Lore - Lore 246: The Greatest Show

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Few examples of folklore are as well-traveled as this one, complete with painful tragedy and dark echos of the past. Grab your ticket and step inside. Narrated/produced by Aaron Mahnke and written by GennaRose Nethercott, with research by Cassandra de Alba and music by Chad Lawson. —————— CONSUMED, my newest full-cast fiction podcast, premieres January 31st. Learn more and subscribe here. —————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com —————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. HelloFresh: Get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Go to HelloFresh.com/LoreFree, and use code LOREFREE for free breakfast for life! One breakfast item per box while subscription is active. To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here. ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Hey folks, Aaron here. Back in 2021, I released my first full cast audio fiction show called Bridgewater. You can think of it as a TV show for your ears, sort of a hybrid between the X-Files and a lot of the stories you've heard here on lore. And Bridgewater really connected with people. We cracked the Apple Podcast Top 10 charts, won a Best Fiction Podcast Award, and went on to make an amazing second season. And I blame part of that success on the talented team behind the scenes, but also on our cast,

which included amazing performers like Misha Collins, Melissa Ponziio, Alan Tudyk, Trisha Helfer, Will Wheaton, and so many others. So why am I telling you all this? Well because this week, the Bridgewater Universe is expanding with a brand new full cast fiction podcast called Consumed. This one is a monster mystery built again on a firm foundation of folklore and legend. And while Misha Collins returns for a guest role to tie it all together, we've got a ton of new performers on board.

Rachel Rosenblum and Arturo Castro help bring the story to life, along with Genevieve Padalecki and Ruth Connell, plus a whole bunch of others. And because I want you to fall in love with this new show as fast as possible, the first two episodes of Consumed will premiere this week on Wednesday, January 31st. You can hear the trailer and find subscribe links over at the webpage for the show, grimandmild.com slash consumed. And once you've subscribed, make sure to tell a few friends to do the same. Honestly, shows like this take a massive amount of work and any bit of help that you can lend

us in making it a hit. Well, it would mean the world. So there you go, consumed. My new supernatural thriller podcast arrives January 31st. Please subscribe and let me know what you think. And now, on with the show. 17. It's the age of high school crushes and prom dates of homework and gossip and teenage angst.

Or if your name is Rosa Matilda Richter, it's the age of flying 70 feet through the air after being shot out of a cannon. On April 2, 1877, Rosa, or Zazzle as she was publicly known, became the world's first ever human cannonball. The stunt involved a rubber spring-loaded cannon, which, when lit with a fuse, rocketed Zazzle over an audience to, hopefully, land in a safety net. Now, I say hopefully because AIM wasn't exactly the cannon's strong suit. Spectacle?

Yes. Precision? Not so much. And the audience knew this, too, making the suspense all the more delightful. But lucky for Zazzle when the shot rang out and she soared over the crowd, she somehow landed miraculously on the other side. Safe and sound. And with that, the London teenager became an instant celebrity.

She had literally cannonballed to fame. And suddenly this kid was touring the world, performing her human cannonball stunt up to twice a day for sold out crowds as large as 10,000 people. Think the Ares Tour, but with more potential for death. Now, just because that first show went off without a hitch, it doesn't mean that they were all so smooth. She suffered her fair share of injuries over the years. But none of that slowed Zazzle down.

This was her art form, her passion, and nothing would stop her. Until, well, it did. In 1891, while on tour in New Mexico, the unthinkable happened. But it wasn't her beloved canon that betrayed her. No, after performing her canon ballax successfully, Zazzle fell from a tightrope. She survived, but she broke her back, ending her career in the circus forever. It's a common enough tale from the big top, a blend of the fantastical and the tragic, and stories like that, well, they have a way of leaving a mark. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. lower. Almost like a fairytale, we start with seven brothers.

