And That's Why We Drink - E254 The Bunnyman Bridge 5K and Pre-Halloween Santa Hats

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

We're going wild with "fun" facts today for episode 254, from Runescape to shoe buckles to the last woman hanged in New York State! For Xandy's second episode, Em covers the second part in their two-part series on the local lore of the Bunnyman Bridge. Then Xandy takes us time traveling through old newspapers and the case of Bathsheba Spooner, the first woman executed by the U.S. government. And please tell us if you know of any pokemon card related heists... and that's why we drink!

uh hey everybody is and that's why we drink round two featuring uh zandy schieffer how are you i'm doing great thank you how are you doing um i'm just i've been wondering all day like why why do you why do you drink thank you i'm so glad you asked because i didn't prompt you to do that at all um well because uh so we are recording an hour late because we were supposed to record an hour ago but then i told xandy oh i want to wait until uh my smoothie gets here because i don't want it to like melt the whole time we're recording and then i don't have a smoothie also i would like it to drink while we are recording but as you can see i'm not drinking anything because it took forever to get here uh it finally showed up and then as

soon as i sat down on the table to record it fell over and exploded all over the floor all that hour was for nothing I still would have not had a smoothie no and so oh my god that's terrible it's fine yesterday I was like really dehydrated I don't think I realized it until I woke up this morning and I had one of those like dehydration like headaches where I was like if you don't drink a gallon of water right now you're gonna fall over and I was like oh I'm gonna like replenish myself with vitamins and be really good and like I had a whole plan with the smoothie and it just literally fell apart so literally that's awful that's the worst feeling ever yeah so I chugged a bunch of water before we got on here we'll'll see what happens. But I hope your day is going better.

Is there a reason why you drink today? Kind of. So you texted me saying we got to push it back. And I wasn't complaining because I was playing RuneScape. This is my life recently. It's literally RuneScape. I don't know what else to talk about because it's all I've been doing. And then I was like, great, I actually have a chance to do do something and this will mean nothing to most people but i got this clue scroll

i was doing it was a hard clue scroll and i went through all the steps and the rewards i got were really bad so that's why i'm drinking because i'm really sad about it i don't know what that means but i that's man you know i've been there a million times it's just never good never good yeah never good i tried to impress you and i looked up runescape trivia i'm not i i failed you because i don't know i feel like every link i clicked on where it was like did you know these things about runescape it felt like a listicle of things everyone already knows um which is weird because i don't even know what runescape is and i felt like i knew these things it was like did you know that you can have a lot of different characters and i was like okay i was like i feel like that's i assume any any game

gives you that option it just kind of like sells it to you instead of like giving anything too fun about it um i feel like most fun facts are very specific to the game where if you don't play it won't make sense that i saw something about magic spells and i was like i for all i know that is a fun fact the fun fact to me is that there's magic spells i didn't know that so i do have something though there are yes there are multiple um multiple types of magic within runescape and you can change your spell book uh each one has like a different different theme and actually uh fun fact i have so uh gillinor is the name of like the world uh and it's an anagram of religion and part of that is because there are different religions within it's spelled like g-i-e-l-i-n-o-r or something i don't i may

probably mess that up but But they're different religions and they're kind of like factions where there's like Zamorak, Saradomin, and they're all these different... So anyway, so I actually found that out recently. That actually did blow my mind a little bit. Yeah, it's a little fun fact. Does everybody who plays this know that?

No, I didn't until recently. I've been playing this since middle school. That's what i that's the kind of information i was trying to throw your way i could not find it in a pinch um i tried but hey you had one anyway i did do some research though other than that and i found a little short true crime thing a sort of true crime i about uh runescape because there was a 19 year old who threatened another player on runescape and ended up being put in prison for six years oh my god what kind of threat was it no exactly and i read

that i'm like that is absurd this is like it's probably stupid trolling or whatever and then i read it and sure enough that's kind of what it was it was like really dark and really specific like school shooting related like very oh my god. And brought up Columbine. But then I read more into the case. And the FBI got involved because on this guy's computer, there were all these different... He was searching ways to make bombs. He was searching very specific school shootings. So this guy kind of meant business.

Yeah. Very clearly was looking at specific recipes and uh whoa and anyway so i got put in prison for six years uh was released in 2018 so there is something true crime somewhat related adjacent to uh runescape wow now if anyone knows any true crime about pokemon cards let me know if there's like a big like oceans 11 theft on pokemon cards i'd like to know about it wow okay wow that actually i learned something by accident which was the opposite of how this was supposed to go but it worked out all right my story today um is the second half of the bunny man bridge so if you are popping in uh and you haven't listened to the

most recent episode go check that out first because you won't know what i'm talking about but i am very excited for the fun fact i have for you at the end of this because i feel like uh i feel like it's well i feel like if i give you any lead in there you'll know what i'm talking about so you won't whatever okay so this is part two of the buddy man bridge and we last left off with this one man named brian conley he finally was over not knowing what the legends origins were and he went out and he actually found two incidents back in the 70s and there was in fact a quote to a police report, rabbit with an axe or subject dressed as a rabbit with an axe. So at least we can confirm where the origin originally started. So now in the year 2000, this is something else that Brian Connolly found.

He was like, OK, I found the origins origins but where is the actual what's the root of the legend coming from who started this rumor and in 2000 apparently the washington post had a whole collection of articles called the maryland folklore archive which is uh something i guess brian looked into and in it one of the articles mentions this student from the University of Maryland named Patricia Johnson. And in 1973, only three years after the Bunnyman folklore began, she was in a class called Introduction to Folklore. And she submitted a paper titled The Bunnyman. And her whole goal in this article was to figure out how many versions of the story there were after only three years of the legend even existing do you want to guess

after three years how many versions of the bunny man urban legend there were yeah okay i'm trying to think because it's a small town but at this point it had already spread to through the entire dmv which by the way it's Maryland, yeah, that's a good point. DC, Maryland, Virginia. Yeah, because it was started in Virginia, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Interesting. Okay. Hmm. Ooh. Because when I... Hmm. I'm going to guess... No, I don't know if I'm...

17! 17! you know what no um but i was trying to think no no it was actually shockingly not enough what there were in those three years which had the story had spread to the dmv dc mary, Virginia. It took it got up to 54 different versions. Fifty four. It had spread like wildfire. And it's not shocking why even today. I mean, the town I grew up in was 45 minutes away from where this story supposedly happened. And I grew up hearing a bunch of different versions of it, which makes sense from only 45 minutes away.

And people three hours away are hearing about it. But it's either, oh, he ate bunnies, he dresses a bunny and killed people, also he's a ghost on Halloween. I mean, it's all over the place. And what's really interesting about Patricia Johnson's paper where she wrote about this, out of the 54 versions,

she actually broke it down to figure out what parts were changing the most often things like that by the way i think this class still exists if you're at the university of maryland it's english 460 that's so cool that that's existed in the 70s and is still going today i think that's such a cool a cool class to be able to take oh my gosh there was there was one class that i'm so mad i never took at my school i think it was like in like uh we never had a media communications i grew up i grew up in college i knew like oh i'm in com or i take communications i always thought of it as human

communications or human behavior and then i went to bu and like the College of Communications and it was all media. So I had to readjust my brain. But in college, I was a comm minor. So I did human communication. And one of the classes was called like magic demonology and weird beliefs or something. It was crazy. It was apparently the professor had like seen demons before. And I found out about this like the last semester before i graduated so i couldn't take another class i was so upset oh my god that sounds wild

whoa anyway if you're at cnu and you take that class please send me your notes okay so she found out there's 54 versions and she broke it down that out of these 54 versions 14 of them were completely different locations i guess bunny man bridge just kind of became like a a catch-all for like a bridge nearby 18 of them only only 18 of them involved a hatchet so that's like what a third a quarter of them a third of them i think yeah that's like exactly a third right okay never i don't know no no this isn't a math 18 times three is 50 yeah it is it's literally a third wow are you wait together we're pretty good at math that worked out surprisingly so only a third of them involve an axe anymore

which is interesting because the first versions of the bunny man bridge i heard didn't have an axe but i i there were slaughtered humans and bunnies so i guess i i never even thought about the weapon i just what and then 14 of them involved attacks on cars which the first incident was a couple that was parked out in a field nine of them involved a parked couple and five of them had to do with vandalism which was from the second incident where he was attacking a porch and only three of them involved murder oh that's kind of surprising i feel like that's the first thing especially if you're if you're adding things or changing things to the story to especially if you want to make it scarier you're telling

it around a campfire i don't know how this works but um i imagine you want to add murder to it that's what i thought i i definitely thought the same i was like well murder is gonna be at least the one thing everything has in common but i guess i don't know if i guess this the murder part is that you know you better not go near the bridge at night or you'll get murdered but i guess there really isn't too many stories involving a murder origin because just like how i had never heard the version where his first victim was a another person from the the hospital remember he killed somebody from the hospital i never heard that version so maybe that was one of the three but anyway since this study was done over 50 years ago, now, those 54 versions could have grown significantly, or some of them might have even just faded away. Or there could

be brand new ones. I mean, we definitely need to recount. So Patricia Johnson, if you're still a student at University of Maryland, please recount them for me, especially because it's involved over time. So one of the things that I think it was Brian Conley who realized this, but based on the generation you're a part of that grew up with this story, there are different kind of themes. It's like it's evolved over time based on what's spooky now. So in the 70s, people kind of heard the baseline, the closest thing to the truth, because the actual incidents had just happened. So it was more based on like vandalism or just a creepy guy in the area. In the 80s, it became a little more.

