Lore - Legends 60: Operatic

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Some places only have a handful of dark stories to explore. Today’s subject, though, is the land of a ten-thousand tales. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra de Alba. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: MeUndies: Slide into game changing comfort with MeUndies. Get up to 50% off at MeUndies.com/lore with the promo code LORE. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring. Acorns: Acorns helps you automatically save & invest for your future. Head to Acorns.com/LORE to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today! Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

It's an odd exhibit considering the location. If the stories are true, it's a piece of ancient history. It's a large stone covered in writing, with a date that makes it roughly 650 years old, and you can see it for yourself if you swing by the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce. It's not just ordinary writing, though. No, this stone is thought to contain a record of an event that happened, a sort of memorial, if you will. According to the writing on its cold gray surface,

30 Scandinavian explorers had set up camp for the nights in the area, only to meet a grizzly end. It seems that a few of them headed out fishing one day, only to return and find ten of the men who stayed behind, dead and bloody. And just as we might build a monument to fallen soldiers today, they had set up a record of their own small tragedy. But here's the truly mysterious part of the stone. It wasn't found in Sweden or Ireland or anywhere else in Europe.

No, this Viking stone from 1362, covered in ruins that capture a dark tale, was discovered in 1910 in western Minnesota. The farmer who uncovered it, as well as the community who surrounded him, named it for the nearest town, which is why even today, it's known as the Kensington Rune Stone.

As you'd imagine, a claim that wild has been hotly debated for well over a century. The idea that Vikings, those marauding seafarers of the medieval world, had somehow navigated a complex series of lakes and rivers all the way from the northeast of modern-day America to the landlocked state of Minnesota. For most historians, it's pure fantasy. But the Kensington Rune Stone does contain one bit of truth, A landscape doesn't technically have to be ancient to contain a multitude of amazing legends.

Even in the middle of the United States, where old buildings look like new constructions compared to places like Europe, there's a rich trove of story for us to explore. So join me as we take a trip into the land of 10,000 lakes. Don't let your guard down, though, because there's more to Minnesota than giant mosquitoes and campgrounds. In fact, one particular city contains enough legends of dark and terrible things, to leave us downright terrified. I'm Aaron Manky, and this is lore legends. Duluth, Minnesota isn't really a very big place.

With a population of 90,000 people, you had never guessed that it was once home to some of the richest men in the country. In fact, people have claimed that at one point, Duluth had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the U.S. Unfortunately, that factoid isn't true, but that doesn't mean that their collective wealth wasn't impressive regardless. The number of millionaires in this little town, while not the highest in America, was still staggering.

This can all be attributed to the fact that Duluth used to be a major port city. Located right on the tip of Lake Superior, it was in the perfect spot to facilitate trade between Canada and the United States. And when their shipping industry boomed, then local industry as a whole experienced a boom as well. Duluth was a mini-industrial powerhouse until the factories began closing in the 1970s. Today, its main attractions are the beautiful views of Lake Superior and a number of historic buildings. And of course, those buildings are said to be extremely haunted. One of the more famous historic sites in Duluth is the Glenshine Mansion.

Built in the early 20th century, the Jacobian-style estate was meant to be a self-sufficient paradise away from the more chaotic, crowded cities of the region. Its owners, Chester and Clara Congdon, had wanted a home on the shores of Lake Superior where Clara could escape from nosy neighbors and their six children could have a happy childhood. And the Congdon family enjoyed that peaceful life in their mansion, until Charles died of an illness in 1916. At the time of his death, he was thought to be the wealthiest man in Minnesota, which means that he had plenty of money to leave to his grieving widow. That money kept Clara comfortable, allowing her to live out the rest of her life in the home that she loved so much.

After her husband died, Clara stayed in the Glenshine Mansion until her own death at the age of 96 years old. Her sole companion through the latter half of her life was her daughter Elizabeth, who had dropped out of college when her father died so that she could stay with her mother. After Clara was gone, Elizabeth stayed at Glen Sheen until she too died in the mansion just like her mother had. Although unlike her mother, her cause of death was far from natural. You see, in 1977, Elizabeth and her night nurse, Velma, were murdered in cold blood. It was eventually discovered that one of Elizabeth's own adopted daughters, Marjorie Caldwell, was behind the murder. It wasn't even the first time that she had tried to kill Elizabeth.

