Lore - Episode 208: Bygone

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

  Humans have never let go of folklore designed to help us find things, even if it seems like it’s from another time, long ago. But in stories about our search for things, it’s possibly to find something a lot more thrilling. Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by Sam Alberty. ———————— ANNOUNCEMENT LINKS Bridgewater: www.grimandmild.com/bridgewater 13 Days of Halloween: www.grimandmild.com/13days Cabinet of Curiosities: www.grimandmild.com/curiosities Grim & Mild Presents: www.grimandmild.com/presents Lore on YouTube: www.youtube.com/lorepodcast Ad-free Lore on Apple Podcasts: www.applepodcasts.com/lore Ad-free Lore on Patreon: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast ———————— 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.

Hey folks, Aaron here. I wanted to do a quick bit of housekeeping and announcements. Give me two minutes of your time and then we'll be on our way. But this stuff is important. First up, Bridgewater is coming back for a second season. Casting and recording schedules were a bit trickier this time around, so we're looking at an early January release. Be sure that you're subscribed to the Bridgewater feed in your podcast app to hear the exact

timing when we announce it. Speaking of returning shows, 13 Days of Halloween will be back for a third season in October, and let me tell you, it is intense. Next, don't forget that I host a number of other shows, too. Cabinet of Curiosities is nearing its 450th episode, which is just nuts, and my newest series, called Grim and Mile Presents, is halfway through our documentary on the history of pirates. I think you'd all really enjoy it.

Oh, on the lore side of things, the upcoming Halloween season means brand new episodes every Monday in October, because we all deserve a bit more lore, don't we? Plus, if you use YouTube on a regular basis, be sure to subscribe to the official lore channel at youtube.com slash lore podcast. The first 200 or so episodes in our catalog are up there as audio-only episodes, but everything after that is talking head style, with me telling the stories on camera. Subscribe and enjoy. Pretty please.

And last, if sponsor ads aren't your thing and you still want to support this show, you can access ad-free versions of lore on Patreon and Apple Podcasts for a small monthly fee. But as always, your support means the world to me, and I'm grateful you're here and listening. So, thanks for that. I'll put the links to all of these little bits of news in the episode's description in case you want to check them out. Thank you for being awesome, and thanks for sticking around.

And now, on with the show. In November of 1992, Eric Laws did something that we all wish we could. He put a shovel into the ground, and unearthed a mountain of silver and gold. Eric was standing in a farmer's field in the village of Hoxen in Suffolk, England. And I don't think I have to paint an elaborate picture for you to catch the excitement, because what he found was extraordinary. Over 15,000 Roman era coins, loads of silver spoons, and over 200 items made of solid gold. From an archaeological standpoint, it was priceless, and because he immediately stopped

and reported the discovery to the British government, they awarded him nearly 2 million pounds for his honesty. But here's the thing, Eric wasn't actually out hunting for treasure that day in 1992. He never stepped into that field looking for gold. He was only trying to do a favor for the farmer who worked in that field. You see, that man, Mr. Wattling, had lost his favorite hammer, and Eric simply offered to help find it. The good news is, he did.

In fact, that hammer is on display with pieces from the treasure hoard. And it's a powerful example of an age-old problem that all of us have faced a few times in our lives. People lose things. Call it misplaced, call it temporarily absent, call it whatever you want. But the truth is, humans are very good at losing things, and just as good at inventing ways to rediscover them. And sure, the folklore surrounding that might come from a bygone era, but the history of

it all is filled with amazing stories. And if you're ready, it's time to do some digging. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. All of us have attachments. That favorite handbag, a pocket knife we've carried for years, maybe a deck of cards from a lost loved one that you always keep in a safe place. It's easy to grow attached to certain objects, especially if they're personal in origin. We're also good at losing things, though.

Sometimes it's just the remote control or the car keys, some things that can be frustrating but never heartbreaking. But it's at the intersection of those two characteristics, our emotional attachment to certain items, and our propensity to lose things, where the real drama begins. In 1210, a teenager named Fernando Martins left his home in Portugal to join a monastery. Within a few years, he was ordained a priest and eventually found himself living and working in a Franciscan abbey under the priest the entire order was named for, St. Francis of Assisi.