Their names were Albert, Otto, Alfred, Charles, John, Henry, and Gus. But don't worry, there won't be a quiz at the end. Their father, August, a German immigrant, raised the boys on the road, along with their one sister, Ida. Together the family moved from city to city, town to town, but there was one spot that always seemed to draw them back, a little place called Baraboo, Wisconsin. And in 1875, the family landed there for good. Now, Baraboo was an industrial hub, or rather it had been ever since white settlers had forcibly removed the indigenous

Hochuk population. The land was on a river, you see, and the settlers wanted to build mills, which is exactly what they did. Baraboo was soon producing wool, lumber, flour, you see, and the settlers wanted to build mills, which is exactly what they did. Baraboo was soon producing wool, lumber, flour, and more, shuttled all over the country via a robust railroad system. But it wouldn't be the wool or flour or lumber that would really put Baraboo on the map. It would be those seven brothers. By the mid-1880s, most of the brothers were grown up, so like any enterprising young people, they decided to start a business.

And their business just happened to be show business. The eldest brother, Albert, had worked as an acrobat, juggler, and tightrope walker in circuses before, so they decided to start a circus of their own. They named this new endeavor after themselves. Sure, their surname changed a little, switching from the Germanic version into English, a U with an umlaut replaced with an I, but the pronunciation stayed the same. Ringling. That's right, together, these men were known as the Ringling Brothers. And each had their own role to bring to their fledgling circus life. Albert, with his performing experience and eye for talent, picked the X.

Alf and Gus were the hype men, with Alph heading publicity and Gus arranging advertising. Charles served as the producer while Otto managed the money. And if we're thinking of this as an Ocean's Eleven heist team sort of way, which I am, John was the getaway driver so to speak, in charge of arranging the show's transportation. And lastly, Henry attended every single performance just to make sure that all of it was running smoothly. Before long, the Ringling Brothers had become one of the biggest circuses

in the United States, and it was only getting larger. They started buying up and absorbing other shows, including the legendary Barnum and Bailey, which the brothers acquired in 1907. And for a while, they kept those shows all touring separately. But when audiences started to dwindle during World War I, they merged into one whopping super circus.

And let me tell you, this was a fever dream of a show. The massive circus boasted 1,100 people, 735 horses, and almost 1,000 other animals. It took 90 to 100 brightly painted train cars to transport everything from place to place. The age of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey had arrived. Now, just imagine being a farm kid out in the rural Midwest and seeing one of these spectacles chug through town. A seemingly endless train flashing with gold leaf and red paint, maybe you'd even catch a glimpse of a lion's paw or an elephant's trunk poking out from between the silver bars and then Tense billowing up in an open field the smell of roasting peanuts knife throwers and trapeze artists and strongmen

It must have seemed like something from another world and to many people it was another world one that provided an escape from their daily lives And worries so much so that running away to join the circus has basically become shorthand for running away from your problems, running away from your ghosts. But the thing is, not even the circus can run forever. Every winter, Ringling Brothers returns home to its off-season base for rest, training, and preparation for the year ahead. For the first 36 years of their existence, that base was a massive circus enclave called Ringlingville, located right in the heart of the city where it all began, Baraboo, Wisconsin.

And trust me, although the brothers are long gone by now, Baraboo hasn't forgotten them. And neither have the ghosts. The circus is a magical place, a place where the impossible is made real. And so it makes sense that for a spectacle as larger than life as the Ringling Brothers Circus, some of their ghosts were larger than life too. And I mean a lot larger. The Ringlings got their first elephant in 1888, just four years after their circus began, and the animal quickly became a symbol of, well, the circus itself. They would continue to tour with the gentle giants until 2016, when animal rights activists

won a long battle to remove animal acts from the circus. And yet, according to legend, some of those elephants never quite escaped the circus, even after they died. According to a popular Beraboo legend set in the winter of 1930, one family became plagued by an elephant ghost right on their own property. Allegedly, Baraboo residents Alice and Patrick Green, along with Alice's widowed mother Rose, awoke one night

