Lore - Episode 48: Downriver

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Tragedy is never something we plan for. It sneaks up on us like a bandit in the night, and takes away our sense of security and purpose. But throughout history, there have been places so plagued by tragedy that those who live near them consider these locations to be cursed. * * * Official Lore Merchandise: www.lorepodcast.com/shop Member-only Episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

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Porter, actually enjoy economy. They named the village after the Latin word for serpent, colubar. Today though, so many centuries later, its name is rarely spoken by those who live in the Basilica region of Italy. There's something about it that gives local Italians a feeling of dread, and they'd rather not speak its name. Colubaro earned that reputation though, if we're to believe the stories, that is. It's said that in the early years of the 20th century,

the town was home to a very successful, but very disliked, lawyer, Nambiaggio Vergilio. Vergilio was speaking in court one day, according to the story, when he pointed up toward the ceiling of the courthouse. If what I say is false, he shouted, may this chandelier come down. And it did. It dropped right into the middle of the room and shattered into thousands of pieces.

And while no one was injured, the town's reputation took on a dark tone. It was cursed, they said. Hexed. And later events only serve to reinforce that belief. Landslides, car accidents. There are even stories of babies born with two hearts or three lungs. And of course, tales of witchcraft. Locations take on a flavor over time.

Whether it's our own hometown or just an infamous spot in the area, we have a tendency of treating locations like people. They have a personality and a reputation. And some, if you listen to the locals, are even cursed. When life doesn't go the way we'd hoped, we look for reasons. Claiming that our town is cursed is an easy way to make sense of the accidental, the unexpected, and the unfortunate. But sometimes the evidence is dark and deep

and includes suffering, death, and even utter destruction. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. There's this notion that's almost as old as time itself. That a city or a nation that strays too far from its roots or from its moral center puts itself at risk of being cursed. The Hebrew legend speaks of the Tower of Babel, which shows how the pride of one settlement brought about destruction and confusion. The ancient stories of Atlantis spoke of the island civilization

as technologically and socially advanced, but it was their greed and immorality that led the gods to destroy them. According to the interpretation of the ancient writers, they were cursed by their behavior. Other ancient stories speak of a city that once stood in the southern sands of the Arabian Peninsula. It's mentioned in the Quran, the Christian Bible, even in the Arabian Nights.

It was known as Yubar, Iram, Wubar, or the city of Ed, and after serving as a trade center for over five millennia, it vanished roughly 2,000 years ago. Satellite scans in the 1980s finally provided us with an answer. The city, it turns out, was built on an enormous subterranean cavern and sometime in 300 A.D., it all collapsed. There are so many other examples. Port Royale in the Caribbean, the ancient Greek city of Helike,

even Pompeii comes to mind. But these stories aren't limited to dusty cities spoken of in ancient texts. Even here in the United States, in a country that's relatively young compared to much of the world, we can find stories of cursed locations and horrible tragedy. On November 1st of 1886, tragedy came to Lafayette, Oregon. That was the day that David Corker, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, was found dead in his general store by a customer.

The shop had been broken into overnight and Corker had been killed in defense of his store. The suspect was a man named Richard Marple. He'd moved there with his wife Julia and mother Anna just the year before and the rumor was that he'd chosen a life of crime over gainful employment. The man, they said, was a thief. Add to that a handful of eyewitness reports about how Marple openly mocked the shopkeeper

and it was hard to ignore him as a suspect. The sheriff visited his home and found a bloody shirt, a scrap of paper in his pocket with blood stains on it, and a collection of tools used for breaking into locked buildings. Marple was convicted of murder on April 9th of 1887. His wife and mother fought the charges. They provided a solid alibi and swore to his whereabouts that night. It didn't work though.

Marple was hanged on November 11th, just a little over a year after Corker had been found dead. 30 locals gathered to watch as the man was strangled to death at the end of the rope for nearly 18 minutes. Marple's mother wasn't allowed to watch the execution, but she could hear the screaming from a distance. She cursed the town, they say, and predicted that three fires would burn Lafayette to the ground.

It was easy to laugh it off though. Predictions like that always are, so that's what they did. No one was suspicious when a blaze ripped through the town in 1895. Towns, especially those built mostly out of lumber, have a knack of catching fire. Six buildings were leveled by the flames. Two years later, another fire broke out, destroying four more. Then, in 1904, the fire destroyed 16 buildings as it raged across town.

A random series of accidents, or the product of the curse of a very angry mother. For some, that isn't an easy question to answer. Another location that's haunted by tales of a curse is the Dutch village of Saftinga. Well, it was, up until the late 1500s, that is. Let me explain what I mean. Saftinga was a middle-aged hub for the harvesting of peat. It was situated in what is known as the polders,

the flood plains that were separated from the ocean by man-made dykes and dams. And because peat was used at the time as a popular source of fuel, Saftinga was an important community in the region. Peat was in such high demand that, according to some historians, the farmers of Saftinga were said to dress in fine silks. They even decorated their workhorses with gold and silver jewelry. Of course, this led to a reputation of greed and selfishness, which wasn't helped by the fact that the townsfolk would chase newcomers away with weapons and dogs.

