Lore - Episode 133: Proof Positive

Episode Date: January 6, 2020

The human tendency to study the unknown—to dig deep and search for the bedrock of truth at the bottom of the mystery—is one of our most enduring qualities. But while that tenacity has helped scientists unlock much of our world, it has also led us to unusual ideas. And you’d be surprised what they recorded about it. ———————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources 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.

Somewhere inside the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France is a set of curious boxes. They're not necessarily off limits, but you do have to sign a waiver if you want to see what they contain. Oh, and you'll need to put on some protective clothing, too. Why? Because what's inside them is incredibly dangerous. Each box contains a notebook used by the legendary Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie. Her research saw the discovery of two new radioactive elements, but also most likely caused her untimely death. So radioactive are her notebooks that they need to be stored in

lead-line boxes and will for another 1500 years. They are a testament to the danger of scientific work, but also a priceless treasure that records the work of a woman hailed by many as the mother of modern physics, and their own complex history hides a more simple lesson. Scientists love to write things down. There are other notebooks like them, of course. One of the oldest and most famous is probably the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, but museums and archives have also preserved the documents of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Lewis and Clark. If it was significant or useful for reference later, they would write it down, an act that preserved it for the ages and opened a

window into the past that we can still look through today. From the mundane to the groundbreaking, scientific notebooks have been used throughout history to keep a record of events and knowledge learned so that future generations might look back at them and remember. But for a period of time in the 17th century, that process was used in an unlikely field, witchcraft. And while it's easy to assume that that combination, found at the intersection of witches and science, might not be the most logical, you'd be surprised to learn that more than a few professional skeptics tried to use rationale to test superstition. And what they discovered was beyond frightening. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

Not all scientific debates look entirely scientific in retrospect. Sometimes the deeply held convictions of the past have been shown to be more a matter of belief than fact, and it's easy to look back on those with a bit of embarrassment. A great example would be the folk belief in something called sympathetic magic, which proposed that if an object looked like another object, it must also share the same characteristics. But today we know better. Just because a flower is shaped like the human heart doesn't mean those flowers are literally the best medicine for heart trouble. In the late 1600s, one of the scientific debates that seemed just as common was whether or not the supernatural world was real. And great minds fell on both sides of the issue,

although not for the reasons we might think. And on one side was a man named John Webster, an English physician and chemist. Webster wanted to prove that there was no such thing as witchcraft. He had been born into a world that had been wrapped up in witchcraft trials for close to 200 years, and he felt that it was his calling to apply science to the matter and disprove the superstitions that cause so many people to fear their neighbors. The technical term for this debate was sadicism. The active quest to prove claims of the supernatural were false, and John Webster was one of the biggest voices. But every debate has two sides, and there were others who spoke out against him. To them, the supernatural world, one full of witches

that threatened the safety and security of every community, was real and valid. And one of the most prominent of those voices was George Sinclair. Sinclair was part of a group of thinkers who believed that the supernatural world was real, that spirits existed, and that witchcraft was a real and powerful threat. But he and his fellow believers weren't part of the non-scientific community. In fact, it was quite the opposite of what we might expect. George Sinclair was a professor of mathematics at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He'd also served time as a geologist doing mineral surveys, and as an engineer. In fact, in 1655, he crafted a diving bell so that he could explore the wreck of a Spanish ship

off the coast of the Isle of Mull. He was also part of the engineering team that was hired to use pipes to transport fresh drinking water into Edinburgh, something that cities take for granted today. I guess my point is that George Sinclair possessed a smart scientific analytical mind, which makes it a bit of a conundrum that he used that mind to debunk belief in the supernatural. It was honestly a very bizarre and backwards debate. On one side, there was John Webster, who was not just a chemist, but also a priest, arguing that the supernatural world of spirits and witches was nothing but fiction. And then on the other, you have people like George Sinclair, scientist and engineer par excellence, claiming science could prove that all of it was, in fact,

true. And they did this primarily through observation, observation and notebooks. So when reports of witchcraft activity would pop up, Sinclair and others like him would interview witnesses, record evidence, and build a document with all of the facts. They believed, deep down in their bones, that if they studied these mysterious events with a true scientific mind, they would establish proof of things like ghosts and witches. And it wasn't a practice limited to England and Europe. Even in the New World, practical minds were documenting irrational events. In 1671, a Puritan minister in Massachusetts named Samuel Willard spent weeks painstakingly documenting the apparent possession of one of his servants, a young woman named Elizabeth Knapp. And in the