to a strange thumping noise. So loud it made the house shake. And it only got stranger from there. A few days later, a neighbor came over for tea and asked the Greens about the horse they were keeping in their garage, which would have been standard small talk, if not for one problem. The Greens didn't own a horse or any animals for that matter, but apparently the neighbors had spotted a giant hulking animal there in the night. Things reached a fever pitch when, one morning, the Greens awoke to find the very same garage had been flattened to rubble. At that point they called the cops. Four officers kept watch from dusk till dawn, only to be terrified by smashing windows,

loud bangs, and the house shaking so hard that everyone was knocked to the floor. After that, the police chief did some detective work. It turns out Rose's late husband had been the head elephant trainer for the circus. And that flattened barn on the property? Well it seems like it had been made with wood salvaged from none other than the old elephant barn where he had worked. And with this information in hand, the police chief believed that he had solved the case. Clearly, the family was being tormented by the ghost of an angry elephant, come to seek

vengeance on the widow of the man who had mistreated it. It's a good story for sure, but I have to admit that all of these details appear to originate from a single article in a December 1953 issue of Fates Magazine. Then in fact, the police chief cited in the story, a guy named August Marlowe, doesn't even seem to have existed. So take the whole story with an elephant-sized grain of salt. But while the story is likely fiction, that hasn't kept it from spreading. Not to mention the fact that some residents still claim to hear the trumpeting of elephants near the former

site of Ringlingville to this day. And of course, the Phantom Elephant isn't the only ghost in Baraboo. Take for example, the very haunted Al Ringling Theatre, named for Albert, not Alfred, if you're keeping track. Al had built the place himself, or rather paid exorbitantly to have it built as a gift to the city where he got his start. The theater is lavish too, with 874 seats including 17 box seats. An iron and glass canopy hangs over the entrance with a triumphal arch above and hand-painted murals all across the ceiling.

But here's the thing, the theater's beloved founder barely got to enjoy his creation. He died, you see, on New Year's Day of 1916, just six weeks after opening night. But hey, while Al never spent much time there in life, legends claim that he more than made up for it. In death. Now, if the stories are true, Al Ringling's ghost has been seen lingering in the theater in one particular spot, Box 17. As the story goes, a set designer at the theater brought his three-year-old daughter to work one day. The young girl began smiling and waving up to Box 17. She told her father that she was waving at a man.

But when the designer looked up, the box was empty. Later that same day, as the little girl and her father left the theater, a photo in the lobby caught the child's eye. Excitedly, she pointed and told her father that that was the man she'd been waving to. And I think you already know what comes next. It was a photograph of Al Ringling. But he's not the only ghost in that theater. Far from it, there's a little girl in a poofy dress, a little boy in suspenders,

a woman in white searching silently for her lost baby, a baby, according to the tales, who fell to its death from the theater balcony years before, and can still be heard crying through the audio equipment. And then there's the violent shadow man, who haunts the theater's leftmost box seats, and according to the story, once plunged his hand right into a cleaning woman's abdomen and squeezed her organs, talk about a stomach ache, and believe it or not, all of these accounts are just scratching the surface. Speaking of scratching, one story claims that a group of boys went adventuring in the rooms below the theater, but got lost and died there. Their ghosts are still scratching on the walls, trying to get out to this very day. Is there any historical evidence to back this story up?

No, no missing boys are on record, but that doesn't keep the whispers from spreading. Oh, and one last theater ghost. But this one isn't a person, not a whole one, anyway. Allegedly a workman unloading steel for construction back in 1915 accidentally severed his own finger. But, rather than go quietly, this finger, and I quote, took on a life of its own, flicking the lights on and off and even poking theater goers. And even today, when musicians in the orchestra get their notes wrong, they often blame it on the ghostly finger, reaching out from beyond the grave,

to tap the wrong note. Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey were, without a doubt, the biggest act in town. But they were far from the only one. By the 19 teens, there were around 100 American circuses traveling the country. And while many did still travel by wagon, nearly one-third of those traveled, like the Ringling Brothers, by rail. The American railroad was heavy with coal and lumber for sure, but it also rattled with bright, glimmering circus trains, all sharing the same routes.