One of the jobs Fernando had was guiding all the other members of the order in their studies. He was a smart guy, and the others learned a lot from him. But one day, his prized copy of the Psalms went missing. Now, it's bad enough to lose a book, but this was in an age when books were rare and this particular copy had all of Fernando's personal notes scribbled into the margins. As you'd imagine, he was heartbroken, so he did what any good friar would do. He prayed that God would return the lost book to him. And soon enough, it did.

It turns out a novice had pocketed it and then quit the abbey. That guilt must have overshadowed the man, and he came back and handed the book over. In 1232, Pope Gregory the Ninth canonized Fernando, although that's not the name people know him by today. His given name in the church was Anthony, and ever since Catholics around the world have prayed to St. Anthony whenever they lose a precious item. But religion hasn't been the only tool people have relied on to find lost objects. For centuries, some people have used books of secret knowledge known as grimoires.

Oftentimes, it was because these books contained spells and incantations that claimed to reveal the location of lost things. Occasionally, though, it was also because some believed they could use these grimoires to control spirits who would assist in the finding process. In the 18th and 19th centuries in America, these grimoires took on new life as tools for treasure hunters. It was believed that by using the spells inside them, or by following the elaborate charts drawn on their pages, that everyday people could track things down.

One thing I've noticed in my years of research is that during the 1800s, there was a widespread practice in the Pennsylvania area of using a grimoire known as the 6th and 7th books of Moses to locate buried treasure. Newspapers are full of the stories. People who own that book would offer their services for anyone interested in digging for gold. Also common in that place and time was the folk magic practice known as powwowing, and central to it was a book known as The Long Lost Friend.

In fact, one of the rituals described inside it involves breaking a young twig off a tree on the first night of Christmas and then bashing it into the ground while reciting an incantation designed to locate lost things. And speaking of twigs, another common tool people have used over the centuries is dowsing. Long ago, a dowser would hold a branch in their hands that was roughly Y shaped, and the way the central stem behaved as they searched would literally point to an answer. Over the years, that tool evolved into a pair of bent rods, usually made of metal. And I think all of us have seen a TV show in our lifetime that includes someone using

dowsing rods. I remembered them from old Unsolved Mysteries episodes back in the 1980s, and the practice even makes an appearance on the modern show The Curse of Oak Island. But whether it actually works or not is a topic of discussion that feels like it's never going to go away. Back in 1917, for example, the United States Geological Survey actually published a report on dowsing and divining rods, and it's so revealing that it's almost comical. Let me read you a couple of quotes.

The use of a so-called divining rod in locating mineral or finding hidden treasure is a curious superstition that has been a subject of discussion since the middle of the 16th century and still has a strong hold on the popular mind. And then later on, they add this. It should be obvious to everyone that further tests by the U.S. Geological Survey of this so-called witching for water, oil, or other minerals would be a misuse of public funds. Clearly, you know a superstition has caught on with enough people when a government agency needs to step in and shoot it down in an official paper.

Still, the important thing I think we should all walk away with isn't necessarily whether or not dowsing actually works, but that just a century ago, so many people believed it did that the government had to take action. His belief doesn't keep up with the facts, and while that can lead to tragic results in the right circumstances, it has also left us with a deep well of surprising folklore. And uncovering that can be more than thrilling. They called them peep stones. No, not peep shows, and these little stones have an enormous story to tell.

But let's begin with how they work, and the best way to explain that is through a story. Back in the early 1900s, there was a pair of sisters living in Utah, in the town of Twilla, and according to the story, one day they were both out on a mountain in the area when they found two unusual stones. Each sister took a stone, and both of them noticed that if they brought the stones up to their eyes, they could look through them and see things that weren't actually there. And when one of the sisters claimed to see a horse her brother had recently lost, she told him about it and described the location visible through the stone.

