tapping, wouldn't you say? And the
18:13
Speaker 1: sound continued. Uh, they were hearing it outside of their
18:16
Speaker 1: log home, their log cabin. And it continued and its
18:20
Speaker 1: urgency increased, the frequency of it increased every single night
18:24
Speaker 1: until Bell and his his boys um went outside to
18:29
Speaker 1: try to find this the source of this sound, and
18:31
Speaker 1: every time they found nothing. And then following that occurrence,
18:37
Speaker 1: each night, all of the Bell children began waking up
18:39
Speaker 1: in a horrible panic and fright. Um. And they thought
18:43
Speaker 1: that rats were inside the house and infested their their
18:47
Speaker 1: tiny log home and were gnawing at their bed posts. Yeah,
18:50
Speaker 1: there were other weird sightings were purported weird sightings of animals.
18:56
Speaker 1: There was the strange black dog they called showing up
19:01
Speaker 1: they saw or what not John Bell. But another family
19:04
Speaker 1: member saw a bird on a fence and and he, uh,
19:08
Speaker 1: he thought he was shooting at a turkey, but it
19:11
Speaker 1: took off and it flew over him. It was much
19:14
Speaker 1: larger than a turkey and it could actually fly. Uh,
19:17
Speaker 1: just gonna go on record here, casey, I don't know
19:19
Speaker 1: if you have to edit this because we are a
19:22
Speaker 1: family show. But even now, it is well known that
19:26
Speaker 1: turkeys are complete a holes. It's one of the only
19:29
Speaker 1: things all the residents of Boston agree on. So, like
19:33
Speaker 1: you said, well, they're they're hearing these strange noises and
19:37
Speaker 1: then these noises seem to escalate until what whatever this
19:43
Speaker 1: apparition or this force of this spirit is, it begins
19:46
Speaker 1: to speak to the family in a strange voice, and
19:51
Speaker 1: John Bell gets these weird physical symptoms. His tongue swells
19:57
Speaker 1: such that he cannot eat. And they finally tell some neighbors,
20:02
Speaker 1: some friends about the weird stuff happening on the farm,
20:06
Speaker 1: and the friend and the wife come to investigate. And
20:10
Speaker 1: according to them, according to the official story, when the
20:14
Speaker 1: visitors were at the farm they stayed overnight, a spirit
20:18
Speaker 1: came into the room and pulled the covers from their bed.
20:21
Speaker 1: Classic ghost flex right there. Yeah, they just want you
20:24
Speaker 1: to be chili, because if you got the covers off,
20:26
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier for them to get you. Get
20:28
Speaker 1: get you all chili. And as we learn from a
20:31
Speaker 1: young age, there is no better insurance against things that
20:34
Speaker 1: go bump in the night than a good set of
20:36
Speaker 1: covers over your feet and over your head. Yeah. But
20:40
Speaker 1: now with the you know, the improvement of jump scares
20:43
Speaker 1: and horror films and them being PG. Thirteen now instead
20:46
Speaker 1: of are because there's they're less focused on gore and
20:49
Speaker 1: they're more focused on spookery. Right, So a lot of
20:52
Speaker 1: times you'll have the kid under the cover and then
20:54
Speaker 1: what happens The ghost is up on there there with
20:56
Speaker 1: him or her. Yeah, yeah, you know, I still think
21:01
Speaker 1: it depends on how you tuck the sheets. You know.
21:04
Speaker 1: What you do is you gotta do that hotel tuck. Yeah,
21:06
Speaker 1: where you gotta like pull with all your mice three
21:09
Speaker 1: sides under the mattress. No ghost can penetrate the hotel tuck,
21:14
Speaker 1: the hotel tuck, which is a lot less dirty than
21:17
Speaker 1: it sounds if we just use the hotel talk as
21:20
Speaker 1: a that's that's a pro move right there, the hotel tuck,
21:24
Speaker 1: good old hotel tuck. Also, adding owl in front of
21:28
Speaker 1: anything makes it sound like even worse euphemism. We talked
21:32
Speaker 1: about this in there. I don't remember, but I agree
21:34
Speaker 1: with you right now. Awesome, Well, here's the formula real quick.
