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Hunters’ Duel · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Robert refused to give in to fear born into slavery
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  Speaker 1: in the American South. He always found small ways to rebel.
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  Speaker 1: His proudest moment was when he married his wife, Hannah,
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  Speaker 1: who was also enslaved. Their marriage wasn't even legally recognized
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  Speaker 1: by the state of South Carolina, but they did it anyway.
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  Speaker 1: He had also proven himself smart and capable enough at
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  Speaker 1: various jobs until he was stationed on a steamship called
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  Speaker 1: the Planter. The crew was mostly fellow and slave people,
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  Speaker 1: with only three white officers to oversee all of them.
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  Speaker 1: It was better than being on a plantation, and then
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  Speaker 1: they got to be out on the water and move around,
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  Speaker 1: but their overseers were just as hateful and condescending as
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  Speaker 1: any white slave owners on land. They hadn't done much
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  Speaker 1: sailing over the past year since the war broke out
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  Speaker 1: and the Union blockaded Charleston, trapping the Planter and other
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  Speaker 1: ships in Charleston Harbor. They could still run supplies back
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  Speaker 1: and forth between the peers, but that was about it.
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  Speaker 1: As such, Robert started to notice the captain and the
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  Speaker 1: other two officers grow lax when it came to military regulations.
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  Speaker 1: They weren't supposed to ever leave the enslaved people alone
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  Speaker 1: on the ship, but that started to happen more and
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  Speaker 1: more regularly, more shocking than that. One night, the captain
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  Speaker 1: told Robert that he and the other officers were going
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  Speaker 1: to town to be with their families for the night,
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  Speaker 1: and he left the ship in Robert's care while the
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  Speaker 1: war raged on. Every time Robert got word of a
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  Speaker 1: Confederate victory, his heart sank. He and his wife now
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  Speaker 1: had two small children to care for, but those children
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  Speaker 1: were the property of his wife's enslaver. There was nothing
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  Speaker 1: keeping that slaver from selling her and the children and
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  Speaker 1: sending them off to god knows where. If the Confederates
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  Speaker 1: were successful in becoming their own nation, then Robert and
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  Speaker 1: his family would continue to be enslaved for the rest
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  Speaker 1: of their lives. It wouldn't be a matter of if
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  Speaker 1: their family was torn apart, but when and thinking about
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  Speaker 1: this led Robert to desperation. He would rather die than
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  Speaker 1: lose his family. He continued to be left in charge
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  Speaker 1: of the planter. The captain probably thought that Robert would
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  Speaker 1: appreciate the trust, and he did, but not because he
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  Speaker 1: cared at all what the man thought of him. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: he was going to show the captain that he had
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  Speaker 1: made a huge mistake. And so Robert gathered the other
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  Speaker 1: enslaved people on board and told them that he wanted
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  Speaker 1: to take advantage of the situation. They didn't know how
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  Speaker 1: the war would turn out, but they would be fools
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  Speaker 1: to just sit back and let it play out without
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  Speaker 1: taking advantage of the chaos. He proposed that they steal
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  Speaker 1: the ship, pick up their love ones, and escaped to
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  Speaker 1: the Union blockade, where they would turn over the ship
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  Speaker 1: and earn their freedom. They put their plan in motion
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  Speaker 1: in June of eighteen sixty two. The crew had no
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  Speaker 1: problems sailing from the military peer to a nearby wharf
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  Speaker 1: where their friends and family were waiting. Once picked up,
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  Speaker 1: there were now sixteen escaping in slave people on board,
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  Speaker 1: with the women and children hiding below decks Robert then
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  Speaker 1: put on a straw hat that hid his face and
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  Speaker 1: had the men raise the Confederate flag above the ship.
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  Speaker 1: He then sailed them out into the harbor, past the
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  Speaker 1: Confederate fort guarding the city. The men on guard yelled
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  Speaker 1: down to the ship, give the Yankees hell, to which
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  Speaker 1: Robert coolly replied, I I. And from there several tense
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  Speaker 1: moments passed as they grew closer and closer to the
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  Speaker 1: Union ships. They waited as long as they dared to
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  Speaker 1: switch the Confederate flag out for a white flag of surrender.
