Lore - Episode 206: Fault Lines

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

If a community is only as strong as its foundations, then this American city is standing on shaky ground. And the stories that have fallen out of it are as dark as they come. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Access premium content! ———————— ©2022 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.   To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

Things break, that's one of the earliest lessons we learn as kids, isn't it? Our favorite toy, those shoes we loved, sometimes even our dreams. And Willem knew all about that. Let's just say that he had a hard time living up to his own expectations. And what did he hope for himself? Success, of course. So when he took a job working in a store at the age of 16, he probably assumed he would be successful and climb that ladder, right?

For a while, it did too. His job took him to London, the big city, and then on to Paris, the city of lights. But then, after all he'd put into it, he got fired. So he decided success would have to mean something else entirely. This time, he would follow in his father's footsteps and train to be a minister. Two years later, though, he'd given up on school. He tried a less formal training course, but three months into that, he failed out of there, too.

Willem just couldn't escape his broken dreams. His life had become one long series of failure, disappointment, and hopelessness. But thankfully, he didn't give up, because there was one more thing he felt inspired to try. Art. Today, there are few people in the world who haven't heard of Vincent Willem Van Gogh. And while his paintings are things of beauty, we can also see them as symbols of something bigger.

That even when everything has fallen apart, there's still hope. That from the most fiery wreckage and destruction, something else can be born. So today, I want to take you to a place that embodies that lesson, right down to its core. A city that pushed through ruin and pain, only to discover a world of story on the other side. But if the folklore that rose up from those ashes has anything to tell us, it's that the worst kinds of tragedies aren't from an outside force. They're the ones we've created ourselves.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. When the Spanish arrived in the 1770s, they did what they had always done. They built a mission. Looking around at the beautiful coastline and vegetation, they named the place after one of the fragrant plants there, the Yerba Buena. But in 1776, it received the name we know today, San Francisco. In fact, to put things in perspective, some historians believe the city officially began on June 29th of 1776, just a handful of days before the Declaration of Independence was

signed on the other side of the continent. Little did the folks back in the northeast know that a community was forming at the same time that would become, centuries later, one of the most densely populated cities in the country. Now, of course, the Spanish started that community by eradicating the native population that already lived there. The Eloni people had once numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but by 1900, there were fewer than 25,000 of them left, with the last speaker of the Eloni language passing

away in the 1930s. But that didn't mean things were settled in 1776. For the next 70 years, control of the land around San Francisco would pass from nation to nation, before finally becoming part of the United States in 1848. And what happened after that is sort of like buying a house just before the housing market explodes in value, because just months later, gold was discovered. What happened in San Francisco is similar to other gold rush settlements. The population went from less than 1,000 people in 1849 to 25,000 just a year later.

Then within a generation, that figure had multiplied to an astounding 150,000 residents. Most came for the gold, and the rest settled there to build lives around the miners, and a large number of them all arrived by ship. Think about it. You and the rest of your crew have all been sailing for weeks, maybe months, looking forward to the hope and promise that San Francisco held. There was gold to be found, and fortunes to be made, so the moment they dropped anchor in the bay, every single person on board would leave, abandoning the ship, and the water

became very crowded very quickly. What did the city do? Well people started turning the abandoned ships into businesses, churches, and even jails, and some of the less hospitable vessels just sort of rotted there, eventually sinking into the bay. Actually, that happened to a lot of the nicer ships too, but on purpose. You see, the city needed more land, and filling in the waterfront could transform the area into a new foundation for the future.

So they offered lots for sale in the shallow water, on the condition that buyers would fill it in with dirt. Soldiers got around the purchase price altogether by just scuttling their own ships on other people's lots, thereby claiming the land as part of the salvage. Whatever the method, the result became the area known today as the Embarc d'Aro. Oh, and a cool little detail. Many many years later, when a subway tunnel was being dug through that area, one length of a tunnel was constructed right through the hull of a large ship called the Rome.

