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Cave of Wonders · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Why is a raving
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  Speaker 1: like a writing desk? It's a question asked by the
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  Speaker 1: Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's famous title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
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  Speaker 1: and though many have tried to answer it, the truth
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  Speaker 1: is the question has no answer, much like another question,
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  Speaker 1: how is Lewis Carroll linked to the Knights Templar? Like
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  Speaker 1: Carroll's original question, there's no clear answer, at least not
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  Speaker 1: that anyone is aware of. However, his story of a
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  Speaker 1: girl who discovers a magical world down a rabbit hole
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  Speaker 1: is not the only one. Several years ago, a farmer
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  Speaker 1: in Shropshire, England, had walked through a wooded area on
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  Speaker 1: his property when he noticed several large holes in the ground.
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  Speaker 1: He assumed they were rabbit holes leading to a massive
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  Speaker 1: underground warren. Upon closer inspection, though, he discovered the holes
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  Speaker 1: led to something else. Somewhere else Beneath the forest was
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  Speaker 1: a network of caves and man made rooms, carved entirely
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  Speaker 1: from sandstone. Enormous stone pillars held up arched ceilings only
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  Speaker 1: a meter below the farmer's feet, and some areas were
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  Speaker 1: so small their entrances so narrow they could only be
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  Speaker 1: accessible by crawling on one's hands and knees. Known as
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  Speaker 1: Kington Temple, the chambers bore a striking resemblance to those
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  Speaker 1: of a place of worship. Many thought the site had
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  Speaker 1: been the venue for countless ceremonies, ranging to black magic
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  Speaker 1: rituals to Christian gatherings. In fact, the caves possessed several
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  Speaker 1: features that lent credence to that belief, including a font
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  Speaker 1: and drawings of crosses on the walls. The crosses helped
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  Speaker 1: fuel speculation as to the cave's true purpose, as they
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  Speaker 1: looked much like the crosses worn by the Knights Templar,
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  Speaker 1: the military order that fought in the Crusades and allegedly
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  Speaker 1: protected the Holy Grail. For a long time, it was
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  Speaker 1: believed that the underground refuge was the resting area for
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  Speaker 1: the Knights. Later, after the order was dissolved, it became
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  Speaker 1: a place of worship for their followers. In addition to
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  Speaker 1: the crosses, the temple's nave, or central gathering area, was
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  Speaker 1: round in shape, carved in the image of the Church
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  Speaker 1: of the Holy Sepulture, which according to tradition, sits on
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  Speaker 1: the site of both the Crucifixion and the burial of Jesus.
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  Speaker 1: Rumors of the cave's religious origins brought more than historians
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  Speaker 1: to its hidden corridors. Since the nineteen eighties, tourists, vandals,
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  Speaker 1: and practitioners of the occult have flocked to the sandstone hideaway,
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  Speaker 1: carving things into the walls and leaving garbage behind. As
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  Speaker 1: a result, the area was closed off to the public
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  Speaker 1: by the property owner in two thousand twelve. In that time,
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  Speaker 1: more information about the caves has um surfaced. For one,
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  Speaker 1: it has never been a place of worship for the
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  Speaker 1: Knights Templar or their followers. It hadn't even been built yet.
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  Speaker 1: Kanton Temple was most likely a product of the Victorian era,
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  Speaker 1: carved hundreds of years after the Knights Templar had been dissolved.
