Lore - Episode 111: Inside Job

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

The deepest mysteries come from the places we haven’t fully explored, or where we lack the control that makes us feel safe. And yet one of the most universally mysterious places of all is closer than you might believe. It’s the best kept secret everyone has been sleeping through. * * * The Lore book series: www.theworldoflore.com/books The Lore TV show: www.Amazon.com/Lore Latest Lore news: www.theworldoflore.com/now Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It wasn't the first time he'd had the dream. In fact, it was one more in a long series of visions that had come to him in his sleep in the winter of 1913, and they weren't easy to process. They involved tragedy on a massive scale. Floods washed across Europe between unusually tall versions of the Alps and the North Sea. Waves of yellow carried innumerable dead, while the debris of civilization lay all around. The sea and rivers turned red with blood, and an entire region was frozen solid by arctic blasts.

It was horrifying, and left him feeling nauseous and depressed. And he felt like it meant something. In fact, he couldn't shake the feeling that his dream was a warning, a signal that something terrifying was about to take place, and no one in Europe was safe. By the time his final dream took place in June of 1914, his puzzlement had turned to certainty. War was coming. Less than two months later, on July 28th, it all came true.

World War I began, and Europe found itself consumed with destruction as horrifying as he had envisioned, and the man who had endured all those visions was left with a powerful confirmation of everything he believed and taught. A man, by the way, who was Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology and a pioneer of modern psychiatry. If anyone was going to recognize the power of dreams, it was Jung. But just because they are powerful doesn't mean they are safe. Dreams are just too complex to nail down as purely good or entirely evil.

And it's that unpredictable aspect that gives dreams their mysterious aura. They can delight us with pure fantasy, or stab us with a knife of grief over a long lost loved one. They can reconnect us with sights and sounds from our youth, or they can paint a picture that is difficult to understand. And if you've ever had the sort of dream that stuck with you the entire day, like a ghost that was eager to haunt your mind, then you understand just how problematic they can be.

A dream come true, it seems. Might not always be a good thing. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is LORE. There are few words in our vocabulary today. But carry as much weight and power as the word dream. We use it to talk about our aspirations when we dream of a better life. It becomes a measure of our very best when we label a group of athletes the dream team. And it sets us up for bitter disappointment when someone mutters, in your dreams.

But that power and weight isn't new. In fact, cultures have been talking about dreams for thousands of years. The earliest surviving written evidence can be found in the land of pharaohs and pyramids, ancient Egypt, and even then, it was all about vocabulary. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics represent the idea of sleep with the figure of a bed, while dream is represented with an open eye. In the context of sleep, that open eye has been translated as meaning to come awake, but it's used in many other contexts to communicate sight, to see, or to be vigilant.

And there's a reason for that. In all of the ancient Egyptian writings about dreams, they are treated as nouns, not verbs. You wouldn't say, I dreamt of wealth and glory. Instead, you would say, I witnessed a dream of wealth and glory. And there's a difference there. Rather than being the one in control, the ancient Egyptians believed that dreams happened and they were simply a witness to what they saw. And that sort of attitude toward dreams led to some unique beliefs.

For instance, it was believed that the soul left the body during a dream in much the same way it did upon death, which meant that there was another doorway to the afterlife, or at least a window through which they could look and see the other side. Which of course leads to new questions. If you can enter a dream and view the other world, what benefit could that bring into your own life? Early on, that led ancient Egyptians to write letters to dead loved ones, asking for favor. A soldier might request that his deceased father appear in a dream and show him a vision

of victory in battle. And there are lots of examples of this, all collected into something called the Letters of the Dead. By the time of the New Kingdom, around 1500 BCE, dreams became a tool for communication with the divine, but only for royalty. It was an odd mixture of politics and religion, where, yes, they believed that they could speak with the gods in their dreams, but also conveniently they were the only ones who could report back on what happened, and it was almost always an affirmation of the pharaoh's power.

Here's an example I think most people will recognize. Remember the Sphinx in your mind. Do you remember that tall, flat stone between its front paws? That's called the Dream Stale, and it explains how Tutmosis IV had a dream in that very spot about how he needed to unbury the ancient Sphinx from the sand in order to become pharaoh. He did, and of course, he did. At least that's how the story is told. Like I said, convenient, right?

