Lore - Episode 41: Hole in the Wall

Episode Date: August 22, 2016

We’ve been taught since childhood to be honest, because our actions have consequences and our words can hurt people. But the events that took place in a Scottish village over three hundred years ago took that lesson to a darker level.   * * * Official Lore website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

Folklore and superstition are fluid, flexible things. There's no set formula for how they're born, no rules or recipes to create them. They just sort of happen. Sometimes folklore is instructive. It comes first and teaches us how to behave. Other times it's reactive. It sprouts up long after a key historical event, like a sapling that grows from an acorn buried by a forgetful squirrel.

But either way, it's always a mirror showing us who we all really are. There have been times, though, when people have crafted their own tales and then set out to convince everyone else of the truth. Counterfeit folklore, sometimes it's done for money, and sometimes for that drug we all seem to be addicted to. Attention, take George Hull, for example. In 1868, he purchased a 10 foot long block of gypsum from a quarry in Iowa. Then he had it shipped to New York, where he paid a sculptor to carve it into the likeness

of an enormous human corpse. Finally, he transported it to the small New York town of Cardiff, where he buried it on his cousin's farm. When the cousin, William Newell, hired two men to dig a well about a year later, he pretended to be shocked when they uncovered the stone figure. They pulled it from the ground and locals quickly decided that it was a petrified man. The Cardiff giant, they called it. Newell built a tent over it and sold tickets to anyone who wanted to see it.

He and cousin George, of course, made a lot of money off the prank. Before the invention of things like the camera, the internet and the telephone, it was a lot easier to pull the wool over people's eyes. That lack of documentable proof helped those hoaxes grow and spread. And most of those fakes were harmless, thankfully. History contains moments, though, when those lies have come with more serious consequences. Social rejection, legal action, even imprisonment, and on rare occasions, those lies have even cost people their lives, all because of a good old fashioned hoax.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. In the years between the 16th century and the early 18th, a wave of witch trials swept through Western society. Most of us know this. The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 have become something that few people haven't heard about. And most know if only anecdotally, the trials just like it happened across Europe and in the European colonies of North America.

Putting witches on trial is something that's been happening for a long time. Something that predates Christianity. In fact, Charlemagne, who ruled much of Europe at the beginning of the 9th century, declared that anyone caught burning a witch would be executed. But religious fervor in the late 1500s began to turn witchcraft into something that was more evil, more feared, and more panic inducing. A lot of the beliefs about witches that were common in the Salem trials actually came into the public mind through a trial in England in 1612.

The Pendle witches, as they were called, all confessed to have sold their souls to the devil himself. They took credit for supernatural acts, claiming to have bewitched their neighbors. After a short trial, all 10 of the suspected witches were hanged. It was during this time that witchcraft laws were passed in England, Wales, and Scotland. Each were designed to outlaw and prosecute anyone who practiced it, as well as those who supported them. The Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 declared those crimes to be capital offenses punishable

by death. In England, it's estimated that roughly 500 people were tried as witches. But in Scotland, that number was much higher. Estimates range from 4,000 to 6,000 suspects brought to trial, and over 1,500 of those were executed. The first major test of the Scottish Witchcraft Act took place in 1590. King James VI had traveled to Europe to marry Princess Anne, sister of the King of Denmark. When a terrible storm prevented their first attempt to return home, a Danish admiral made

an offhand comment about the witches, and that set off a witch hunt across both Denmark and Scotland. As a result, over 100 people from North Berlick were arrested, and over 70 of those were convicted and executed. Most confessed under torture, although historians are unclear as to how many actually died. Just seven years later, Scotland became caught up in what historians now call the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597. The first case came to light in March of that year with the trial of Janet Wisher of

Aberdeen. She was accused of using a cantrip and burned for the crime. A month later, though, a key suspect was brought in. Margaret Aitken from Balwary was arrested and promptly tortured for information. She struck a deal with her accusers and promised to locate more witches in exchange for her life. But remember, almost all of us would promise anything if it meant that the torture would stop.

In a sense, Margaret was helping to build a nesting doll of lies. She would find the fake witches for the people who believe that witches were real. Over 400 people from across the country were accused of witchcraft. Many of those suspects were identified by Margaret herself, called out for the simple crime of being noticed by her. It took the authorities over four months to discover that she was a fraud, but at that point it was too late. Over 200 people had already been executed.

A second Great Witch Hunt took place over the course of a year between two years between 1661 and 1662, and this time nearly 700 suspects were arrested. More than half of them were killed. The methods varied, but most of them were burned, strangled, drowned or even crushed to death beneath heavy stones. I'm telling you all of this so that you can understand the fever that seemed to have spread throughout Scotland. People were afraid.