Later that day, he went to that spot, and wouldn't you know it, there was the horse. And stories like these pop up all over Utah, and another tale, a woman from the city of Logan claimed to be able to see the location of drowned bodies in a nearby lake simply by using her peep stone. And when a family wants nothing more than to know where their lost loved ones are buried, you can see why her guidance was so valuable. But the relationship between peep stones and Utah seems to go much deeper. In fact, they both share a common, reoccurring connection.

Mormons You see, there's apparently a description in the Book of Mormon about God touching a number of stones, and then handing them over to his people to guide them. These stones were described as white and clear, almost like rounded fragments of broken glass. And some historians think this goes back to the state of New York, where Mormon founder Joseph Smith lived for a decade or so in the early 1800s. And at that same time, people all over Western New York were obsessed with what they called money digging, basically digging for the possibility of finding buried treasure.

Now of course, treasure is a complex term. You have to think about what would have been valuable to people in the 1820s. And while gold and silver are on that list, so are things like salt, fresh water, and the welfare of their livestock. And it seems that Joseph Smith participated in that early money digging fad. For example, he and his father, Joseph Sr., were hired often to help locate fresh water and sink wells for it, and they apparently became popular as water wizards with the locals. In 1825, the Smiths were approached by someone who claimed that there was an old mine near

them with gold coins inside, but they needed help finding it. Sadly, there's no record that that search ever turned up the goods. And the secret weapon in Joseph Smith's arsenal? He claimed to have been given a pair of seeing stones at the same time as the golden tablets, what the Book of Mormon is said to be based on. Stones that were said to give him the ability to view those tablets in a special way and even translate them. Smith himself referred to these two clear stones as spectacles, highlighting both their

physical nature and their use. Clear glass-like stones, through which the user peeps at a hidden secret. In other words, peep stones. As far as historians can tell, those stones, or at least the idea of them, eventually traveled across America to what is now the state of Utah. In fact, in 1841, just three years before his death, Joseph Smith is reported to have shown off his seeing stones to a group of 12 individuals, one of whom was Brigham Young, who would go on to found Salt Lake City.

And one can't help but wonder if that sort of folklore, a belief in magical stones that reveal hidden things, just sort of climbed onto those wagons as they headed west. All we know for sure is that stories of peep stones are now scattered all throughout Utah history. For some, though, no tool was necessary. All they needed was their mind and a special gift to find the things their clients were looking for, and their stories add new meaning to that age-old phrase, seeing is believing. Luvia was born in 1902 in the little town of Plainfield, Vermont.

From everything I've read, there wasn't anything special about her early years. But sometime in her teens, I'll love that changed. At first, it was nothing more than a fun thing she did for classmates, helping them find things they lost. But as she got older, that ability matured into something more powerful. She could look at a friend and tell them that a letter was on its way to them, who it was from and when to expect it. She could even predict visitors to the homes of her friends, days in advance.

In 1922, Luvia married George Lafarera, and they settled into life together. But life with Luvia was never normal, however much it might have seemed like it at first glance. Yes, her house was neat and tidy, and it looked nothing like Hollywood depictions of a fortune-teller's shop. But magical things are said to have happened there. Luvia explained how her abilities worked to anyone who asked. She didn't use props like scene stones.

No, all she had to do was close her eyes and feel for an answer. I get impressions, she told a reporter in the 1960s, which are very much like a memory in pictures and sounds. Honestly, the more you read about her, the more Luvia sounds like the psychic in that classic X-Files episode, Clyde Bruckman's final repose. She distanced herself from the popular trappings that are usually associated with psychics who look for things, and spoke out against the charlatans who abused that trust. At the same time, her track record backed up her own humble claims.

For example, Luvia once received a telephone call from a woman in Montpelier, Vermont, who was desperate to find her missing son. Without even visiting the mother in person, Luvia had one of her impressions and described what she saw. The child was near water and sitting beneath something feathery to the west of their home. After searching in that direction, the distraught parents found him near a wide creek, huddled for warmth beneath the branches of a pine bush. So good was Luvia at finding lost people and objects that for decades the police in the

area would turn to her when things became hopeless. One state trooper told the story of reaching out to her for help when a local man went missing from his home near the railroad line. Walk down the tracks near his place, she told the police. And when you come across an object that he dropped, he's going to be nearby to the side of the tracks, laying by something round. Sure enough, after finding a matchbook on one of the railroad ties, the police stepped into the field beside it, and that's where they found the man's body.