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  Speaker 1: During that time, elaborate ornamental structures such as this were
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  Speaker 1: common among wealthy members of the British elite. They provided
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  Speaker 1: only decoration, even though they're very architecture betrays a sense
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  Speaker 1: of purpose. However, instead of a replica Roman temple or
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  Speaker 1: an Egyptian pyramid in someone's garden, the owner at the
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  Speaker 1: time had decided to carve an entire temple out of
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  Speaker 1: sandstone beneath an English forest. England is full of ancient
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  Speaker 1: caves and underground structures. Kara Dot Cave and all Stretton
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  Speaker 1: is a large opening in volcanic rock and is believed
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  Speaker 1: to be where British chieftain Caracticus hid out while resisting
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  Speaker 1: the Roman army during first century a d And another
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  Speaker 1: folly similar to Kington Temple, the Hawkstone Grotto, was carved
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  Speaker 1: out of an old copper mine adjacent to a large
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  Speaker 1: manor house. There are many of these edifices and man
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  Speaker 1: made caverns we know about, and chances are some have
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  Speaker 1: yet to be rediscovered. England, of course, is a vast
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  Speaker 1: country with thousands of years of history behind it, but
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  Speaker 1: we still don't know everything. To achieve that, we might
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  Speaker 1: just need to dive a little deeper down the rabbit hole.
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  Speaker 1: It's the thought that counts, right At least, that's what
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  Speaker 1: we tell ourselves when we get a gift that doesn't
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  Speaker 1: seem quite the right fit for us. We should just
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  Speaker 1: be thankful someone thought of us at all, Except that
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  Speaker 1: isn't always the case. Sometimes no gift is the best
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  Speaker 1: gift of all. A woman from Edinburgh must have felt
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  Speaker 1: that way when her friend returned from a trip to
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  Speaker 1: i row In In the friend's luggage was a modest
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  Speaker 1: necklace made from glass beads, a thoughtful token from a
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  Speaker 1: far away land, though the woman might not have accepted
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  Speaker 1: it had she known where exactly in Cairo, her friend
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  Speaker 1: had obtained it an ancient tomb. Even though the necklace
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  Speaker 1: had been a gift from someone close, the woman didn't
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  Speaker 1: think much of it and set it aside. For seven years.
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  Speaker 1: It lived among her jewelry, getting pushed deeper and deeper
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  Speaker 1: out of the way, until nineteen twenty, when she rediscovered it.
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  Speaker 1: It still didn't suit her taste, and enough time had
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  Speaker 1: passed where she didn't feel guilty getting rid of it,
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  Speaker 1: so she tossed it in the small waste basket beside
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  Speaker 1: her bed. She awoke the following night and reached for
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  Speaker 1: her pair of slippers that she kept nearby when something
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  Speaker 1: grabbed her wrist. At least she thought something had grabbed her,
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  Speaker 1: but when she looked down she didn't see anything. There
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  Speaker 1: were strange sounds coming from the waste basket, too, like
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  Speaker 1: something was crawling around inside it. She looked down, but
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  Speaker 1: there was some paper and a string of beads. She
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  Speaker 1: snatched the necklace in a panic and threw it outside
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  Speaker 1: her door. The woman told her brother about the incident
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  Speaker 1: the following day. He was a doctor and someone who
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  Speaker 1: would scoff at stories of strange sounds in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of the night, but his sister was not one to
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  Speaker 1: make up such outlandish things, so he took the necklace
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  Speaker 1: home with him to see it for himself. That night,
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  Speaker 1: he placed it under his pillow and went to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: At four o'clock the next morning, he was awoken by
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  Speaker 1: loud banging on the walls. He also felt a hand
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  Speaker 1: moving under his pillow, as though it was trying to
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  Speaker 1: take the necklace from him. His neighbors asked him the
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  Speaker 1: following day why he'd been hanging pictures in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of the night when he should have been getting sleep.
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  Speaker 1: He had woken everyone up, They said, one nightly experiment
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  Speaker 1: wasn't enough to render a sound judgment, though, so the
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  Speaker 1: man spent another night with the ancient bobble beneath his head.
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  Speaker 1: That evening, his bed started to shake, and for a
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  Speaker 1: whole week he experienced bizarre visits from an unnamed entity
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  Speaker 1: that haunted his bedroom. His part of the experiment was over,
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  Speaker 1: but he needed a wider sample size, so he gave
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  Speaker 1: the necklace to a friend who had a similar experience
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  Speaker 1: involving an invisible hand reaching for them during the night.