They tried to incorporate it into like satanic panic. So during sleepovers, you would hear about it like maybe he was summoned by the devil or something. But the kids that were our generation who grew up in the nineties and after it's becoming more and more supernatural. So I never grew up with, he was a ghost that only showed up on Halloween, but apparently that's the new version kids are hearing. Interesting.

So it's very cool to see that based on the decade it's editing itself. Yeah. Yeah. So, like I i said by 1973 when this paper from school came out about how many versions there were the bunny man story had spread all over the place different versions had now become i guess i don't know what you would call it not allegories but like representative of like their times kind of thing. Like they, they became,

it became one of those things where parents would tell their kids about it to scare them into like their behavior. Yeah. Yeah. Where it was like, don't do this or the bunny man's going to come get you. As a German, we just call those just stories.

Just good wishes for the end of the night.'s going to come get you. As a German, we just call those just stories. They're all that, you know. Just good wishes for the end of the night. Everything has to happen. Just bedtime dreams. So they would say like, oh, don't be disobedient or we'll leave you in the woods and the bunny man will get you. Like our parents did some of the weirdest shit that now today would not fly.

They also, anytime someone would go missing, the rumor would always spread that maybe the bunny man got them i guess one of the things they told kids a lot was if your animals got out then they would the bunny man would find them so that it like forced kids to be more um attentive to like not letting the dog out or something like that so it was just used as kind of a sweeping warning for the community. And again, by the 80s, it became more of the satanic panic folklore. And so it was like good around campfires and sleepovers and things like that. And by the 90s, in 1999, when the internet hit, it got a whole new wave of people because now it's not just spreading throughout the community, it's spreading on the internet.

So the main website that it's spread on is called Castle of Spirits. And I don't know if you've heard about it. I hadn't either. And now I feel like I need to bookmark it if it's telling me the truth. But apparently it is one of the oldest consistently running archives of ghost stories on the internet. It's been around since 1997. Does it look the exact same way as it did in 19... I love it.

I love that. It sure does. It sure does. I don't know if it's still working. I mean, it does work because I logged on and it exists, but I don't know if anyone's still posting on there. But Castle of Spirits and a guy named Timothybes posted the story of the clifton bunny man and that was when it really took off again i'm assuming it attracted some interest i don't want to you mentioned last week you said something that i i bit my tongue so i didn't say anything but you mentioned that it sounded a little like donnie darko yeah which

is set in a town called middlesex virginia oh and the director richard kelly he grew up in virginia so he actually was born in newport news which is where i went to college and he grew up in richmond which is an hour away from me no way so there's a very large chance it has not been confirmed but it like i'm pretty convinced that he knew about the bunny man growing up and that might have been the inspiration for frank the bunny and donnie dark yeah oh my gosh which if you haven't seen donnie darko 14 year old me would have thought you were just the worst human on earth i've just been like you don't even know culture you know nothing about anything um but it's jake gyllenhaal and a his either a hallucination or a ghost it was never really explained even in the movie but he's followed around by a man in a

bunny suit and there's even a there's a famous line where he says why are you in the bunny suit and then frank says something like why are you wearing that human suit it's supposed to be like really philosophical and blow your mind did you watch it i have it's been a while though it's i i watched it pretty late like i at a point where i felt like i was obligated to finally watch it and then i haven't watched it since i really enjoyed it um but i don't really remember too much i just remember of course frank sticks with you you know he's got costume yeah especially because the face on him is is a little creepy it's not like a cute easter bunny suit yeah and so the only real premise i can tell you

about diana darko is this bunny is telling him that like the world's gonna end in 28 days and i kind of hate the movie and that like the point of it is it it makes no sense you're supposed to make your own interpretation off of it like the director has even been like i don't know what it's about i just fucking went for it which is so sad can you imagine if he really had a real vision for it and nobody understood it so now he's kind of like backed away and he's like yeah yeah i don't it meant nothing or maybe everyone he heard all of these theories about what it meant and was like oh shit that's a better thing than mine so i'm just gonna pretend i didn't have one in mind whatever he really made a name for himself i i don't know if he's done anything else but you know he gets to die knowing he made dying dark oh yeah cult classic for sure i mean i've

probably got also commercial success too but i, that's still one that people point to. I still think it was, it definitely, my adolescence was changed because of Donnie Darko. So the fact that my hometown legend was based on one of my favorite movies as a teenager, I just thought I was on top of the world with spooky folklore. But so again, it's never been confirmed. But it's a well known suspicion that the bunny man bridge is what inspired Frank. And so here are just a few theories of who this bunny man is. Because like I said, last week, there were

two incidents that actually happened with a man in a bunny suit within the same week on the same block, or one block or whatever. And it was a man in a bunny suit within the same week on the same block or one block or whatever. And it was a man in a bunny suit with an ax, but we never found out who it was because the first incident never had a police report officially filed. And the second one was a vandalism report, but very vague. So we never got the actual person. The only ID we ever got was that it was someone in either their late teens or early twenties. And I think one of the guys said he was five feet tall, about 175 pounds. And I think he was a white guy. So one theory for who this is, is he is actually, well, here's, okay.

Here's another part. Let me do this first. Here's a part of the folklore of like, one of the 54 variations is that they think this was a mental patient who escaped, not just to escape being in a mental hospital, but because he needed to be out so he could avenge his dead wife and child. Dead Wife and Child. That was one of the many versions. And I guess it made a real name for itself. So when they tried to research it, I think Brian Conley, when he tried to research this, he was like, let's at least put this one to bed. If this person does exist, was he really out to avenge his wife and kid? So he went through all of the Fairfax County records from the 1870s to the 1970s, a whole hundred years. from the 1870s to the 1970s, a whole hundred years.

And he looked specifically at murders that there was more than one person and one of them was a child. Smart, yeah. Shockingly and happily, out of 100 years, there was only three cases. So really dialed in on them. One of them was from 1949, and was a a mom and a daughter the mom had been beaten up and shot by her husband and the baby daughter was buried alive jesus and he was able to exclude this one because the husband was convicted which means he couldn't have escaped anywhere. And he was officially convicted.

And yeah. And he killed the family, too. So he couldn't avenge anyone if he was the killer, you know? So that one was out. The second one was in 1927. The wife's name was Minnie. And then there were actually two daughters. So that also kind of goes against the story.

But a man broke into their house i guess he actually called and said like oh can i talk to your husband and then when she he found out that the husband was out he came over and he uh beat up the wife and kids and i guess the kids ended up dying the wife was able to survive and id him but so then that takes them out of the picture because the wife survived. The last one is from 1918. And it was a 14 year old girl who left the house for the day and never came back. But she was, wow. Several things. The police found out several things that might have happened to her.

But one thing was for sure is that they found her tied to a tree and strangled by her own apron jesus and she was 14 so the killer was never discovered which makes this story more fitting but there was no mother who also died to be avenged and uh plus this story is from 1918 which is too old of a story or it's not it doesn't fit the timeline so here are the so he was able to wipe out the the one theory of like oh he's out to like you know get revenge on whoever hurt his family that one's out so now i'll bring in the conversation of so who the heck is this guy based on what we know the best theories people could come up with is that it could have been and most realistically it could have been someone who was really mad about people trespassing but then also how would he know whether or not someone was trespassing because he didn't it's not like he lived on the properties

that he went up to and said you're on someone else's property. He most likely had some mental illness and he, he honestly, another theory is he could have just been someone not dressed as a bunny at all. Because if you remember the first incidents, the first incident, the, even the two people who saw him had differing opinions on what he looked

like. And one of them very much seemed to say that he looked like he was dressed like he was a member of the kkk in that area at that time i would not be surprised if that's what happened if this dude just showed up in a random field wearing like one of those tall white hoods like i don't know you tell me could have who knows another theory is he could have literally been a fucking serial killer and like i mean he smashed through people's car and like tried to hurt them so could be a serial killer another option is that he was a very unhinged man but specifically he was having a hard time

adjusting to the new development in the area that is probably the most accurate guess besides maybe being a white supremacist. What's interesting with that one is because like, it definitely could have been both. With that one, if they describe the man as late teens, early twenties, I feel like that,

like get out of, get off my property, that crotchety, it makes me think of a much older person. So the fact that he's described that way, it doesn't, I feel like that description doesn't lend itself to someone who would not be happy about new development.

