Lore - Episode 171: Long Shadows

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

The older the city, the deeper its roots. And when that location is the oldest around—well, the amount of darkness it’s hiding should not come as a surprise. ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: Squarespace: If you're passionate about it, show it off. Build your own powerful, professional website, with free hosting, zero patches or upgrades, and 24/7 award-winning customer support Build your free trial website today at Squarespace.com/lore, and when you make your first purchase, use offer code LORE to save 10%. HelloFresh: Save time and frustration, and get delicious, healthy, honest meals delivered straight to your door, with all the instructions and ingredients prepped and ready to go. So go today to HelloFresh.com/12lore and use code 12LORE for 12 free meals, including free shipping! Casper: From bedding, bed frames, and even a dog bed, Casper has everything to build the dream bedroom—for every kind of sleeper. Visit Casper.com to get $100 off your mattresses order by using the offer code LORE100. Terms and conditions apply. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com 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.

Everyone wants the latest and greatest. The newest fancy phone is typically only a small improvement over the previous version, yet eager customers will plunk down massive sums to own it. And even if your laptop is practically brand new, the moment a newer version is announced, you can feel its obsolescence. But not all valuable things are new. Take the world of Scotch whiskey, for example. A bottle of a 12-year-old single malt is good, for sure, depending on the distillery who

crafted it, but the 18-year version, undeniably better and priced accordingly, and the older they get, the more you're going to have to pay for a taste. How much more? Well, in 2018, legendary distillery The McKellen released a limited batch of 72-year-old single malt. It's a Scotch that has aged in barrels for over seven decades before being bottled up and sold, and each bottle came with a price tag of roughly $65,000. One bar in Beverly Hills was reported to have sold one-ounce pours of the stuff for just

$12,000 a piece. The same could be said about a lot of things. About a year ago, a U.S. Air Force veteran took an old Rolex watch to a local taping of the Antiques Roadshow. He'd bought it in 1974 for about $350, and then he never wore it. Thanks to the popularity of that model, known as a Daytona, and four decades in a safety deposit box, the watch is now estimated to be worth half a million dollars. The veteran, by the way, fell over when he heard the news, as any of us would, I'm sure.

It seems that aged like a fine wine isn't always an exaggeration. Time can be powerful magic, transforming the ordinary into something more, something exceptional. And that doesn't just apply to fine objects and tasty beverages. Even the places we live can become extraordinary, given enough time. After all, the longer humans live in a place, the more of themselves they imprint on its streets and landscape. But if you want to explore the oldest in America, there's only one place to go. It might be bright and sunny, but don't let that fool you, because time has left a mark

that can still be felt today, thanks to all the tragedies that have paid a visit. It seems there's one more rule that history wants us to remember. The older our cities get, the darker their shadows become. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. When they needed a name for the place, they turned to the calendar. It was a journey that had been at least five years in the making. Back in 1560, King Philip II of Spain had put Captain Pedro Menendez de Avalas in charge of a bold mission, to sail to the New World and help the Spanish treasure ships settle

on the best route home. Now, the Caribbean and eastern coast of Mexico were practically on another planet to most people in the 1500s, but to Menendez it was familiar and understandable. And weirdly enough, it was part of his family. You see, his son was also a captain of a Spanish ship, but in 1563, that son's ship was lost at sea, somewhere off the coast of what would now be South Carolina. He made multiple requests to go search for his son, but the king refused. And then in 1565, Menendez was tasked with sailing to the coast of Florida to set up

a colony there while also preventing the French from gaining a stronger foothold. Knowing it would also give him a chance to look for his son, Menendez agreed. So when the coast of Florida came into view on August 28th of 1565, it was a major victory for his mission. Menendez wanted to give the new settlement an auspicious name, and it just so happened that August 28th was known to Catholics as the Feast of St. Augustine. From that moment on, the settlement had a name. They weren't the first humans to live there on the coast of Florida, of course.

Archaeologists can trace human settlement there back at least 15,000 years. So when Menendez and his 800 settlers came ashore, they were far from alone. In fact, the nearby Tumukua people numbered over 200,000 strong. But the arrival of Europeans changed that, mostly through the unintentional introduction of new types of disease. It's estimated that within the first 30 years of St. Augustine settlement, over 75% of the Tumukua people were dead, thanks to smallpox and other deadly epidemics. As the decades passed by, St. Augustine grew, but it also found itself in a constant tug-of-war

battle with the French and the English. Keep in mind, St. Augustine's founding in 1565 makes it the oldest continually occupied settlement of European origin in the New World, and that means that it was always there, an object of desire for any superpower looking to take control of Florida and the southeast of North America. And it should go without saying that because it was Spanish in origin, it was also deeply Catholic while the French settlers to the north, as well as later English invaders, were all Protestants.