21:38
Speaker 1: I don't want us run along. You take any word
21:41
Speaker 1: that you any innocuous object or nown like casey, what's
21:46
Speaker 1: what's an easy just now, first one that occurs to you?
21:50
Speaker 1: An object? Chips? Okay, chips. So now we add a
21:54
Speaker 1: place name. So, no, what's the name of a place,
21:57
Speaker 1: any place? Cambridge? Okay? Uh? And then we should be
22:01
Speaker 1: crisps if it's Cambridge, Cambridge in Boston. Okay. Okay. So
22:07
Speaker 1: so we got Cambridge chips. Now we have just have
22:09
Speaker 1: to add ale on there. And it's gonna sound like
22:12
Speaker 1: a creepy euphemism when you say, oh, you know, meta,
22:19
Speaker 1: I met a girl. We uh, we liked each other,
22:22
Speaker 1: we hung out, we had some drinks. Next thing, you
22:24
Speaker 1: know is the old Cambridge chips. So Chattanooga handbag, et cetera. Anyway,
22:33
Speaker 1: back to the old Tennessee bell Witch. We know about
22:38
Speaker 1: this story, the bell Witch story, because there was a
22:40
Speaker 1: lot of press advertising it. And as you said, the
22:44
Speaker 1: bell Witch would torture most of the family members right
22:49
Speaker 1: throwing them on the ground, sticking pins in their bodies.
22:53
Speaker 1: John Bell, the patriarch, eventually was attacked and apparently an
22:57
Speaker 1: invisible foe beat the snot out of him. The fame
23:02
Speaker 1: of this bell Witch grew in a word of it
23:06
Speaker 1: spread throughout Tennessee, the hollers and the valleys. Uh. And
23:09
Speaker 1: then supposedly Andrew Jackson heard of this. This is Andrew
23:14
Speaker 1: Jackson before his president, right right, Ben, So, Andrew Jackson,
23:18
Speaker 1: as you know, was a was a born and raised Tennesseeman. Right,
23:22
Speaker 1: he's your he's your kin at least by proximity. Uh yeah, okay,
23:28
Speaker 1: geographically related, graphically related. And before he was president, he
23:32
Speaker 1: was already known across the land as a top notch
23:35
Speaker 1: war hero and so being you know, kind of a
23:38
Speaker 1: gaston esque figured that sounds like I'm being. He was.
23:42
Speaker 1: He was tough, he had like a puffy chest, you know,
23:45
Speaker 1: but he was not a mean guy like Gas. Actually
23:47
Speaker 1: we don't know that. Um him, he could have been
23:48
Speaker 1: a jerk, but where who are we to say? Point
23:50
Speaker 1: being is he wanted to come to the aid of
23:53
Speaker 1: the Bell family at the very least, you know, get
23:56
Speaker 1: a look see for himself as to what these these
23:58
Speaker 1: spooky happenings were all about. So Jackson um came, according
24:03
Speaker 1: to what's this call it myth legend, came from his
24:07
Speaker 1: home in Nashville, where he was already a decorated general
24:10
Speaker 1: at that point a major general, and supposedly he came
24:15
Speaker 1: to visit the farm and had dishes thrown at him.
24:19
Speaker 1: Um all kinds of of of spookery, Um was afoot.
24:24
Speaker 1: He purportedly was quoted as saying, um, he would quote
24:28
Speaker 1: rather fight the British again than face the abject horror
24:34
Speaker 1: that was the Bell which and then took his leave
24:37
Speaker 1: the next morning after spending one spook filled night at
24:40
Speaker 1: the at the Bell farm. Right it did. It's smacks
24:45
Speaker 1: of of of incredulity, the very model of a modern
24:50
Speaker 1: major general. Right has this has this issue? Anyway? A
24:54
Speaker 1: long story short. Eighteen twenty, about three years after the
24:59
Speaker 1: beginning of this story, John Bell is found quite ill.
25:04
Speaker 1: The story goes next to a vial of quote strange liquid.
25:10
Speaker 1: He died to you know, everybody at the time believed
25:13
Speaker 1: that he had been poisoned. His family members gave some
25:17
Speaker 1: of the liquid to a completely innocent cat, to the
25:21
Speaker 1: family cat who just happened to be in the room.