Yeah, exactly. And I, so I agree with you. I think it's probably someone younger. The reason that they bring this up, that it might just be someone adjusting to like new development plans is because I guess during the 70s, there was a huge change in the town where it went from being a really small area. I guess after World War Two, it was super rural then. And then by the 1950s,

they started building some houses. And by the 1960s, it was becoming like it was becoming a whole new area. And by the 70s, they had plans to just completely make it like its own city. Yeah. And I guess it was very common for people in the area who had lived there for generations to really not like this. I guess a lot of people had a hard time coping about getting rid of the rural area. And one of the main reasons was because they felt like their sense of community was being threatened by city life and the trope of not knowing everyone you live next to and he if here's my thought if he loved his community so much and he was so close to his community knew everyone in it why could no one ID him yeah yeah that's my thought so were they protecting him because what if he was a racist

asshole but they he wasn't their friend or their neighbor and they're like oh yeah they're my racist asshole yeah it definitely wasn't a clan hood it was definitely a religious a very positive religious thing the only thing they could say was he looked like a bunny but we're not saying anything else about him we just want like the insurance to pay for our car window we don't want this guy in trouble so actually you know what let's throw that in there because all these are such vague guesses anyway like who knows but you know what's interesting about the area is i guess the bunny man bridge and this theory that he was just like a simple man who loved his community which is so ironic that that's how we've turned this into something he apparently has inspired other people in the area

who now live in a much more populated fairfax county they have now started their own collective with the intention of bettering their connection with their neighbors oh and it's called the bunny man bridge collective oh my gosh that's kind of fun i have a few quotes it's so weird they like turn something like kind of gnarly into something very sweet but they are quote inspired by the bunny man's mission to preserve community which is so funny because he's throwing axes at people but okay um one of the people part of the collective named jessica calista says quote the bunny man bridge collective counteracts the fragmented relationships between neighbors

who know each other only well enough to nod hello to each other we recapture interconnectivity and others to put an end to the isolation and alienation experienced by people living in suburbia and they host art events and exhibits and they are hoping to bring in other locals it's basically like a friendship group if you're in a city and want friends um it's very sweet and jessica also said the bunny man may not have known how to stop suburban sprawl but he wasn't going out without being heard he may have been the perfect storm of mental instability and exasperation at the unraveling of virginia's small town communities but the bunny man is an icon for shaking things up doing things in a different way and not accepting

the status quo of making noise he's the underbelly the weird the urban legend in fairfax which on the surface is calm but the bunny man torments suburbia well i okay this might be weird but i got goosebumps from that it was honestly a lot like it it was very flowery but like it sounds like today's version of how shakespeare probably like very well said like you really like i understand your mission entirely yeah but um yeah so they're just a collective of artists who just want some friends in the city and want to know the community and i think that's very sweet i also think it's they really took a completely different spin on who the bunny man might have been i really respect that and it reminds me this is kind of off topic,

but it reminds, I've been thinking of, uh, Isaac Brock, who's the lead singer of a modest mouse. And it's one of my favorite bands, but they have this album lonesome crowded West. And the whole point of it was about this, that, that, that, the, the sprawl that was all these strip malls popping up. And so there's all these themes. And so as you were saying this stuff about the bunny man i'm like i feel like isaac brock is is like also the bunny man

like going out with all this noise and making noise about like you can't stop it but like talking about how freaking awful all of these strip malls popping up and taking away our community i like how the bunny man and the modest mouse like for sure. It's like one's the good and one's the evil. They're each other's like chaotic evil. Exactly. Anyway, no, that's part. Yeah. Well, then maybe Modest Mouse, if you're listening, go join the Bunnyman Bridge Collective.

You sound like you fit right in. Anyway, that's one spin on who the person might have been. And they've at least taken it by storm. I don't think there's any other theories out there on who the Bunnyman is where like organizations are being created. So I'm going to run with that because they found a way to make a nice spin on it. But the so growing up in Virginia, the main story that you hear or like the kind of the log line you hear at high school when they're like, oh, you want to go to the Bunnyman Bridge tonight? you hear or like the the kind of the log line you hear at high school when they're like oh you want to go to the bunny man bridge tonight it's just that if you go at night the whole point is to like drive under the bridge and in general experience the creepiness especially on halloween but i think a lot of people will say like yo you have to go and you park under the bridge or even

get out and just walk around in the woods near the bridge and see what happens a lot of people people do the like, oh, you have to sit under the bridge and honk your horn three times or say Bonnie Mann's name three times. It's just like a thing you do on Halloween. But I guess around, I don't know why this year, but I saw one article say by 2003, it became such a massive, like a well-known Halloween thing that teenagers would do. Instead of trick-or-treating, because like you could just literally go get candy for free next door i don't know why people stop doing that but uh people would just do it so often on halloween that the police had to start getting involved and just as an fyi if you live in the area and you want to go to bunnyman bridge

on halloween fairfax county police monitor the site every Halloween and they allegedly even have a 24-7 camera pointed at the tunnel. Apparently there was one Halloween in 2011 that was so bad that there was a 14-hour traffic checkpoint, like a roadblock that you waited 14 hours to be able to get out. Oh my God. And there were people who even came from Pennsylvania,

I guess, to go to the Bunnyman Bridge. And over 200 people were turned away that night. My God. Okay. This is wild. At that point, you should start just selling tickets. I mean, I literally, especially during COVID, and there's still some that after COVID, it was so successful, they're doing it again this year, even though people can get out of their cars. In LA, there's so many drive-in Halloween events now where you drive through a pumpkin patch and it's all lit up with pretty lights and everything.

Why on earth didn't they make this like a jump scare drive-through attraction with 200 people? Yeah, I'm doing one of those in Long Island. And I looked and there are a bunch of them in Long Island. There's so many of these things. And it's like, take advantage of this, especially with that bunch of them in Long Island. Like there, there's so many of these things and it's like, yeah, and we'll take advantage of this, especially with that kind of story. I mean,

I know these other ones, it's just like, Oh, let's, we have some space. Let's create one. But here you have not only an area for it, you have a freaking bunny man story.

I mean, if you're the mayor of Fairfax or something, I'm just giving you an idea that at least sell tickets for pictures next to the bunny manax or something, I'm just giving you like an idea that at least sell tickets for pictures next to the bunny man bridge or something, or have someone dress as the bunny man bridge, like just throw like a bucket of fake blood on an Easter bunny costume, have them stand by the bridge all night and have people take pictures. Um, what, what's this bridge look? I didn't Google it. What does the bridge look like? Is it just a, just concrete, just kind of boring looking overpass? It's a very boring looking overpass. It's actually I, I don't know what it looks like now. But online, I saw someone leave a note being like, since, you know, I went or since I used to go as a kid,

it actually looks a lot different than it used to. They've like, built it up, or it doesn't look as creepy as it used to. But it's also right next to a dead end. So I think a lot of cops were able to tell, especially during Halloween, like, oh, if you're driving through the tunnel, like there's nothing on the other side. So like you're clearly going. I'm sure it's also a great spot to park if you're a couple on Halloween

and like hoping to run into the bunny man. So I think apparently there's a dead end not too far away. So there was a note on like atlas obscura too that said like if you end up going just you're gonna have to awkwardly back out afterwards and drive back home but it's the area has super sharp winding roads just a heads up if you are going also the tunnel is a single car tunnel it's very tiny so don't speed through it because someone might be coming out on the other side or people might be walking or something and it apparently leads to a dead end again i say apparently or allegedly because i never went because my mom always got mad at me when i said i was thinking about going

so uh now that i'm an adult next time i go next time i go home i should probably just check it out for myself and call it a day but yeah so just heads up especially don't go on halloween because either the police will turn you away or you'll get stuck in like a several hour long roadblock the most recent update is that in 2018 there actually was a man found dead there and it seems like it was a homicide i don't know any more about that case but it was only a few hundred feet away from the bridge so i guess it uh invigorated people to tell the story all over again or it just fits into the the zeitgeist of this i guess yeah and it just adds adds to it all you know oh my gosh and here's my fun fact for you uh this i'm just going to end on this because

it's very delicious is that there's one man named j Waters, who I guess still lives in Fairfax or lives in the Virginia area. He's in his 50s now. But when he was 11, he would hear about the Bunny Man Bridge all the time. And I guess it terrified him. He was afraid to even like, walk to school or ride his bike to school. And I guess him and his local friends, they all have their own version of Bunny Man Bridge and the stories that they heard growing up and so he's in a band um which i don't know the pronunciation echo echo in the bunny man no it is called i don't i don't think it's in english it's m m a n t u a mantua and then the second word is f-i-n-i-a-l-s finiles finiles i think i think that's like a part of a house i think a mantua i don't know about the first part but that last oh yeah i think that's i think that's like a it's it's finals with an a before the it's an i before the a um yeah f-i-n-i-a-l yeah yeah it's it's a an ornamental thing on a roof

