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The Divine Tragedy · 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 right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the cabinet of curiosities. It's called binomial nomenclature, and
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  Speaker 1: it's how scientists classify species of living organisms. When someone
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  Speaker 1: describes a great white shark as a car carridan car carrious,
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  Speaker 1: they're using binomial nomenclature. In fact, your average four year
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  Speaker 1: old probably knows all about the Tyrannosaurus rex, one of
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  Speaker 1: the few things to be known only by its Latin classification.
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  Speaker 1: And for this naming system we have one Homo sapien
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  Speaker 1: to think. Carlus Linnaeus, also known as Car, a Swedish
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  Speaker 1: botanist and scientist. Carl is often considered the father of
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  Speaker 1: modern taxonomy. He spent his years in Sweden studying nature
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  Speaker 1: and lecturing students on the subject of botany. In the
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  Speaker 1: seventeen forties, he traveled throughout his homeland, collecting different types
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  Speaker 1: of plants and naming them according to his new system,
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  Speaker 1: eventually publishing his findings across several books. But Carl had
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  Speaker 1: another book, one that he kept outside of his scientific wheelhouse.
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  Speaker 1: He called it the Nemesis Davina, and he treated it
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  Speaker 1: as a hybrid journal and commonplace book, away for him
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  Speaker 1: to explore the things that couldn't be explained in the classroom.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to know how so much horror and tragedy
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  Speaker 1: occurred in a world that believed in a just and
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  Speaker 1: true God. Within the pages of the Nemesis Divina, Carl
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  Speaker 1: collected passages from books that he found interesting and lines
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  Speaker 1: of scripture that reinforced his worldview. He also recorded pieces
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  Speaker 1: from his life, such as stories and happenings of the day,
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  Speaker 1: and one such happening occurred on the night of July twelfth,
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  Speaker 1: seventeen sixty five, in the museum attached to his home.
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  Speaker 1: The facility most likely held various plant species that were
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  Speaker 1: important to his work, so at the end of every night,
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  Speaker 1: Carl would walk through and lock all the doors and
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  Speaker 1: carry the key with him to bed. As the midnight
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  Speaker 1: hour rang out and July twelfth became July, Carl's wife
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  Speaker 1: shook him awake. She told him she heard someone walking
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  Speaker 1: around the museum. Carl heard footsteps too, but couldn't understand
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  Speaker 1: why he'd locked the doors. Just as he'd always done,
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  Speaker 1: and the key was still in his possession. He knew
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  Speaker 1: those footsteps too. They belonged to someone with a heavy
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  Speaker 1: gate who tromped around wherever he went. Soon enough, they
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  Speaker 1: faded away, and both Carl and his wife somehow went
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  Speaker 1: back to sleep. Days later, Carl got some bad news.
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  Speaker 1: It's her now that a friend of his, commissioner, Carl Clerk. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I know another Carl, had passed away earlier that week, specifically,
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  Speaker 1: at midnight on July twelfth. Linnaeus froze. He suddenly realized
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  Speaker 1: why the footsteps had sounded so familiar years earlier when
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  Speaker 1: both men worked together. It was how Linnaeus could tell
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  Speaker 1: his friend Clerk was nearby due to the heavy steps
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  Speaker 1: of the Clerk's boots on the floor. But that isn't
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  Speaker 1: even the oddest story recorded in Carl's nemesis Davina. Remember,
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  Speaker 1: this wasn't a journal, but a repository of anecdotes, quotes,
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  Speaker 1: and texts that resonated with him. And it just so
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  Speaker 1: happened that one of the strangest tales that he kept
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  Speaker 1: didn't happen to him at all, but rather it happened
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  Speaker 1: in Philipstad, a town several hundred miles north of Karl's birthplace.
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  Speaker 1: As the story goes, the mayor of that town was
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  Speaker 1: a man named Rizal who lived there with his sizeable family.
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  Speaker 1: Among the many children he had was a fourteen year
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  Speaker 1: old her and in the story that carl Annaeus recorded
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  Speaker 1: later in his book, this daughter had fallen asleep one
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  Speaker 1: night while her mother was still awake. Roselle's wife watched
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  Speaker 1: one of the other children walk into her fourteen year
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  Speaker 1: old daughter's room in a daze, practically sleepwalking. The young
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  Speaker 1: girl pulled a fancy dress down and draped it over
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  Speaker 1: her sister's sleeping body. There had been no reason to
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  Speaker 1: do so. It was not something that she had ever
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  Speaker 1: done before, and typically such clothes were laid out the
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  Speaker 1: night before special occasions like a wedding or a party
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  Speaker 1: or a funeral. After the girl had left, her mother
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  Speaker 1: peeked in and asked her daughter if she'd really been asleep.
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  Speaker 1: The teenager whispered back that she'd been awake the whole time.
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  Speaker 1: She knew all about the white dress, but had no
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  Speaker 1: idea why her sister had placed it upon her. She
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  Speaker 1: certainly wasn't getting married and had no party to attend.
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  Speaker 1: The Next day, the fresh faced fourteen year old girl
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  Speaker 1: joined her tutor for lunch, having forgotten about the strange
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  Speaker 1: incident the night before. She mentioned a bird outside who's
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  Speaker 1: tweeting was bothering her during her meal, and she asked
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  Speaker 1: him to fetch his rifle. The tutor obliged. He grabbed
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  Speaker 1: his rifle, cocking it as he strode through the house
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  Speaker 1: towards the bird. The rifle, however, malfunctioned as he passed
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  Speaker 1: the young girl and it went off. She died instantly,
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  Speaker 1: and waiting for her upstairs was the white funeral dress
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  Speaker 1: her sister had picked out for her the night before.
