Lore - Episode 82: Forgotten

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

People are really good at moving on. We rush from fad to fad at an alarming speed, and it’s difficult to predict where our interests will land next. In the process, we tend to abandon things—things like the places we live. But don’t be fooled; even after we’ve all moved on, those places are far from uninhabited. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

All they wanted to do was get rid of the garbage, so it's hard to fault them for what was about to happen. Given the chance to live life in their shoes for a day or two, I doubt it would have come out any other way for us. The town had taken over an old strip mine in early 1962 and repurposed it as a landfill, which was admittedly a good thing. The number of unofficial landfills had popped up around the town and they were hoping this would clean things up a bit.

But this new official landfill sat right up against a cemetery and people were starting to complain about the mess, so the town council met and planned the cleanup. On May 27th of 1962, someone working for the town struck a match and set the whole pile of trash on fire. But there was a problem, a big, lurking, underground problem. That landfill, you see, was directly on top of an abandoned coal mine, and coal, as we all know, has a tendency to burn when you add fire. They tried putting the fire out, of course, they tried digging it out, pouring in wet

sand and cutting off the oxygen supply the fire needed to burn, but nothing worked. The fire just kept burning, and as it did, it started to transform the town above it. Over the decade since the fire was set, the population of roughly 1,000 townsfolk has all vanished. The toxic, sulfurous fumes and carbon monoxide have driven people from their homes. The weakened spiderweb of mines beneath their streets have caused sinkholes, some deeper than a house. In 1992, the governor of Pennsylvania exercised eminent domain and condemned the town.

Only seven people still live there, refusing to leave their home, but once they pass away, the government will take full possession of Centralia. Meanwhile, 55 years later, the fire still burns. We tend to think of cities as permanent locations, that our hometown will always be there when we find the time to visit family, or that population numbers will always climb higher as the years go by. Maybe it's a point of pride, or a sign of human arrogance, but most of us believe that these centers of human civilization represent our indelible, immortal mark on the pages

of history. But life doesn't always play along with our assumptions. There's always an exception to the rule. Sure, most towns and cities do grow and swell as time goes by. But sometimes they don't, sometimes they burn, or crumble, or get washed away. As frightening as it is to consider, some towns just fail, like a tire pierced by a nail. They slowly leak everything that ever made them a community, until finally, there's

nothing left. Nothing that is, except ghosts. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. If you get in a car and head north of Boston, following the coastline, you'll eventually wind your way up to a small peninsula known as Cape Anne. It's a deeply historical area, with settlers dating back to the 1620s. Toward the northern side of the tip of that peninsula is the town of Rockport, and on the southern side is Gloucester.

In 1693, though, a group of settlers headed toward the area right between them, in the middle of that stretch of land, and set up a sort of common settlement. They called it, now get ready, because this was incredibly inventive of them, the common settlement. Yeah, I know, just roll with it. The name was accurate, though, since the entire five mile area was meant to serve the whole community. You could harvest timber from the trees there, and graze your livestock in the fields.

Being farther inland, it was also safe from the pirates that plagued the coast, so eventually, people began to build homes there. By the mid-1700s, there were roughly 100 families living in the common settlement. But not all utopian dreams can last forever. After the American Revolution was fought and won, pirate ships were a lot less common around Cape Ann, so people started to move back to the coastline where life was easier. And as they did, the town was just sort of left behind, discarded like old toys in the backyard.

Some people even left their dogs, which ended up becoming feral, roaming the area long enough for locals to start referring to the settlement as Dogtown. There were stories, too, tales of witches that stayed behind to torment the people around them. One legend says that a witch named Tammy Younger was so feared by people passing through that they would pay her a toll when they did so, just to keep her happy. In the end, though, even the witches moved away. Today, Dogtown is a wilderness of tall trees, oddly-shaped boulders, and whispers of witchcraft

and shadows. And sprinkled throughout it all are large holes in the ground, the cellars of those long-gone buildings that settlers once called home. So if you ever visit, watch your step. You never know what you might stumble into. The northwestern corner of Connecticut is another heavily-wooded region of New England. It always has been. But when settlers arrived in the mid-1700s, they tried their best to tame it.