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  Speaker 1: That person passed it on to someone else, who gave
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  Speaker 1: it to another person, all who reported the same stories
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  Speaker 1: the necklace had invited something into their homes. Even more strange,
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  Speaker 1: each person who possessed the necklace woke up in a
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  Speaker 1: cold sweat, their hearts beating out in their chest, as
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  Speaker 1: though they'd come face to face with a ghost. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: stories about the necklace made their way to a local newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: The reporter J. W. Harry's printed an article about the
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  Speaker 1: cursed object, including quotes from each person who had slept
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  Speaker 1: with it under their pillows. As you might imagine, the
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  Speaker 1: article spread like wildfire, but Harris wanted to learn more
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  Speaker 1: about the necklace. He borrowed it and had it examined
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  Speaker 1: by the Royal Scottish Museum, which told him the blue
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  Speaker 1: beads were rough three thousand years old. Though an interesting piece,
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  Speaker 1: there was nothing particularly special about it. It didn't look
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  Speaker 1: like something used in a religious ceremony or a ritual
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  Speaker 1: of any kind. Harry's took the piece home, and after
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  Speaker 1: his family had retired for the night, he placed it
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  Speaker 1: on the mantel and took a seat in his living room,
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  Speaker 1: book in his lap. It wasn't long before he started
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  Speaker 1: hearing sounds rustling in the sideboard, someone knocking here and there,
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  Speaker 1: what steps in the hall. He ran around the house,
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  Speaker 1: chasing each of the sounds, but when he looked for
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  Speaker 1: a source, he found nothing. Harry's even included his wife,
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  Speaker 1: who didn't know that her husband had brought the necklace
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  Speaker 1: home in these experiments. He took it into the bedroom
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  Speaker 1: where his wife was sitting up, still awake, and hid
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  Speaker 1: the necklace out of sight. The lights dimmed, then returned
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  Speaker 1: to normal. They did so consistently for minutes at a time.
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  Speaker 1: Eventually Harry's turned off the lights and then the rustling
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  Speaker 1: sounds began again. After a week, Harry's decided to unload
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  Speaker 1: the necklace on another unsuspecting soul, an architect named James Dunn,
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  Speaker 1: while the others dealt with rustling and mild tapping. Donne
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  Speaker 1: experienced crashing sounds in the middle of his bedroom, so
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  Speaker 1: loud that they scared his dog. Harry's also told someone
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  Speaker 1: else about the necklace, someone familiar with the supernatural, Sir
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  Speaker 1: Arthur Conan Doyle. He told Harry's how ancient Egyptians would
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  Speaker 1: enchant their tombs with spirit entities to guard them after
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  Speaker 1: their death. It was possible that the necklace had been
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  Speaker 1: taken from one of those tombs without permission, disturbing the entity,
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  Speaker 1: and so Harry's gave the jewelry back to its original owner,
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  Speaker 1: the woman from Edinburgh, who wanted nothing to do with it.
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  Speaker 1: She told her brother, the doctor, to take it away
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  Speaker 1: from her, which he did on a trip to Loch Levin.
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  Speaker 1: He reached into his pocket, pulled the necklace out, and
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  Speaker 1: threw it into the water, where it's been ever since.
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  Speaker 1: But that wasn't the end for the Gyptian relic. Soon after,
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  Speaker 1: a young woman in Edinburgh was reported to be writing
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  Speaker 1: strange letters that didn't seem to make any sense. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: kids make up silly words all the time, but what
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  Speaker 1: made this incident noteworthy was that her writing hand was
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  Speaker 1: doing it automatically independence of the rest of her body.
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  Speaker 1: It turns out that what everyone thought was gibberish was
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  Speaker 1: in fact a message scribbled backwards, supposedly taken from the
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  Speaker 1: deity protecting the Egyptian tomb from which the necklace had
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  Speaker 1: been taken, and this deity was revealing the location of
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  Speaker 1: the necklace and that it was probably best for it
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  Speaker 1: to stay there. Jewelry is a lovely gift in most situations.
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  Speaker 1: Better than that, though, is something much more comforting relief
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  Speaker 1: from an Egyptian curse. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: 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 World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,