Years later, that communication channel opened to the rest of the citizens of ancient Egypt, allowing anyone to seek answers within their dreams, which led to a reinvention of the way they viewed dreams. Suddenly, they were a source of prophecy and divination, where everyday people could find significance in the imagery they witnessed while asleep. This was harnessed in a couple of ways. First, there were dream books, essentially collections of common dream images and their associated meanings.

You could buy the book and then wake up in the morning and look up what you had experienced. But it also led to the rise of sleep temples, a home of something called dream incubation. Basically, there were rooms inside many of the temples where a person could go in search of answers or wisdom. They would make a sacrifice to that particular god and then go to sleep on a specially designed dream bed. Once the person woke back up, they would speak with one of the priests there, who would explain the meaning of what they saw.

Now, dream incubation was a tool used by the Egyptians for centuries, but they certainly weren't the only ones. As cultures began to mingle, ideas were shared along with trade goods. The ancient Greeks began to experiment with their own versions of sleep temples. But it wasn't until the cult of Asclepius began in the 6th century BCE that things really kicked off. Which is interesting, because Asclepius was more than just the son of Apollo and a hero in the Greek world.

He was a figure of wisdom and power, who was most often depicted carrying a staff that most of us would recognize today, a long rod with a snake wrapped around it. You see, Asclepius was the god of medicine. And sure, it would be narrow-minded to believe that the connection between dreams and medicine all started with the Asclepius cult 2500 years ago. Those ideas were certainly old by the time they started to build their sleep temples. But it is that anchor moment that we need to make our next jump in time. Because everyone has dreams, and everyone has problems.

And it's that pair of predictable experiences that kept all of these ancient ideas alive for thousands of years. Some say there is power in our dreams. It's there, just waiting for us to tap into it. And as it turns out, modern history is full of individuals who claim to have done just that. Through their dreams, they had the power to heal. As we've already established, the connection between dreams and healing is an ancient one.

In fact, there's a powerful story from the middle of the second century that bears repeating. According to the historical account, a young Greek man was suffering from a build-up of fluids beneath his diaphragm, threatening his life. But Asclepius came to him in a dream and told him how to fix the issue through self-surgery. And when the young man awoke and tried the remedy, it worked. And this story isn't just significant because of its age. It turns out that young Greek man was Galen, the Greek physician who is considered one of the most influential figures in the history of medicine.

Think about that. A man at the forefront of the medical field of his day allowed dreams to play a part in his surgical practice. Today, we would see that as a bit unorthodox, if not downright silly. But history has always been full of people offering medical advice that drifts outside the overlapping circles of science and common sense. And one of the most interesting moments took place in the middle of the 19th century with the advent of mesmerism.

Without spending 10 minutes explaining in detail exactly what mesmerism was, here's a real quick tour. Franz Mesmer was a German doctor who proposed a strange idea in the 1770s. He believed there was a natural energy inside living beings that could be transferred to other people and objects. And he called that energy animal magnetism. Over time, it also became known by his own name. Mesmerism

Early practitioners of mesmerism believe that they could harness that energy to do things, which is where the world of medicine in the 19th century comes into play. Because that's when there was an explosion of alternative practices, fertile soil for the arrival of the clairvoyant physician. One of them was a man we only know today by the name of Mr. Johnson. He advertised his services in the New York Daily Herald, claiming to have years of experience using animal magnetism to, and I quote, remove almost every class of disease. But it turns out he himself wasn't a clairvoyant.

No, that was the assistant who worked for him. In 1872, a man named E. A. Smith ran an ad in the Burlington Free Press up in Vermont. This clairvoyant physician offered free consultations and then charged only $1 for the exam. According to his advertisement, he had already worked with over 3,000 patients, which goes a long way toward helping us understand just how popular and convincing this new practice was. In all of these cases, the work of the clairvoyant physician took on the same pattern. Mesmerism was used to place a person into a sleep-like trance, and then that person would learn about the medical cures in a dream.

Then they would speak them out loud while still asleep, and the assistant or manager would write the instructions down and pass that on to the patient. Let me also add that this wasn't spiritualism. Spiritualism was built around the idea that the living could communicate with the dead, and this was purely a medical thing, focused on finding new cures and treatments in a new place, inside our dreams. Of course, this sort of work quickly caught the attention of the government because, honestly, it smelled like fraud from a mile away.