huh what's mantua look that up okay mantua mantua finiles finiles mantua it's a city in ohio oh it's also i was in a city in italy uh it was an island settlement um in italy so interesting well okay so that's the name of his band and uh i guess all the members are locals from virginia or at least people who grew up hearing about the bunny man story and i'm i the way i've written the origin to this in my head is that they had all at one point gotten together and talked about their variations of the bunny man and none of them knew the truth of you know what origin is correct or what legend is correct all of them got together and they wrote a two and a half hour rock opera which is by the way 26 songs three cds which i purchased and it is a two and a half hour rock opera from the bunny man's perspective whoa which like are you kidding i love that so fun even in 2013 to 2014 they even

performed parts of it uh live at a place called jam and java it's by the way you would love that place that was like one of the main venues my friends would go to for shows in richmond you at a place called Jammin' Java. It's, by the way, you would love that place. That was like one of the main venues my friends would go to for shows in Richmond. You would love Jammin'. Actually, I don't, it might be in DC. I totally forgot which way. It's either up or down from Fredericksburg. No, actually one of my best friends from home,

it's her favorite venue ever. But yeah, apparently they performed there for a year and did different pieces of the bunny man show so anyway i did listen to some of it i did purchase all three cds so if you ever wanted to sit down listen to it i can send you my account to it yeah the music is actually pretty good so they need at this point especially now finding this out they need a bunny man festival they need a i don't know why because doesn't um cincinnati have like a loveland frogman thing i don't know maybe uh that's a good question they should oh i'm thinking of um shit it was some it's another small local cryptid

over demon i don't remember they have the loveland frogman race i just googled so there's like a 5k okay but there should be a bunny man where you run through the bridge at the end yeah oh yeah that should be i don't know why that if i'm telling you if you are part of small government in fairfax county what the fuck are you doing like if your job is like community which especially if your whole job is community and one of the whole theories about this is he just wanted community again you could honor the bunny man bridge and then thus keep him away from harming people if you just bring community together at the bridge yes i i love you're foolish to not yeah oh my god you already have a a musical artist i can perform there um for two and a half

hours two and a half hours you're set that's like that's all you've got your set your whole set you can have pictures literally i'm not kidding about like the easter bunny with like a bucket of paint on him like i mean there are definitely easter bunny costumes i know at the fairfax mall you can take pictures with a bunny man during easter but like you know it's these things are available to you and you're not doing it. So, and also during Halloween, I don't know why you wouldn't just make this a money grabbing situation, like capitalism, but you know, it would just saying, I feel like, you know how you were talking about the different decades having different, um, versions. I feel like

the Gen Z bunny man is a capitalist. So, think that might be you might be like feeding into that story actually the gens i'm very excited to see what gen z does with the bunny man i at this point they could at least like what what the fuck's a weird little bunny man dance gonna be on the bridge like some crazy little true some little hop or something but uh anyway that's the story of the bunny man bridge. Oh, that was amazing. And I've got some music to check out too. I love that.

Oh, cool. I can't wait to send it to you. I, um, I really did buy it in the middle of the night with the intention of like, at some point I'm just going to sit down and just take every word in. It's like,

I'll probably send it to you so we can analyze it together. I love it. I love it. I have something that actually kind of. When you were going through your story. And you were talking about how things changed over the years. That's kind of where my story is. I'm going to go through the years. A couple hundred years, and show how a specific story has been changed or added to, I'd say.

So first I'll give the initial background and the basics of the case. And this is the case of Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner. Oh, every name was better than the last. the case of Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner. And she was the... Every name was better than the last. I'm going to hate having to say Bathsheba over and over again. It is very difficult for my mouth to make that noise. So I'm sorry in advance, everyone, for having to listen. I just told Zandy this yesterday.

All I knew was that the person's name was Bathsheba. I just did a whole story about someone named Bathsheba, and I had to say the name a million times. It was awful. Also, if your name is Bathsheba, it just did a whole story about someone named Bathsheba. And I had to say the name a million times. It was awful. Also, if your name is Bathsheba, it's such a pretty name. I just, saying it was really rough for me. Because it definitely feels like two, sounds like Bath and Sheba. And they should not, there should be a space between them in speech.

So it really did sound rough coming out of my mouth. So good luck. Thank you. I've been practicing but i don't think it did much good so we'll see um so her story is actually this it's a story of the first ever capital case since the american revolution whoa so it starts with her birth sandwich massachusetts february 15th 1746 okay Her dad was a very wealthy lawyer and a military leader. He was Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles.

I know, these names are just not... I feel like if I ever time traveled, every person I met back there who told me their last name, I would just have to take a moment and chuckle to myself. They're all so silly. They are silly, and it makes it a little more whimsical even though it's uh maybe not it feels like like willie wonka's cousin it's like brigadier ruggles it's like winnie the pooh's best friend oh my god or like an animated like dog in some movies like happens to be in the military like i think of like Do you remember the movie Cats and Dogs?

Yes. I feel like he would have led the dog team against the cats. Like a gruff German shepherd. Brigadier General Ruggles. With Ruggles, he's got all those jowls. Oh, the jowl. Oh my god, I love it.

So Ruggles, he was the leader of the Tory party, which I needed a reminder of this, which meant he was a supporter of the king and was a loyalist during the revolution. So no one really liked him because they were like, hey, you're not on board with this revolution thing. And in 1766, and the theory is partially because of him being a loyalist and not being very popular, he arranged for his daughter Bathsheba to be married to a very wealthy farmer who was of pretty good standing. And his name was Joshua Spooner. And Joshua's father was a Boston merchant. Okay. So Joshua, though, was abusive. He was an abusive husband, and he was unfaithful as well to her.

And a court deposition described him as weak, easily intimidated, and unable to sustain a manly importance as the head of the family. And I weirdly like, no, I don't like, but it's funny, not funny. What is the word I'm looking. No I don't like. But it's funny. Not funny. What is the word I'm looking for? I don't know. But basically. It's silly.

It's always silly. It's silly. It's silly that. The way they described him. Was like. Oh he's weak. He's not manly. They didn't care about the abuse thing.

You know. That he was abusive. And unfaithful. They were like. Oh he was such a weak man. So weak willed. I know. Maybe they were. Like ahead of their time and they knew that being abusive doesn't make you a strong man and they were trying to hit him where it hurt they were like you're not even you're not strong you know

i don't know yeah that's a good point that's a good you know i like that i like that i like to think that they were uh that aware of what masculinity was in the 1700s. Whatever. We can all hope. We can all hope. Let's hope. So then in 1777, there's an American soldier who was coming home from war named Ezra Ross. He fell sick in Brookfield, Massachusetts, where the Spooners were living.

And Bathsheba took care of him until he felt well enough to continue home. Then Ezra went to return back to war and stopped by the Spooners again in July 1777, and then after the British surrendered at Saratoga, New York, he returned to the Spooner household again, but this time he stayed for multiple months. He went on business trips with Joshua, so those two were tight. And he also had an affair with Bathsheba, so those two were also tight. They were super duper tight. They were hanging out. Yes, and then he ended up getting Bathsheba pregnant in January of 1778. And then him and that baby were pretty tight. No. January of 1778.

And then him and that baby were pretty tight. No. Well, does the baby make it? You'll see. Okay. You'll see. I said too soon. So her and her family, they were all loyalists, so they were not very popular. So Bathsheba was really worried about having this affair, and people were going to find

out because she was pregnant. And apparently people were getting tarred and feathered for loyalists specifically were getting tarred and feathered for just being loyalists. So this on top of it was just an extra layer of something, something to be afraid of. So she came up with the idea to kill her husband, which because she thought no one's going to find out if I just kill my husband because then no one's

gonna care and he's just gonna be dead and then i can say it was his uh-huh okay so but the plan was not well thought out and that kind of comes up later so she asked ezra to help poison joshua so he took a bottle of nitric acid with him on one of his on one of the business trips they went on together but he backed out of the plan and decided to just go home instead of returning to the Spooner household. But while they were gone, not even knowing that he had backed out of the plan, Bathsheba met these two British soldiers who were returning from war, and because she was a loyalist, she took them in.

They were Private William Brooks and Sergeant James Buchanan. They were prisoners of war who had escaped so she was like yep come on in because you know she supported them and their cause and she told them all about her plot to kill her husband so just just a willy-nilly just like oh yeah i could the conversation's pretty dry i've got something that'll spice things up again not very well thought out. Yeah, she seems a little eager for, to tell someone about her plan. Yeah, and I imagine at that time, if you're a loyalist, like, you're probably somewhat rare.