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  Speaker 1: But when they finally did, the nearest Union ship called
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  Speaker 1: out to them, asking for their names and their intent.
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  Speaker 1: Robert gave them his and told them that they wanted
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  Speaker 1: their freedom. This was just the beginning of Robert's incredible story.
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  Speaker 1: He went on to captain the Planter and use it
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  Speaker 1: to help fight the Confederacy for the remainder of the war,
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  Speaker 1: and after the war was over, he took the reward
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  Speaker 1: money for the ship's capture and used it to buy
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  Speaker 1: a mansion in South Carolina, and not just any mansion,
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  Speaker 1: but the mansion of his original enslaver, who had since
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  Speaker 1: fled the state. We can only imagine how incredible he
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  Speaker 1: must have felt raising his family in the main house
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  Speaker 1: where he was born into slavery in a shack in
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  Speaker 1: the backyard. In the years that followed, Robert continued to
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  Speaker 1: do amazing things, becoming a state senator and doing his
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  Speaker 1: best to make South Carolina a safe place for freed
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  Speaker 1: and slave folks. Unfortunately, with the rise of the Jim
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  Speaker 1: Crow South, a lot of amazing stories like Roberts were
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  Speaker 1: deliberately downplayed in the history books. But curious minds have
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  Speaker 1: since reclaimed that legacy, bringing his story back to national
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  Speaker 1: attention with a monument outside of South Carolina's state House.
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  Speaker 1: When he piloted that ship out of Charleston Harbor, rob
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  Speaker 1: Bbert Smalls was just trying to create a future for
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  Speaker 1: his family, but in doing so, he contributed to the
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  Speaker 1: future of all black Americans. It began on a frozen
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  Speaker 1: evening in early nineteen sixty nine. A middle aged accountant
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  Speaker 1: by the name of Thornton was walking home when he
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  Speaker 1: decided to cut through the graveyard, a shortcut that quickly
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  Speaker 1: became a detour into the uncanny. Once a grand Victorian graveyard,
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  Speaker 1: Highgate had long ago fallen into disrepair. Its crumbling mausoleums
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  Speaker 1: and tombstones were now covered in ivy and graffiti, and
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  Speaker 1: the paths were severely overgrown. As Thornton wandered between the
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  Speaker 1: crips and weeping angel statues, he realized that he had
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  Speaker 1: gotten lost. A bell clanged in the distance, and he
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  Speaker 1: started toward the sound, hoping that it might lead him
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  Speaker 1: to the gate, but he had barely made it a
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  Speaker 1: few steps before the temperature suddenly dropped. A towering figure
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  Speaker 1: loomed ahead, human shaped but draped in shadows, and watching
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  Speaker 1: him with unblinking intensity. Thornton tried to run, but he
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  Speaker 1: was rooted in place and growing rapidly weaker, as if
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  Speaker 1: the specter was sapping the life from him. And then,
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  Speaker 1: as suddenly as it appeared, the figure vanished. When Thornton
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  Speaker 1: realized that he could move again, he ran, and he
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  Speaker 1: didn't stop until he stumbled out through the cemetery gates.
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  Speaker 1: A few weeks later, an elderly woman reported a near
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  Speaker 1: identical experience. Both accounts were reported to the British Psychic
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  Speaker 1: and Occult Society, a little known organization run almost entirely
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  Speaker 1: by a twenty four year old psychic investigator named David Farrant,
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  Speaker 1: intrigued but skeptical, he visited Highgate himself one night and
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  Speaker 1: allegedly glimpsed the same phantom, which he described as a tall,
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  Speaker 1: gray figure with pinpricks of red light for eyes. Convinced
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  Speaker 1: that something supernatural was a foot, Farrant wrote to the
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  Speaker 1: local newspaper asking if anyone else had seen anything strange
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  Speaker 1: in Highgates. The responses poured in, detailing one account after
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  Speaker 1: another of bizarre paranormal phenomena. The local press picked up
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  Speaker 1: the story and then the BBC. Pretty soon Highgate was
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  Speaker 1: the hottest destination in London for ghost hunters, goth teens
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  Speaker 1: and aspiring occultists. One of the newcomers was a guy
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  Speaker 1: named Sean Manchester, a self proclaimed bishop and exorcist. He
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  Speaker 1: claimed the figure in Highgate was not just a ghost,
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  Speaker 1: but a vampire, possibly a medieval Romanian nobleman, who had
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  Speaker 1: been brought to London in a coffin full of native soil.