And in the late 1500s, that religious divide between Catholic and Protestant was one that inspired a lot of competition and hatred and spilled more than its fair share of blood. By 1821 though, after bouncing from Spanish hands to the British and then back again, the United States acquired the eastern portion of Florida in a deal with Spain and quickly began to absorb other parts of the region. And finally in 1845, Florida became a state in the Union. That didn't mean the road ahead was smooth. In fact, it was paved with the horrible treatment of former enslaved peoples and conflict with

the local Native American peoples. And no story captures that struggle more than the tale of Osceola. Chief Osceola was actually born in Billy Powell in the territory that became the state of Alabama. While his heritage was mixed, his mother was Muscogee Creek and raised him in that tradition. But sometime during his childhood, he and others migrated to Florida. And over time, he became part of a movement within his people known as the Red Sticks. The name came from the two foot long war clubs that were used in battle by the Creek. And as a group, they had war in their hearts.

While their larger mission was a lot more complex, the Red Sticks basically focused primarily on resisting the European American invasion of their lands and the forced assimilation of their people into those cultures. They were a firewall, a line in the sand, and it's honestly hard to blame them. Everything they knew was being eroded away, and they wanted to fight back. In the early 1830s, Osceola and the other leaders of his community refused to be removed from the area by American agents. Tensions continued to build and violence became more frequent.

But in 1837, General Thomas Jessup offered a bit of hope. Peace talks. So on October 21st, with a white truce flag flying over a fort near St. Augustine, Osceola and over 80 of his followers arrived to discuss their future. Instead, Jessup sprung a trap, and every single one of the Red Sticks present were captured and imprisoned. It was cowardly and dishonorable, but it also perfectly demonstrated the prevalent attitude that most Americans had toward Native Americans.

The loss utterly crushed Osceola. While imprisoned, he became deathly ill, and despite constant care from his friend Dr. Frederick Whedon, he passed away on January 30th of 1838. But even in death, that attitude of disrespect continued. It's said that Whedon decided to take some trophies before Osceola's burial, and along with stealing a number of a man's possessions, he also removed his head, which he kept for years in a jar that he put on display. Clearly, a city as old as St. Augustine has had a chance to collect all manner of atrocities

and horrible stains. Terrible moments, like the betrayal of Osceola, serve to remind us that no matter how far people venture out from their home, no matter how hopeful they might be as they start something new, human nature always follows them. After more than 450 years, though, St. Augustine's dark secrets have been pushed just out of sight, hidden behind a more modern façade. But as we all know, the things in the past are never really gone, whether they are admirable or tragic.

All you need to know is where to dig for them. All he wanted to do was run a hospital. William Watson lived in St. Augustine during the two decades that the British controlled the city, and because the military was such a large part of life there in the 1760s, he wanted to set up a hospital to serve them. He didn't start from scratch, though. Instead, he found an old building and just converted it, adding on here and there as needed.

When completed, there were two wings, an east wing and a west wing, naturally, that joined at the central house, where an early version of a pharmacy was set up. Then for a while, it provided essential services to the British forces around the city. But the years weren't kind to the hospital. In 1818, a fire destroyed the west wing, and five years later, the building was abandoned by the staff for better facilities. By 1895, the east wing was gone as well. That old central house with the apothecary stuck around, though, and today serves as

a medical museum. But not all of the relics are on display. Back in 1821, an old water pipe beneath the structure burst, and a work crew was called in to repair it. The men opened up the foundation in search of the damaged segment, but as they exposed more of the soil beneath, water flooded in and turned it all into a soupy mess. And then, slowly, things began to float to the surface. Human bones.

Workers at the time assumed it was a Native American burial ground, although we should remember that it was just a guess. A century later, an actual documented Tamukua site was discovered not far away, casting doubts on the graves beneath the old apothecary. Today, most historians think the bodies were victims of an early outbreak, killed by typhus or smallpox. Visitors to the remains of the hospital today have frequently reported an overwhelming sense of oppressive evil in the space.