So she was like, oh, I can trust these soldiers because we're all on the same side of war. Right, right. And so then her husband returned from his trip and still alive. And she was like, okay, maybe I can recruit these two men to kill him. And they agreed. And one night, I'm sorry, you know, why not? What? I feel like we're really overlooking the bond that they must have all immediately had for her to feel safe enough to tell them that she's going to kill her husband and for them to just be like yeah we'll do it yeah something happened i something happened

she did end up paying them so it didn't say that she offered it beforehand but i my assumption is they also she also said hey i will pay you but um all the sources i read basically said um that she paid but they'd never said that that's how she got them to do it. So that next night when he, he was out and then he came back and they jumped him and killed him. They beat him to death. And then the three of them through his body headfirst into their well, the well that they had on the property. So Bathsheba gave the two men, the two soldiers, money from Joshua's safe, as well as his watch and his shoe buckles, which were silver, and they had his initials on them. Shoe buckles at the time, this is a whole thing. And I remember because I had read an article on my other podcast on human seeking human, and it was something about belt buckles and how those were such a popular thing until a king used ribbon

instead and then that became popular so then people weren't buying these expensive belt buckles and like the value went down on these buckles it was a whole this is the shit that i care about i'm so glad you mentioned that because if you just said belt buckle i was gonna deep dive belt buckles later alone i'm so glad you already did the research these are shoe buckles oh shoe buckles right yeah yeah so like it was even like less of a thing now but it's you know you think those like stereotypical like pilgrim things with the shoe buck like there's a like shiny part of the shoe yeah they were apparently it was a whole a whole thing back well it makes sense now to it didn't even cross my stupid little 21st century mind that like shoe buckles would

cost a lot because they were solid metal like that of course they're expensive and if they're silver forget about it yeah exactly um so then they actually found the body very quickly the authorities um i'm i did a lot i've run through so many articles there was never any reason why they found him so quickly. I don't know if someone reported it, but it said within 24 hours, basically. Well, it sounds like Bathsheba was a real chatty Catholic. I wonder if she just, she might have just been like, I know where it said body is. Well, she's not alone because the two men that she hired, the two soldiers, were found

drinking at a tavern where in town where they uh were showing off these belt buckles or sorry now i've got the belt buckles on the brain uh these shoe buckles with his initials on them so they were picked up real quick and they found ezra in the same tavern but hiding in the attic because he heard that the authorities were coming and so the men quickly at least the two men i don't think ezra did this but the two men quickly were like oh bathsheba it was the wife she like put us onto this so brooks one of the soldiers was charged with the assault on joshua spooner and then buchanan and ezra ross were charged with aiding and abetting in the murder and then bathsheba was charged with inciting, abetting, and procuring the manner and form of the murder. They all pleaded not guilty.

And they were represented by Levi Lincoln, distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, who later became Thomas Jefferson's first attorney general. It was really interesting to read about these people. And they all have their own big Wikipedia pages. And they were all very big people um that were involved with this like on both the defense and the prosecution um it is fun it's a tv idea although tmtm don't take our idea but i would be i would love a show like a historical show about all of the side characters that we hear about and what their lives were like like what was abigail adams sister-in-law or a cousin in up to like i feel like they've got some wild

story that totally got deflated by the fact they were related to someone more famous you know they're adjacent to these people but they got completely overshadowed by um you know what people talked about over the years and after a few hundred years okay a couple hundred years then you start losing all these stories i mean i started getting into um and i think i've mentioned this on the show before so sorry everyone but i on ancestry i found out that my great great grandfather was a real piece of shit in new york but he had like a big wikipedia page about him and i was like i didn't know that like apparently he was like so misogynistic that new

york voted that women can or that women can vote like they just in spite of him because at like one of the council meetings he like said such horrific things about women that they were like like we just don't wait whatever you say we don't like god and they just like voted women into new york so glad i share his blood but i like i like there's then i was able to click on other people that like knew him and it became a whole thing and i was like it's such a shame that all of us are probably related to someone with a wikipedia account we just don't even know it. It's weird, right? And then you think back to this, and it's so long ago that one little branch can go off into so many different things. I also just started watching the first two episodes of the show Loki.

And so I'm thinking of the branches, and I'm like, one little thing can cause so much. I will do my best to not overtake your story by just telling you everything I feel about Loki. But when you're done with it, I would love a text from you. Yeah, we'll talk later for sure. Anyway, the problem is, so this lawyer, Levi Lincoln, couldn't do much for Buchanan and Brooks, the two soldiers, because they both signed a confession saying that they about their full involvement despite pleading not guilty but for Ezra he said that Ezra had only just found out that same

day about this plan because he backed out of the original plan and then he only that day a few hours before they killed him found out that that they were going to do it this way he didn't participate and the lawyer claimed that he only pretended to do it this way uh he didn't participate and the lawyer claimed that he only pretended to approve of the plan so that his lover bathsheba uh would still be chill with

him basically he was like yeah he wanted to like be you know on good terms uh sure and then as for bathsheba he argued that she was had a quote disordered mind uh and well yeah she already killed one person she cared about like of course you want to stay on her good side if you can yeah exactly right and then one of the reasons why she had such a door or a proof that she had a quote disordered mind was because of how bad the plan was so basically because there was no escape plan there was no it wasn't really well formulated basically it was because her mind wasn't right so therefore she should be let off or at least let off pretty easy um right and none of it worked and all four of them were sentenced

to be executed bathsheba petitioned for a postponement due to her pregnancy because at this point she was i'll say she claimed at the their eyes, she claimed to be five months pregnant. And a first group of examiners argued against her being pregnant. They actually did their quote-unquote tests and said, no, no, no, she's lying. There's no way she's five months pregnant. But then they had the test done again, whatever tests these were at the time. And this panel, the second panel said, actually, she is pregnant. We should wait at least until the baby's born. The court did not grant the postponement. And the four were executed on July 2nd, 1778. It was a crowd of 5,000 people in Worcester, Massachusetts.

And they did an autopsy. And sure enough, she was was five months pregnant so this led to a lot of controversy obviously because you know the people a lot of people wanted her hang because she was a loyalist especially and she did commit this crime but you know then once they found out that yeah oh she was telling the truth about this like people were obviously upset at this decision. And also, it turns out that the man who signed her death warrant was a staunch anti-loyalist, and he was a member of the innermost circle of the Sons of Liberty. And he was also a close relation to Joshua Spooner, the murder victim, to Joshua's stepbrother. Huge conflict of interest. Very huge conflict of interest. And all of this came up after the fact.

And all this does lead me to the research that I did, which was the most quote-unquote fun part of this, because the views of both her and her case changed over the years or was added to, and it was so interesting to get to go through and read about all these and also the different reasons why she popped up in the news because there were times when she wasn't mentioned in any newspapers for for decades and then suddenly she'd pop up again and so the earliest mention because i have that podcast the human seeking human about newspapers so i just went through all the newspapers that I could find about that mentioned her name.

And the earliest I could find was from Fall River Daily Evening News in Fall River, Massachusetts. And this was July 10th, 1865. It was a few months after Abraham Lincoln's assassination. And the reason she was brought up was because one of the alleged co-conspirators was Mary Surratt yeah you might recognize her name because she's you know very historically she was involved in his assassination right yeah yeah because her daughter still haunts the White House who her I guess after his assassination

her mom was one of the people who was going to be executed and her daughter anna back when you could just like walk up to the white house she was like i guess she like banged on the door like in the middle of the night like begging for them to like give her mom mercy yeah and so now that's one of the ghosts that still show up at the white house you'll hear banging on the door or see an apparition banging on the door and they think it's anna sarat yeah and that makes sense because mary sarat was the first woman to be executed by the u.s government so it literally came from the president saying hey yeah we are killing her and also i think uh after she was executed they they refused to give the body over to the family.

I think that was another big thing. So I think they did eventually. It took some years. But I assume Anna was trying to also get the body back afterwards. Sure. So she ended up being executed, Mary Surratt. She was executed three days before this article was published. And this was, like I said, Fall River Daily Evening News in 1865.

It was pretty short. It just says, Mrs. Surratt, not the first. In 1778, Bathsheba Spooner, a daughter of Timothy Ruggles, a Tory, was hung at Worcester with three men who, at her instigation, had murdered her husband. So pretty factual. It just kind of laid it out like, hey, this has happened before. Here are the facts. And then actually just a little fun fact, it also made international news. It was in the Reynolds newspaper in London in July of 1865, where because of Mary Surratt, they also mentioned Bathsheba Spooner as being another person who was executed.

