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Grin and Bear It · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The American political circus is based on a
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  Speaker 1: two party system and has been since the mid eighteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats each put up their candidates for election
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  Speaker 1: to various offices, and the American people vote for who
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  Speaker 1: they'd like to represent them. However, other factions have formed
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  Speaker 1: over the years to catch those who feel that neither
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  Speaker 1: party deserves to represent their interest. From the Green Party
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  Speaker 1: to the Working Class Party to the Alliance Party, these
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  Speaker 1: splinter groups have become little more than a distraction. They
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  Speaker 1: do earn several thousand votes each election, but they don't
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  Speaker 1: amount to much overall. Almost nothing, ever, changes, But one
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  Speaker 1: group did want to change things, and they almost did
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  Speaker 1: until the Bears moved in. It started when Yale student
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  Speaker 1: Jason Sorens wrote an article for a niche political publication.
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  Speaker 1: Jason was a libertarian who believed in small government, fiscal conservatism,
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  Speaker 1: and free market capitalism with almost no oversight. Sorens fashioned
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  Speaker 1: himself something of an activist, and he sought out other
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  Speaker 1: like minded individuals to join him. He was starting a
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  Speaker 1: brand new enterprise that would establish a community for people
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  Speaker 1: who shared his ideas. His concept was centered on the
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  Speaker 1: idea of secession, but rather than separate from the United States,
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  Speaker 1: he would force a state to bend to his will.
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  Speaker 1: He called it the Free State Project, and it was
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  Speaker 1: started due to sorens frustration with the Libertarian Party, more
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  Speaker 1: specifically it's inability need to get any of its candidates
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  Speaker 1: elected to office, so he turned to the past for inspiration.
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  Speaker 1: Like other extremist leaders who had come before him, Sorens
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  Speaker 1: believed that an extreme act of migration was necessary to
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  Speaker 1: achieve his goals. He planned on overtaking the politics of
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  Speaker 1: a particular states and in turn swaying the country toward libertarianism.
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  Speaker 1: After an unsurprising undemocratic vote, the Free State movement settled
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  Speaker 1: on New Hampshire, thanks in large part to its live
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  Speaker 1: free or die mentality. A subset of followers formed an
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  Speaker 1: off shoot called the Freetown Project and moved into the
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  Speaker 1: small town of Grafton. Now Grafton had a modest population
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  Speaker 1: of just over eleven people before the Freetowners moved in,
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  Speaker 1: a number that jumped up by another two hundred rather quickly.
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  Speaker 1: They saw its low property tax rates and lack of
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  Speaker 1: zoning laws as the signs of a perfect libertarian utopia.
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  Speaker 1: The freetowners, mostly made up of white males, believed that
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  Speaker 1: they were liberating Grafton with their wild new ideas about
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  Speaker 1: how the government and run and how budgets should be spent. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: locals greeted them with hostility, and that might have been
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  Speaker 1: for a good reason. You see, the freetowners had come
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  Speaker 1: with yrs, RVs and shipping containers, which became their homes.
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  Speaker 1: One of the leaders of the movement, Larry pen Darvis,
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  Speaker 1: had a strange agenda he was dead set on seeing through.
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  Speaker 1: It included organ trafficking, old fashioned duels, and the right
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  Speaker 1: to organize fights between folks without a home, presumably for
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  Speaker 1: entertainment and betting purposes. He also supported what he called
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  Speaker 1: consensual cannibalism, something he referred to as a victimless crime.
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  Speaker 1: But not everyone shared pen Darvis's views. He eventually left
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  Speaker 1: Grafton for Texas. But the freetowners didn't want a free
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  Speaker 1: market system that embodied their libertarian ideologies either. All they
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  Speaker 1: wanted was a smaller budget and lower taxes, which went
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  Speaker 1: about as you might expect. Grafton suffered dearly after it's
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  Speaker 1: yearly one million dollar budget got slashed to about three
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  Speaker 1: quarters of that. Violent crime went up, while road repairs
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  Speaker 1: went down. Domestic violence spiked, The Senior Citizens Council lost
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  Speaker 1: its funding, and town employees could no longer afford to
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  Speaker 1: heat their homes. As some people put it, the town
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  Speaker 1: went feral, which probably explains what happened next. Farmers started
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  Speaker 1: noticing that livestock was being taken from under their noses.