And nearby, a large wooden spool that once held some sort of cable. While some people came to Luvia for help with a lost loved one, the most common requests were about missing items. One woman, who wrote an article about Luvia in the 1960s, said she visited the psychic to find a coat she had misplaced. Not a matter of life and death for sure, but when you love something, you want it returned, right? Luvia told her what she saw, that the coat was left on the back of a black chair.

But that didn't sound right. She had looked at all her chairs at home, but the coat was nowhere to be found. Finally, after asking around, she found a neighbor who remembered finding it and putting it in the back of her closet to hold for her. And where had she found it? Over the back of a black chair. One last story. A local man named Paul Heller published an article a few years ago about an experience

he had with Luvia when he was a boy. His father had been keeping an eye on one of their cows, Daisy, who was pregnant and close to giving birth. But one day, Daisy went missing. Paul and his father looked high and low, but couldn't seem to find the cow. So when a neighbor suggested Luvia Lafarera, they decided to take a chance. She answered the phone, listened to their problem, and then paused for a moment before telling them about her impression.

Daisy, she told them, was in a ravine nearby that was littered with boulders, and she seemed to be stuck and in trouble. Paul's father knew exactly where that spot was and rushed over. Sure enough, there was Daisy, caught in a barbed wire fence, and unable to walk away. Luvia Lafarera passed away in 1977 at the age of 75. And with her departure, Vermont lost a unique individual who had helped countless people for over five decades. People who believed there was an answer to all of their troubles, even when they couldn't

see it for themselves. It's never fun to lose something. All of us probably have a powerful memory from childhood about a precious toy we lost. Maybe it was a pet that ran away and never returned, or that feeling you get in the basement when you stand in front of that mountain of boxes and you know the thing you're looking for is in there, somewhere. I'm willing to bet that humans have been misplacing things for about as long as we've been picking objects up and setting them down.

So it isn't unreasonable to assume we've been looking for ways to find them just as long. From holy saints to forbidden books of magic, people have been willing to do just about anything for a shot at being reunited with whatever it is they've lost. And while the superstitions that have grown up around that notion might seem like they're from an old bygone era, they've done a pretty good job of hanging on, right up to today. Lovia Lafarera is a great example of that. Her life and career spanned that journey from the days before automobiles were in every

garage all the way up to the space age, and it seems that the demand for her services never really faded away. Way back in the 1920s, just as she was beginning to get her sea legs as it were, Lovia was awoken by a knock on her front door. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was barely four in the morning, but proceeded to drag herself out of bed. At the door, huddled against the early morning chill, stood a man and a woman, Mr. and Mrs. Walden, and the look on their faces said everything Lovia needed to know.

Their son had gone missing, and they were desperate for her help in locating him. Lovia paused to form one of those impressions, and then pointed in a particular cardinal direction. He's farther away than you'd expect, she told them, but he's in a shelter he made for himself and he's doing just fine. As you might expect at this point, the Waldens found their boy exactly where she said he'd be, and unlike so many other missing children, he got to go home. They had lost something, and Lovia had returned it to them.

Years later, Lovia was visited by a man who had lost something small. Maybe it was a wallet or a pocket watch, or even a wedding ring. Whatever it was, it drove him to her front door, like many others, and she welcomed him in and told him where to look. And he found it, too, but there was something else unique about this man. As he left Lovia's house that day, thankful that she had helped in a way that only she ever could, he turned to her and told her who he was. I, he said, am the Walden boy.