The community there was eventually called Cornwall. But according to the legend, sometime in the 1750s, members of one particular family started to move to the southern edges of town, away from everyone else. Gideon Dudley was the first, followed a short time later by two of his brothers. Then a distant cousin named Martin Dudley arrived. Other families followed them, of course, but the settlement never grew very large. And by the 1850s, there were just over 20 families living there. And thanks to the founding Dudley brothers, Cornwall would always be known by another

name, Dudleytown. Then as is sometimes the case, life changed. The Midwest opened up, and people moved in that direction for a fresh start and a new life. The iron industry that had thrived for decades began to dwindle, until finally there was little reason to stick around at all. Three of the four original Dudleys moved away, and they fared much better in their new homes. But Abiel, the one who remained behind, didn't share in that good fortune, which has led

some to believe in a curse that hovers over the region. Some say the curse is connected to a Dudley ancestor who was executed for treason back in England, and that this curse followed the Dudley family to Connecticut. It's mostly just a lot of local legend, but what we do know is that some pretty odd things have happened in Dudleytown, so the curse story sure looks like a great hook to hang your coat on, if you know what I mean. Because Abiel Dudley ended up losing his entire fortune. Shortly before he passed away in 1799, the town of Cornwall actually stepped in and took

possession of his property to cover his debts. But rather than disappearing, a curse, if it really exists at all, seems to have just stayed with the land, as a whole string of unusual events seem to point out. First it was a neighbor of Abiel's who was killed while helping another neighbor build a barn. The neighbor who survived was a man in William Tanner, and he managed to escape the curse and live to the ripe old age of 104. But during his long years in Dudleytown, he claimed to have seen unusual things.

Things like unnatural creatures that approached his house from the woods at night, or shadows that moved through the trees. The one final tale from Dudleytown tells us that Sarah Fay, the wife of a Revolutionary War general, was standing on her front porch sometime in 1804 when a freak storm blew in. Then as she was looking up at the clouds, a bolt of lightning flashed down and struck her, killing her instantly. Her husband, Herman, was said to have gone insane after that. Like Dudleytown, the Dudleytown of today is little more than dense woods and the occasional

stone lined foundation hole. Then while the people who lived there are long gone, each location still plays host to its own mix of folklore and rumor. Because even when you take the people out of a town, something always stays behind. And sure, New England is really old, relatively speaking, and time has a way of helping everything fade away, people, events, even places. So maybe it's not a big surprise that Dogtown and Dudleytown no longer exist. That said, a community doesn't have to be ancient for that to happen.

In fact, there are some places that are far younger than any New England town, and yet their past is full of violence and tragedy and death. In fact, if the stories are true, there are abandoned towns out west that are inhabited by much more than just story. Because sometimes the past refuses to die. When gold was discovered in the American West back in the early 1800s, it acted like a beacon, attracting thousands of adventurous Americans to its light. They flocked to California, Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, and many other dusty, rocky, harsh

environments, and in 1862, after gold was found at Grasshopper Creek, they rushed to Bannock, Montana. Being the 1860s, some of Bannock's first settlers included civil war deserters, people who preferred getting rich over fighting for their country. They were joined by common thugs, con artists, and career miners who had failed so many times before that they were beyond desperate. Putting them all together in one place could never end well. There was constant danger from the outside, too.

Remember, once gold was collected, it needed to be transported away to truly be valuable, which, of course, created ample job opportunities for anyone interested in the age-old profession of highway robbery. And when it came to stealing gold from travelers in 1860s Montana, no one did it better than the innocents. The innocents were a legendary gang of outlaws, preying on the people who had finally struck it rich. Once gold was packaged up and transported out of town, it was this collection of thieves

and gunmen who chased them down and relieved them of their burden, so to speak. They did it often, and if anyone resisted, they did it with violent force. The documents we have today show evidence of at least eight murders committed by the innocents, but local legend puts that number much higher, closer to 100. The trouble was, local Sheriff Henry Plummer didn't seem interested in helping to track the innocents down, so as humans have always been so very good at doing, the people of Bannock took justice into their own hands, and they caught them. It turns out the leader of the innocents was none other than Sheriff Henry Plummer himself,

which explained a lot. And because the crimes went beyond highway robbery and deep into the realm of murder, he and 22 other members of his gang were rounded up and executed in nearby Virginia City. Over 5,000 people turned out to watch the hangings. Hangings, by the way, that took place on gallows built years before, on the orders of one man, Sheriff Plummer. Bannock is empty now, and appears exactly as you would imagine in Old West Ghost Town to look.