In 1884, a whole list of trance doctors were prosecuted in New York state, including George W. Barrett. He claimed to be able to cure a man's son with medicine discovered through his dreams, but after 18 visits over seven months, the patient died. Which leads us to Lucy. She was born in 1819 to a large family in rural Vermont, and for a while, she seemed to live a normal life. According to the stories, that family farm wasn't as successful as they had hoped, and

by the age of eight, Lucy found herself moving into a foster home, and soon after that, the workforce, which is where she learned to make clothing. It turns out Lucy was pretty good at it. Within a few years, she was running a bustling business, making custom clothing for a growing market. I'm sure it brought her a lot of joy, being able to do something special and earn a living at it, especially after such an impoverished youth. But it was a demanding occupation, and over time, it took its toll on her body.

Now the details of her early years are a bit fuzzy. There's just not a lot of material to provide solid timelines or connect specific ages to certain events. What we do know is that sometime in her early 20s, Lucy became so ill that she was confined to bed. The local doctor was stumped and unable to help her, and for a while it seemed as if Lucy was going to pass away long before her time. And then, her brother came to help.

Lucy's brother George was, coincidentally, a mesmerist who lived and worked in Northern New York. According to the story, he arrived to find her sleeping, and instead of waking her up to say hello, he motioned his hands over her head while doing whatever it was that mesmerist did. Amazingly, though, it drew a response. Still sleeping, Lucy was said to have dictated a remedy that was meant to cure her illness. It was a concoction of herbs and roots, although the exact ingredients and the way they were

supposed to have been prepared have disappeared from the public record. But George wrote them down, and then said about making the medicine for his sister. Now logic says that this sort of thing shouldn't work. But instructions mumbled by a sleep-talking tailor shouldn't carry significant medical weight. But the world was a lot different in the late 19th century. Patients gave morphine to their teething toddlers to help with the pain. An opium was known colloquially as God's own medicine, and administered prolifically

as a cure-all drug. Heck, qualified professional medical doctors prescribe mercury and arsenic to treat various illnesses. Compared to the medical field of today, Lucy's world was the wild, wild West. And so George gave her this medicine, and Lucy didn't ask questions as far as we can tell. She had no memory of the dream or of the specific instructions, and yet took the herbal cure from her brother's hand and ingested it without fear.

And then the unthinkable happened. It worked. Lucy had been healed. Sure, it was enough that she was free from her sick bed and able to get back to work, but the way in which it all happened begged for reflection. If there was a power hidden deep inside her dreams that could solve the mysteries of her own illness, what else could it do? Was it limited to her own body, or could she, perhaps, offer her help to others?

So that's what she did. Her own physician, a man named Dr. Douglas, literally closed his traditional medical practice when he saw the results of her powers, and reinvented himself as a manager for Lucy. Patients came from all over, paying 50 cents for each diagnosis, and they did this for over three years. Every healing took place while Lucy was asleep, with the information used to treat them always coming straight from her dreams. And unlike so many of the other clairvoyant physicians who only offered treatments for

invisible, unprovable conditions, things like headaches or sickness, Lucy did things that could be seen with the naked eye. She set broken bones and dislocated joints with her own hands, and did all of this without the need for anesthetics. Whatever Lucy was doing, it was miles apart from every other quack doctor on the scene, and because of that, it drew a following. People believed in her, and literally put their health into her hands. Over time, things changed for Lucy.

In 1846, she married Charles Cook, a man from Vermont who also happened to be a mesmerist. Because why not, right? And together, they managed a small in for their main income while Lucy continued to take on patients. Charles, of course, used his skill to induce her trances, and together they helped countless people. As her own skills developed, she branched out. She began to offer other kinds of information to people, not just medical help.

And she continued to do all of it while in a trance, which eventually led to the nickname Sleeping Lucy, and Sleeping Lucy was about to expand her services. The details are a bit fuzzy because the story comes to us through a 1936 radio interview with a man named Dorman Kent. Apparently Kent's own grandfather had an encounter with Lucy back in the late 1860s that defied logic, and he was never able to forget the story. Kent's grandfather, it seems, was a very wealthy man who needed to carry large amounts of cash on his person each day to help him run his various businesses.

And one day, his wallet disappeared with over $300 inside, a tidy sum worth over $7,000 in today's market. Naturally, the man looked all over for his lost billfold, but after three days of searching, he came up empty. So, on a whim, and probably as a last-ditch effort, he traveled to see Lucy and ask her for help. Lucy promptly went into a deep sleep and then began to describe the location of the wallet. It was in someone's pants, she said, pants that were currently hanging in a closet.

