Lore - Episode 178: Opportunity

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Some of the darkest moments in human history have taken place because of our hunger for a second chance, a better life, or a fresh start. But not all opportunities are guaranteed a bright and shiny outcome. ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: Casper: From bedding, bed frames, and even a dog bed, Casper has everything to build the dream bedroom—for every kind of sleeper. Enjoy 15% off select mattresses, 10% off pillows, sheets, and more with Casper’s Labor Day Sale. Terms and conditions apply. Wondrium: Hundreds of topics taught by professors and experts, all in one enormous video library. Start your free month of unlimited access to the entire library! Go now to Wondrium.com/LORE.—and don't miss my newest recommendation: Notorious London: A City Tour. Stamps.com: Print your own postage and shipping labels from your home or office. Start your 4-week trial today, which includes free postage, a digital scale, and zero commitment. Just visit Stamps.com, click on the microphone in the top-right of the homepage, and type LORE. ———————— 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.

In a lot of ways, it was hell on earth. The people in the city started to wake up a little after midnight to the sounds of shouting and screaming. If someone was lucky enough to have a window in their home, they would have been able to see a strange orange glow radiating inside, and one glance into the street would have told them why. FIRE Most historians agree that the blaze had started in the bakery of a man named Thomas Farrener.

He managed to get his family out their window in the room above his shop, but as the fire spread, some people were not so lucky. The sky was a glow, and the noise of panic and alarm was steadily rising. London was burning. Despite fire safety measures that were advanced for 1666, it was hard to stop a blaze like that in a city built mostly of wood and fetch. What started as a small fire around midnight on September 2nd grew into a hungry monster that devoured most of central London, and was still burning four days later.

When it was over, it had destroyed over 13,000 homes, nearly 100 churches, and left at least 70,000 people homeless. It was life-altering, so much so that three and a half centuries later, we're still talking about the great London fire. But out of the ashes, something new appeared. Something I doubt most people today would even guess at, because once the city started to rebuild, they realized that their entire system for recovery needed an overhaul, what was created as quite possibly the first of its kind.

PROPERTY INSURANCE You see, when a building burned down in 1666, it was the tenants who had to pay for the rebuilding. Plus, they had to keep paying their rent while it was happening, even if the building wasn't ruined. When this happened in random isolated instances, it was a frustrating reality. But when 13,000 homes needed to go through this process at the same time, folks realized it was a problem that needed correcting.

So the first fire and property insurance companies rushed in to seize the opportunity. It's something that humans are very good at, isn't it? We have this uncanny knack for seeing opportunity and then doing whatever is necessary to benefit from it. It's a skill that mixes being in the right place at the right time with quick thinking and a lot of risk. If it's pulled off right, it can alter lives forever. But not every opportunity is golden.

In fact, many of them represent trips into uncharted territory, where a myriad of dangers wait to shatter our dreams. So grab your warmest coat, pack your bags, and follow me on a journey into the folklore of one of the last great frontiers. We're headed to Alaska. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Alaska is one of those places that most people think they know. They have enough familiarity with key pieces of its story to assume they know the whole

thing. Of all our flaws as humans, assumption is one of our most embarrassing, isn't it? Alaska's story begins much earlier than the purchase that added it to a growing United States. In fact, to fully understand that territory, we need to go back in time to an age we know very little about, the latter stages of the Stone Age. As early as 15,000 years ago, but possibly as far back as 40,000 years, the first humans to step onto North American soil did so off the coast of Alaska.

They walked over a low, wide land bridge that once crossed the North Atlantic, and from there dispersed southward, eventually populating much of North and South America. Alaska was the gateway to an entirely new world, one full of endless opportunity. But while many of the original inhabitants continued their march south, a good number of people remained behind in the territory that we now call Alaska. Even today, all those thousands of years later, at least 15% of the population there are Native peoples. They are spread across 11 different culture groups, and almost as many unique languages.

And over the centuries, they have experienced the worst of humanity. In 1725, a full half-century before America was birthed as a nation, Russia's Emperor Peter the Great sent an explorer named Vitus Bering to see if North America and Asia were connected. After two wildly expensive and dangerous expeditions, he came home with bad news. They weren't. But he left his own name all over the area there, and we can still see it today. The Bering Straits and the Bering Sea being just two of many examples.