25:23
Speaker 1: A weird detail. Why why would they just trying to
25:26
Speaker 1: test it on the cat? Yeah, they couldn't have given
25:28
Speaker 1: it to like a chicken, or like a livestock or something.
25:30
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know man they did that cat
25:33
Speaker 1: dirty must have not really cared too much about that
25:35
Speaker 1: cat um. And they believed that it was the spirit,
25:39
Speaker 1: the infernal spirit of the Bell Witch, that had forced
25:42
Speaker 1: Bell's hand and caused him to drink this poison. And supposedly,
25:47
Speaker 1: after Bell's death, the spooky happenings came to a close.
25:51
Speaker 1: I call, just as Casey would say, I am Mato,
25:56
Speaker 1: I call BS on this Casey, do we have a
25:59
Speaker 1: BS sound Q or BS alert? Because it sounds like
26:06
Speaker 1: it sounds like someone corporeal poison the guy, you know
26:10
Speaker 1: what I mean, and you could get away with calling
26:13
Speaker 1: it a ghost. But again, this story is fascinating to
26:17
Speaker 1: the the nation at the time because there's this idea.
26:22
Speaker 1: You know, it's eighteen seventeen, eighteen twenty, it's it's a
26:25
Speaker 1: little bit early, but there's this idea that um scientific
26:29
Speaker 1: investigation can be brought to bear upon this phenomenon or
26:34
Speaker 1: upon this series of events, and that the scientific investigation
26:39
Speaker 1: might not necessarily disprove a paranormal occurrence, but that the
26:45
Speaker 1: very same technological innovation that we have now may indeed
26:50
Speaker 1: be able to prove scientifically something about what lay beyond
26:55
Speaker 1: the veil of this veil of tears, ah like tears
26:59
Speaker 1: in the ray, tears in the rain. It's interesting. Oh man,
27:03
Speaker 1: I guess we have time for what? One more? I
27:05
Speaker 1: guess one more? Wasn't it Blade Runner Day? The other
27:07
Speaker 1: day was? Well? November? Right? Is November is the opening
27:13
Speaker 1: card in blade Run. We're we're in a blade runder territory. Now,
27:17
Speaker 1: I love it. They'll can't get a good uh walk
27:20
Speaker 1: by noodle stand in Atlanta? It's true, all all the
27:24
Speaker 1: good noodle places are sit down joints. Is that really
27:27
Speaker 1: your takeaway for the things we're lacking and supposed Blade
27:30
Speaker 1: Runners time? Very you're not worried about the lack of
27:33
Speaker 1: flying flying cars? Man, it took me a long. It
27:37
Speaker 1: took me years on car stuff to deal with it.
27:39
Speaker 1: Flying cars are cool as long as one person has one.
27:43
Speaker 1: The rest if everybody has a flying car and ammonium. Yeah,
27:47
Speaker 1: I mean think about like we would need air traffic
27:50
Speaker 1: controllers for just like you know, our commute. We could
27:55
Speaker 1: do it with autonomous vehicles. Now we're talking science again,
27:58
Speaker 1: But how soon before we get a good autonomous vehicle
28:01
Speaker 1: Haunted house story? You know what a good crossover that'd be.
28:05
Speaker 1: That'd be what they call up remix. Can we get
28:09
Speaker 1: a air horns down here? Yeah? I love that. Did
28:13
Speaker 1: you ever hear us? The CVS Remix, the CVS Jams,
28:18
Speaker 1: CVS Bangers, CVS Bangers, thank you, Casey, Casey other case.
28:23
Speaker 1: And there was also Walmart ones too. There at least
28:26
Speaker 1: someone uncovered like just hours of like Walmart canned music.
28:29
Speaker 1: That one made me intensely nostalgic. Yeah, Christmas Holiday Walmart mixed.