Unfortunately, some of those trains were hurtling toward tragedy. In 1918, a show called Hagenbeck Wallace was America's third largest circus, employing some 600 people, including 60 aerialists, 60 acrobats, 60 riders, 50 clowns, and 100 dancers. Not to mention lions, tigers, zebras, elephants, camels, trick ponies, and even a hippopotamus. And understandably, this required a heck of a long train, or rather two separate trains of 28 cars each. By all accounts, June 22nd of 1922 was a warm night. The Hagenbeck Wallis Circus was heading from Michigan City, Indiana to Hammond, Indiana,

a 45-mile journey. For the first train, that trip was a breeze, and they arrived just fine. The second train, though, had to stop around 4 a.m. to deal with some light mechanical issues. Then so, they pulled onto a side track for repairs, leaving five cars on the main track. Five cars, mind you, that contained many of the circus performers asleep in their bunks. Little did they know, some of them would never wake up again. Disaster was already speeding toward them.

You see, in an empty passenger train a ways up the track, the engineer had fallen asleep at the controls. On manned, the train rocketed forward, blowing past signals warning of the stopped cars ahead, and charging right for Hagen-Bakwalis. It was the circus' breakman, Oscar Tim, who saw it first. He ran toward the oncoming train, waving his lantern and even throwing things at the window to get the engineer's attention. But it did no good. Oscar was forced to watch in horror as the passenger train flew by and smashed into the five cars on the main track.

The sound was so loud that those who lived near the crash site first thought that a steel mill had exploded. Sparks flew, the earth shook, and what followed was nothing short of chaos. The train from hell split the sleeper cars right down the middle. Performers were trapped between broken boards and twisted wreckage. The luckiest of them were flung from the heap, but some were shoved forward along the track, dragged by the still-moving train.

Some were even crushed beneath the wheels. Others tangled into warped piles of bedding, beams, and metal. And then came the fire. Cries rang out through the night as people burned alive inside the wreckage. In just one of dozens of stories, a clown named Lon Moore and an acrobat named Mary Enos had escaped the wreckage, only to dive back in to dig Mary's unconscious husband,

Eugene, from the pile of debris. They succeeded in pulling him free, but many weren't so lucky. All in all, 86 people were killed in the wreck. Another 127 were injured. It was the deadliest circus train disaster in history. And yet, despite that, only three days later, the Hagen-Beckwala Circus performed in Beloit, Wisconsin as scheduled.

This was a job, after all, and the cast and crew had mouths to feed and debts to pay. They couldn't afford to skip shows. All but one of their 25 acts were affected by the wreck, and so other circuses, Ringling Brothers included, banded together to help replace what had been lost, lending equipment or performers, or sometimes both. Anna Donovan, one of the customers for the circus, explained to a local paper, we could not stop to mourn and put on black.

We had to go on, no matter how we did feel inside. The day after this Beloit show, on June 26th of 1918, 56 victims of the train crash were buried in a cemetery plot known as Showman's Rest. It's a plot in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, reserved for circus performers and carnival workers. The founders of the plot had a simple goal in mind, for no showman to ever be buried in a popper's grave. And for the victims of the Illinois Circus wreck, that would be true. They were the first burials in the newly purchased plot.

1500 mourners turned out to the Mass Funeral, and the coffins were laid to rest with reverence and a huge shared grave. These coffins contained some of the most celebrated circus artists of their time, and yet only 13 of those 56 bodies had been identified. Many of the dead were simply too badly burned to be recognized. Others due to the transient lifestyle of that line of work have never been known beyond a nickname to begin with. Many Stones Bear words like unknown male or unknown female.