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  Speaker 1: No one had heard of erth Camera, Iowa. Before. According
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  Speaker 1: to an article published in the Clarion soun Telegraph, a
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  Speaker 1: paper from a neighboring town, a man had stopped for
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  Speaker 1: gas in erth Camera before heading back out on the oad.
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  Speaker 1: He only made it two miles before his car petered
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  Speaker 1: out the tank had been empty. Angry at having paid
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  Speaker 1: for gas he never actually received, the man walked two
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  Speaker 1: hours back to town to get his money back, except
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  Speaker 1: he never made it. No, nothing ever happened to him.
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  Speaker 1: Don't worry, It's just that the closer he got to
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  Speaker 1: Earth cameer the farther away he seemed. It was a
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  Speaker 1: fellow traveler who eventually helped the man by giving him
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  Speaker 1: some of his own guests, but the whole experience left
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  Speaker 1: him feeling rattled, so much so that he checked himself
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  Speaker 1: into a sanitarium A short while later. The pilots also
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  Speaker 1: heard the rumors about the mysterious town and took it
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  Speaker 1: upon himself to snap photos of it from above. What
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  Speaker 1: he captured on film were unkept fields and abandoned homes.
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  Speaker 1: A deserted town should have been on the lips of
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  Speaker 1: every Iowan everywhere, but the local news took a back seat.
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  Speaker 1: After the stock market crash, of or Camera faded once
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  Speaker 1: again into obscurity. Stories emerged here and there over the
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  Speaker 1: years from people passing through. In nineteen thirty, two farmers
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  Speaker 1: fleeing the dust Bowl to California stopped in or Camera
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  Speaker 1: to rest. Two men from the camp went out into
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  Speaker 1: town in search of supplies, mainly liquor. Imagine their surprise
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  Speaker 1: when the steps of the front door disappeared right beneath
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  Speaker 1: their feet. One witness described it as those stepping through
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  Speaker 1: a cloud. They returned to camp empty handed, and their
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  Speaker 1: story was laughed off as a cheap ploy to pocket
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  Speaker 1: the cash they had been given for the booze. It
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  Speaker 1: was only when the men offered to give the money
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  Speaker 1: back that the rest of the camp got worried. Soon
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  Speaker 1: the two men turned into twelve who marched back to
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  Speaker 1: the general store to see what was going on. They
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  Speaker 1: too tried to climb the steps to the front door,
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  Speaker 1: and once again they fell through to the ground. Next,
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  Speaker 1: the men tried bridging the distance between the ground and
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  Speaker 1: the door with a wooden plank, but ended up with
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  Speaker 1: the same results. The board fell through the steps as
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  Speaker 1: though nothing was there. When they had had enough, they
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  Speaker 1: quickly returned to camp and instructed everyone to pack up
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  Speaker 1: their belongings. It was time to go. State police finally
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  Speaker 1: got word of the stories and did some investigating of
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  Speaker 1: their own. They attempted to speak with the earth Camera
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  Speaker 1: sheriff directly, but each time they knocked on the door,
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  Speaker 1: their hand passed right through it like smoke. Contact with
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  Speaker 1: anyone connected with the town seemed almost impossible. As the
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  Speaker 1: years passed, it wasn't just stairs and doors that disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: The houses did too, leaving behind fences, bathtubs, and overgrown fields.
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  Speaker 1: After the last vestiges of the town had evaporated, a
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  Speaker 1: group of Romani travelers set up camp in one of
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  Speaker 1: the empty fields. It didn't take long for them to
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  Speaker 1: realize something was amiss about the area, and just as
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  Speaker 1: soon as they arrived, they set out again on the road.
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  Speaker 1: The leader of the group told a local official that
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  Speaker 1: the area was and I quote, saturated with the tears
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  Speaker 1: of the dispossessed and with the despair of those who
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  Speaker 1: had never borne names. In all of their statements, not
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  Speaker 1: a single person who had ever been to the town
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  Speaker 1: ever remembered seeing a soul. No locals, no shopkeepers, no
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  Speaker 1: children playing in the fields. Erth Camera, from the very
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  Speaker 1: beginning had been deserted. So after all this time, the
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  Speaker 1: question remains, what happened to erk Camera, Iowa. The truth
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  Speaker 1: is nothing. The newspaper in which it was mentioned didn't
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  Speaker 1: actually exist. The first anyone had ever heard about the
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  Speaker 1: town was in two thousand fifteen. The story of Erth
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  Speaker 1: Camera circulated around the Internet so quickly and organically people
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  Speaker 1: began to assume it had existed for hundreds of years.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the funny thing about modern folklore. Our technology
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  Speaker 1: has made it possible to di still generations of storytelling
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  Speaker 1: and mythology into just a few years. An entire town
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  Speaker 1: that has only existed for less than a decade has
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  Speaker 1: become a historical touchstone as real to readers as Shangri
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  Speaker 1: La or El Dorado. So while or camera might have
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  Speaker 1: come and gone within a few short years, it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: look like our knack for telling compelling stories will disappear
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  Speaker 1: anytime soon, as long as we never forget the golden rule,
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  Speaker 1: don't believe everything you read on the Internet. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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  Speaker 1: H