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  Speaker 1: According to Manchester, recent satanic rituals had reawakened this ancient bloodsucker,
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  Speaker 1: and only he had the skills and the stakes to
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  Speaker 1: deal with it. David Farrant went on records saying that
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  Speaker 1: he thought this theory was ridiculous. He was a firm
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  Speaker 1: believer in ghosts, but he drew the line at vampires.
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  Speaker 1: Manchester took the criticism personally and pretty so soon their
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  Speaker 1: difference of paranormal opinion spiraled into a bitter feud. Farrant
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  Speaker 1: accused Manchester of fabricating his credentials and sensationalizing the story.
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  Speaker 1: Manchester accused Farrant of consorting with black magic and desecrating graves.
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  Speaker 1: Both gave increasingly bombastic interviews, each casting himself as the
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  Speaker 1: real hero of the Highgate tale and the other as
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  Speaker 1: the diluted or dangerous fraud and, as you'd imagine, their
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  Speaker 1: rivalry only fueled the media frenzy, which reached the fever
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  Speaker 1: pitch on March thirteenth of nineteen seventy, Friday, the thirteenth,
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  Speaker 1: of course, Manchester went on TV to announce that he
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  Speaker 1: would track and destroy the vampire that night. As the
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  Speaker 1: sun set, hundreds of thrill seekers stormed into the cemetery,
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  Speaker 1: climbing over locked gates and wandering the tombs in search
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  Speaker 1: of the undead. Unfortunately, Sean Manchester failed to kill the
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  Speaker 1: vampire that night, so the cemetery remained haunted, and over
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  Speaker 1: the next few months, the story grew even stranger. In Adust,
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  Speaker 1: a headless, charred corpse was found near the graveyard. Police
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  Speaker 1: suspected the body belong to someone already buried there exhumed
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  Speaker 1: for some kind of occult ritual. Just a few weeks later,
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  Speaker 1: David Farrant was caught climbing over the cemetery walls with
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  Speaker 1: a crucifix and a wooden stake and arrested for trespassing.
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  Speaker 1: The charges were eventually dropped, but Manchester used the arrest
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  Speaker 1: to connect Ferrant with the burnt body, accusing him of
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  Speaker 1: black magic and grave robbery. By nineteen seventy three, their
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  Speaker 1: feud had grown so absurd that the two men agreed
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  Speaker 1: to a public duel on Parliament Hill, complete with magical weapons.
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  Speaker 1: Fans eagerly awaited a showdown between their two favorite occult celebrities,
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  Speaker 1: but the duel was called off at the last minute.
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  Speaker 1: No real explanation was given, leaving everyone feeling disappointed. After that,
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  Speaker 1: the vampire began to recede into urban legend, but Farrant
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  Speaker 1: and Manchester kept themselves in the spotlight, prolonging the story
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  Speaker 1: through their personal war for decades. They have denounced one
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  Speaker 1: another in interviews, rival books, and blog posts, and kept
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  Speaker 1: the Highgate saga alive long after the cemetery had emptied out.
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  Speaker 1: David Farrant passed away in twenty nineteen, and when he did,
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  Speaker 1: Sean Manchester posted a surprisingly respectful tribute, and then returned
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  Speaker 1: to his blog to reaffirm that Farrant had always been
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  Speaker 1: dangerously wrong. Like the creature they had once hunted, their
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  Speaker 1: feud refused to stay buried. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.