Others just simple monikers like Baldi or Smiley. Some list an occupation alone. So many names in lives. All lost to history. And yet perhaps the victims aren't as far gone as they seem. With such a legacy of tragedy, it's no wonder that many believe showman's rest is haunted. Visitors there claim to have heard the disembodied laughter of clowns on the wind, echoing throughout the cemetery.

And, trust me, I hate that idea just as much as you do. Others have heard circus music in the air. Ghost hunting groups claim that the batteries of their electronics have mysteriously drained in the area, or that the equipment has malfunctioned or jammed. Some visitors have even smelled smoke, as if the train that took so many lives is still relentlessly burning. It seems the phantoms of showman's rest aren't unperforming just yet, even in death. The show, after all, must go on.

I love the circus. There's something about that tension between its dreamy childlike magic and its seedy underbelly that makes it endlessly fascinating. A place, much like folklore, where fear and wonder intersect. From the Ringling Brothers' mythic rise to Hagenbeck Wallace's tragic crash, the circus has birthed plenty of its own folklore. And these days, with the golden age of the circus train long behind us, even the art form itself is a bit of a ghost.

So really, can you blame the nameless souls at Showman's Rest for calling out, practically begging to be remembered? But here's the thing, the most often reported haunting at Showman's Rest, well, it isn't actually human at all. Instead, countless visitors have reported hearing the spectral midnight trumpeting of elephants. A brief disclaimer for all of you animal lovers, just to ease your mind, all of the animals traveling with the Hagenbeck Wallace Circus were on the first train, safely away from the crash, so no elephants are actually buried at Showman's rest.

But that said, the plot does have a pretty special set of guardians. Five elephant statues, they're trunks lowered in mourning. One explanation for the strange animal sounds is that people are hearing nothing more than real elephants trumpeting in the nearby Brookfield Zoo a little over a mile away. A logical solution to a haunting mystery, except for one small problem. The Brookfield Zoo doesn't have a single elephant. Clearly, the circus is a place of magic, and not always of the innocent kind. The darkness hidden beneath the big top has a way of leaking out into the rest of the

world, as ghosts or something else. But sometimes, it really all is just an act. Because as one last story will help you see, some circus ghosts are nothing more than illusion. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. One of the most common misconceptions about relationships is that they have to be easy to be right. But sometimes the best ones happen when both people put in the work to make them great.

And therapy can be a place to work through the challenges you face in all of your relationships, whether with friends, work, your significant other, or anyone. I know firsthand how helpful it can be to learn positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers me to be the best version of myself because therapy isn't just for those who have experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Become your own soulmate whether you're looking for one or not. Visit betterhelp.com slash lore today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help H-E-L-P dot com slash lore. This episode was also sponsored by HelloFresh. With HelloFresh you get farm fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep.

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Make saving time your breeziest solution with quick, convenient recipes delivered right to you. Just choose your meals and select your delivery date. HelloFresh handles the meal planning and shopping so all you have to do is open your weekly box of pre-portioned ingredients and step-by-step recipes to get cooking. I love the meals from HelloFresh, and this week I'm excited to dig into their barbecue cheddar pork burgers with chipotle aioli and potato wedges. It only takes 35 minutes to put this meal together too, which means more time to relax

after a busy day. Go to HelloFresh.com slash Lore Free and use the code Lore Free for free breakfast for life. One breakfast item per box while subscription is active. That's free breakfast for life with Lore Free at HelloFresh.com slash Lore Free. HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. Close your eyes and imagine it. The heyday of the circus is in full swing. As you purchase your ticket, you can glimpse the big top lights

glimmering in the distance. But you aren't here for the main show. No, you're heading for a smaller one, off to the side, more classically known as a sideshow. The tent you step into is dark inside. But as you jostle in among your fellow spectators, a light rises on the stage. There, right before you, stands a beautiful woman. But this performer seems sort of, well, feral. Her clothes are tattered and her hair is wild. And soon, a presenter steps out and spins a yarn of the wild jungle lady, recently captured in some remote region of the world. Tonight, before your very eyes, you will watch her morph from a girl into a raging beast. And with that, she begins to change.