And then a year later, there was another article, kind of a little more detail. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it was from Port Allen, Louisiana. And it brought up that her dad was a Tory. It talked about her being executed, why she was executed. But it was, again, just kind of like the basic facts, nothing too interesting other than the regular story but 1875 so 10 years later her story really started to be romanticized so it got weird i started reading and i'm like where did all of these details come from like what i never like i didn't read about any of this and then all of a sudden it's like as if it's a work of fiction did you find out about that because

like you checked the date or the air like how did you find out that it was like as if it's a work of fiction. Did you find out about that because like you checked the date or the air? Like how did you find out that it was like as time went on, this got more flowery? Yeah, so I searched in my, like I use, I've got a subscription to newspapers.com because that's where I do most of my research. And so I searched for Bathsheba Spooner and I sorted it by year and I went through every single article. And thankfully her name is unique enough where it's not. There were a lot of Bathsheba mentions because Bathsheba is also a biblical figure so there are a lot of random religious things in there but you know it was pretty easy to find the articles that actually were talking about who I wanted them to talk about and they got really really flowery it got

really strange because you know at first you know as a as a loyalist she wasn't well respected you know that no one really yeah so it was probably like they didn't they didn't even want to give her the dignity of like any additional facts just like she died fun yeah and then and then it started to shift though so here's one this is from Lancaster Pennsylvania the Intelligencer Journal January 19th 1875 and here's just. This is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Intelligencer Journal, January 19th, 1875. And here's just a little, it was a lot. The whole article was about women in crime. There was a whole segment about her and this is about her execution. So here's what it says.

Then she gave up hope and summoned courage. gave up hope and summoned courage. She dressed her handsome person in the richest brocade and lace, put on all her jewelry, and looked like a Copley picture as she stepped out of the country jail. Her health was so feeble that she could not walk. Her friends and neighbors had all come to see her hanged,

and she bowed to them smilingly, acknowledging the attention. They even hanged her poor lover, Ross, first, but she did not blench. As her turn came, a violent thunderstorm broke over the scene. She crawled on her hands and knees up the fatal ladder, too feeble to mount otherwise. The thunder and lightning increased in intensity. The prince of the powers of darkness had come to claim his daughter, the people thought.

She did not blench but died with a smile on her lips what is this little women or something that's right that is the like that sounds like the beginning of like erotica like it's so powerful and moving and it was that became the theme it became very much about you know more more than just the crime. It turned into this, like, fantastical story of this brave woman who fought, and sure, her husband was abusive, you know, they started to bring these facts up as not necessarily to excuse what she did, but to say, look, she had a reason for it. And also, she was pregnant. So, the fact that that played a big factor, I think, in a lot of these, because, you know, the fact that they killed a five-month-old unborn child.

And the people were, of course, rightfully, like, not happy about that. And there's this article from the Holton Recorder in Holton, Kansas, from 1878, that talks about that specifically. So it says, 1878 that talks about that specifically so it says the surgeons to whom her body was given reported the same night that what she had said about herself was true and the effect on the public mind was startling so talking about how the surgeons were confirmed that she was in fact pregnant the feeling against mrs spooner had naturally been aggravated by prejudice against her family and her own open contempt for public opinion but now that it was known that the vengeance of the law had fallen on her unborn child there was intense mortification at the needless haste of the proceedings the terror which her punishment was meant to cause was largely neutralized by pity for her sufferings and her crime was almost lost sight of in admiration for

her beauty her energy and her fortitude so basically saying like because once they found out she was pregnant everyone kind of shifted their view uh and and looked at her not as a loyalist but rather as this as a woman or as a woman yeah and who has gone through this tragedy and so that that's when she kind of came back up again. And a lot of them also had some religious leanings too. So talking about how like now like she's with God now and she and her unborn child are now with God. So it got very religious. And then there was another reason for why she'd be brought up again. And it was similar to the Mary Surratt case when other women killed their husbands.

So this is kind of like multiple true crime stories. I'm not going to go into too much detail. It's very meta right now of like a true crime show talking about true crime before there were true crime shows. It's very wild. Yeah. So in 1887, a woman named Roxanna Drews murdered her husband.

And this is an article from Scranton, Pennsylvania, March 2nd, 1887. It says, the approaching execution of Mrs. Drews calls attention to the criminal record of this city. And I find that while 100 men have been hanged here during the past century, the number of women is only four. The latest case having occurred about 60 years ago. One of the most sensational cases of the kind that ever occurred in America was the execution of Bathsheba Spooner for the murder of her husband in Springfield, Massachusetts. And it says,

it will be noticed that the women who suffered the death penalty are almost invariably murderers of their husbands. But of all such cases, the Drews tragedy is the most horrible and hence the murderess has but little claim on public sympathy. And sure enough, there wasn't very little sympathy for Roxanna Drews, who was executed. And she was the last woman to be executed by hanging in New York State. And part of the reason why she was the last was because her execution was botched and uh it caused new york state to switch the primary method of execution from hanging to electric chair

wow so this little sprinkle of a little fact in there um just yeah just the whole sprinkle i don't know how to sprinkle true fun quote-un. Like a Salt Bay situation of like, and then the electric chair, you know? It makes anyone was wondering, I don't know. Like when was the last woman hanged in the state of New York? No, I mean, between that and shoe buckles, I feel like, and RuneScape, I'm learning so much. Oh good, oh good. I might have some more things. Then 30 years later there

was another woman named mary rogers who was convicted of murdering her husband and there was a lot of time a talk at the time about whether or not she was guilty and then if guilty whether or not she should be executed um and if executed she would be the first woman um oh sorry no uh so because of this there are a lot of retellings of the Bathsheba Spooner case, because people were pointing to that and saying, hey, remember that time we executed this woman, and it went really terribly? Like, let's maybe not make that same mistake. And again, because of that, they use very flowery language to try to talk about this case. So here's an example from the Boston Globe in 1903. This is specifically about her meeting Ezra Ross, the soldier, her lover.

It says, Ross was now a young man of 18, fine looking and soldierly, whom campaigning had developed into a man of the world. She was a woman of 33 beautiful and accomplished unhappy in her domestic life she readily bestowed her love upon the dashing young soldier his visit was prolonged like the lotus eaters of homer he forgot to return home okay yeah i know it's so dramatic i feel like every time you do this it's getting more flowery and more shakespearean it's like they're really trying to beat around the bush here on the facts yeah she was ever in his company and they took long horseback rides through the romantic and beautiful quabog valley till her love for the young soldier fermented into a guilty passion which turned dislike for her aged husband into hatred so yeah

it basically is as if you're telling like this romance novel and talking about, it's bizarre. And these articles were very long too. So they had all of like this whole, they told the whole story this way. So they did talk about the fact, but whenever they did, they'd also bring in like in that last one, a few articles ago about the thunderstorms at the execution happened. I'm like, I never read about that until I looked at these old newspapers. Yeah. Like how do you know what the weather was 100 years later?

Yeah. I don't know. It's so weird. And then this next one might be even weirder. This one's from 1904. This is the Black Hills Union. It's a newspaper from Rapid City, South Dakota. Wow, everyone's talking about this girl. Okay.

Yeah, exactly. It's crazy. All over the place. And then here it says, she bowed gracefully to spectators whom she recognized. And when the time came, with a smile, she mounted the scaffold and acknowledged that her punishment was just. Taking the sheriff's hand, she said, my dear sir, I am ready. In a little time, Whoa. not beside her kindred but in a lonely grave on the hillside in ground owned by a friend the body of the beautiful enchantress was laid to rest and the forgiving earth closed over her forever few in these days know the place but whenever a sinning woman is condemned in massachusetts to give up her life on the scaffold the spirits of bathsheba ruggles spooner and her unborn child arise from the grave on the hillside to make pitfall appeal and never without avail it's very flowery language i have the words i

don't know beautiful enchantress and the earth ate her up i mean okay so hmm where do i want to start it's just i mean it's first of all i think it's shocking that uh people who had that ability to write were like comparatively like they were reporting on her we're reporting on her like it has really dumbed down like like if those were the words they had to use before and now we're talking about like belt buckles the whole time like the timeline of what reporting has turned into is very silly and then on top of that i really wish that somebody from back then could time travel to now just to like let us know how accurate that was because if they were writing that in 1904 and

she's like bowing to her friends and holding the guard's hand and hoping to see him again i wish they could all be like no she kicked and screamed the whole way like that's not what happened and also it wasn't storming outside like i it makes you almost question these sources i mean especially because this isn't i mean there are some that are just like the boston globe there's some in here that are just they're legitimate newspapers i mean they're all you know legitimate publications but yeah back then it what was what were their fact checkers you know who who they can just kind of make up what they want. And then years later, we're like, oh, look, this newspaper article said this. But how accurate is it?

How much of it was guesswork? Or how much of it was even old school version of needing to get the word count? And that's why it's so flowery. Like it's like, I, I wonder how, yeah, that's a great point. I'm like where reporting ended and just trying to get a story out began. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, after that though,

I mean, a lot of the times that she'd be brought up were a lot of them were just, um, at least for a bit, not quite yet. That, that kind of comes in later, but it was kind of more of like fun facts so what

would happen is in in a lot of these newspapers they'd have the same fun facts and i assume there's like a a top newspaper company or whatever and they would send the same information to all these newspapers across the country to publish um similar to i think like nowadays you'll get an article and the article actually originated somewhere else and then that it was like sent out as a blast to all these different publications similar thing and so there was a lot of columns about like random it was yeah like a fun fact and it just had oh here's some fun facts so i saw them in tennessee louisiana north carolina and it was literally just a small box and i think the top maybe said oddities or something. And it said that, or like trivia or something.