But what Russia did discover was a land rich with resources, never mind the fact that it was a land already inhabited by the Native peoples I mentioned earlier. So more Russian explorers traveled there, as did fur trappers and traders. But they, just like the Europeans who landed on the east coast of North America a century or so before, brought more than goods and supplies. They brought disease, and the effects were devastating. In 1799, Russia made their foothold their official by launching what they called the Russian American Company to monopolize on the fur trade.

They built settlements on the coast where the weather was more tolerable, and then spent decades systematically hunting down just about every animal they could find. In the process, they left the native communities without the resources they had depended on for thousands of years. Some left the area in search of land the Russians hadn't discovered yet. Others were driven to reservations where disease and poverty would hold them down like a prison sentence. And all the while, the Russians took everything they could find.

But by the 1860s, the opportunity seemed to be running low. It was expensive to maintain their presence there, and the return on their investment was dropping year by year. So in 1867, Russia decided to cut their losses and return home, selling the territory to the United States for a little over $7 million, roughly $130 million today. For a couple of decades, it was viewed by most Americans as an embarrassment. We had spent big money to buy a used up, far off land that was too cold for most people to live in.

They called it Seward's Folly, after William Seward, the secretary of state who orchestrated the deal. Then in the late 1890s, things changed when a new opportunity was discovered. Gold. They called it the Klondike Gold Rush because that's where the yellow metal had been found, the Klondike region of the Yukon, far inland to the east. So far east, in fact, that it was actually in Canada, but that wasn't going to stop gold-hungry prospectors looking for the next big break.

And they flocked to Alaska by the thousands. Some historians believe that upwards of 100,000 people arrived to search for gold. The vast majority of them spent their time there in utter poverty, and many of them died that way as well. To serve that great migration of hopefuls, a number of boom towns popped up along the route to the Yukon, offering all the services the gold miners would need. But it wasn't all glittering goodness. That journey from the coast of Alaska to the Yukon territory was incredibly dangerous.

Many who set out from places like Valdez would never make it, and those who did faced horrible conditions along the way. So in 1899, the U.S. War Department sent a captain named William Abercrombie to see if there was an easier route. What he discovered was a horrifying sight. Most of the prospectors along the way suffered from things like frostbite and scurvy, as well as poor equipment and clothing. In some places, small cabins had been set up to house them overnight, but those were

packed with a dozen or more sleepers, like sardines and a tiny can. But in one place, known then as 12-mile camp, Abercrombie encountered stories of something worse than the harsh elements. The men there all seemed to have been overcome with madness, because most of them believed in the existence of a monster that roamed the wilderness outside of camp, a creature they referred to as the Valdez Demon. Not they knew of it came from a handful of encounters, but one in particular was interesting enough to make it into his official report.

He wrote that a pair of strong Swedish men, a father and son duo, had been pushing their sled of supplies north across the Valdez Glacier when a dark shape appeared from the snow. But when it jumped on the sun, who was at the front of the sled, the father let the battle play out. He knew his son was strong enough to handle it, and sure enough, the unknown creature eventually gave up and ran off into the blizzard around them. But after continuing on for a while, the thing returned. This time, the son wouldn't win.

The father even rushed to his aid, trying to pull the demon off, but it was no use. The son had been strangled to death, and all the father could do was place his body on the sled and trudge his way back to 12-mile camp. Once safely there, the other men helped him bury his son, and then they shared the tale. Some believed the demon was a creature known as the kushtaka, a shapeshifter from the stories told by the Klingent people. But looking back, it's likely that it was nothing more than a gold miner who had lost his mind, living more like an animal than a human.

Which makes a tragic kind of sense. For many, the opportunity that Alaska offered them was little more than a fairy tale. Between the harsh elements, the brutal terrain, and the tragic loss of life, their journey didn't make their dreams come true. In fact, it destroyed them. Gold wasn't the only thing of value that they found in the mountains there. In 1900, explorers also found copper. Actually what they found was one of the richest copper deposits in the entire world.

And since the gold rush had died down, a fresh opportunity was more than welcome. The miners who arrived there built a little town to suit their needs, and called it Kennecott. But they also discovered something else. It seems that the trek from the copper deposit to the nearest smelter was just too long and difficult to make the operation worthwhile for them. So early on, those first miners sold their claims to a collection of wealthy businessmen. What they created was the Alaska Syndicate, a mining company that included JP Morgan, the Guggenheim family, and many others.