early days of the Salem witch trials, the town minister Samuel Paris put his own regular observations into a notebook, a book that I've held with my own hands. And flipping through its pages, it's easy to see the neat, orderly handwriting of a rational man slowly transform into the scribbles of someone governed by panic and fear. Looking back, I think it's easy to see these records as historically important, but scientifically weak. Some people view them as nothing more than propaganda, designed to fuel the fear of the unknown. But there's something else going on inside each of them. They are collections of stories, and not just stories, but stories with incredible detail, witness interviews, and sworn statements. They are the sort of proof that most courts would love

to get their hands on. Eyewitness accounts and interviews around the neighborhood that contribute to the investigation. And this is what writers like George Sinclair were so good at. But it also invites questions, doesn't it? Because when we pair that sort of accuracy and depth of research with tales of the mysterious and unexplainable, sometimes our logic and rationale are put to the test. We might want to believe that these stories are nothing more than traumatic works of fiction, but there's always the lingering doubt that something more is going on below the surface. With all that proof and detail, it's hard not to ask a very tempting and very dangerous question. What if the stories are real?

It's buried in a book about fluid mathematics. In 1672, George Sinclair published a book called Hydrostatics, which discussed the math behind the flow of liquids. Not the sort of place you might expect to find a ghost story. But if we remember that Sinclair was a scientist to believe that spirits were real, it becomes less of a surprise. Sinclair wasn't the first to write about the story I'm about to tell you. But the earliest mention was in a personal letter written in 1661 by a man named Robert Bailey. And sometime in the 11 years between then and the publication of Sinclair's version, Sinclair had managed to track down many of the key players and conduct his own scientific investigation into it all. Either way, everything began in October of 1654.

That was when a beggar named Alexander Agnew showed up at the home of Gilbert Campbell in the Scottish village of Glenloos. Agnew was a known atheist, something rare and unusual for the time he lived in. In fact, just two years later, he would be hanged for the crime of blasphemy. Agnew knocked on the Campbell's door and asked for food, but was turned away. In response, he threatened them, calling down curses on their household. And then he wandered off. And it might have been easy for Gilbert Campbell to settle back into normal life, to fill his days with work. But fate had other ideas. Campbell was what they called a webster, which was another term for a weaver. His world revolved around threads and scissors and looms, all of which were tools of

the trade that helped him craft goods for his customers. I imagine it was difficult work, but he had most likely inherited the business from his father and knew little else. His entire existence probably revolved around his trade. But after Agnew's visit and curse, that work became much more difficult to manage. At first, it was little things, threads that had been cut by someone other than himself, broken scissors, misplaced items. It was confusing and frustrating, I'm sure. Yet he managed to work around it all. That is, until the voices arrived. The first time it happened, it was actually his daughter Janet who heard them. She had been walking to the nearby well for water when a mysterious whistling sound filled

her ears. And she wasn't alone either. Other women around her also heard it and turned toward her when they did. So as a sort of joke, she said out loud, I would rather hear you speak than whistle. In response, a woman's voice spoke to her and said, I will cast you, Janet, down the well. And Sinclair makes note of the fact that all the other women heard the threats loud and clear. Naturally, Janet ran home to her father and the safety of their home, but some threats can't be stopped by walls or doors. The next time the Invisible Force made itself known, it did so by throwing stones through the windows of the Campbell home. Some even tumbled down the chimney, as if a person were standing on

the roof and dropping them in. But of course, no one was up there, or even outside. There was no explanation for the stones at all, which must have been both frustrating and frightening. But then things became more invasive. More of Gilbert's work was tampered with the following day, the threads being cut by invisible scissors, and not just threads on the loom either. Soon, they were finding clothing that had been cut while stored inside their chests. Bedsheets were tugged off the bed in the middle of the night, preventing anyone from getting the rest they needed. But those attacks on Gilbert's occupation were the hardest to endure. Eventually, he was forced to store his tools at a neighbor's home each night, hoping that the

spirit would leave them alone. But soon, his tools and loom were so badly damaged by the angry spirit that he was unable to practice his trade, putting his entire family in financial trouble. Desperate for help, Gilbert reached out to the parish minister, John Scott, telling him about everything that had happened so far. He also spoke with a number of his closest neighbors, who made observations of their own. It was their opinion that the invisible fiend, whatever it really was, seemed to trouble some of his children more than the others, and that got him thinking. As a test, he sent each of his children to stay with a different neighbor. It would give him a chance to see if the ghost that was plaguing them was attached