But it wasn't the only area of the city coming to life. Among the many newcomers to San Francisco in 1849 were immigrants from China. And for a brief, wonderful moment, the white settlers were enthusiastic about welcoming them in, literally holding a welcome ceremony in 1850 in Portsmouth Square. They were all handed bibles, and told that they hoped even more would follow. But racist resentment took root pretty quickly, and a series of laws were passed that discouraged Chinese citizens from work like gold mining, took away their right to testify in court, and with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act effectively prohibited any more from emigrating to America.

Abandoned and constantly abused, the Chinese citizens that already live there gathered together to build a community that could support and protect itself. Chinatown became a universe unto itself where Chinese folks could find work, food, education, places of worship and entertainment, and so much more. But the Chinatown of the late 19th century looked nothing like the photos you've seen of San Francisco today. Early on, it was just block after block of the same Italian 8th architecture that filled much of the city.

No, the Chinatown of today was built later and designed by white architects to cater to the imagination of visitors. Why did it need rebuilt in the first place? Well, the answer is an event you probably already know about. It was a disaster unlike anything the country had seen before, and it left the entire city wondering if the world was about to end. You know it today, as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The ground began to shake at 512 am.

That was the moment on April 18th of 1906 that 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault ruptured, sending out shockwaves that were felt by people as far away as Oregon and Nevada. The world, at least to the people of San Francisco, had come undone. One person described the feeling as being on a ship tossed about on a rough sea and spoke of how their chandeliers swung like a pendulum. Another witness, Fred Hewitt, said that the pavement pulsated like a living thing and spoke of how screeches rent the air as terrified humanity streamed out into the open in agony of despair.

And of course, as buildings and homes were tossed to the ground, gas pipes were torn apart and then ignited by hundreds of fireplaces and stoves that had spilled their contents in the quake. The result was a fire that quickly engulfed the rubble of the city and burned for several days. If someone's home was lucky enough to survive the earthquake, the fire most likely claimed it. Being a natural disaster that took place after the advent of photography, this is one of

those rare events that simultaneously feels ancient to us 21st century observers, but also tactile and visceral, because we can see it with our own eyes. Over 3,000 people died that day, and over half of the 400,000 residents found themselves homeless in an instant. Of course, the city got to work right away rebuilding. Over 28,000 buildings had been destroyed, dumping an estimated 6.5 billion bricks into the mangled streets. And if you've ever visited the city and taken a walk in the Marina District, you've

stood on that rubble, because most of it was dumped into the water that once covered that area, turning it into new land to rebuild on. One casualty of the disaster was City Hall, which had just been completed less than a decade before, which was frustrated, I'm sure, since it had taken them almost 20 years to build it, and it was work that had started on a terrible note. Back in the 1850s, the area of the city was being eyed for development, but something was in their way, the old Yerba Buena Cemetery. So in February of 1853, the city started digging up those graves so that they could use the

land. According to one local paper, bodies were pitched into heaps by the roadside, then shoveled into carts and driven off, the coffins which were much decayed were burnt, and the others sold for firewood. And those bodies were placed in a new cemetery. But when San Francisco wanted to build their city hall in the 1870s, they unfortunately picked that burial ground as their location, which meant moving the corpses again. So when we think of the mangled remains of City Hall following the earthquake, it's

important not to forget the other mangled remains that was built on. One place that found new life after the quake, though, was the large island in San Francisco Bay. Although Angel Island had been used by native peoples for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of Europeans, it had spent much of the 19th century serving a variety of purposes, such as a repair station for ships and even a quarantine area during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. But Angel Island truly became part of the city's history in 1910 when it was set up

as an immigration center. For the next three decades, over a quarter of a million Chinese and Japanese immigrants made their way across the Pacific looking for a better life, just as many of their relatives had a few generations before. Instead, what they found was not much better than a prison. Many immigrants there were detained on the island for months and subjected to intense questioning. People were divided up into cell blocks for men and women and often left with no privacy