But it wasn't dark in there. Down at the end of the long, narrow closet was a window, which led in a good amount of light. Kent's grandfather was awestruck. He knew that closet well because, surprise, surprise, it was his own. And after traveling back to his house and opening the closet door, he was delighted to find his missing wallet right where Lucy said it would be. Inside a closet, in a house she had never seen before, let alone entered.

Lucy, it seems, could find things. It wasn't spiritualism, which was growing in popularity at the time, and it wasn't magic. But it wasn't normal, either. Lucy could fall asleep and locate missing objects, and that was something people couldn't help but whisper about. Soon enough, everyone in the area knew what she could do, and that led to even more drama. On April 18 of 1872, a 19-year-old woman named Nelly Jewett went missing from a small town

in nearby New Hampshire. Most people weren't worried. They believed that she had simply skipped town to go live in Boston after having a big public argument with her mother earlier that morning. But there were some who disagreed, and the lack of evidence of Nelly actually having moved was disconcerting, to say the least. Even after the police were brought in, they failed to track Nelly down, which is when someone on the police force suggested that they ask Sleeping Lucy for help.

Now, I can't prove this, but even if this wasn't the very first instance of a police department bringing in a clairvoyant helper, it's one of the earliest. Or then again, maybe it's just the natural evolution of the function served by those ancient Egyptian sleep temples. Either way, Lucy agreed to help. She told them where to look for Nelly's body, upriver from the Menadnok mill's dam, and the police went out to investigate. And at this point, I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that Nelly's body was found in that

exact spot. It wasn't a lost wallet, but Lucy had proven once again that her gifts could do more than just heal people. They could provide answers. Later that year, Lucy helped with one more missing person's case, and successfully led the police to yet another body. And maybe it was all that death that eventually turned her off, because after that there is no more evidence that she ever helped the police solve a difficult case.

She settled back into her medical practice, and continued to bring healing and relief to everyone she could. In 1876, Lucy left her life in Vermont behind and moved to Boston with her daughter. Her husband Charles had passed away, and she was looking for a fresh start and a new opportunity. For the next 19 years, she would work hard to grow her reputation and help more people. In fact, one of her own advertisements claimed that she had been consulted by over 200,000 people during her career, and set thousands of bones and joints in the process. She eventually married again, and amassed a small fortune, and life was good for a very

long while. Then the fortune dried up, her daughter abandoned her, and in 1893 she came down with pneumonia, which never fully went away. In May 24th of 1895, Lucy Ainsworth Cook passed away at the age of 76, from what would later turn out to be colon cancer. And I find it more than a little ironic that someone as powerful as Lucy, someone who helped thousands of desperate people find comfort and healing through a career that spanned over five decades, was unable to use that same healing power to save herself.

Whether or not we believe that the stories about Lucy were true, her death suggests a painful truth. Maybe even dreams have limits. Even today, in 2019, it's easy to view sleep as something mysterious and impenetrable. We might be surrounded by the latest technology, powerful advancements in medical science, and a deeper understanding of human psychology, and yet we still wake up every now and then from a bizarre dream that leaves us feeling haunted. Dreams are frustrating because they sit outside our realm of control.

They happen, and we experience them, but we can't make them start or stop. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons why humans have been obsessed with them since the dawn of civilization. From the ancient Egyptians to sleep studies in university psych departments, we can't stop thinking about our dreams. Lucy Ainsworth Cook and the others like her stood in a tricky place. They made claims that were entirely too wild to believe, and yet the source of their powers, their very own dreams, were the one thing that couldn't be put on display as proof.

It was an inside job, so to speak, and the people around them were left with a simple choice — to believe it or not. One woman chose to believe the stories. She was a writer from New Hampshire who had endured more grief and trauma in her first 30 years than anyone should have to suffer. Even in 1821, she had lost a husband, a fiancé, her mother, and then a son, all by 1850. But as things settled down later in life, she discovered sleeping Lucy. In fact, she later wrote that whenever someone in her family was ill, she would immediately

take them to Vermont to have a consultation with Lucy, where they would always be diagnosed and healed. She was fascinated by it, and that obsession with healing would direct the rest of her life. This writer, Mary Baker Eddy, would go on to found a belief system known as Christian Science — sort of a hybrid between Christianity and medicine that held that all illness is simply a figment of our imagination. Before she passed away in 1910, Mary's new religion had grown to nearly a quarter of

a million members and became the fastest growing religion in the United States. Healing, it seems, will never not be popular. What hasn't lasted all these years are most of the records about Lucy's life and work. It's honestly a bit frustrating. For a person held in such high regard in local lore, and whose name appears on countless lists as one of the most powerful trans doctors in history, there are huge holes in the record of her life outside of newspaper advertisements and the stories told by the people she interacted with.