Their big money brought in bigger vision. And in 1906, that vision began to take shape in the form of a railroad. Finished in 1911, it allowed the copper deposit to be efficiently mined and delivered. But all that success came with a heavy price. The building conditions for that railroad through the Alaskan terrain were brutal. There was rock to blast, glaciers to cross, and everywhere you went, snow for miles and miles. It was cold and bloody and dangerous.

And because of that, countless men lost their lives. By 1938, the deposit was depleted. The investors had made good money during their run there, but all good things must come to an end. So they packed up and left. And that meant abandoning Kennecott. But over the years, enough people have made the drive up to the ghost town to report something strange.

It seems that many people traveling north on the old dirt road that runs alongside the abandoned railroad have noticed something odd. Just off the path, jutting up from the snow and rocks, countless travelers have reported seeing grave markers. Not an unusual thing in and of itself, considering the loss of life involved in building that railroad. But it's what they've seen on the return trip south that's more troublesome. Absolutely nothing.

All those tombstones they had seen heading north had suddenly vanished, as if they'd been nothing more than ghostly remnants of a painful past. And sadly, it's not the only location in Alaska to hold on to such pain. In the late 1890s, many gold miners would trek along one of the most popular routes from the Pacific coast to the Yukon goldfields, known as the Chilkoot Trail. It was direct and cheap, but it was also dangerous. And those who traveled it were at constant risk, depending on the weather. And on April 3rd of 1898, that weather changed.

The mountains around them were covered in a thick layer of soft snow. So when a strong warm wind blew in, many of the experienced guides knew what it meant. Avalanche. And that's exactly what they heard that morning, a distant rumble that warned them of impending danger. And everyone on the trail ran for their lives. The wave that came down the mountain buried the landscape in 50 feet of snow. Historians estimate that about 200 people were on the trail that day, and nearly half of

them died. So many, in fact, that a temporary morgue had to be set up nearby while they planned out how to transport them south for burial. Today, Chilkoot Trail is a popular hiking route, although it's said to be incredibly challenging. And over the years, hikers have found countless items along the trail from the days of the gold rush, hoping to preserve them for later generations. Many of these objects have been taken north to the town of Skagway, where they've been

put on display in the mascot saloon. But apparently, that's not all that's been transported there. Today, visitors to the saloon have reported unusual experiences. Some noises from empty rooms, knocking on doors by invisible hands, even sounds of disembodied voices. It almost seems as if the miners who died in 1898 aren't quite finished with their journey. One last story.

In 1918, a ship called the Princess Sophia left the city of Skagway to sail south along the inside passage, most likely headed for Washington State. It was a journey the ship had made many times before, although the route was never easy, and it was that risk that would rise up to meet them along the way. On the morning of October 24, the ship found itself sailing directly into a major storm. In the chaos, the captain made a navigational mistake, and instead of heading toward safety, ran the ship aground on the Vanderbilt Reef, and then more bad decisions compounded on the first.

You see, the weather was so bad that the captain decided not to offload his 350 passengers. It didn't help that the storm was also preventing rescue ships from reaching them, so he decided to have everyone waited out on board. But the following day, a massive wave swept the ship off and back into the water, where its torn hull quickly filled. Shortly after that, the boiler on the ship exploded, dumping huge amounts of oil into the water. At least half of the passengers went down with the wreckage, but the rest managed to

swim to the surface, where they drowned in the oil. When it was all over, every single person on board was dead. The only survivor was a dog, left to fend for itself by its owner. Bodies washed up on the shore of nearby Juneau for at least a week. There were so many corpses to deal with that embalmers deemed it to be brought up from Seattle, and many of the cellars of downtown buildings became temporary morgues. And today, the echoes of that tragedy can still be felt. One building downtown has had unusual reports for years.