28:36
Speaker 1: You know what I love. It's it's almost like a
28:38
Speaker 1: secular version of a church, or maybe it's a it's
28:41
Speaker 1: a haunted house of capitalism. I used to go to
28:45
Speaker 1: twenty four seven grocery stores like Kroger's there are a
28:49
Speaker 1: lot of those around here, and just stroll through the
28:52
Speaker 1: aisles at three thirty four in the morning, and there
28:55
Speaker 1: was something something lonely and beautiful about here in that
29:01
Speaker 1: terrible music, because you know that the people working don't
29:05
Speaker 1: really have a lot of control over what radio station
29:07
Speaker 1: is getting played. Uh, but yeah, this is very true. Um,
29:12
Speaker 1: totally separate, but but similar. I had a really melancholy
29:16
Speaker 1: and kind of almost borderline creepy brush with that kind
29:20
Speaker 1: of capitalism the first time I landed in New York
29:23
Speaker 1: City a very very late at night and was staying
29:25
Speaker 1: right off of Times Square on a Sunday and walk
29:28
Speaker 1: through Times Square full on Christmas mode, lights blasting. Not
29:32
Speaker 1: a single soul in site. Oh yeah, yeah, very strange.
29:35
Speaker 1: It's like a Vanilla's guy. It's very much like Vanilla's Guy,
29:38
Speaker 1: or like twenty eight days Later or something like that.
29:40
Speaker 1: The Christmas a dish. So is capitalism the ghost that
29:44
Speaker 1: haunts America? That that may be a story we get
29:48
Speaker 1: to in the future, but for now, let's talk about Okay,
29:52
Speaker 1: so we teased vampires, we tease railroad hauntings. Let's go
29:57
Speaker 1: with railroad hauntings for now because vampires your kind of
30:00
Speaker 1: ageless and timeless. Railroad haunting seems very eighteen hundreds. It does.
30:04
Speaker 1: And you know, and if you are interested in uh,
30:07
Speaker 1: in vampire situation, you want to check out the New
30:09
Speaker 1: England Vampire Panic, which would have been we would have
30:12
Speaker 1: talked about today. You can go to our sister show
30:15
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know, uh and just
30:17
Speaker 1: search the archives for New England Vampire Panic and we
30:19
Speaker 1: did an episode on that, uh some time ago. If
30:22
Speaker 1: it's not an audio podcast, definitely done as a video
30:26
Speaker 1: but fascinating story. Don't want to spoil it for you,
30:29
Speaker 1: but the New England vampire panic is one of those
30:32
Speaker 1: paranormal stories, uh, in which we do find a direct,
30:38
Speaker 1: definitive answer speaking of paranormal occurrence has been someone slipped
30:42
Speaker 1: into this document just now. It highlighted everything in pink.
30:45
Speaker 1: And it's not you because you don't have a computer
30:46
Speaker 1: in front of you, my friend, No, it was me
30:49
Speaker 1: from earlier. Yeah, but it wasn't highlighted and now it is.
30:52
Speaker 1: It just happened. Happened? Ye, interesting, all of the dot. No,
30:56
Speaker 1: just just this story about the decapitated train conductor. Okay,
31:00
Speaker 1: see it's probably just a slow WiFi or something. Do
31:03
Speaker 1: do do do? Don't like it? So, yeah, the decapitated
31:12
Speaker 1: train conductor who would swing a lantern uh near the
31:16
Speaker 1: place where he ultimately met his end? Yes? Yeah, So
31:22
Speaker 1: the railroad, since we're speaking of science and spiritualism, the
31:26
Speaker 1: railroad is one of the one of the bangers, the
31:30
Speaker 1: breakout singles of technology in the eighteen hundreds. And I know,
31:35
Speaker 1: I know, we all know that it was around before them,
31:38
Speaker 1: but this is where it really mainstreams. And not only
31:43
Speaker 1: does the railroad become a great source of communication, of
31:47
Speaker 1: transit of trade. It also finds itself being a great
31:52
Speaker 1: source of folklore. There are so many stories from this
31:56
Speaker 1: time of ghost trains. And know what, how do you
32:00
Speaker 1: describe a ghost train? It's like ghost riding the whip, right,
32:03
Speaker 1: It's similar. Yeah, it's like in an autonomous car. It's
32:07
Speaker 1: very loosely similar, very loosely. A ghost train is a train.
32:10
Speaker 1: What hath no conductor? And what hath no corporeal form
32:14
Speaker 1: of the train itself? Yeah, the train itself. You hear
32:18
Speaker 1: the choo choo and the distance, and nobody's been on
32:21
Speaker 1: these tracks for now fifty years. Do you see some
32:25
Speaker 1: sort of ghostly luminescent shape of a train? Perhaps? Yeah?