While there are no stories of moving objects or flickering lights, some have left the building with unexplainable scratches on their arms, while others have claimed to hear mysterious voices in otherwise empty rooms. Elsewhere in the city, other signs of its contentious past can still be found. Two ancient cemeteries seem to be in a tight contest for the title of the most haunted, and they stand on opposite sides of that age-old religious divide. As I mentioned earlier, when the city was first founded, the Protestant split from the Catholic Church was still a very painful wound.

So when burial grounds were set up in St. Augustine, they reflected that division. One being Protestant and the other Catholic. The Old Huguenot Cemetery, an old French term used for Protestants, there are stories of the ghost of a girl who died centuries ago in an outbreak of yellow fever. The legend says that her body, like so many others, was simply dumped in the street and then buried in a pauper's grave. With no way to confirm the tale, we'll just have to take the legend with a grain of salt. Although what is clear is that people today still see her, floating among the trees near

her gravesite. Another resident there is more well known. John B. Stickney was a judge who served the city in the 1800s, but was also killed by yellow fever, passing away in 1882. Decades later, his family decided to move his remains to another location, but when they opened the grave, they discovered that the body had been looted. Even today, despite the judge's remains no longer being there, people still report seeing him wandering through the graveyard at night.

Maybe he, just like the city he once lived in, has a problem with letting go of the past. Or maybe it's just folklore. I'll let you decide. The Tolomato Cemetery is a little newer than its Protestant counterpart, but just as legendary. Although we're not exactly sure when it was established, we do know that an old Spanish mission once stood nearby, and the cemetery is marked on a map of the city from 1737. And it has equally compelling stories, too. One burial there is that of a young boy named James Morgan.

Like many kids of his age, both then and now, it's said that he loved to climb trees, especially an old oak tree right there in the cemetery. But one day, James slipped and fell out of the tree and died as a result of his injuries. His family buried him right there beneath the tree and purchased a number of other plots around it, planning for the future. But not all plans are meant to be. Another local family suffered their own loss in the early 1800s, according to the man who recorded the tale.

Colonel Joseph Smith wrote about being invited to dinner with the younger couple not long after he moved to St. Augustine. But before he could arrive, he was notified that the wife had suddenly fallen ill and passed away. So instead of a dinner, he arrived for a funeral service. Honestly, for as tragic as that sounds, it's not unusual for the early 19th century. No, it's the burial that was odd. Colonel Smith recorded how the body of the dead woman was dressed in her finest and then

seated on an elaborate chair, which was then carried by the pallbearers from the house to the graveyard. As they entered the cemetery, though, they passed under a low-hanging tree, and Smith tells us that one of the branches caught the dead woman's forehead, slicing her pale skin. Amazingly, though, blood ran from the wound, and when it reached her eye, something else happened. She blinked.

Immediately the woman was carried back home, placed in bed, and a doctor was summoned. Like many of the illnesses of the day, it seems that the symptoms had made it seem as if she had passed away, when in reality it had only been a deep sleep or a coma. In time, she recovered, and I would have to assume that Colonel Smith finally got his chance to go over for dinner. Sadly, though, it wouldn't last long. Six years after her first death, she passed away again. This time, though, instead of a swift burial, her husband decided to allow her to lay in

state for seven days, just to be sure. It seems that even in a city as old as St. Augustine, the past is never really far away, but not all of the tales that haunt the place are buried in the darkness of the Earth. In fact, if the stories are true, the most frightening one comes from a very unlikely location, right where the light shines the brightest. A lot of the stories about St. Augustine are defined by its location, specifically the Florida coast. In fact, the coast features heavily in the very first stories about the arrival of Captain

Menendez. It's said that he searched the coastline for shipwreck survivors, mostly looking for his missing son. And although he never found him, the story teaches us something essential about St. Augustine. The coastline there was treacherous. Between the underwater terrain and the constant tropical storms, the coast posed a danger to passing ships. Heck, on New Year's Eve of 1782, just one evening, at least 16 ships ran aground as

they were trying to sail into the harbor for shelter from a storm. Honestly, it was a busy bit of ocean, and as the years went on, that traffic only increased, thanks in part to the Gulf Stream, which flows up the eastern coast of North America and helped ships cross the Atlantic more efficiently. If a ship was heading back to Europe, chances were good it had to pass right by St. Augustine. And then there were the military invasions. French, British, you name it, the city was constantly being approached by foreign powers. So pretty soon after the settlement was established, a series of wooden watchtowers were built

along the coast as a sort of early warning system. In fact, we're pretty sure where most of them were located too, thanks to Sir Francis Drake, the English privateer who invaded the city in 1586. Not only did he make off with the military payroll and a bunch of weapons, but he also managed to map the city's defenses for future purposes. But as the centuries passed by, many of those watchtowers fell to ruin and vanished. But not the northernmost tower. That one was closest to the city center, and over the years it saw frequent use.