And it said that she was the last legal execution of a woman in Massachusetts. And that was their little fun fact. It was a thing that people, I guess, would then talk about at dinner later that day. But then... It's like... Yeah. Oh, go ahead. I was going to pivot pivot so you tell me what

i was i was gonna say it makes me think immediately of oh how the mighty have fallen for that like you have this whole portrait of like the 1870s to early 1900s of like this flowery might as well be a whole chapter of a book story dedicated to you yeah and now you're like a blip on a tablet yeah like that's like very interesting that at some point the story just kind of faded out of interest or because like it lasted from the 1700s all the way up until like the 20th century and then eventually people are like we've done this enough and just like kind of threw her to this to the wayside yeah it was was less about the woman and more about the execution than anything. And then, though,

she popped up again because another woman murdered her husband. Eva Kaber killed Daniel Kaber, her husband. She actually hired two men to do it. And this was in 1921. And so it was a very similar type of case. So yeah, it's like she reincarnated. Yeah, exactly. And there was an article about executing women written in the Buffalo Times in Buffalo, New York in 1921.

And it says, whenever a woman murderer, no matter how fiendish her crime has been sentenced to capital punishment in the US, at once a furor of sentiment against putting to death a member of what is considered the gentler and the finer sex has been aroused, and governors have been besieged to stay her execution. Such a feeling of pity for women, just because she is a woman, although devoid of the moral attributes of her sex, already is making itself known in the Ker murder case alleged to have been plotted by women and for which four women are indicted for first degree murder and face the electric chair so basically saying nowadays look we they're yes they're women but we should

still execute them like this is a we used to execute them and that's what they brought up later in this article they brought up bathsheba's case to say look we used to do this but nowadays we're very like hesitant to kill women just because they're women um right so it was it was just an interesting look into the time i i don't know what that means for society now or anything but um and she was later i feel like you could really you could deep dive into like the social you know standards at that time that could become its own whole topic yeah um and i won't go into that but what i will say is that eva caber was uh sentenced to life in prison so she was not executed gotcha and then 24 years later bathsheba makes another appearance but for a different reason this is because this

is 1945 someone found joshua spooner's grave so they found his grave and a blast like a similar blast was sent to all these different newspapers including this one in um the star phoenix which is in saskatoon saskatchewan canada this is august 1945 and it just says epitaph tells all brookfield massachusetts and the village cemetery is the grave of joshua spooner whose epitaph says he was murdered by three soldiers of the revolution ross brooks and buchanan at the instigation of his wife bathsheba and that's it and that was sent to so a bunch of newspapers i read uh had the same little like again another fun fact and it's all because someone discovered the grave and thought oh this is interesting and so they didn't have any more

details all they knew was someone found this grave yeah wow and then meanwhile there were actually a shocking amount of accounts about it if you look 100 years ago but wow it was a lot harder back then to like look and find all of these accounts so they didn't have findagrave.com uh but uh wow and also that's on his epitaph can you imagine if like the way you died or the way you were murdered is like the only thing people are gonna remember about you 300 years later right um and then well i mean it could be argued that if he hadn't been murdered, he wouldn't be remembered at all. Okay. That's one way to look at it, too.

He was a wealthy farmer. You know, his dad was a merchant. So I don't think he had no, as far as I knew, no political aspirations or anything like that. So he was, I don't think he had any role. I don't even know if he would consider himself a Tory. I don't know if he was. Yeah. He was just kind of there.

But then again, he was murdered. so who knows what he could have become but then similar to that podcast thing in 1951 there was a series titled album of famous mysteries and it included the story of bathsheba but they called it the case of the old man and the young wife so they're already like talking about the age difference between the two and already kind of setting it up as like this woman who was in this terrible predicament got out through murder and yeah then again like presented like a work of fiction so we got back to that and she was there were different radio um so i saw a lot of things like on the schedule this week and it was radio broadcasts and telling her story so wow she became like a

little bit of a like a little like a legend a true legend but still it was a very like a oh let's talk about the legend of bathsheba spooner but again like very flowery and kind of like almost like it's a work of fiction and the uh subheading for that one was while ross was recovering from his wounds bathsheba remained devotedly at his side later she was to prove her devotion in another more sinister way it's really just setting it up that like as if it's this crazy like this fictional like this story like a romance story i don't know i know imagine also if you were either of them or even the two men who killed them

and to know that people are still finding new ways to present your story of what happened. And it's all making you look kind of good. Yeah, yeah. She did it pretty well story-wise, I'd say. I know. But yeah, CBS Radio played this thing called Crime Classics, which dramatized different stories.

And one of them was called The Crime of Bathsheba Spooner. So that's a little fun thing. And then there was, this is the thing I sent you an image for. So there's an article in the Billings Gazette in Billings, Montana from 1977. And it was reprinted from the Farmer's Almanac. So Farmer's Almanac did a little story on Bathsheba Spooner and oh my god is the illustration intense so if you open that up it is I saw that and I was like whoo it is a it is a drawing for people who are not on YouTube or who aren't on our Instagram. It is a sketch of a woman being hanged.

And there are literal men with axes in the crowd all watching her. And they seem at least neutral about the fact that she's hanging there. Yeah. And it says, an unborn child pays for murder when his guilty mother is hanged it was she beautiful charming socially prominent judged author and procurer of the bloody event whom the people especially came to see hang she was charming beautiful and a murderer a murderess yeah so it just got very again like they're presenting it as like look at the it. It's as if it's for entertainment purposes rather than for just factual purposes. The sketch itself, I mean, it wasn't like it wasn't drawn like in a bubble format or anything, but it looked like it almost could have just been like a comic.

Yeah. Yeah. It's weird, right? It's so weird. Yeah. And then comes one of my favorite mentions, which I think was really interesting. It's from 1982. And it was

a Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. And someone wrote into the editor about Bathsheba Spooner and had this to say. Bathsheba Spooner planned the murder of her husband 204 years ago, and three accomplices carried out the crime. Bathsheba was desperate and women were not allowed the choices women have today, divorce and abortion. Had Bathsheba was desperate and women were not allowed the choices women have today, divorce and abortion. Had Bathsheba got a divorce for her abusive husband without social humiliation and rejection, she would have born her lover's baby and kept the child. Had she been able to have an abortion, she could have tried to save her marriage. Given one of the choices, she might not have planned to kill her husband,

and she, along with the three men, wouldn't have been hanged. Bathsheba begged her executioners to let her give birth to the baby, then carry out the sentence, but she was refused. Shortly after the hanging, an autopsy was performed on her that revealed a five-month-old male fetus. Six lives were lost because of oppression. We need to hang on to our choices that keep us from becoming desperate, because desperate people usually find ways to end their torment. Colleen Hardman, Salem, Oregon. So it was really interesting to see someone who not only knew about the story or read about the story, but then related it to today's times. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So it was really interesting to read that because and that was after I hadn't read about, it didn't pop up much anymore.

And then all of a sudden, in a letter to the editor, someone so well put, lays a story out in the context of today's world, which I thought was really cool. And also it felt, I mean, it makes sense because it's coming up closer and closer to like our actual timeline, but the reporting seemed

like what i consider solid reporting and that it seemed kind of here are the facts here's a slight opinion but like let's not make it too puffy and beautiful and yeah so it it seemed like it was almost the like a a better explanation of the scenario to begin with. It wasn't like the brave enchantress. Yeah. I wouldn't like, I take it, I take it more seriously compared to the other ones. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then there's only one more mention that I could find and it's the most recent one. This is from 2017. And wow,

it's, you really went the whole gamut. I really did. I tried to find everything I could. and this is uh from the boston globe again so we're back to her being talked about in the globe uh february 19th 2017 this is it's like a a fun fact thing about brookfield massachusetts and so on it it has uh 1939 and then it talk talk about a cow that was born in 1939 in the town.