32:30
Speaker 1: So one famous ghost train. They're one famous ghost train story.
32:34
Speaker 1: Also ghost ships to right, Yes, many? Yeah, actually, I
32:37
Speaker 1: think I'm just gonna have to write this horror story
32:40
Speaker 1: about in a haunted autonomous vehicle. But yeah, there's there're
32:44
Speaker 1: all sorts of ghost ships stories. The Flying Dutchman being
32:49
Speaker 1: one of the most famous. Ghost trains are another iteration
32:54
Speaker 1: of this sort of folklore, but unlike ghost ships, they
32:58
Speaker 1: can be cited on regular routes because they usually follow
33:01
Speaker 1: the tracks where the tracks were right. One of the
33:03
Speaker 1: most famous was apparently, uh, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln's
33:08
Speaker 1: funeral train. It was apparently draped in black, and that's true.
33:14
Speaker 1: President Lincoln's train was draped in black, but it was
33:17
Speaker 1: man's not by people, but by skeletons. Uh. So we
33:22
Speaker 1: since that's so well known, we wanted to find another
33:27
Speaker 1: railroad train related ghost story, and we found a pretty
33:31
Speaker 1: cool legend from the eighteen sixties. So, one dark and
33:38
Speaker 1: stormy night in eighteen hundred and sixty seven, there was
33:42
Speaker 1: a railroad conductor of the Atlantic Coast Railroad by the
33:46
Speaker 1: name of Joseph Baldwin, the spookiest name in all of folklore. Um,
33:52
Speaker 1: and he uh did he did not mind the gap
33:55
Speaker 1: when stepping between two trains that were um parked at
34:00
Speaker 1: a station in mac Mako. What do you think then,
34:02
Speaker 1: m a c o North Carolina. They've always got weird pronunciations.
34:05
Speaker 1: It's probably Maco. It's probably like the cow or it
34:10
Speaker 1: maybe Maco exactly, sort of like uh. In Georgia, I
34:14
Speaker 1: believe there's Kiro, but it's pronounced no. It's spelled Cairo,
34:18
Speaker 1: but pronounced Cairo Anyway, it's a whole proper anounds in general.
34:24
Speaker 1: Um so, yeah, again, he did not mind the gap
34:26
Speaker 1: he stepped between these two coupled cars. Uh the train
34:30
Speaker 1: the locomotive engine began to move unexpectedly, and uh oh, poor, poor,
34:37
Speaker 1: poor Joe Baldwin lost his head and he went out
34:44
Speaker 1: as a true humanitarian. You see gather around the campfire here.
34:49
Speaker 1: Joe Baldwin's last act was to swing the lantern toward
34:53
Speaker 1: other people to keep their distance from these dangerously shifting cars,
34:58
Speaker 1: and in the weeks fall ueen this tragic accident, people
35:02
Speaker 1: began seeing a lantern moving along the nearby tracks. But
35:08
Speaker 1: this lantern had no hand holding, It had no man
35:12
Speaker 1: swinging it. Instead, the lantern hovered above the ground about
35:16
Speaker 1: three ft, bobbing, as if being held by someone searching
35:20
Speaker 1: for something. According to veteran rail rotors, this was the
35:24
Speaker 1: dead conductor himself, Joe Baldwin, looking for his head. Because
35:31
Speaker 1: when I said lost his head, I was being literal. Yes, yeah,
35:33
Speaker 1: he didn't just get very upset when he tripped and
35:36
Speaker 1: bumped his knee. Now he was decapitated, And yeah, that's
35:40
Speaker 1: I love a good headless ghost story. Ben remember that
35:43
Speaker 1: one from Scary Stories? To tell him the Dark spoiler
35:46
Speaker 1: alert for this quite old book of spooky children's stories.
35:49
Speaker 1: But she has the ribbon around her neck and the
35:50
Speaker 1: story just ends with and then her head fell off.