or sanitation. It was a level of treatment that was never carried out at its east coast counterpart to Ellis Island, and it broke the people who stayed there. One of the shadows of their pain and suffering left behind is the poetry they carved into the walls of their cells. Over 200 of them have been preserved, and there were probably many hundreds more that are now lost. They expressed their regret for leaving home, their sadness at their inhumane treatment,

and their loss of hope for the future. And then there's the ghost. It was a common story among the women who were imprisoned there. They often spoke of a ghostly woman in a wedding dress, who they believed was a young bride who had come to America to be with her husband. Unable to reunite with him, though, she took her own life there in the showers. Over the years, many women there reported seeing this ghostly figure near the bathroom. There have been reports of flickering lights, eerie footsteps, and movement at the corner

of some people's eyes. Before the facility shut down in 1940, one Chinese teenager reported the most frightening story of all. She awoke in the middle of the night to the sensation of a heavy weight sitting upon her chest. And according to the story, the weight only disappeared when she began to pray. This paralysis, or the spirit of a long dead bride, burdened by grief and sorrow, we may never know for sure.

But sadly, Angel Island isn't the only place of tragedy in the Bay, and most who have made the journey to its rocky foundation never managed to escape. The Spanish named it after the Pelicans that nested there, the Alcatrasas. But today we know it as one of the most infamous prisons in American history. Scholars are certain the native peoples of the area used the island for a very long time. But thanks to the efforts of Europeans to eradicate their culture from the area, we are unclear on what those uses were. Some think it was used as a place of isolation for tribal members who violated the law, while

others believe it was a hunting ground for birds and their eggs. In 1954, the first lighthouse on the west coast was built on the island to serve ships coming and going in the bay there. Within just a few years, though, the light was joined by a military base, which makes sense from a strategic location perspective. Soon enough, one of the functions of that base was to serve as a military prison, and for the next 70 years, that's what it was, a place for the US government to lock up people who posed a threat to national security, you know, like conscientious objectors and Native

Americans who refused to be abused and mistreated. For example, in 1895, 19 Hopi men were imprisoned there for a year. Their crime? The government wanted to take away their children and put them into white boarding schools, and these men committed the crime of wanting to keep their families together. In 1934, though, the island began a new phase. That was the year it transitioned from a military jail to the high-security federal prison that we all know from the stories we've heard in pop culture.

And of course, it picked up the nickname that everyone seems to know, perhaps thanks to the Nicolas Cage action movie about it, The Rock. A lot of people can name a few of the more infamous inmates of Alcatraz, Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and even Whitey Bulger all spent time there. But most of the inmates weren't household names. The first inmate to arrive, for example, was Frank Lucas Bolt, a soldier in the US Army whose only crime was being gay. Most of the inmates, though, were sent there because other prisons found it difficult to

keep them behind bars, at least there on The Rock. There was the dangerous San Francisco Bay to help keep them in. But that's not to say no one tried breaking out, though. In fact, over the years it was operational, there were 14 documented escape attempts from Alcatraz. Involving 36 prisoners. Of them, 23 were recaptured. Six others were shot to death, two drowned, and the remaining five just went missing.

Although there are rumors that one or two survived the swim to the mainland to live out the rest of their days in hiding. Before Alcatraz shut down in 1963, a number of lives were lost there on The Rock. Along with prisoners killed while attempting to escape, there were a number of riots against the guards over the years. In 1946, for example, an incident known as the Battle of Alcatraz saw six prisoners overpower the guards and take control of their cell house. Over the three days that followed, two officers and three prisoners were killed, and another

two inmates were executed for their involvement. Naturally, with such a dark and bloody past, the prison has been home to some haunting tales. Many of them are the sorts you might hear about in any number of other locations around the world. The sound of footsteps in empty areas, unexplainable screams and voices, the constant feeling that something in the shadows is watching you. One of the most talked about though is an entity known as the Thing. It has often been spotted in or near cell 14D, and visitors there have reported an overwhelming