And it has like a little history thing. Imagine if you're that cow. Like you are still making headlines. Right, right. And then it says 1,700, which is the number of luminaries placed on Brookfield Common, Lincoln Street and Route 9 and lit each year in a holiday tradition. So it has like these little fun facts about the town and then it has the number 32 and it says 32 age of

brookfield resident bathsheba spooner when she reportedly was the first woman hanged in the united states by americans not the british the wife of joshua spooner bathsheba was hanged in worcester on july 2nd 1778 after plotting with a member of the Continental Army and two British soldiers to kill her husband and stuff him down a well. She was five months pregnant when she died. And then there's a picture of, it looks like a tombstone,

but it says, Spooner Well. Joshua Spooner murdered and thrown down this well March 1st, 1778, by three revolutionary soldiers at the urging of his wife so it's just like a little local i have a little local flavor of what's going on brookfield massachusetts and she gets a final mention as a little fun fact uh including a picture of the spot where her husband joshua was thrown down the well wow wow that's all that's that's that's bathsheba

spooner's journey through time yeah i know yeah the the earliest time traveler um wow that's i do like that there was it kind of peppered in there there was a few just like random fun facts it really was quite a range of like here is this very long verse of the most detail possible and then here's like uh a throw a bone situation yeah do you know if any i if you didn't look at any other podcasts it's fine do you know if any other podcasts have covered her i have no idea okay so it would have been fun if we were the first since 2017 to mention her that wouldn't be fun but but I don't know. Let's pretend we are.

No, I'm not sure. It's bad. I think you're similar to me, though. I don't really listen to podcasts much. Yeah. So I didn't really use podcasts for research. I actually didn't think about it until you mentioned that. No, you literally used like hundreds of years of newspapers.

I think you're fine. You know what's so, I don't know if you would would know this because I just imagine, I don't know. I, I like to think of you as a plethora of knowledge. And also, uh, you have a whole podcast on newspaper clippings. So do you happen to know, this is very random, how people even searched for things before the internet for newspapers. Like if you were in the 1850s, how did you find information about someone from the 1700s? I think that it's been, everything has been, or at least at a certain point started to be cataloged and placed in like

local libraries or government buildings where they'd have any, any edition of a newspaper would be saved because with newspapers.com it's all you know these scans of these old newspapers and I believe they got them from the archives so they'd have an archives and they have archivists whose main job was to preserve these old newspapers and eventually now thankfully with technology they've been able to scan all of these newspapers and it's fun like I don't know if you get the emails but every once in a while I get an email from newspapers.com saying a new newspaper is available and it's like some random one from a rinky-dink town from the 1800s that like i guess

someone it's never like a mind-blowing article but um no offense to newspapers.com i'm still waiting for like here's a newspaper about aliens coming down to earth yeah no because i mean i guess i don't know what the right word is it's not privileged or entitled but i think i'm just so not part of the archive community that i'm just blissfully unaware of some of the jobs that exist out there but i i there's like a certain point in time where I can look, I can think back enough and think like, oh, they probably were able to like more easily than I'm aware of find articles from forever ago. But like once you hit like the 1940s, 1930s, in my mind, it just becomes like an impossible task. Yeah. And I'm like, at what point did people start archiving?

yeah and i'm i like at what point did people start archiving i wonder because for them to have i know now with newspapers.com it's probably easier but how did people in that 1904 one how on earth did they know about bathsheba in the 1700s crazy yeah that's a good point and i think speaking about that i i um the earliest one that i found the earliest article was from the 1800s i i would bet good money that the newspapers back in 1776, or whatever publications they had, definitely talked about this murder and her execution. But I just didn't have access to anything like that. So I assumed that there were no archives, or at least not where I was looking of those newspapers. So that's why I said the earliest I found because there's no way that her first mention was in 1865. It had to have been earlier than that. But yeah, then again,

how did the people in 1865, like read up about this case? I assume, yeah, they went and looked up the archives, whatever that means. Honestly, maybe they just heard it from their grandparents because they've been around from the 1700s. Yeah, that's a good point. Who knows i mean i and i just think a little things like that and by the way if you work at newspapers.com and you're looking for like a new angle to like really draw people in y'all should have a drop down like a category for like just like true crime or like do them in like uh like people's interests and just do like because if i i'm sure that would become such a useful tool for people who are researching true crime all the time so like if you could just type in bath sheba and

just get a list of a true crime person you could do it for other categories too but true crime and paranormal would bode well for me that's a good start i'd say yeah i would love to like uh i have newspapers.com this feels like a big ad for newspapers.com all of a sudden. But I have it for myself because I'm really into ancestry. But if I could rely on a source like that for just paranormal articles, oh my god, my life would be so much easier. It would be very cool. I've never been able to use newspapers for a spooky story yet. That would be very fun one day. Yeah, yeah.

Because when I first started this, this wasn't my plan. i found her and i was like oh this is interesting i'm gonna go read up on it and then i was like let me check newspapers.com and then it like the story formed around me where i was reading these articles i'm like this is getting wild what are they calling her an enchantress like i thought i wish i was in the room i wish i was in the room the second it got really flowery for you and you're like what like i went from like some research papers about her and i was like wikipedia obviously and then i went into those sources from there and i was like very factual and then i'm like i'm like let's check newspapers.com like wait a second why did why did newspapers not or why did wikipedia not

mention the crazy thunderstorms that happened apparently like the moment she was executed i felt a little like that with bunny man bridge just because i expected like a bunch of reddit forums of like what's your urban legend from your hometown and that's what it looked like a while ago which is why like my own hometown friends have been like why haven't you covered our literal urban legend yeah and i've been like there's just not enough information which like this is a psa to everybody if i haven't covered your urban legend and you've suggested to me, there might just not be enough information. But because I have to have a certain amount of notes to be able to like gauge whether or not I'm going to have enough information to tell a story that's worth the time or like, you know, worth a literal time limit. And maybe if you're listening, though, and i haven't covered yours like give me the suggestion again and maybe it's grown overnight like bunny man bridge did because when i checked

this time versus like a year ago or two years ago it's it's a completely different google page so yeah everyone's everyone cross your fingers for your urban legend to just all of a sudden blow up with information because there's so many different archives out there and there's so much information out there that people just haven't discovered yet that, or at least hasn't gotten mainstream enough where you can just Google it and it'll pop up. So yeah, you never know. Suddenly something might happen and it'll be back in the public eye. And sure enough, all these newspapers will talk about it because like all these different articles I mentioned about Bathsheba, I'm sure when they were published, it was the first time any of these people heard of her.

Even though there have been in the past multiple times she was mentioned, but she kept getting popping back up. And in 2017, same thing with that article. I bet a lot of people in Boston were like, huh, never heard of this story. Yeah. You know, and then who knows, like 10 years from now, maybe another woman would kill her husband and she'll pop up again. Yeah. It's so interesting how that works. Yeah. Well, uh, I don't actually know what, uh, time this comes out. Cause we're recording way in advance. Like it's not even Halloween yet when we were recording this, but I think we are coming up on Christmas. Um, so just so we like, feel like

we are, have time traveled into everyone else's world. Before we end, do you have any holiday plans coming up? Do you feel if you can imagine yourself on like the couple weeks before December 25th? Are you feeling stressed about Christmas shopping or anything yet? Oh, I'm always feeling stressed about Christmas shopping. I'm sure. Yes. So yes, I am.

Um, I don't have gifts for anyone. I'm sure at this point. Um, but it's going to be an exciting time because I mean, I don't have gifts for anyone, I'm sure at this point. But it's going to be an exciting time because I mean, I don't know what my sister's plans are or anything. But you know, now Leona's here. And so like our family grew this year. And it's going to be and it's last year, it was my first Christmas alone, because I was in LA, and I couldn't travel home for it. And I was just in my one bedroom apartment. So anything for this Christmas will be better than last Christmas. But yeah, our family has grown.

I was going to say this is going to be my first Christmas back home too. Because COVID, I was inside on my... Actually, no, I wasn't inside for Christmas last year. All during COVID, Eva and I were each other's quarantine buddies. And we did not see a single other person except each other for like eight months or something it was very wild but the only time i left my home was to go to eva's and uh we decided because allison took the leap and went home for christmas but then she uh quarantined by herself for two weeks before she before we got

to see each other again so i ended up being alone on christmas and the two weeks after that so eva and i hung out for christmas and i remember she made this really good like i think it was like some sort of breakfast casserole or and then i ended up making like mac and cheese for us and we got like um we had like i think we bought like a whole cheesecake and just like went to town on it. Something happened. I remember making it like an ultra feast of sorts. But so I'm very excited to, no offense, Eva, I'm excited to see my family for Christmas this year. Instead of doing a Zoom Christmas, I sat right here and watched my whole family open prisons

by the fire with Christmas music. And I was like, barely in pants and just watching them from afar. So I don't know what my plans are yet. I don't know even if I'm in California when this comes out, but whatever happens. Oh, you know what? If this is the week I think it is,

the Spider-Man 3 movie's coming out. It's a big time for me in the future world. So anyway, thank you for coming on. I'm going to figure out with Eva when the actual Christmas episode comes out and we'll have to, you know, address it. Yeah, we'll address Christmas. Yeah. My brain is not there yet because we're not even on Halloween, but I will pretend it's there.

Me too. Maybe next episode. I'll put on a Santa hat or something and we'll make it real festive. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you, Zandy. Come back next week and I guess we're going to pretend it's Christmas or something. Sounds like a plan. I love it. Thank you.

And that's why we drink.