They were afraid that witches might be real things and that their neighbors might secretly be one. Mostly, though, they were afraid of being accused because once the judicial system sunk its teeth into them, there was very little hope. That hysteria made an accusation deadly. You see, you could call your neighbor mean or ugly or even a thief, but you rarely risked hurting more than their feelings. Called them a witch, though, and you could very well spark a wildfire that could

consume your entire town. And in 1697, that's exactly what happened. In August of 1696, Christian Shaw became sick. She was the 11-year-old daughter of a wealthy landowner in central Scotland. And thankfully for her, that position afforded her some special treatment. Right away, she was taken to nearby Glasgow for medical care, where she was quick to tell the doctors what was wrong with herself. According to her, it was simple.

She'd been cursed. Shaw told a story that went something like this. She'd walked into the kitchen of her home on August 17th to find one of the servants, a woman named Catherine Campbell, drinking from a fresh jug of milk. Shaw might have been 11, but she knew the rules. She knew how the house functioned, and she understood that the contents of that jug belonged to her father, to her family. They belonged to her.

Shaw must have been a bold child. Here she was alone in the kitchen with a grown woman, and she stared Campbell down and told her she intended to report the theft. And that's just what she did. Campbell, according to Shaw, replied with a curse, telling the girl that she wished the devil would haul her soul through hell. That might have been something she could have forgotten. Harsh words in a heated moment, you know.

But just four days later, Shaw turned the corner in a hallway and came face to face with Agnes Naismith, a local woman rumored to be a witch. And that made the threat real. Because if Campbell wanted the devil to carry her away, it made sense that she'd send Naismith to do the job. And that, she said, was how she ended up in bed, suffering through torment that her doctors couldn't identify or treat. She would twist and writhe with seizures, often crying out in pain.

Other times she would pass out and remain unconscious for hours. She was actually taken to the doctors twice, but each time she and her family left, they did so without hope of relief. The doctors were just as perplexed as the Shaw family. Sure, this was late 17th century medicine, but it wasn't barbaric. Even still, no one was able to find a cause of her pain and fits. But that wasn't the worst of it. Back home, Shaw's symptoms started to become more unusual.

Visitors to her room claimed that she would often lean forward and vomit up objects. Objects, they said, that didn't belong inside a little girl. Feathers and pieces of bone, straw and coal, hairpins, charred wood, even gravel. All of it was said to have come out of her mouth and everyone knew that that was impossible, unless, of course, was due to a curse. In a moment of support, old Agnes Naismith actually visited Shaw in her room. Family was there for her, partly to support her, but also to protect her. Naismith was a witch, after all.

The old woman wasn't there to curse the girl anymore. She said she'd come to pray. And in the days afterwards, Shaw claimed that Naismith was no longer tormenting her from a distance. It was as if the old woman had called off her curse and called it quits. Others, though, weren't off the hook. Along with Catherine Campbell, the servant who had stolen the sip of milk, more names were uttered by Shaw in between her seizures and fits.

But when the symptoms failed to disappear or improve, she was taken back to Glasgow for another examination. This time, though, the doctor had new ideas to present to her family. The doctor was a prominent Glasgow physician named Matthew Brisbane. And he suggested that the girl might actually be wrestling with a demonic force. It was a logical explanation, given the era and the circumstances. There was something inside of her that was producing mysterious symptoms. And medical care hadn't been able to identify the cause.

To him, that left the spiritual realm. Christian Shaw, he believed, was possessed. Back home, the local church stepped in to do what they could. People fasted. They prayed. They gathered in the meeting house, but none of it seemed to help. So as Christian Shaw continued to mutter more and more names of people, she claimed were tormenting her.

Her father wrote them all down. And that's when he did what any father might have done in his place at the time. He wasn't a noble per se, but he was the local layered. And that title came with some political pull, angry, frustrated and more than a little desperate. He went to the local authorities. He pushed the list of names into their hands and he demanded justice. When that justice arrived, though, it was more than bitter.

As a result of Shaw's list, a council was set up to look into the matter. One of the first to be arrested was a woman named Elizabeth Anderson. It's not clear whether she was tortured or just traumatized over the arrest itself, but she quickly confessed to witchcraft and then started to name others who had done the same. Those others were already on the list, but hearing it from a self-proclaimed witch made it that much easier to go after them. Anderson's confession earned her lots of company in jail. All told records show that in January of 1697, 35 people were arrested and held for trial.