to a particular person or just the house in general. And while Campbell wasn't a scientist, I hope you can see the scientific nature of that test. Remove the variables, test the results, and then make adjustments, observing the entire time. And that's exactly what Campbell did. After the children were gone, the activity in the house stopped and remained silent for nearly a week. But eventually, the minister told him that it would be bad parenting to leave his children in danger for the sake of peace at home, so he began to bring them back. First, he brought back the one that had been staying the closest. When the spirit failed to return with them, he brought another. And then another until finally the only child left was

his son Thomas. But when Thomas stepped back inside the Campbell house, everything started back up all over again. The voices, the pounding, the destruction of their belongings, all of it. The following day, while Gilbert was off talking with the minister, his house caught fire. And while a neighbor managed to put out the flames, Gilbert took that as a sign that Thomas's presence would bring destruction down on their home. So he begged the minister to take the boy in for a while until they could find a better solution. This time, though, the unusual activity continued after Thomas had gone. So the minister brought him back. When he arrived, though, a voice boomed out, telling him that he was not allowed to enter the house. Ignoring it, Thomas stepped

inside, only to be assaulted by the invisible fiend over and over again. In the end, Thomas was forced to return to the home of the minister, and Gilbert Campbell was left with his life in ruins. No way to work, no support for his family, the loss of his son, and a home that no one felt safe in. Things had become as low as they could, as far as he was concerned. And then they got worse. Because that's when the spirit began to talk. They say that the family spoke to it. In the short time that the invisible force had begun to speak with them, they had not only grown used to it, but also became comfortable with responding and asking their own questions. I'm sure there was a level of constant fear, but I imagine there was

also a bit of amusement. After all, they were talking to a spirit. A few days later, the minister brought Thomas Campbell back home, and Gilbert met them on the path to the front door of the house before walking them inside. As the minister crossed the threshold, though, the spirit or ghost or whatever it was shouted out an insult. Dog, it seemed to growl. The minister, though, wasn't visibly insulted. He just sort of smiled and nodded and then commented to Gilbert that he could never take insults from demons to heart. After all, his Lord Jesus had suffered the same. In response, and this is one of my favorite moments in the story, mostly because it reminds me of the old 1980 film Airplane, the voice spoke up again and clarified itself. It hadn't actually

been speaking to the minister when it shouted the word dog. No, it had been referring to an actual dog that was walking a few steps behind the man. And no, that's not essential to the story. But who in their right mind would cut out a detail like that? The voice did seem to have a problem with the return of Gilbert's son Thomas. During those first few moments, it made a number of threats toward the boy, which prompted the minister to step in and have his own conversation with the spirit. I'm going to skip a lot of the details of that chat, mostly because it goes down some deep theological roads. But after a while, the minister demanded that the spirit show itself. In response, the hand and forearm of a grown man seemed to rise up from the floorboards before

forming into a fist and pounding on the floor. Then the voice made a frightening statement. That wasn't my arm, it told them. That was my father's. His meaning was clear, too. According to the spirit's voice, they had all just laid eyes on the devil. The minister had heard enough. He told the family to ignore the demon's attempts at conversation and to instead increase their prayers to God. And then he set off to meet with other ministers in the area and ask for advice, leaving the Campbells alone in the house with the disembodied voice. They didn't last long, I'm afraid. Sure, they tried to ignore it, but after just a few hours, one of them caved in and began to talk back. Maybe they felt that if

they gave the spirit the conversation it desired, they might leave them alone. Or perhaps the novelty of it all was just too tempting to pass up. Either way, they kept up the talking and the demon or devil, or whatever it was, kept them busy. When the minister, John Scott returned a week or so later, he had good news. He had called the gathering of all the local ministers, and their advice had been unanimous. Everyone involved must enter into a season of humiliation, a time of denial and prayer and fasting, sort of like Lent, and that should cleanse the house of any sins that were keeping the demon trapped inside. That was the end of February of 1656. By April, things were already becoming more and more quiet, and by August, well, everyone felt sure that the troubles were over.