Only a few years prior, she had hid a lethal dose of sedatives in Elizabeth's marmalade. So clearly a very well-adjusted family dynamic, right? But the property lived on. After Elizabeth had been killed, the Glenshine Mansion went to the University of Minnesota. And only two years after that, it was opened as a historic home that offered guided tours. Now, tour guides don't ever mention the murders. As far as any visitors are concerned, the Congdon family all died of natural deaths. Still, that hasn't stopped rumors that the estate is haunted.

According to witnesses, the lights flicker on and off of their own power. Some have felt cold spots on the staircase where Velma was murdered, while others have seen a white mist moving around the library as if it were perusing the books. This might be a haunted house, and two lives may have been cut tragically short within its walls, but the glenching mansion was so much more than that. For decades, it was a beloved home. This was where a family laughed together and cried together, where they broke bread together, and where they comforted each other.

Elizabeth and Velma may have been murdered, but that act of violence didn't define this house. It was, at its heart, a place of love and belonging. And when it comes to paranormal experiences at the glenching mansion, the most commonly reported one isn't scary at all. Visitors feel an overwhelming sense of happiness in both the living room and the children's bedrooms, as if there were someone else there who was having a great time. It's the polar opposite of most ghost stories,

but when a house is a true home in every sense of the word, even the strongest memories won't be attached to tragedy. They will be attached to memories of happiness and love. One of the scariest haunted houses in the world isn't a house at all. In 2024, Forbes magazine released a list of the planet's seven creepiest haunted house attractions, the very best places for kids of all ages to get their Halloween thrills. It was competitive, but the William A. Irvin made the cut. And yes, that's the name of a ship.

After its completion in 1937, the William A. Irvin, or as I'll be calling it for the remainder of the story, the Irvine was named after the then-president of the U.S. Steel Company. The Irvin spent the next 40 years hauling iron and coal around the Great Lakes. Not a glamorous job, sure, but a necessary one for the nation's growing steel industry. It was decommissioned in 1978. The final entry in the captain's log read, She was the Queen of the Lakes, and so shall she remain for the rest of her job. days. In 1986, the city of Duluth bought the Irvine. Today, the ship lives a second life as a

museum on the Lake Superior waterfront, but if you're more into frights than freighters, then you should drop by later in the year, because every October, the ship is transformed into Minnesota's best haunted house. And I promise that this isn't some sort of long-winded ad for this ship, although I'm sure that my fellow horror fans truly would enjoy being chased around a giant boat by actors in ghoulish rubber masks. But my real point is this. When Halloween is over, those spooks don't actually go away. You see, according to locals, the ship is actually haunted, and the real ghosts aren't

wearing masks. The most frequently reported sighting is of a man believed to be named William Wari. This poor guy was the only recorded death on the Irvin. In 1964, a broken boiler tube sprayed water on the boiler fire. William got caught in the steam. and he was essentially scalded to death. Today's museum employees often see a figure standing in the boiler room. They have dubbed him, creatively, boiler room man,

but anyone familiar with the ship's history knows that this is most likely William's spirit stuck at the sight of his traumatic death. And yet, despite the fact that he is the only person known to have died on board, there are many more ghosts hanging around, and no one really has an explanation for those. One of the ship's more famous permanent residence is a little girl. People have speculated that she was the child of one of the employees, or maybe that she was somehow connected to the U.S. Steel Company. Whoever she was, she's been seen running around rather frequently, swishing her white skirts and laughing as she goes.

And some think that it's also possible that she has somehow connected to another apparition on the ship, an old woman who wears an old-fashioned white dress and walks along the deck. Not every reported incident involves visible apparitions. One actor for the haunted attraction on the ship said that he once felt a pair of invisible hands grab him. Some of the employees have been forced to dodge objects that have been thrown at them, and another said that he heard the sound of, and I quote, someone counting bolts, like if you had a handful in your hand, chucking them back into a bucket. And one other employee claims that he regularly heard the sound of footsteps.

In fact, he heard it so frequently that he acknowledged whoever was making the sound, beginning each shift on the ship with a chipper, Good Morning. Soon after he started this ritual, the footsteps stopped, and they never bothered him again. The hauntings on the ship mostly follow all of the usual beats. There are orbs of light that float in mid-air, objects that move on their own, doors that slam, disembodied voices, mysterious banging noises, and even the sound of a piano heard being played somewhere else in the ship. And the ship has been the subject of multiple paranormal investigations,

and they all come to the same conclusion. The boat is wildly haunted. Some of them even walk away with scratches all over their bodies as a gruesome souvenir from the ship's more unpleasant residence. As someone who doesn't really like getting clawed up by a ghost, I don't think that I will be visiting the William A. Irvin any time soon. But if you decide to drop by, I'd encourage you to go while the haunted house is up and running.