By the mid-1700s, it was torn down and replaced with a stronger stone version, although still serving more as a watchtower than anything else. It's not until the 1780s that records listed as a lighthouse, but that change was likely what saved it from fading away like the rest of the towers. There were tense moments and tragedies over the decades that followed. One lighthouse keeper in 1859 fell off the scaffolding while painting the tower and died on impact. A few years later, as the Civil War was beginning, a Confederate sympathizer snuck in and stole

the large lens and essential equipment so that approaching Union forces wouldn't benefit from the light. All those years exposed to the sea spray and tropical storms took their toll on the structure too. So in the late 1860s, funding was provided to replace it with a more modern version. Work began in 1871, and the city buzzed with excitement about the project. And that's the setting where the real tragedy took place. It's said that the lighthouse keeper at the time was a man named Hezekiah Petit, who

lived there with his wife and four children. As the construction moved forward, he was right there, keeping the light lit while his children played with the children of the workers on the site. If you've ever been a kid around grown-ups building cool things, you can probably imagine the excitement they all felt each day. One of their favorite games, apparently, was to ride in the small rail car that was set up to transport supplies and materials from the dock to the job site. Whenever it wasn't being used by the workers, the kids would climb in and ride it down to

the shore, where a wooden beam across the tracks stopped it from falling into the water. Think of it like a more mundane version of the minecars from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but without the cult villains chasing after them, and I think you've got a pretty good picture of the scene. But on July 10th of 1873, that game turned deadly. Three of the Petit children, along with the daughter of one of the workmen, all climbed into the rail car and pushed off. As the car moved down the track toward the water, it picked up the speed that made the

ride so fun for them, and no one else worried, because they knew that the beam at the end of the track would stop them, except the beam that day wasn't there. I won't describe the worst details of that tragic ride, although I'm sure you can probably fill in the blanks yourselves. When the workers heard the crash, they rushed to the scene, only to find the rail car and all of the occupants underwater, upside down. Only one of the children were saved, the youngest Petit girl, while the rest were claimed by the sea.

Unable to process their loss and grief, the family packed up and moved north, far from the shores of St. Augustine. But if the stories over the years are true, even though the family left the lighthouse behind, a part of them has stuck around. Since the 1870s, other lighthouse keepers have reported unusual activity inside the main house, where the Petit's once lived. In fact, the keeper who served there between 1953 and 1955 had to move out and live in the building at the base of the tower, because he couldn't handle all of the unexplainable

events there. Others have reported the sounds of footsteps on the second floor when the house was known to be otherwise empty. There have been unusual lights spotted through windows and the typical cold spots inside that are often associated with paranormal activity. But honestly, it's the stories that provide the most chills. Stories like this one. In the mid-1950s, the lighthouse received an overhaul that automated its function and

a residential keeper it was no longer needed. To use the space, the house was rented out to locals for some extra cash. One of those renters, a man who lived there in the mid-1960s, reported a frightful experience of his own. He had retired to his bedroom at the end of a long day and gone through his nightly routine with no unusual deviations. After climbing into the covers and turning off the light, he fell right asleep, and soon evening turned to the middle of the night.

At some point, though, he woke back up, his bed surrounded by darkness, and couldn't shake the feeling that he was no longer alone in the room. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he glanced around and then caught his breath. There, at the foot of his bed, was the ghostly vision of someone standing perfectly still, gazing with empty eyes at where he lay. The ghost, he claimed, of a little girl. The past has a way of fostering story. If folklore is a plant, then time is the water.

Given enough of it, the seed will take roots, begin to grow, and eventually flourish. And if there's one thing St. Augustine has in abundance, it's time. With the risk of mixing my metaphors, I like to think of time as a sort of runway. The longer the stretch of pavement, the more opportunity an airplane has to get up to speed and take flight. In that sense, St. Augustine has one of the longest runways around. Over 450 years of time, in fact, and that's plenty of room for stories to be born, run their course, and then fade away as the world moves on to something new.