35:54
Speaker 1: That's a great you know. And Schwartz, the guy wrote
35:58
Speaker 1: or compiled a lot of these, is fantastic folklorist. The
36:02
Speaker 1: art is also amazing. I actually think the updated versions
36:05
Speaker 1: of that don't have the old creepy art because that
36:07
Speaker 1: was the part that was the most upsetting, right well,
36:09
Speaker 1: that's what made it the edgiest thing you could get
36:12
Speaker 1: from the Scholastic book fair. And shout out to anyone
36:15
Speaker 1: else who remembers that. Did you guys have that totally Scholastic?
36:19
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the closest thing I can compare that
36:20
Speaker 1: art too. It's like it's like evil Steadman, you know,
36:24
Speaker 1: It's it has that like in an ink splatter equality,
36:27
Speaker 1: but it's even creepier than Steadman are that's the guy
36:29
Speaker 1: who did a lot of Yeah, so yeah, I think
36:34
Speaker 1: I think it's it is a little bit creepier because
36:38
Speaker 1: of the gradients involved, and Steadman is a little more
36:42
Speaker 1: uh stark blotchy lines. The one that's like burned into
36:46
Speaker 1: my head is the girl in the Shower with the spiders,
36:49
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, which I believe makes an appearance in
36:53
Speaker 1: the recent film adaptation of Scary Stories of Telling Art,
36:56
Speaker 1: which I haven't seen, but i've heard it's quite good.
36:58
Speaker 1: I was. I was going to see it too. Someone
37:00
Speaker 1: told me it was it was for kids, and I thought, yes,
37:03
Speaker 1: so is the book series. Anyway. You know what, you
37:06
Speaker 1: can't die on every hill. You gotta pick your battles,
37:09
Speaker 1: and Joe Baldwin picked his people began saying that they
37:13
Speaker 1: would see two lanterns. This is how folklore works. Now,
37:18
Speaker 1: it's two lanterns. One is apparently Joe's head and the
37:22
Speaker 1: others his body. They're looking for each other for all eternity,
37:25
Speaker 1: which doesn't make sense unless the head can float and
37:28
Speaker 1: is holding the lantern in its you know, in its
37:31
Speaker 1: jaw and its mouth, or unless the head has become
37:34
Speaker 1: a lantern. I don't know. Anyway, these things became known
37:39
Speaker 1: as the Mako lights. And here's another common folkloric trope,
37:45
Speaker 1: the ghost lights. Ghost lights. Yeah, yeah, well, the wisp
37:49
Speaker 1: and so on, but even more specifically to the eighteen hundreds.
37:53
Speaker 1: Often the President of the US shows up, is somehow
37:56
Speaker 1: involved in these stories and this time. According to the legend,
38:00
Speaker 1: it's President Grover Cleveland just so Ben just So in
38:04
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty or round about in the late eighteen eighties,
38:07
Speaker 1: President Grover Cleveland um was just you know, passing through
38:12
Speaker 1: the area and he heard the tale and he began
38:16
Speaker 1: to tell it at dinner parties, the tale of Old
38:19
Speaker 1: Joe Baldwin and his ghostly Light, and that is credited
38:23
Speaker 1: with popularizing the story and making it part of the
38:27
Speaker 1: oral tradition exactly. Reports of the mac O Lights continued
38:31
Speaker 1: uh past the nineteenth century, pretty far into the twenty
38:36
Speaker 1: I believe at the time of recording. The last sighting
38:40
Speaker 1: occurred in nineteen seventies seven. Yep, and that's what they say.
38:44
Speaker 1: They're over on thought code dot com with their list
38:47
Speaker 1: of supernatural and spooky events. Also at North Carolina Ghost
38:51
Speaker 1: dot Com slash Coast slash Mako Light. So this ends
38:57
Speaker 1: today's episode, but not our show. We want to hear
39:01
Speaker 1: from you. What are some of your favorite stories from
39:04
Speaker 1: the time of spiritualism versus science or spiritualism in a
39:11
Speaker 1: a strange uh collaborative team up with science. What what
39:16
Speaker 1: really gets in your historical craw about this period in
39:21
Speaker 1: history For me. I'm I'm fascinated continually by the strangely
39:27
Speaker 1: specific acts of spiritualists and mediums like ectoplasm alone and
39:33
Speaker 1: do you did you ever read much about that? Mainly
39:36
Speaker 1: just you know what I learned from the Ghostbusters films. Ah, yes, yeah,
39:40
Speaker 1: I've got some great time life books that I'll bring in.