Evidence was heard. Neighbors were brought in to speak to the character of the suspects. Stories were told, and these stories weren't nice. Yes, there was the main issue of Christian Shaw, sick in bed in her father's house, and they covered that, but other items came up as well. It's as if the town had been given a platform to air their grievances, and they wanted to take full advantage of that. They might not have had buses back then, but they acted like it,

throwing people under them with every word they uttered. The trial stretched on for months. Elizabeth Anderson's elderly father died in jail while awaiting a verdict. Others were released as stories revealed their innocence. In the end, seven suspects remained, including Agnes Naismith. But June of that year, after five months of imprisonment and were sentenced to death, one of them, John Reed, took his own life in jail before they could carry out his execution. On June 10th of 1697, the final six were hanged in Gallo Green in the west end of Paisley.

After the accused witches had been killed, the bodies were piled together and set aflame. Superstitions at the time told people that even after being hanged, the witches might still be alive, so the fire was a necessary precaution. Even still, they didn't know when to let down their guard. Local legend says that's just what happened there in Paisley that day. One of the executioners borrowed a cane from someone in the crowd, and after using it to nudge an arm back into the fire, tried to hand it back. The villager refused to touch it.

After the flames died down and there was nothing more than a pile of ash, the remains were gathered together and buried. A ring of cobblestones was arranged around the burial site, and a horseshoe, an ancient symbol used to ward off magic and protect specific locations, was placed in the center of the ring. They did this because of something that happened right before the execution. There, in the center of town, Agnes Naismith was said to have addressed the crowd that gathered there to watch. She cursed all of them and all their descendants after them.

She cursed the town of Paisley and the shaws and the trial and everything about it all. A horseshoe was meant to act like a seal, locking in that curse and preventing it from escaping. Sadly, it was all a lie. Every last bit of what happened in Paisley was built on a foundation of fraud and make-believe. Naismith knew it. That's why she cursed them after all. And if it wasn't for the irrational panic that had swept through the community, the villagers might have known it too. They knew what we all do, that there's no such thing as a witch who flies on a broomstick and turns neighbors into animals with a word. No one can make a young girl sick and cause her to vomit

up feathers and pins. It's not logical or rational. It's not real. We can see now, looking back, how this mess got out of hand so quickly. Lie upon lie upon lie. The human desire for self-preservation is a powerful weapon and it was used to justify behavior that wasn't normally acceptable. It always has been. It still is. I wish I could tell you that this story ended justly. That Shaw was caught in her lie and punished for building such a deadly hoax. That itself would be a lie. She grew up and eventually pioneered the manufacturing of thread, something that fueled her town's economy for generations. As much as possible, Shaw seems to have gotten away with it.

But lives were lost. People were tortured and killed. Families were torn apart and forever altered. Shaw had spread lies that hurt others and then those people told lies that hurt still more. And finally, the rest of the town lied to itself and accepted it all as gospel truth. Because of fear, because of social pressure, and because sometimes it's easier to let the current wash you away than it is to swim against it toward the truth. So, no one knows why Christian Shaw did what she did. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she liked the attention. Maybe she truly hated some of the people she accused. In the end,

most people died. And all because of a hoax. There are theories, of course. It's possible that she suffered from conversion disorder, where anxiety is converted into physical symptoms. It's also been suggested that she might have been exhibiting signs of Munchausen syndrome, a condition where people pretend to have a disease or illness in order to draw attention or sympathy from others. These ideas certainly could be possible. But it's also possible that she just flat out lied. People are very good at lying, after all. If we're honest with ourselves, we're a lot more gullible than we'd like to admit. Spend some time on Facebook and you'll witness the power of a good

old-fashioned hoax. Sometimes a lie can fool people because they're blind to reason, or because their prejudice and hatred prevent them from seeing the truth. Sometimes, though, lies persist because superstition feeds the flames. No matter the reason, people get hurt. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Well, you get the idea, right? In 1839, we came one step closer to understanding the how of what Christian Shaw did in 1696. That year, two researchers were examining the Shaw home and discovered something on the wall where the head of Christian's bed would have been positioned. It was a hole. The hole was cut at an angle, making it nearly invisible to anyone entering the room from the

hallway. But from the bed, it was perfectly positioned for moving small objects through, objects like feathers and pins. And don't ignore the other question that this new detail begs us to ask. Who passed those items through? Shaw, it seems, had a helper. In the 1960s, the original horseshoe, the one that marked the grave of the victims of the trial, went missing following some road work. Decades of economic hardship followed, reminding some of the curse uttered by Agnes Naismith, the curse that the old horseshoe was meant to repel. The town placed a new horseshoe over the grave in 2008. Maybe, like the people caught up in those lies three centuries earlier, we still have a hard time today separating fact

from fiction. Maybe, we always will. This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey. Lore is much more than a podcast. There is a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.