sense of negative energy and temperature drops of 20 to 30 degrees. Before the prison shut down, both guards and prisoners claim to witness the Thing for themselves, described as a dark shape with red glowing eyes that claim just seeing it can drive a person mad. There's even a rumor that the Thing caused one inmate to take his own life. His cell, 14D. One last story. In the early days of Alcatraz as a federal facility, it's said that the prison's first

warden, James A. Johnston, hosted a Christmas party there on the island. I imagine it was about as festive as it could be for a high-security lockup on a tiny island in the middle of the bay, but it was well attended by guards and administrative people. At some point in the evening though, a man walked in that caught everyone's attention. He was dressed in a gray suit and wore a brimmed cap, although people mostly noticed his large, bushy, mutton-chopped sideburns, and he was pale and ghostly. The moment the figure entered the room, the people there said the temperature dropped and everyone turned at the sound of the fire in the fireplace instantly blowing out.

When they glanced back at the door though, they all caught their breath. The man, they said, had vanished. Everything has a fault line, a breaking point, a place where there's always risk of failure or falling down, and San Francisco, more than most, has fault lines in spades. Whether geological or cultural, it seems the city has, from the very beginning, been a place where everything has been built on shaky ground. From the mistreatment of the local native population and Chinese community, to the construction of a small, dark prison on a cold, forbidding rock,

San Francisco has always been a city built on flaws. And today's version of San Francisco is no less at risk. Look, I love the city, its life and people and adventurous spirits, and it has grown a lot, socially speaking, since those early days. But beneath those shining towers and expensive homes is the same soil that the 1906 earthquake turned into a roiling sea. The experts have been clear, the next big quake isn't a matter of if, but when. I should also point out that shortly after the 1906 earthquake,

the city's real estate board met together to discuss how to move forward in a way that kept people from running away. They decided that the tragedy should be referred to as the Great Fire, rather than the Great Earthquake. Why? Because fires can be fought. Tectonic plates and fault lines, however, cannot. But people have stuck around.

Today, there are nearly 900,000 of them, double the population of 1906, and along with them are countless local ghost stories. And I suppose as long as people live there, they'll have tales to tell, like the white lady of Stowe Lake. She said to be the ghost of a mother who lost her baby in the waters of the lake over a century ago. Some whisper a very specific story about two mothers excitedly chatting and not noticing one of their prams rolling down the hill and into the water. Others think it's connected to reports of a dead infant found in the lake's waters

shortly after survivor camps were set up along the shoreline after the 1906 quake. Either way, you approach the legend, the reports all seem to agree that the white lady has been spotted over the years. Dressed in white, broken by grief and haunting the edge of the lake, they say she wanders at night asking anyone who passes by if they've seen her baby. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle back in 1908, one of those sightings almost led to a riot. It seems that a group of terrified motorists all brought their cars to a standstill near Lake Stowe

when someone spotted the figure of a woman who seemed to shine with light. Witnesses described this woman as barefoot, blonde-haired, and thin. But because traffic was blocked by people who were stopping to get a look, the police were called. The motorists weren't so much frightened as they were upset, you see, and they made quite an unusual demand. They wanted the police to arrest the ghost. San Francisco, like so many places in our world, is a city built on mistakes. I hope today's tour through its dark past has given you a better understanding of those flaws

and how it all informs the present. But we're not done just yet. I have one more tale of seismic shifts, and if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by BetterHelp Online Therapy. How well would you take care of your car if you had to keep the same one your entire life? That's how our brain works, so why don't we treat them the same way? How we care for our minds affects how we experience life, so it's important to invest time and care into keeping them healthy.