Many of the original buildings are still there, but they're just empty shells now, void of human life. Some say the town is far from empty, though, that something still walks the dusty streets and empty buildings. The Ghost of Sheriff Plummer. The town of Bodie has its own dark history. Situated roughly 200 miles to the east of Sacramento, near the Nevada border, this abandoned California mining town has everything you might expect, from glory days

and tragic collapse to other, less explainable qualities. And it all began in 1859. That was the year that four men discovered gold just north of Mono Lake. After one of the men, a 44-year-old former tin merchant from Poughkeepsie, New York named W.S. Bodie, died in a blizzard. The others decided to name the camp after him. It's been Bodie ever since. Give or take a change in spelling, that is.

A mining town quickly grew up around the camp, and by the 1870s it was booming. Millions of dollars of gold were being shipped out of the town every year, and people were flocking to that golden glow. But all good things come to an end, even if that ending is slow and drawn out. The blows that killed Bodie came in waves. A fire in 1892. The closing of the railroad in 1917. Another fire 15 years later.

The Great Depression. Each event acted like a nail, slowly locking the lid of the coffin down on a town that had once been so alive and vibrant. Still, some things refused to completely go into the grave. Multiple spirits have been seen by visitors to the old town over the decades since it was abandoned. Some have seen what they describe as a ghostly Chinese woman peering out from the window of one of the buildings, while other buildings have played host to the sounds of laughing children. The stories that attempt to explain these experiences, pairing names and legends with the

sights and sounds, are a bit of a mixed bag, but all of them speak to a powerful idea. Human settlements, even after all the inhabitants have moved away, seem to have a way of living on. But there's something else in Bodie that's darker than the ghosts of the past. If the stories are true, the town is also home to a curse. I've heard it rationalized a number of ways. Some people think that the remains of Bodie are so precious to its ghostly inhabitants, that they actively hate thieves.

Others think it has roots in the town's survivalist spirit. The people of Bodie suffered through starvation, exhaustion, even tragedy. All to earn a living there. And that means everything in town was precious and valuable. As a result, there are multiple stories of people who have visited the town and left with souvenirs, only to have life fall apart a short time later. One man stole a glass bottle, triggering a series of accidents in his family that left them injured and afraid.

Another took a rusty nail home and experienced so much hardship that he actually put it in an envelope and mailed it back. But some things can't be mailed back. Occasionally, the things that poison the spirit of a town can't be blamed on random tragedy or events outside their control. Sometimes, a town seems to voluntarily invite the shadows in. Once they arrive, though, they tend to put down roots. People have lived in the area for decades.

They started to roll in before the ink on the Louisiana Purchase was dry and just kept moving west. Right here, though, in the flat green land about three miles north of Spring River, they encountered a community of Native Americans from the Osage tribe and had to fight to claim the land. Don't get me wrong, this was Osage land. They'd been there for at least two centuries after being forced out of their original home territory farther east.

But the white man was good at pushing, and they pushed the Osage right out of town. And since the 1820s, the community there had grown like a weed. In the late 1850s, two of the more prominent men in town, D.S. Holman and P.A. Love, worked together and registered their town with the state of Missouri, just to make it official. The state welcomed them in, and life continued on in the same way it always had, except, you know, more officially, I suppose. Naturally, the freshly minted town known as Avila needed a post office,

so Mr. Holman set it up and gave the job of postmaster to himself. And it was through that post office that so much of the news from the outside world flowed in. Within a year, though, that news started to take on a darker flavor. War was coming, they said. A war between the states over the issue of slavery, which was a bit tricky for the people of Avila, because while slavery was legal in Missouri, most of the people in town didn't care for it.