Basically, they weren't friendly people, and no one likes a jerk, right? As the story goes, a farmer was fishing outside Saftinga one day when he reeled in a real-life mermaid. Apparently, she could speak Dutch, and she warned the farmer that unless the town straightened up and fixed its greed, something horrible was going to happen. The farmer laughed at her and decided that a pet mermaid would be nice to have, so he tied her up.

Even when the mermaid's husband surfaced and begged for her release, the farmer refused, so the mermaid uttered a curse. The lands of Saftinga will fall, he said. Only its towers will continue to stand tall. In 1570, a flood swept through the Dutch coast, flooding the land all around the town. 14 years later, in 1584, the Dutch army was fighting a war known as the 80 Years War and destroyed one of the dykes that held back the ocean. The town of Saftinga was overcome by an enormous wave and was never seen again.

Today, the region is known as Verdrankenland, the drowned land, but locals say that not all of Saftinga is gone. Somewhere beneath the marsh and water, if the stories are to be believed, the old church tower still stands tall. And on foggy days, they say, you can still hear the bell toll. In the southwestern corner of Illinois is a city on the edge of the Mississippi. Now, it's easy to limit the history of a place to our American experience, but Illinois is older than that.

In fact, the entire area from the Arkansas River all the way up to Green Bay was once controlled by the French. They explored the region in 1673 and then claimed it for the crown shortly after. They called it Upper Louisiana and sometimes Illinois Country. Most of the settlers who moved into the area were French Canadians from the north, and the biggest draw for them across this whole stretch of new territory was fur trapping. The Upper Mississippi River Valley was apparently a gold mine for trappers and hunters, so they moved south to chase their fortunes.

They built six major settlements along the eastern edge of modern-day Illinois. One of those was built near a tribe of Native Americans who took their name from a small tributary that joined the larger Mississippi. There were a lot of variants. White Europeans were rarely ever good at taking a Native American name and carrying it over to French or English in a consistent way. But everyone there began to call the place Kaskaskia. Before we move on though, let me explain briefly the geography of this area.

You see, Kaskaskia was a settlement built right on the tip of a small peninsula that stuck out into the Mississippi River. To the east, you could walk deeper into the Illinois territory. Looking west from the town would give you a spectacular view across the Great River. That was the territory now known as the State of Missouri. Kaskaskia, in a lot of ways, was a place caught in between. And not just geographically, on a social level, the settlement was a mixture of French-Canadian fur trappers,

Jesuit missionaries, and local Native Americans. The Jesuits brought the structure. The trappers brought the economy. The indigenous people brought, well, they'd already been there. And like so many other stories about the early days of this country, that meant that they weren't going to get a fair shake. One story clearly highlights this disparity. In 1698, about 25 years after the settlement was founded,

a Frenchman named Jean Bernard immigrated to Kaskaskia along with his wife and daughter Marie. Like a lot of people who moved there, Bernard was a fur trader and the abundant resources of the area promised to make him a wealthy man. He set up his trading post on the edge of town, where it would be easily accessible to the trappers moving up and down the western edge of Illinois. They brought in the fur, he purchased it from them, and then sold it to buyers outside the wild frontier.

It was simple and lucrative. And before long, he had a thriving business. As the trading post grew, Bernard brought on more help. It was common in those days of Kaskaskia for European business owners to hire local Native Americans to do the manual labor. And that was how one man in particular came to work for the Frenchman. History doesn't remember his name, but the tale does describe how Jean Bernard mistreated the man.

He was cruel and unfair toward him and always gave the worst of the labor to him and the other Native Americans who worked in the shop. But this man was different from most of the other Kaskaskians in the region. It seems that the Jesuits had worked with his family decades before and he himself was raised to speak both his native tongue and French, and that made him more helpful than most. Bernard took a liking to the young man

and they formed a good working relationship as a result. But Jean Bernard wasn't the only person to take a liking to the Kaskaskian. Apparently, his daughter Marie fell in love with the man, something that her father was strongly opposed to. The legend says that he fired the young Indian and then spread word around town that he wasn't to be hired by any other local businesses. His goal was to drive the man to leave town in search of work

and it apparently succeeded. Marie, of course, was heartbroken, but there was nothing she could do about it. Then, a year later, a group of traders rode into town and hidden among them was her lost lover. He'd return to claim her hand and take her away to end their separation and build a new life together elsewhere. Somehow, he managed to pass a message to her

and they arranged to meet in a secret location later that night. Once together, the couple left town, disappearing into the great Mississippi. It's never that simple, though, is it? Yes, they had a head start and yes, they had love on their side. But Marie's father wouldn't be defied so easily. The moment he learned of his daughter's escape, Bernard gathered together a large group of men

and they rode out of town to hunt the couple down. I don't know how they knew to ride north, but that's what they did. Maybe they assumed her lover was looking for work in one of the bigger settlements. Maybe they knew he had friends and they knew he had a friend and they knew he had a friend

and they knew he had a friend and they knew he had a friend Maybe they knew he had friends or family north of Cascadia. Whatever their reason was, they followed the Mississippi northward. It would have taken them hours, but eventually they tracked the young lovers down just outside of Cahokia.