Some visitors have claimed to feel a cold hand grip their arm or shoulder, while others have felt a sort of electric shock. Some people have reported seeing the figure of a little boy standing down the hallway, silent and unmoving. Just feel things, like an overwhelming sense of anger and dread. I think it's clear from the stories, both the historical and the modern, that Alaska has always had a way of exacting a heavy price. Whether it was hopeful miners trekking north toward the promise of gold, or travelers hoping

to leave the region for a better life somewhere else, every opportunity came with a risk. But as amazing as it might seem, the wreck of the Princess Sophia isn't even the most frightening tale from the frigid Alaskan waters. For that, we need to go back a few years earlier to a storied vessel with a complicated past. And a ghostly visitor who does the unexpected. This story doesn't start in Alaska, and I hope that's okay. Sometimes you need to start elsewhere and allow the context and events to act like an undertow, slowly pulling you toward your destination.

But trust me, the journey will be worth it. The Eliza Anderson took its maiden voyage in 1858, three years before the start of the American Civil War. It was a 276-ton steamer, measuring roughly 200 feet long, and owned and operated by the Columbia River Steam Navigation Company, which strikes me as a highly specific business name. But the Eliza Anderson earned its own reputation just two years later. During a voyage to Victoria, British Columbia in 1860, a government official on board learned that the Eliza Anderson had a stowaway, and not just any stowaway, but a fugitive.

His name was Charles Mitchell, and he was a 13-year-old son of an enslaved woman. It seems that he had been orphaned at the age of three, and over the following years was cycled through various plantations, until finally being taken to Washington in 1855. Now, Washington in those days wasn't a state yet, it was a territory. And on paper, it was a free territory. Due to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, though, that didn't mean that Charlie suddenly became a free man there. But after five long years, he gave up and decided to make a run for Canada, which was

why he was hidden away on board the Eliza Anderson. Thankfully, the Black community in Victoria rose up when they learned that Charlie was on board, docked in their harbor, and not allowed to step out and into freedom. There was a brief battle between American and British attorneys, but in the end, Charlie Mitchell was allowed off the ship. He would go on a trip to the United States, and he would go on a trip to the United States He would go on to marry there, father at least four children, and enjoy his freedom. And his story would become part of the Eliza Anderson's legacy.

Over the next few years, the ship would become a well-used transport, bouncing along the Pacific Northwest coastline as a ferry for gold prospectors and fortune-seekers. But in 1877, the gold rush in British Columbia dried up, and the Eliza Anderson found itself anchored in Seattle, and it stayed there for the next six years. In 1883, a man named Tom Wright bought the ship, but things weren't looking good. Though six years had been harsh, and it had actually sunk, needing to be raised and repaired in order to be operational again. But Wright's run as a captain was short-lived.

In 1885, the ship was stopped on its way back to the U.S. from British Columbia by American authorities. It seems that the newly passed Chinese Exclusion Act was being enforced with extreme prejudice. It was the first and only federal law to ever prohibit a specific people group from entering the country, built on a foundation of fear. But apparently, Captain Tom Wright didn't see things that way, so he was helping transport a small group of Chinese immigrants into the country. The scandal would put an end to his career, and see the Eliza Anderson back in storage,

spending the next 12 years dockside in Seattle. But then, in 1897, gold was discovered in the Klondike, and all of a sudden, ships were in short supply. People were willing to pay good money for a ride north, because opportunity was calling, and they didn't want to miss out. So Thomas Powers bought the old ship and tried to get it in the game. Apparently it was in really bad shape. I mean, it was 40 years old at that point, and it had spent a lot of those years just

sitting in neglect. But in one of those scenes that reminds me of the old 80s TV show, The A-Team, he hacked together the ship with anything he could find, and then opened it up for business. In July of 1897, the Eliza Anderson left Seattle overloaded with passengers. I don't mean that as a hyperbole. Captain Powers literally sold tickets to about three times as many people as the ship could normally hold. Oh, and because of that, they hadn't loaded up on fuel.

But they left port with an entire fleet around them, all gold-hungry fortune-seekers. And then a storm blew in. You can see where this is going, right? First the Eliza Anderson crashed into another of the vessels in the fleet. Then it was separated from them by the wind and the waves. After that, the smokestack crashed onto the deck. And thanks to the scarce amount of coal for the boiler, they started throwing cargo and furniture into the furnace.

Honestly, things weren't looking up for the people on board. Being on water, with the wind howling and the waves crashing against the hull, all hope seemed to be lost. And it was in that moment that a strange, ghostly figure appeared on the deck of the ship. Witnesses describe him as ancient and pale, with a long gray beard and hair. But despite his age, he seemed muscular and powerful, like some sort of Greek god. And he walked carefully toward Captain Powers.