In fact, when it came time to pick sides, they threw their hat in with the Union without ever thinking twice about it. The local physician, Dr. Stemins, even freed his slaves, literally putting his money where his mouth was. When Confederate troops in the area caught wind of it, though, they rode to Avila. On March 8th of 1862, a raiding party fell on Doc Stemins' home, looting what they wanted before burning it all to the ground.

Then they stood the good doctor up and put a bullet in his head, sending a message to anyone else in town who might be thinking of following in his footsteps. The plan backfired. Avila rose up, created their own local militia, and began to patrol the area looking for Confederates who might be doing the same thing in other towns. They were vicious, too, taking down groups of rebels much larger than their own,

sometimes defeating a hundred or more in a single battle. Then something happened. Legend says that on one of their patrols, they discovered the corpse of a man in a Confederate uniform. No one knew who had killed the man, but judging by the state of decomposition, he'd been killed days before. A bullet hole in the man's rotting skull certainly told them how, though.

As a way of warning the other Confederates to stay away, one of the soldiers brought the dead man's head back to Avila. There, he found a tree in the orchard alongside the road near the Dunlop farm and hung the skull from a branch, and that skull hung there for so long that people began to call its home the Death Tree. The Civil War eventually ended and peace returned to Avila, but folks left that skull in the tree

as a reminder of how strong and determined they all were. The next few decades tested that strength, though. First, a new railroad line was installed between Springfield and Carthage, but it skipped Avila entirely. Business dried up for many of the shops in town, and by the 1940s, the younger generation was moving out in search of work elsewhere.

There's not much left of Avila today. The few original buildings still standing are just empty shells waiting for their turn to fall over. But there are about 100 people still living there, still holding on to their community, and still doing their best to get by. But they're not alone. According to the stories, Avila is home to something else,

something far less human than you might expect. Multiple witnesses have reported seeing a shadow-like figure that moves through town, sometimes even passing through locked doors. It's said that the figure is more visible out of the corner of your eye than straight on, but it's been seen at all hours of the day in multiple locations around town. The darkest tales, though, are about a more visible entity. They call him Rotten Johnny Reb,

a nickname that hints at both the stench he seems to give off, as well as his origin story. Johnny Reb, you see, was a common term for Confederate soldiers. According to the stories, this figure is the very same soldier who lost his head all those years before. Witnesses describe him as a walking, rotting corpse dressed in military clothing. Some say he wears a long leather coat and carries a rusty Winchester rifle,

while others claim that he's been seen crawling around on the ground as if he's looking for something important. And while the shadowy figures never seem to bother anyone, Rotten Johnny Reb is another story entirely. Not only does he notice people in town, he's been said to approach them. Whether the stories are true or not, ghost towns certainly represent something powerful in the world of folklore. They seem to be two very different things all at the same time,

empty, forgotten places that are also somehow overflowing with tales and activity. We can debate the existence of ghosts and curses all we want, but there's no denying the power of story. Still, if you ever find yourself in a villa at night and you catch the scent of rotten flesh on the wind, do yourself a favor. Run. Ghost towns are oddly attractive to us.

They're something magnetic about being able to step into a place where an entire town once thrived and be the only person there. To walk through buildings that were once homes or streets that used to hum with life, for the briefest of moments, it can seem like you're the only person in the world. On the other hand, ghost towns can also be a little horrifying. Think of it this way, archaeologists have found graffiti that dates back thousands of years in places like the interior of the Great Pyramid and the walls of Pompeii. It's part of who we are.

We have a deep need to leave our mark on the world. Legendary martial arts pioneer Bruce Lee once said that the key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. And that's why ghost towns can be a bit frightening, because they stand as proof that, no, not everything we build will stand the test of time. But sure, some things still remain. People who visit Bodhi get to walk through buildings that still feel like a time capsule. The general store still has product on the shelf,

and homes still have furniture in them. As I mentioned before, some of those old items have been stolen by tourists, only to be sent back when life starts feeling a little, well, cursed. In fact, the park rangers there in Bodhi say they receive packages all the time. And over at the museum gift shop, they keep a photo album full of the letters that came with those returned objects, letters that are full of guilt and regret and hope. Hope that maybe by returning these items, they might end the curse. But it's not always that easy.