Hair sprouts from her skin, and fangs appear where her teeth had been. Within minutes, she's transformed entirely into a massive gorilla. But of course, none of this is real. It's only a clever illusion. An illusion made possible by Pepper's Ghost. For those that don't know, Pepper's Ghost is named after the 19th century British chemist John Henry Pepper, but the origins of the invention are much older, stretching back into the mid-16th century.

And then, in 1858, engineer Henry Dirks presented a paper on a version of the illusion to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was all well and good. Except that, well, it apparently wasn't well and good enough to make much of a stir. Enter Pepper. He improved on Dirk's design and popularized it, taking the name and the glory for himself. Which Dirk's obviously wasn't thrilled about, but look, we all love a pair of dueling illusionists, don't we? So, what exactly is Pepper's ghost? Well, it's quite literally a trick of the light.

Basically, it uses a pane of glass to make an object that's in one place appear to be in another. Usually, an object behind the audience may to appear as if it's actually in front of them. I know it's hard to grasp without seeing it, but think of it this way. It's similar to the effect of looking out through a dark window at night and seeing the fire in your fireplace reflected in the glass in front of you. So for a moment, it looks like there's a fire dancing out in your yard.

And Dirk's innovation was to basically imagine this commonplace phenomenon as a theater technique. He proposed creating a concealed compartment under the audience where an actor would stand illuminated by a strong light, and that light would then be reflected off the actor, landing on a large pane of glass in front of the audience. And the result? It would appear that there was a human hovering translusively in the air. In other words, a ghost. Now to be fair, Dirks never actually made this happen, but Pepper did, with some choice

technical improvements to boot. Most notably, he proposed that the illusion would work better if the glass were at a 45-degree angle, tilted toward the audience, with the actor lurking at a similar angle in the orchestra pit. And he was right. The effect was a success. This contraption made its debut in a performance of Charles Dickens' The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain on Christmas Eve of 1862. Pepper had watched nervously to see how the trick would go over. After all, no audience had ever seen anything like this before. Would they even buy it? So Pepper waited and hoped, and at last the ethereal skeleton appeared on the stage, hovering before the unassuming crowd. But

he needed to have worried, because that skeleton, it absolutely blew the audience's mind. That was all it took. Immediately Pepper's ghost became a theatrical sensation all throughout Victorian London. Eventually though, the novelty of the illusion wore off for London theatre-goers. But like any good ghost, Pepper's wasn't done haunting the stage. Another branch of showbiz carried on the tradition, one that was no stranger to gimmicks and trickery. That's right, the circus. Which brings us back to that shape-shifting woman in the tent.

Girl 2 Gorilla was a popular sideshow event, made possible by none other than Peppers' ghost. How? Well, with some of that same setup as before, with a pane of glass placed directly in front of the woman, along with a handy little dimming switch, by slowly dimming the light on the woman while increasing the light on the hidden actor in a gorilla costume, it would appear as though the former were transforming into the latter. Pretty cool, right?

It almost makes you wish that you could go back in time and see one of these side shows or Victorian theater performances in person. But lucky for us, we don't have to invent a time machine to see Pepper's Ghost in action. In fact, you probably already have, and didn't even know it. For one, it's the way Disney is able to conjure a ballroom full of dancing ghosts in their popular haunted mansion. It's also the technology behind hologram performances of late celebrities like Tupac and Michael Jackson. But that's not all. The Pepper's Ghost illusion is

responsible for one more thing that you've definitely seen. Teleprompters. Yep, the same technology that allows broadcasters to read scripts while staring straight into the camera lens has been frightening everyone from Victorian theater goers to circus crowds for more than 150 years. This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, and was written by Jenneros Nethercott with research by Cassandra De Alba and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing ads? I've got a solution.

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