Rushing the younger man aside, this mysterious figure grabbed the wheel and began to steer the Eliza Anderson to safety. Somehow against all the odds, the ship successfully and safely made it to the dock of some random abandoned cannery on Kodiak Island, just off the coast of southern Alaska. And after the chaos and celebration, everyone looked around to thank the strange visitor, only to discover that he was gone. Their stop on Kodiak Island was short, though. By some miracle, they found over 75 tons of coal just sitting in a pile.

And soon enough, they were filled up and ready to continue on. They limped to the closest major port, a place called Dutch Harbor, where all the passengers disembarked and switched to a better ship. And that's where it stayed, broken and defeated. A year later in 1898, a storm broke the ship's mooring lines and erected on the coast there. For the Eliza Anderson, there would be no more second chances. No fresh opportunity or final adventure. Alaska had exacted its price, as was so often the case, leaving the ship to rot and decay

on its cold, rocky shore. All that's left now is story. Alaska is one of those places that instantly conjures up the idea of the frontier. It represents the wilderness in a lot of ways, the old world, the way things used to be. Yes, its history is imperfect, as the treatment of its native peoples over the years has demonstrated and dangerous, as the stories of struggling gold stampeters makes clear. But it's also a place that feels wide open and free. In short, it fully embodies the idea of opportunity.

Everyone dreams of a better life, of a chance to reach for something bigger and make it theirs. So in a lot of ways, the story of Alaska is our story. It's a tale we can relate to. And that makes the tragic moments much more painful for us all. We can see the potential, sure. But we can also see the risk, the failure, and the deep, bloody cost. For hundreds of thousands of hopeful miners, Alaska was the promised land. Stories of gold-filled mountains and earlier prospectors who struck it rich were their

religion. Was the journey from the coast to the mountains difficult and dangerous? Absolutely. But for them, there was nothing else they could do. And they had to answer the door. All that said, I have to wonder how well that hope was holding up for the people on the deck of the Eliza Anderson during that storm in 1897. I can't think of a worse situation for all of them to be in.

No fuel, no help, and no clear path forward. I don't care how hopeful they might have been, how optimistic or idealistic. That can't have been easy. Which makes their mysterious savior that much more powerful. A stranger no one had seen on board, suddenly appearing in the storm to guide them to safety. It sounds like a scene from a fantasy novel. Yet it happened, and it got people wondering, who was that strange man? There were a few who firmly believed it was Captain Tom Wright, the former owner of the

ship who had once tried smuggling Chinese immigrants into the United States. Indeed, he was still alive at that point, so it might have been possible. But it wouldn't explain why he was on the ship at that moment, so far from home, no longer the owner and captain. The truth, it seems, would be even stranger than that. It seems that the man's name was Eric Heasted, and he'd stowed away earlier in the voyage looking for an easy ride to Dutch Harbor. He and his two brothers, Braddock and Olaf, were out of work, and it was Eric's job to

go earn enough money to help them all buy passage to Alaska, their promised land. And where did Eric and his brothers live and work? Kodiak Island. In fact, the abandoned cannery, with the 75 tons of coal just lying about, used to be theirs. And with the storm threatening to ruin his plans, Eric Heasted made the decision to come out of hiding and guide the Eliza Anderson to the only safe port he could think of. Home.

Eric himself would later explain how he used the chaos of their arrival at the old cannery to slip away. One of his brothers actually rode out to the ship in a small boat, picked him up, and then rode back to shore. And no one else noticed a thing. Sometimes things turn out to be vastly different than we'd hoped. The rewards don't equal the risk, or the destination turns out to be much less satisfying than the journey itself.

But sometimes we receive a simple explanation to another worldly miracle. Not everything that glitters is gold, and not all stories from Alaska's past are about hopeful miners. In fact, if we go back a bit further in time, we can explore another well-known legend, one that's left people wondering for centuries. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. When something's nice to have, more people should have it. That's why you can get Roger's 5G mobile plans now for less.