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  Speaker 1: One woman's kittens were snatched and eaten while she was
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  Speaker 1: still playing with them on her lawn, and neighbors began
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  Speaker 1: getting strange visitors on their porches. These weren't religious preachers
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  Speaker 1: or even girls scouts selling cookies. They were far more menacing. Grafton,
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  Speaker 1: New Hampshire, had been invaded by bears, black bears, to
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  Speaker 1: be exact, which normally didn't bother people. However, now the
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  Speaker 1: animals that had been keeping themselves in the woods were
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  Speaker 1: taking over the town. But why well. One theory is
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  Speaker 1: that the lack of funding for animal control and bear
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  Speaker 1: proofing garbage cans led to the incursion. Another is that
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  Speaker 1: the influx of outsiders encroaching on the bears domains results
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  Speaker 1: to them seeking other places to unwind, like swimming pools
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  Speaker 1: and decks. Some people even fed the bears, which may
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  Speaker 1: have kept them coming back for more. Whatever the cause,
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  Speaker 1: the bears did more than rereak havoc on Grafton. They
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  Speaker 1: drove the freetowners apart, with many fending for themselves and
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  Speaker 1: leaving their neighbors to figure things out on their own.
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  Speaker 1: And soon enough, the freetown projects simply died off, well,
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  Speaker 1: more like it was absorbed. The free state movement that
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  Speaker 1: had started it all took control as more and more
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  Speaker 1: freetowners opted to live without regulations or rules, and Grafton
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  Speaker 1: has shared its town with the libertarians ever since. But
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  Speaker 1: you might be wondering when all this occurred. Clearly, a
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  Speaker 1: town overrun with anti government cultists seeking political freedom couldn't
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  Speaker 1: happen today. Right Wrong, This didn't happen in the seventeen hundreds,
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  Speaker 1: or the eighteen hundreds, or even the nineteen hundreds. The
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  Speaker 1: free state project was started in the early two thousands,
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  Speaker 1: and it's still going strong twenty years later, although their
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  Speaker 1: numbers aren't as high as they had hoped. Apparently, some
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  Speaker 1: people find the idea of living in a town full
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  Speaker 1: of potholes and wild animals to be well unbearable. It's
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  Speaker 1: no secret that during World War Two, Adolf Hitler turned
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  Speaker 1: to some unconventional methods to try and gain an edge
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  Speaker 1: against Allied forces. There's potential evidence that the Nazi Party
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  Speaker 1: itself was inspired by occult influences. Beginning in the nineteen twenties. Books, movies,
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  Speaker 1: and television shows for the past seven decades have speculated
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  Speaker 1: as to the efforts Hitler might have gone to in
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  Speaker 1: order to create his master race, from mad scientists to
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  Speaker 1: religious artifacts to Satan worship. The Third Reich didn't just
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  Speaker 1: rely on tanks and guns to carry out its abhorrent agenda.
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  Speaker 1: That attempted to reach over into other worlds and even
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  Speaker 1: other dimensions for a leg up. For example, Heinrich Himler,
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  Speaker 1: one of the main architects of the Holocaust, was an
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  Speaker 1: unflinching zealot who spent much of his time on extracurricular
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  Speaker 1: projects to help the Nazis one of which inadvertently ended
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  Speaker 1: up as the plot of the third Indiana John's film.