The talkative demon, known by then as the Devil of Glenloos, seemed to have vanished. Through a combination of fervent prayer and scientific diligence, they had banished a real threat from their home and brought peace to the family. For a while, at least. That August, everything started up again, just as violent and disruptive as it had been back in February. More stones were thrown into the house, invisible hands pounded on the walls, and that disembodied voice resumed shouting at them at all hours of the night. Worse yet, their food supplies were ruined, and new fires were discovered from time to time, including one that ignited right inside one of their beds. And I wish I could tell you that the

story has a happy ending, that a cursed object was removed, or that the minister returned and cast the demon out of the house. But that's not what George Sinclair tells us in his record of the events. According to him, these events continued for years. In fact, he said that if he had written down everything that happened after that August in 1656, the words would have filled an entire book of their own. And while Gilbert Campbell survived into his old age to talk about everything that had happened to him, it's hard to imagine he was ever really the same after it was over. In the end, we're left with a detailed record of something that defies logic and rational thinking, and yet claims to be a record of fact and evidence. But if we take

George Sinclair's detailed account of the events in Glenloos, along with his interviews of neighbors who witnessed it all, as something that constitutes proof of the spirit's existence, then we have a lot to wrestle with, don't we? Because while it might be fascinating to believe that, yes, the spirit world is real and documentable, it's also destructive and dangerous, which might be the biggest lesson of all, whether we were looking for one or not. Sometimes the proof isn't so positive. Sometimes all we really want are answers. So much of human history and folklore in particular has been the story of our journey into the unknown, hoping to bring back something solid

to aid in our growth and advancement. Those journals of Marie Curie are a fantastic example, as are the notes of Charles Darwin. Great minds have applied themselves throughout the ages to the task of seeking out and writing down the evidence to prove that their convictions were valid. And in a lot of cases, they were right. But there's something dangerous about that journey as well. Sometimes it's obvious, as in the case of Marie Curie. Not only are her notebooks kept inside lead boxes, but so is her coffin. Her remains were so radioactive that before being buried, her casket was placed inside a lead box with walls nearly an inch thick. Yes, humans are good at searching for answers, but what we find isn't always easy to handle.

But I want to dip back one more time into the story of the Gilberts and their vocal housemates. If you remember, the demon was far from excited to have young Thomas return from the minister's care that day in February of 1656. And while we don't know why that is, there was one other detail to the story that has left some people scratching their heads ever since. You see, the minister, John Scott, tried several times to flat out command the spirit to leave the Campbell House. True to the invisible being's nature, though, it chose not to listen. In fact, according to George Sinclair, it even presented a counterargument, giving the minister a reason for why it couldn't obey. I have a commission, it told the man of God, hinting at some sort of

obligation or mission it was ordered to fulfill. And my commission will last longer than your own. And, admittedly, that was an unusual thing to say. But if the demon's commission was to haunt that house, and the minister's commission was his calling to be a man of the cloth, then we can at least see the pieces that are being compared. According to the Devil of Glen Luce, its own mission was going to last longer than that of the minister. It was a bold prediction and one that hinted at a bleak future for John Scott. It seems that the spirit believed that it would be working in the Campbell household long after the minister had given up his own mission, a nicer way of hinting at his death. It wasn't a threat, but it certainly was a dark forecast.

Sure enough, the minister died the following December. Years before the Devil of Glen Luce, finally left the Campbell home in peace. The notion that the supernatural world can be studied and recorded is probably not the most logical to a lot of people. But science offered people a lot of hope in a time when so much of the world was still a mystery. And the observers we've discussed so far were only a small sample of a larger trend. Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear yet one more tale of unusual activity and those who wrote it all down. As I mentioned earlier, the trend of documenting supernatural events was pretty widespread

in the late 1600s. Along with George Sinclair, other scientists joined in, men like Joseph Glanville. In fact, an earlier episode of lore featured one of Glanville's stories, covering the tale of the drummer of Tedworth. But even small-town believers got involved. I've already mentioned Samuel Willard, the Puritan minister in Colonial Massachusetts, who claimed to have a demon-possessed servant in his home. Willard actually observed and took notes for over a month, documenting every little change in his subject's condition. In the end, he was convinced it was supernatural in origin, but was unwilling to place the blame on her, as the leaders of Salem would do two decades later.