Visit rogers.com slash plans for more. And count on more value to come, because we're with you all the way. It wasn't always called Alaska. In the seven decades or so leading up to the purchase by the United States, it was known as Russian America. I know that sounds like the plot of a Cold War era fantasy film, but that's the reason why the trading company they founded there was called the Russian American Company. At its peak, the Russian American Company only ever had about 700 people there, compared

to the tens of thousands of native peoples. But that didn't stop them from acting like they were in charge. And at the top of the chain of command was a man who would later be referred to by historians as the Lord of Alaska, Alexander Baranov. He was a Russian merchant and trader born in 1747. He wasn't born into money, so like most people, he had to work hard to get ahead. For him, being a merchant was a family business. And after getting married in St. Petersburg, he took his family deep into Siberia to further

his business trades. It seems that a couple of turning points set up the rest of his life. Used by the late 1780s, his wife had grown fed up with life in Siberia, so she packed up the kids and left him. And around the same time, a business investment went sour, leaving him bankrupt and ruined. So to get a second chance at success, he took a job in Russian America to manage an outpost there. Over the next few years, Baranov moved around a bit, but ultimately settled in near Sitka,

a town on a large island that today is known as Baranov Island. That sounds nice, I'm sure. But he built his small fortress right on top of an active clinkett village. Russia maintained that Baranov purchased the land from them, but the clinkett people say otherwise. It goes without saying, relations between them were becoming tense. It didn't help that the Russians saw the native people there as free labor, enslaving them to work for the trading company.

So what happened next should have come as no surprise. In 1802, the clinkett people issued a final warning. Get out, they told the Russians. Give us our land back. But the small fort of 150 people refused to listen. So the clinkett attacked. Baranov himself escaped, but nearly all of the Russians inside were either killed or taken prisoner.

And for a while, it would seem that the true owners of the land might have won. They had their home back. Or a while, at least. Two years later, Baranov returned with a small army. He drove them out and then rebuilt his fortress all over again. That second fort, known as Baranov Castle, is no longer standing. If you visit the island now, all you'll see are a few plaques and cannons. But some things have stuck around, namely story.

Because since the late 1800s, there has been a constant stream of reports of a ghostly sighting, a woman sometimes dressed in white and sometimes dressed in black, who wanders Castle Hill, wringing her hands and moving silently through the dark. And ever since, there have been stories to explain who she is. Some have claimed the woman is connected to Baranov himself, that she is the spirit of his own daughter. But the trouble is, neither of his daughters ever visited him while he was there. Another legend claims the story of the lady in black was the invention of two young

American naval officers who were looking for a way to entertain tourists in the 1880s. They pointed to the ruined castle on the hill and expressed what everyone else must have believed, that it was haunted. In their invented tale, the ghost was that of a woman forced to marry someone she didn't love, and so she took her own life. It's the sort of tale that appeared often in Victorian romance. And the first person to publish it, National Geographic board member and author

Eliza Skidmore, told it wonderfully. But it wasn't true. The most convincing fiction is that her name was Olga Arbazov, the niece of a local official. They say that he ordered her to marry a rough and terrible man many years older than her, despite the fact that she was clearly in love with a young, handsome sailor named Demetrius. And when her uncle sent the sailor away on a long voyage, she lost all hope.

But in a twist of fate, the sailor returned on the very night of her wedding. Upon seeing him enter the castle, hopelessness overcame her. And she snatched his dagger from his belt and plunged it into her heart. A moment later, he used the knife to do the same to himself. Later, the lovers were buried together. Their grave visible from one of the castle's windows. At the end of the day, the story of a ghostly lady in black has remained a mystery. Although there never seems to be an end to the theories about who she might have

been, the very fact that her tale is still whispered is proof of just how powerful folklore truly is. For a very long time, many people have been absolutely certain there is a real woman at the heart of the legend. But at this point, we may never know. Folklore loves opportunity. It's the substance that rushes in to fill the void, the fluid that finds all the cracks and cavities and then seeps in to fill them up and make them whole.

Those sounds in the night, that unexplainable shape in the trees, or the scattered reports of unusual sightings, all of it is a vacuum ready to be filled with story. We love folklore for its treasure trove of entertainment, sure. But it's also an opportunist. It sees a mystery and then dresses it up into something understandable. And that might just be my favorite thing about it. And that's it for this episode of Lore, which was written and produced by me, Aaron

Mankey, with research by Megan DeRoche 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. The first one is a book series, which is written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Megan DeRoche and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in

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