39:44
Speaker 1: I loved them as a kid. Why was this lime pink?
39:46
Speaker 1: And Part two in green and Part one? I wouldn't
39:48
Speaker 1: know because I didn't know until you told me. Really, yeah,
39:52
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You haven't seen part two? No, I've
39:54
Speaker 1: seen both. I just can't really easily differentiate the tellers.
39:58
Speaker 1: Keep forgetting about your color of deficiency. It's really a superpower.
40:02
Speaker 1: It probably has focused your brain in other directions. I'm sorry.
40:06
Speaker 1: I gotta say, man, Ghostbuster, you know what, who cares
40:09
Speaker 1: that Halloween is over in terms of this year's calendar.
40:13
Speaker 1: Let's do a Ghostbusters related episode next. What do you think? Then?
40:16
Speaker 1: I support that wholeheartedly, And I support you wholeheartedly, my friends.
40:21
Speaker 1: You know who supports us, hopefully luckily wholeheartedly. It's our
40:25
Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Big. Thanks to you, man. I'm just
40:28
Speaker 1: gonna lean out of the booth and make eye contact
40:30
Speaker 1: with you real quick. Boom, and they're literally pressing their
40:33
Speaker 1: palms against the glass. Uh like yeah, like that scene
40:37
Speaker 1: in Titanic, but not really like that scene in Titanic either. Um,
40:40
Speaker 1: it does get a little steamy in here and shipping
40:42
Speaker 1: container from time to time. So indeed, big thanks to
40:45
Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed our theme m who also has
40:48
Speaker 1: a heart full of spooky love, and you should check
40:50
Speaker 1: out his show Ephemeral where he actually did a spooky
40:53
Speaker 1: story as well, written by Richard Legalien which was originally
40:58
Speaker 1: published in Harper's Magazine in January of nineteen twelve called
41:01
Speaker 1: The Haunted Orchard, narrated by Peter Yearsley of of audio
41:06
Speaker 1: book fame, and Alex Williams adapted it with sound design
41:10
Speaker 1: and music and his typical um brilliant sonic touch us
41:14
Speaker 1: So check that out. Big thanks to Christopher Haciotas here
41:17
Speaker 1: in Spirit. Big thanks to our regular rotating cast and crew.
41:21
Speaker 1: We've got he was Jeff Cope, We've got Gabe Louise. Yeah,
41:24
Speaker 1: we've got of course Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister,
41:28
Speaker 1: who is just trolling us hard on one of our
41:31
Speaker 1: favorite sites on the Web, which is our Facebook community page,
41:35
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Yeah, join us there. All you gotta do
41:38
Speaker 1: is say one or both are, or you know whatever
41:41
Speaker 1: combination of letters in our names. That'll let us know
41:43
Speaker 1: that you kind of know who we are, or just
41:45
Speaker 1: you know, make a ref of some kind, you make
41:47
Speaker 1: us laugh, make us laugh, anything like that, and we'll
41:49
Speaker 1: let you right on in um. If you want to
41:51
Speaker 1: check us out on social media, we're Ridiculous History on
41:53
Speaker 1: most of the social outlets. Who want to follow us individually,
41:56
Speaker 1: you can check me out exclusively on Instagram where I
41:58
Speaker 1: am at how Now Noel Brown and you can find
42:01
Speaker 1: me getting kicked into and out of various countries, places,
42:05
Speaker 1: and communities. On Instagram, where I am at ben Boland
42:10
Speaker 1: you can find various hot and cold takes alike where
42:13
Speaker 1: I am at ben Boland h s W On Twitter, Uh,
42:18
Speaker 1: we do not have a call in line, which is
42:21
Speaker 1: probably for the best, but we do have an abiding
42:26
Speaker 1: obsession with all things ridiculous throughout history, So let us
42:30
Speaker 1: know what you think your fellow listeners would enjoy. Next.
42:33
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42:36
Speaker 1: can send us a good old fashioned email. We're ridiculous
42:39
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42:42
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42:48
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