One of the things that I do to take care of my mind is balancing my busy work schedule with unplugged non-work activities, like playing golf or role-playing games. It keeps me refreshed and protected from burnout, which is super important. There are plenty of ways to support a healthy brain, learning a new language, or taking power naps, and there's also BetterHelp Online Therapy. BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions, so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy,

and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. My listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash lore. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash lore. This episode was also made possible by SimplySafe. Here's a question. Is there anything that matters more than the safety of you and your loved ones? Of course not. So isn't it strange that not all home security companies put you first? Those old-school home security companies set you up with outdated technology,

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It's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. Me, I've been sleeping on my Casper for over seven years, and I will never go back. You can also get a more restful, more soothing night's sleep with their Wave Hybrid Mattress, which provides more support than foam alone, or upgrade to the Wave Hybrid Snow Mattress with Snow Technology, which provides support for over 12 hours of cooler sleep. And if you're the sort of person who needs to try it to believe it, then I have good news for you. Casper offers free contactless delivery plus a risk-free 100-night trial. And as always, Casper offers free shipping and free returns.

Explore all Casper products, their mattresses, sheets, pillows, and more at Casper.com, and use the code HISTORY100 for $100 off select mattresses. That's code HISTORY100 for $100 off select mattresses. Exclusions apply, see Casper.com for details. Mary came in with the flood. She arrived somewhere around 1852, in those first few years when San Francisco was swelling up from all the Gold Rush activity. Just like the rest of them, she came looking for a new start in life

and a chance at striking it rich. She just didn't look for that in the mountains and the mines. No, instead, Mary got to work building an empire. She amassed a collection of restaurants, laundries, and boarding houses that all catered to the needs of those other fortune seekers. And she was very, very good at it. So good, in fact, that soon enough, she was one of the wealthiest, most powerful women in the city. But Mary had a secret that most people didn't know about.

Sure, if you were in her inner circle and interacted with her in person, it was just an obvious part of who she was. But that list was short. Most people only ever heard about Mary in the newspapers, and would never see her on the street. Her secret? Mary was black. Which is why, from the very beginning in her career there in San Francisco,

she used her newfound fortune to support the black community. For example, do you remember the story of John Brown and the raid on Harper's Ferry? Brown was a prominent abolitionist who, in October of 1859, led a group of men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in what was then Virginia. The raid failed, and a number of his men were killed. Still more were captured, along with Brown himself, and they were all executed a short time later. And all of that seems like a wild detour from the story of Mary.

But I tell you because she was a friend of John Brown's, and a major financial backer of his efforts that day. She once wrote about herself, You know my cause well. My cause was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people. And I'd rather be a corpse than a coward. And as long as she didn't come out in the community as black, it seems that her growing fortune would continue to fund those efforts.

When the California law that prohibited black people from testifying in court was finally repealed, it was mostly thanks to the work that Mary put into it. Perhaps that's why she's known today as the mother of human rights in California. But in 1865, Mary did that. She came out to the city as black, and everything changed. Overnight, the press went from gushing over her successes to false claims that she was a murderous witch, a practitioner of voodoo, and a baby snatcher.

No crime or social taboo had been committed, and yet her reputation was destroyed instantly. To her credit, Mary Ellen Pleasant never slowed down. Her businesses might have suffered and her fortune stopped growing, but she never quit spending what she had to support people in need. She even had time to mock her detractors, carrying around a crystal ball as a prop, just to tick them off.

Mary went from being the first African-American self-made millionaire to utter poverty, and she died in 1904 with almost nothing to her name. And while the magnificent house she once lived in was demolished decades ago, some small pieces of it remain, namely the large eucalyptus trees that she planted herself. Today, they're still there, part of the tiny Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park, at the corner of Bush and Octavia streets in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of the city, a small reminder of a large personality. Sadly, some of the tour guides there still pass off those 1865 rumors as the truth,

filling the heads of visitors with images of voodoo and murder, and even going so far as to hint at cannibalism. There lies, of course, but Mary is no longer around to defend herself. And that's the danger of some folklore, especially about things that happened long ago. Sometimes all that's left is what lies beneath. And sometimes all that's left are lies. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Cassandra D'Alba 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 and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd 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 those 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.