Just know that if you see a little girl in white wandering around, that's not an actor in a costume. There once was a time when every town with a substantial population of wealthy people felt that it needed an opera house, and Duluth was no exception. In October of 1889, Duluth opened a grand new theater called the Temple Opera House.

It had actually been built to replace the previous opera house, which had caught fire in January of the same year. The Duluth Daily News hailed the new construction as, and I quote, grand imposing, beautiful. Beautiful it may have been, but lucky it was not. Just like its predecessor had in 1888, the new theater burned to the ground in 1895. One newspaper wrote about the firefighting effort saying, like the forked tongues of so many demons, they seemed to laugh at the puny streams which were directed against them. For the highest spray throne fell far short of the top of the six-story building, while those which were thrown through the windows were as powerless to stop the

flames as though they had been shot out with a squirt gun. In the end, all that was left of the Temple Opera House was a couple of exterior walls that had somehow remained standing through the firestorm. When residents asked if it would be rebuilt for a second time, they were answered with a resounding no. Apparently, the theater had actually been operating at a loss before it was destroyed. No investors wanted to gamble on a third Duluth Opera House, and I can't say that I blame them. Statistically speaking, the odds just weren't all that great. Throughout that winter, a steady trickle of gawkers came to look at the charred ruins of the Temple Opera House, but for the most part life moved on for the people of Duluth. That is, until March 1st of 1896,

when the Duluth News Tribune reported that a local man had seen a ghost among the ruins. A, quote, prominent real estate man, who wished to remain anonymous, had been walking home late at night, and he had taken a shortcut through the rubble, following a well-worn path that wound its way through the debris. The realtor claimed that as the clock struck midnight, he saw her. The newspaper article wrote that, and I quote, a pale, shadowy form arose in a corner of the rear of the ruins, apparently from a pile of rubbish, and glided rather than walked to the center of the open space surrounded by the walls. The realtor actually thought that she was trash at first, just some paper and ash blowing through the wind. But then he realized that the trash was actually a stunningly

beautiful woman. With long black hair, creamy white skin, and a silk night robe wrapped around her body, she looked like an opera diva who had just been called out of her dressing room. According to the article, the man approached her, but before he could get too close, she faded into nothing. Thoroughly spooked the realtor ran for it. He was so frightened when he arrived home that he didn't tell his wife or children about what he had seen in case they laughed at him. But the next morning, his wife asked about the ghost anyway. It seems that he had talked in his sleep about her, and that had piqued his wife's curiosity. So over breakfast, he told his family about what he had experienced the night before. Unfortunately, his initial instinct was correct. They did indeed laugh at him,

but they wouldn't be laughing for long. That night, his sons, went out to the Opera House ruins to investigate the matter for themselves, and at midnight on the dot, they saw her, the ghost of the Opera House. The realtor claimed that since then, another 20 people had also seen her, all of whom were of sound mind. The newspaper seemed inclined to believe him, too, speculating that the ghost may be trying to reveal some kind of nefarious plot. Maybe this ghost knew the true cause of the fire that destroyed the theater, or perhaps she herself had been a victim.

It's just that, well, somehow they forgot to bring up the fact that the fire had happened long after the opera house had been emptied, and that no human remains had ever been found in the rubble. Over the next several nights, ghost fever in Duluth reached a fever pitch. After the newspaper article was published, locals started waiting at the opera house every night to see the beautiful ghost. One journalist reported that for a few nights, over 300 people showed up, most of whom, funnily enough, were men.

Every night, someone would exclaim that they had seen her, and then the men would begin throwing bricks at the spot where the apparition had allegedly popped up. It's unclear what their goal was here, but they did it every night, several nights in a row. Maybe they wanted to scare the ghost away, or perhaps it was the grown-up version of pulling a pretty girl's pigtails, or maybe none of them knew what they were doing. It's totally possible that the bricks were the result of a mindless mob mentality. Whatever the real reason, the crowds and destruction became,

became an attraction of their own, drawing in another kind of observer, because soon enough, that eager audience of men was joined by the police. A full week had passed since the first sightings of the beautiful woman were reported, and Duluth's ghost fever hadn't cooled down even one day. degree. People were still gathering at the theater every single night, throwing bricks and causing a ruckus. So when a young man ran up to a group of police officers at 9 p.m., telling them that he had seen the opera house ghost, they believed him, and they took off running for the ruins. The officers weren't actually all that eager to see a ghost. In fact, they were terrified. In no way