The town of Cahokia was another ancient Native American settlement that had become home to a French outpost. Like Cascadia, it was home to a mix of French Canadians and Native Americans and that made it a good hiding place for a couple like Marie and her true love. When Bernard's group found them,

they immediately separated the couple. Marie was kept safe and watched over while the man she loved was beaten and bound with a rope. They dragged him to the very edge of the river and then began searching for a large branch or a fallen tree that they could manage. When they found it,

they dragged it toward their prisoner. The young man was tied to the log with yet more rope. We know he spoke French and so did Bernard and his men, so there was probably a lot of conversation. It's likely that he begged for his life, begged for Marie, begged for freedom. But the wrath of an angry father

isn't something that words can sway, not for Jean Bernard at least, so the work continued. When they were satisfied with their knots, the men pushed the log into the dark waters of the river. I imagine them waiting out a bit, pushing it along, making sure it made it past all the debris

and vegetation growing along the bank there. And then they let go and watched as the young man drifted down river with the current. We don't know if Bernard made his daughter watch it all. We don't know if she was whisked away back to Kaskaskia before she could see it all unfold. But we do know that the man she loved shouted out from the river as he drifted away.

His words, they say, carried a powerful curse. Bernard would be dead within a year, he claimed, and he and Marie would be reunited forever. Then he added that the town of Kaskaskia itself would suffer. The French there would be destroyed, and even the dead would find no rest in their graves. Later that year, Jean Bernard got caught up in a bad business deal.

He accused another man of cheating him and challenged that man to a duel. Bernard lost the duel and his life. Later that year, Marie herself died. They say she wasted away from a broken heart, but her death allowed her to reunite with her lover, and nothing would ever keep them apart again. By the 1740s, the British were making moves

to take over the territory controlled by the French. They bribed a number of neighboring Native American tribes to join them in a war against the settlers. And by 1765, the French were run out of town. It seems that Marie's true love was right about more than a few things. Kaskaskia did its best to persevere, though. After the American Revolution, it became the capital of the Northwest Territory,

and then in 1818, it became the first capital of the state of Illinois. But that only lasted for about a year. And all along, the town kept growing, and by the mid-1800s, it was home to roughly 7,000 people. And then the Mississippi River got involved. In 1844, a flood nearly wiped the town off the map, and very few of the citizens stayed around to rebuild. Instead, they went looking for a safer place to live.

The Mississippi has always flooded. It still does, and that's made life difficult for anyone who lives along its banks. After 1844, a lot less people in Kaskaskia were willing to take that risk. In the years that followed, the Great River did something extraordinary. It moved. Slowly, it began a changed course,

shifting to pass by the town on the eastern side, rather than to the west. What was once a peninsula was slowly becoming an island instead, and after another major flood in 1888, the shift was complete. Today, Kaskaskia is on the western shore of the Mississippi. Thanks to an act of Congress, it's a little pocket of Illinois on the edge of Missouri.

Not that most people would notice, though. By 1950, there were only 112 people left to call the place their home. I think there are a couple of indisputable facts buried in these stories that we would be wrong to ignore. First, people love to curse their own town, or the town of their enemies, or whatever town they had a bad day in. We like to blame others for our own misfortune,

or tell stories that explain away our bad luck and tragedy. It can't be our own fault, after all, so maybe the town itself is to blame, right? Second, no place is safe from tragedy. At some point, whether it takes decades or centuries, every location is going to experience its own fair share of loss and misfortune. Fires, floods, natural disasters, or human error. No matter what the cause is,

every location will eventually receive a visit from adversity. On their own, these are both sad truths. Together, though, they create a new world, a world where cities are cursed and the tragedies they experience are rooted in supernatural causes. Oftentimes, the easiest thing to believe is also the most irrational. Still, some locations do seem to have

an unusual amount of tragedy heaped upon them, Kaskaskia being a prime example. And it didn't end in 1950. Even after that flood, the remaining citizens rebuilt the old Jesuit church and tried their best to move on. That's all they could do, I suppose. Still, they had to wonder.

Then, on April 4th of 1973, the Mississippi rose nearly 40 feet above normal levels. The North Levies broke, and the river rushed in, threatening much of the town. Hundreds of college students from nearby Southern Illinois University, along with residents of the mainland and dozens of prison inmates, all gathered there to lay sandbags

and fight the flood as best they could. In the end, though, it was no use. The church and most of the town around it were all washed away. And that includes the cemetery. Local legend says the flood of 1973 caused a number of graves to burst open, washing hundreds of caskets,

along with their occupants, into the depths of the river. The dead, just as Marie's lover had predicted, had risen from their graves. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett. Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online,

and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was released on April 4th of 1973. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett. 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. www.theworldoflore.com 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. you