Lucy Ainsworth Cook seemed to arrive unexpectedly. She delighted those around her with mysterious sights and experiences, and then vanished back into the fog, leaving us to wonder if it ever really happened at all. Just like a dream. The story of Sleeping Lucy is certainly one of the most bizarre to come out of the state of Vermont, but it's certainly not the only tale with bizarre dreams at its heart. Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear one more story that is sure to fill your head with visions.

The Marvins owned not one, but two local businesses. There was The Farm, which sat on the edge of a small lake known to the locals as Fairfield Pond. And about three miles away, the couple also owned and operated a sawmill, which was both necessary in the ever-expanding Vermont of the 1840s, and also pretty common, given how wooded the state was and still is. The two businesses meant that the Marvins had a number of people who worked for them, cutting timber and working the farm, which meant that they stayed very busy, but they

also tried to make time for their community, and Mrs. Marvin received frequent visits from the wives of men who worked for her and her husband. One of those visitors was a young mother named Mrs. Clifford. Each day, she would walk the short road that connected her own property to that of the Marvins, and then the two women would spend a while chatting. Mrs. Clifford always brought along her infant girl, and the pair of them always wore a matching set of shawls to keep the sun out of their faces. One day, though, Mrs. Clifford and her child were accompanied by Mr. Clifford himself.

It was a Sunday, and he had come to ask for some help from the Marvins. Mrs. Clifford's parents lived in Fairfield, just on the other side of the pond, and rather than walking all the way around it, they were wondering if the Marvins might lend them their boats. Mr. Marvin agreed, and the young family set off toward the shore, where they untethered the boats and rode west. The Marvins got on with their Sunday plans and quickly forgot about the visit. At sundown, though, a knock brought them back to their front door where they found Mr. Clifford

standing by himself. Mr. Marvin assumed the man had come to tell them that the boat had been returned and secured at the dock, but one look at Clifford told them there was more to the story than that. Mr. Clifford was wet from head to toe, and he had a look of panic on his face. The boat had capsized, he told them. It had rolled over in a freak accident. He tried to save his wife and child, but they were gone before he could reach them. Mr. Marvin assembled some of his employees, and the group set out searching the water

for bodies, sometime before sunrise. They found them. Mrs. Marvin was there with Mr. Clifford when he viewed the bodies, and then gave one slow grim nod to signal that, yes, they were indeed his wife and child. But she noticed something else. The matching shawls that they had worn each and every day were both missing. Lost the cold waters of the pond, no doubt. A few nights later, Mrs. Marvin had a dream.

In it, she was standing on the shore of Fairfield Pond, where she could see Mr. Clifford stumbling out of the dark waters. As the dream unfolded, she followed his path into the dark cops of trees, weaving in and out of tall oaks and fallen pine. Finally, Clifford came to a stop at an old hollow stump. Bending down on one knee, he pulled something from his shirt. There was a flash of color, and Mrs. Marvin recognized the fabric at once. It was the set of identical shawls that Clifford's wife and child had been wearing the day they

drowned. She then watched as he stuffed them both inside the stump and covered the opening from wandering eyes. Mrs. Marvin awoke the following morning with an ill feeling. Soon after, she asked one of the farmhands to walk with her to the pond and then veered into the cops of trees there along the shore. Every step felt familiar to her, and the path seemed obvious. A few moments after arriving, she was standing over a hollow stump.

The shawls were inside. After the authorities were led to the hidden shawls, Clifford was arrested. He confessed to the murders of his wife and daughter a short while later, and the subsequent trial put him in jail for the rest of his life. Mrs. Marvin, of course, was the most significant witness in the courtroom. Sometimes the thing you're looking for is lost in a dream, and sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll find it there as well. This episode of lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Sam

Alberti and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two fantastic seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both of them. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long

dives into a single topic, and you can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place. The world of lore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.