But of course, not everyone can move on. The past isn't a winter coat that we can slough off and push into a closet. For a lot of people, the past is the present. It's with them every day, whether they like it or not. And that was just as true for the family of James Morgan back in 1877. If you remember, James was the little boy who loved to climb the large oak tree in the Tulumato Cemetery. After his tragic death, his family wrestled with how to move forward, fully aware that

the past would never leave them alone. So as I mentioned before, they bought a number of plots near the base of that tree and buried little James in one of them. Their hope was to live out their lives, remembering their lost boy, and eventually be laid to rest beside him. It's romantic and powerful, but for the Morgans it proved to be too difficult of a road to walk, and honestly, it's hard to blame them. So not long after his burial, the family moved away, leaving the grave of James behind.

The Morgans aren't entirely gone. Obviously, their story is still whispered today, but it goes beyond scraps of folklore, because over the years, visitors to the cemetery have reported the most unusual experience. Many have seen the shape of someone running in and out of the tombstones near the old oak, sometimes scrambling up the tree to vanish into the branches. And more than a few concerned adults have approached, offering a warning to be careful, to be safe, because, after all, climbing can be a dangerous activity. And what they have claimed to find there, up in the branches, always seems to surprise

them. Although knowing what you know now, I have to imagine it's more than a little expected. They claim the figure in the tree was that of a little boy, a boy, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. A city as old as St. Augustine will never suffer from a lack of story. Honestly, the hardest part of taking you on today's journey was deciding which tales to visit and which ones to skip. If I had my way, we'd still be here hours later, exploring them all.

But I've saved one more to wrap up this episode. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. When we talk about the Puritans, we often talk about freedom. After all, they were a group of settlers who left a country that hated them for their religious beliefs and came to the New World looking for a better life. But they weren't the first to do that. Decades before their arrival in the early 1560s, it was the French who crossed the Atlantic. They might not have been running from persecution, but when they set up Fort Caroline at the

place where the St. John's River spilt out into the Atlantic, they certainly intended to be a safe haven for Protestant Christians. Life for those early settlers was rough for the first year or so. Much like the legendary stories about the Puritans, these early French colonists wouldn't have survived without the generosity and support of the local Timokua people. But their biggest threat came in 1565, shortly after the arrival of Spanish captain Menendez. Now we've already talked about how Menendez established the settlement of St. Augustine, named for the feast day by the saint of the same name.

That's not the first thing he did, because his primary orders hadn't been to settle new land. It had been to defend the territory from French invasion. So after crossing the Atlantic, Menendez first attacked Fort Caroline. It didn't go very well for him, though. The French had received strong reinforcements just a couple of weeks earlier, and they were able to repel the Spanish assault. It was only after Menendez retreated that he sailed about 40 miles south and set up

a fort of his own, but his failure would follow him. After taking a few weeks to gather their strength, the French sailed out of Fort Caroline and approached the freshly minted village of St. Augustine. But do you remember how I discussed the dangers of a coastline there near the city? Yeah, well, it seems the French weren't too knowledgeable about that, and got caught in a massive storm that prevented them from attacking. In fact, most of their fleet sank, and Menendez saw an opportunity. Leaving some defenders behind in St. Augustine, he marched most of his troops north to Fort

Caroline, where they quickly overran its defenses. And this is where the true character of Menendez was revealed. While he took roughly 50 women and children prisoner, the rest of the inhabitants of the fort were rounded up and executed. They were, after all, enemies of the church, being Protestants. In his mind, at least. With the threat of Fort Caroline removed, Menendez and his troops marched back south to St. Augustine, but headed deeper south along the coast a few days later.

It seems the storm that had prevented the French from attacking them had dashed their ships on the rocks, but there were some reports of survivors, and he wanted to catch them. The French found them first, and flew the white flag of surrender. Menendez, however, wasn't the sort of person to offer peace to Protestants. Immediately after taking them into custody, he had them slaughtered, except for the few who confessed to secretly being Catholic. From that day forward, the tragedy was referred to as the Matanzas, the Spanish word for massacre. Nearly two centuries later, in an effort to better their defenses in the area, the Spanish

built a fort there, and named it after the slaughter that took place there in 1565. Fort Matanzas still stands today, a reminder of the cruelty of Captain Menendez. It seems that St. Augustine didn't have the best of starts, which might explain much of the darkness that followed. Just about everywhere you look today, the city's secrets lay hidden just beneath the surface, and after all these years, the true history of the city has made something abundantly clear. If there really are ghosts in the ground of St. Augustine, we certainly know who put them

there. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Ali Steed 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 a bit more lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think

you would enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of these shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.