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  Speaker 1: Himmler was on a quest for the Holy Grail, hoping
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  Speaker 1: to use it to give himself superpowers. But Hitler and
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  Speaker 1: his stooges weren't the only one seeking out supernatural means
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  Speaker 1: for success, because across the ocean, in the state of Maryland,
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  Speaker 1: a young group of Americans were doing the same thing,
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  Speaker 1: with one singular goal to take out the Furor with
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  Speaker 1: a little witchcraft. William Seabrook born in Westminster, Maryland in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four, held a number of jobs during his
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  Speaker 1: sixty one years on Earth. He was a journalist and
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  Speaker 1: adventurer who wrote about distant cultures. He had served in
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  Speaker 1: World War One with the French Army, and most famously,
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  Speaker 1: he was an occultist. In fact, he was good friends
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  Speaker 1: with the prior addition to our Cabinet of Curiosities Alistair Crowley,
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  Speaker 1: who stayed with Seabrook at his Maryland farm in nineteen nineteen. However,
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one, the eccentric Mr Seabrook had found
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  Speaker 1: a new cause to get behind. He saw what was
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  Speaker 1: going on in Germany with Hitler's forces advancing across Europe
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  Speaker 1: and knew something had to be done. This was almost
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  Speaker 1: a full year before the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor
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  Speaker 1: and thrust the country into war. Seabrook, along with a
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  Speaker 1: cadre of young hopefuls, gathered at a cabin in the
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  Speaker 1: woods belonging to a man named Charles Tupper. The group
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  Speaker 1: had brought with them numerous tools with which to carry
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  Speaker 1: out their spells, including tom tom drums, nails, axes, a
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  Speaker 1: mannequin and a Nazi uniform, oh and lots of rum.
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  Speaker 1: They fit the uniform on the dummy and drew a
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  Speaker 1: toothbrush mustache under its nose, giving it a familiar appearance.
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  Speaker 1: They had just made an effigy of Adolph Hitler. What
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  Speaker 1: followed next was documented by Life magazine, which had tagged
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  Speaker 1: along for what it dubbed as a hexane party. Seabrook
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  Speaker 1: and his compatriots were preparing to carry out a massive
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  Speaker 1: voodoo in canation on Hitler in order to stop him
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  Speaker 1: from across the pond. As Seabrook himself wrote in a
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  Speaker 1: newspaper article in n Let the doubters laugh at such
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  Speaker 1: things if they want to, I have lived with voodoo
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  Speaker 1: priests and felt myself the awfulness of their strange powers. Personally,
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  Speaker 1: I want no part of the danger that lies in
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  Speaker 1: such sinister explorations. They propped up their Hitler effigy in
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  Speaker 1: a chair as Seabrook coached one of the attendees on
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  Speaker 1: how to play the correct rhythm on the drum. Then
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  Speaker 1: the hexinge began. Each person took turns hammering nails into
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  Speaker 1: the dummies heart, all while clamoring you are Hitler, Hitler,
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  Speaker 1: is you the woes that come to you, let it
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  Speaker 1: come to him. There were also death dolls made a
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  Speaker 1: fabric that looked like the furor, which the participants shoved
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  Speaker 1: pins into throughout the night, before burying them face down
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  Speaker 1: in the swamp outside. Hitler, who had been rumored to
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  Speaker 1: be paranoid and superstitious, was also said to have believed
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  Speaker 1: in black magic. Perhaps all the damage done to the
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  Speaker 1: dolls and the mannequin might have given him a headache
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  Speaker 1: or a bit of heartburn, maybe a sore arm. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it's doubtful, but Seabrook, Tupper and the others knew that
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  Speaker 1: the effects of the incantation wouldn't be felt immediately. They
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  Speaker 1: wanted word of their Hex Hitler event to find its
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  Speaker 1: way to Europe to inspire others to carry it forward
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  Speaker 1: as well. The war continued on for another four years
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  Speaker 1: after that, so it's probably safe to say that their
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  Speaker 1: efforts weren't of much use. But buried somewhere in the
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  Speaker 1: Maryland Woods are a bunch of pin riddled death dolls
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  Speaker 1: that look an awful lot like Adolf Hitler, proof that
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  Speaker 1: even though they didn't get any closer to stopping War
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  Speaker 1: War two, they did put an end to a lot
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  Speaker 1: of their own stress and anxiety that night. Unusual, absolutely,
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  Speaker 1: but also more than a little curious. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,