Most objects and tricks for finding them seem to have left a long trail through the pages of history, and I hope today's exploration helped you find something that you might have been looking for. Hope, perhaps. But it's important to remember that most people looking for help in their search weren't looking for a child or a coat. No, they were looking for treasure. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you about one person

who managed to do just that. This episode of Lore was made possible by all of you amazing listeners and by Squarespace. Back in 2019, I had an idea. I was making more podcasts than just Lore and had begun to hire people, lease office space, and build a studio. So I decided to bundle it all together under one big production label, Grim and Mild. But to make it official, the company needed a digital home, a place to list all of our amazing researchers and writers, and where folks like you could find and listen to any

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Honestly, it's the perfect secret weapon for launching a new project in style. Do what I did, and get started today for free. Just visit squarespace.com slash lore to start your free trial website, and when you're ready to launch it, be sure to use the offer code LORE at checkout to save 10%. Squarespace, build something beautiful. This episode was also made possible by Casper, experienced better sleep with the award-winning comfort of Casper. Casper's most popular mattress, the Casper Original Hybrid Mattress, is the one that

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There's no safe, like Simply Safe. Alison was born in Scotland in 1826, but destiny would take her elsewhere. Like a lot of women of her day, Alison got married pretty young. And when her husband, Stephen Hunter, converted to Mormonism in 1847, the two of them started planning a move to Utah. By 1849, they were on a ship heading across the Atlantic. Their destination was the brand-new settlement of Salt Lake City, but she didn't stay there long.

The handful of years after their arrival saw Alison experience divorce, remarriage, and a series of moves, first to the western edge of Utah, and then all the way across Nevada to the Lake Tahoe area. Honestly, there's a lot of busyness to her early story. Alison experienced a lot of change. In fact, by the time she met her third husband, Sandy Bowers, around 1859, she was known as Ellie. But there was one piece of her brief Mormon past that she had brought with her, a peepstone.

There are stories of Ellie using the stone to help others, too. In one tale, a miner named Joe Webb had a large sack of gold dust stolen by a newcomer to town. And he and some other miners came to Ellie looking for the thief's name and location, which she determined by using the small, semi-transparent glass-like stone. Joe Webb and the others found that thief and then beat him until he confessed and pointed to where the gold was hidden. And sure enough, it was all there.

Now, don't get me wrong, Ellie Bowers got a lot of predictions right, but her record was never perfect. In the fall of 1875, for example, she predicted that a massive storm would bury gold canyon, but all that arrived was an inch or so of snow. In fact, she missed the mark so often that it was common for the newspapers to mock her in print. But folks today still refer to Ellie Bowers as the Washoe Cirrus. And for a good reason, you see, in 1858, she approached a well-known mail carrier named

Snowshoe Thompson with an unusual request, one that would change her life. Thompson traveled the route between her place in Virginia City over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and west to Sacramento. And it was in Sacramento that she hoped that he could obtain something for her, a new peepstone. Now Thompson had never heard of such a thing, so he asked her about it, and she described it in a way that will sound familiar to you by now, a small, glass-like stone through which she could look and find hidden or lost things. She told him that she already had one, but it had grown foggy over the years and difficult

to use. And so she was hoping that he could find her another. Why? Because she thought she knew where a large vein of silver was located, and she wanted to find it. Sadly, Thompson struck out in Sacramento, and he returned empty-handed, so Ellie had to improvise with the peepstone she already had. But finally, after pushing all of her skills to her limits, she figured out where her men

needed to dig, and she set them to work. And Thompson witnessed that work, too. He watched as a pair of men dug the first hole, turning up small bits of silver ore as they did. But the progress wasn't encouraging enough for them, so they eventually quit and moved on. It seemed that Ellie Bowers had failed again. For a moment, at least.

Determined to prove that she was right, more miners were sent into the hole, and they dug deeper and longer. And just when they, too, were about to call it quits and move on to better prospects, they found it. A silver vein unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was a discovery that would put Virginia City on the map, and would earn Ellie Bowers a fortune. And if you know your dates and places and historical timelines well, then you're probably already

thinking what I'm about to tell you. That's right. Thanks to the power of a foggy old peepstone, a strong-willed woman from Scotland dug deep for something valuable in Nevada, and ended up discovering one of the richest silver deposits in the world at the time, the legendary Comstock Load. This episode of lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Sam Alberti and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two 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.