Even though the post office is still open in Avila, Missouri, there's nothing to send back. For that town, it's more a matter of finding things. That's because the tale of Rotten Johnny Reb points to a particular solution. You see, all those sightings of the ghostly rebel crawling around on the ground were a hint. He's looking for his head, they say, but if the town wants to be rid of him for good, they have their work cut out for them. According to locals, they just need to find that old tree,

dig up the skull beneath it, and then set the whole thing on fire. And really, how hard could that be? But then again, that's the trouble. The people of Avila have apparently forgotten which tree it is. Ghost towns have a way of hinting that there's something more, just beneath the surface. Whether it's a spirit-infested town or tales of cursed families, these abandoned places seem to be far from empty. And if you stick around after the break, I have a story about one that's almost too frightening to

believe. The abandoned New England settlement known as Dogtown is home today to a lot more than just a collection of sunken foundations and overgrown clearings. There are also the boulders, boulders with messages carved on them. They're the work of Roger Babson, a successful businessman from the late 19th century and founder of Babson College. During the Great Depression, Babson wanted to help his community find work, so he used some of his fortune to pay out-of-work stone cutters to carve inspirational messages into 36 boulders throughout Dogtown. They're covered in cliched sayings, such as never try, never win, or stay out of debt. It was one of those noble ideas with a

corny execution, but the guy was giving back to his community, so let's cut him some slack. But the Babson boulders aren't the only carved stones in Dogtown. In 1896, Charles Mann wrote a book about the area called In the Heart of Cape Anne, or The Story of Dogtown, and in it he spends a good amount of time identifying the former owners of many of the now-gone homes in the settlement, and then he pauses and mentions something different, two stones in a nearby field. The first has a simple message on it, marked in two words, first, attack. The one beside it gives us more of the story. James Mary, it said, died September 10, 1892. The author then goes on to answer the obvious question of what happened

to this James Mary person. Historian Mark Kurlansky tells us that James Mary was a well-traveled sailor who lived in Dogtown at the end of the 1800s. On a journey to Spain, he had encountered bullfighting, and when he returned, he bragged about having become a matador himself. At the age of 60, Mary acquired a bull and trained with it regularly to put on a show for the locals. That's when something went wrong. The first attack was in 1891. The bull grazed him and left his body bloody, and his pride bruised. Many months later, in September of 1892, the bull finished the job. But here's where things get weird. After wondering for days where James Mary had gone, his friends went looking for him and found him in that field near his bull.

He'd been horribly gored, but his body also showed signs of a different kind of animal attack. Large claws had torn out his throat. But that left the locals with a new mystery. What kind of animal is tall enough to slash at the neck of a man who, according to Charles Mann, stood nearly seven feet tall? The answer might be hiding in a modern story. In 1984, there were multiple sightings west of the Gloucester area of what can only be described as a large beast. One man saw the creature near Crane's Beach in Ipswich, while multiple people in Raleigh saw it the following week. The one man even found the body of a deer that had been viciously torn apart.

Finally, on March 23, two teens near Gloucester managed to get a good look at the beast. It was, according to one local report, a large gray dog, but more monstrous and frightening. The teens saw the creature running past them along the road, but when they reported it to the police, they added one very intriguing detail. This creature, whatever it might have been, had been running down a road that ended in one very special place. Dogtown Sometimes folklore gives us the answers we have been searching for, while other times it just brings up more questions. When it comes to Dogtown,

the biggest question is possibly also the most disturbing. What exactly is the dog? The settlement is known for. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marsette Crockett and Carl Nellis, and music by Chad Lawson. This is my friendly reminder that Lore is a lot more than just a bi-weekly podcast. There's an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more. And you can learn about everything over in one place, theworldoflore.com slash now. You can also follow the show on social media. We're over there on Twitter,

Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. If you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.