had they signed up for ghost hunting when they joined the police force. But this spirit was disturbing the piece, and it was their job to handle that. With heads held high, they bravely ventured into the ruins, doing their best to ignore their racing hearts and their sweaty palms. So it's no surprise that when they saw a dark figure lurking in the corner, they acted impulsively. Dropping into a crouch, the officers grabbed as many bricks as they could from the ground, chucking them towards the shadow. They only stopped when the figure fell over, hitting the floor with a hollow thud. Their target hadn't been a beautiful ghostwoman. It hadn't even been a real woman. It seems the police had launched an assault on a piece of wood. Apparently, some trickster had put a wooden Native American statue

inside the opera house ruins and covered him with a white shirt, and the poor officers had fallen for it. Thankfully, the city of Duluth eventually lost interest in their mysterious ghost, and significantly fewer bricks were flung around in the ensuing months. As for the opera house itself, It never really came back, but today there's an operational theater standing where it once did. I'm not sure if the beautiful ghost has stayed through all the changes, but if anyone sees her, then you know what to do. All you'll need are a few bricks. Most American cities have a few legends hiding in the shadows.

whisper them and historians have spent decades picking them apart. One thing they can all agree on, though, is that the stories we hold on to can often be incredibly entertaining. Now, admittedly, Duluth may not be the biggest town we've ever covered on this show, but its ghosts still pack a heavy punch. For our final story, though, we're going a little further out, onto Lake Superior, that is. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of lore was made possible by MeUndies. Okay, we all know that summer is amazing, right? Sunshine road trips, beach days, all of that.

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Squarespace, build something beautiful. When most people imagine a lake, they probably think of somewhere that's calm, where the opposite shoreline is clearly visible. Lakes, as we imagine them, are meant to be the kind of place where you go tubing and cliff diving in the summer. The Great Lakes, though, are a completely different animal. They're more like tiny oceans. Unlike most lakes, no one should be trying to cross these vast stretches of water in little motorboats. They go so deep that their depths are more akin to an ocean,

and their currents can become just as strong as those on the Atlantic, particularly during a storm. Lake Superior generally has the tallest waves out of all the Great Lakes, with swells that can reach over 30 feet high, about the same height as a three-story building. So it's no wonder that so many ships meet their end in those turbulent waters. Ships like the Bannockburn. On November 20th of 1902, the Bannockburn left Ontario, loaded with 85,000 bushels of wheat.

It was a standard cargo, and the ship was going along a standard route, just a totally routine trip across Lake Superior. The crew of 20 men would land in Duluth, unload the wheat, and then head back to Canada. It was that simple. But nothing about this voyage. went the way it was supposed to. Just a day after they set out, a storm descended upon the lake. Soon, the Bannockburn was buffeted between towering waves and 50-mile-an-hour winds.

And it wasn't the only one. There were 40 ships on the lake that day, almost all of which got caught in the swell. One crew member from another steamer wrote in his journal that it was, and I quote, the worst storm of the season. After the storm was over, 39 ships had made it to their final destinations. The Bannockburn, however, never did. Less than a week later, on November 26th, newspapers began to print stories about the ship being missing.

A few captains who had been out on the lake during the storm stepped forward and claimed that they had seen the Bannockburn out on the water that night, but none had seen her sense. Of course, search parties were sent out, but none returned with any evidence of the ship's fate. And then, on December 12th, a life jacket with the name Bannockburn stenciled on it, was found floating near the shore in Grand Moray, Minnesota. The jacket was tied tight, as though it had been secured over a body, but there was

no body inside of it now. There were only bloodstains splattered along the straps. Six months later, another Bannockburn life jacket was found on the Canadian side of the lake. At this point, everyone already knew that the ship had sunk, but this second life jacket seemed to cement the fact that none of the crew had survived. In 1909, a book about all boats that had sunk in the Great Lakes was published. It dubbed the Bannockburn, the Flying Dutchman of Lake Superior. And even though there was, at that point, no evidence that anyone had seen anything resembling the famous ghost ship, the story took hold in the public's imagination. For nearly a century, people have reported seeing the Bannockburn out on Lake Superior. Most witnesses are scanty

with the finer details about what it looks like, although one 1917 report called it, and I quote, all white with ice and ghostly in the darkness. The most recent sighting was in 2001. Since then, no one else has reported seeing the Bannockburn. It's almost as if it's finally disappeared, sinking beneath the waves. This episode of lore legends was produced by me, Aaron Manky, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra de Alba. Don't like hearing ads.

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