Another small-town minister got involved in his own study in 1696. His name was Alexander Telfair, and he served the community at Cracoubry in southwest Scotland, not too far from Glenloose. And it all started with a cow. There was a man in the village named Andrew Mackie, who worked as a stone mason and a farmer on his own property, which was called Ringcroft. And in February of 1695, he started to notice that his livestock were managing to get out on a regular basis. He did his best, of course, lashing gates shut and even tying the animals to stakes, but nothing seemed to help. One evening, he went outside for some firewood, and discovered that one of his cows had been moved to the backside of the house and tied there,

but not tied to his stake. No, this cow was tethered to the house itself, and so high up the wall that its hooves were off the ground. How it happened was a complete mystery. A few nights later, Andrew awoke to the smell of smoke in his house. He managed to track down the unattended fire and put it out, but it left him feeling unsettled. So when stones began to pummel his house on the 7th of March, sometimes even falling from the ceiling of his own home, he realized that he was out of his depth. So he called on the local minister, Alexander Telfair. When Telfair arrived, he came with information. It seems that Andrew's farm, Ringcroft, had once belonged to the McNott family, but the McNott's had fallen on hard times, and the father decided

he needed answers. So he told the son to head to the village of Iron Gray, about 25 miles to the north, where he was to seek out a witchwife who could give an explanation for their misfortune. The son did manage to find the witchwife, but he apparently got distracted before he could return home. He ended up leaving the country for some unknown reason, perhaps hoping to make a better life for himself, far away from the troubles at home. So it wasn't until years later that another local from his hometown was wandering through Flanders when he recognized the younger McNott. The young man decided it would be good to pass along the witchwife's instructions to the visitor, who eventually headed back to Kirkcubrie. When he did, he explained to the older

McNott that they were supposed to search beneath the threshold of the house for a tooth, and when they found it, they were supposed to burn it. Sure enough, a search of the soil beneath the edge of the home led them to a tooth, although it was unclear if it was human or animal in origin. Still, they burned it as instructed, and then crossed their fingers. Soon after, life began to look up for the McNott's, and their fortunes changed. But that wasn't helpful for Andrew Mackie, was it? Because if an evil spirit had been driven from the house decades earlier, why in the world was it back, making his own life miserable? And Reverend Telfair agreed, so he proposed an experiment. Let me move in for a while,

so that I might be able to witness and document your troubles for myself. Andrew agreed, and the good Reverend moved in later that day, and right away the minister found himself in the middle of the most unusual events. Stones fell from the ceiling and struck him on the head and shoulders. Hard blows struck him in the way that a club or staff might have done, but there was never any weapon to see. It was all such a mystery. And those attacks weren't limited to Reverend Telfair, either. Andrew Mackie's own children were dragged out of their beds during the nights. Visitors to the home were physically attacked by invisible forces, and Andrew himself suffered a blow to the forehead that was so powerful it

made a deep cut that left a permanent scar. Then, on the 5th of April, Andrew's wife noticed a loose stone in the floor of their home, so she pulled it up. Beneath it, she found a cloth bundle that contained human bones, some of which still had flesh and blood still clinging to them. In a panic, she ran to a neighbor's house for help. After removing the bones to be studied, the local ministers, including Alexander Telfair, decided to hold an unusual ceremony. They laid the bones out on a table, and then instructed all of the living former owners of the Ringcroft farm to come and touch them. It was an unusual form of cruintation, a form of trial by blood that was common at the time, but the experiment

netted them nothing but silence. There was a lot of chaos after that. The ministers all visited the house together, only to be attacked by the invisible fiend. More fires appeared, and more stones fell from the sky to damage the house. More people in or near the house were injured, and all the while Reverend Telfair was documenting the events, interviewing witnesses, and making diligent notes. On April 26, the voice spoke to Andrew Mackey and told him, Thou shalt be troubled till Tuesday, offering a tantalizing bit of hope that his nightmare might soon be over. But that was four days in the future, and a lot could happen before the appointed hour arrived. Somehow, though, they managed to survive, and on Tuesday, April 30,

a number of neighbors claimed they witnessed it all come to an end. They had been inspecting the property when a handful of men stepped into Mackey's barn. They claimed to see a thick black fog rise up from the soil and fill the space before surrounding them. Some of the men claimed that the fog actually caused them pain, as if they'd been squeezed or pinched. Others said that clumps of mud were thrown violently out of the darkness. But it was over quickly, and when it was, the supernatural activity that had plagued the house for so long was gone with it. The demon, it seems, had kept its promise. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mackey, with research by Marseille

Crocket 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 seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make other podcasts, Aaron Mackey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast,

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