Lore - Lore 249: Return Trip

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

History’s ability to repeat itself can sometimes be delightful, and occasionally frightening. But few examples are as terrifying as these aviation-based tales. Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by Cassandra de Alba and music by Chad Lawson. —————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Sponsors: Article: Beautiful, high quality furniture with a delightful design (and price) for every home. Get $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more at Article.com/LORE. SimplliSafe: 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. 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. To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [e-mail] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. —————— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.  

If you know your history, you know this story. Born far from his nation's center of influence, he rose through society to eventually achieve the unthinkable, total and absolute power. And then he led his people to war. As his armies marched all over Europe, a major threat loomed in the frigid east, and so he gathered troops and sent them off to put that enemy down. But this mighty leader failed to prepare for something that should have been expected. Winter.

As a result, his campaign failed horribly, hastening the end of his domination over his European neighbors. And if you guessed that this mystery leader was Napoleon Bonaparte, you'd be correct. On the other hand, if you thought that he was Adolf Hitler, you too would also be right. You see, these parallel stories are examples of something known as historic recurrence, which is basically the documentation of incredibly similar stories throughout history. These types of events are almost eerie in just how similar they are. Another great example would be the massive storm that wiped out Kublai Khan's fleet on its way to invade Japan, and the massive storm three centuries later that did the same

when Spain's Philip II tried to invade England. History repeats itself. As they often said on Battlestar Galactica, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. Of course, it's easy to explain away when you understand that human greed and lust for power often drives leaders to do the exact same thing as those who came before them. But some moments in history repeat for reasons that are more difficult to explain. These are painful events, wrapped in tragedy and suffering that seem to come back to vividly

haunt others. Some call them coincidences, while others think of them as proof of the supernatural. But however, we explain them. One thing is certain. Some deaths have a way of echoing across time, coming back to haunt us. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. We've always dreamed of leaving the Earth behind, not in the sense of space travel, but as a way to soar above the ground like a bird. Then maybe we take that desire for granted these days thanks to massive airports and

constant flights in our skies. But that hunger to fly has been around a lot longer than you might think. Flight itself seems to have appeared on the historical record in China around 1000 BC with the advent of kites. And while you and I might think of kites as toys for kids or a niche hobby, the folks back then took the notion to a whole new level, literally. For example, kites were used in military operations to carry lights and noise-making tools with the goal of scaring off the enemy. For example, kites were used in military operations to carry lights and noise-making tools, with

the goal of scaring off the enemy. But around 500 AD, we see a new development. Kites so large, they could carry people. One Chinese emperor even used kites to execute political prisoners, strapping them into various models and pushing them off a tall building. Most died, but at least one man reportedly made a safe landing below. Even Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer who ventured into China in the late 13th century, documented people lifted into the air by kites.

But if we're going to talk about wings of wood and silk, we can't skip Leonardo da Vinci. After all, you can probably close your eyes and imagine one of his technical drawings of a similar device. All yellowed with age, right? Except Da Vinci didn't have that much of an influence on our pursuit to flight. He was a deeply private man, writing backwards in his notebooks in an effort to keep his

work a secret. In fact, his ideas about mechanical flight stayed largely unknown for four whole centuries. It wasn't until the start of the 19th century when things really took off. Englishman George Cayley is credited with designing the first successful glider capable of carrying a human being. Of course, his first test pilot was a 10-year-old boy, but he thankfully moved on to an adult passenger after that. That guy, his personal carriage driver, managed to fly about 900 feet before crashing

and was so frightened by the experience that he quit working for Cayley entirely. There were others along the way, too. Frenchman Henri Giffard flew his glider over 17 miles in 1852, sparking a keen interest in France that would last for decades. But if I'm going to talk about early flights, you would probably be upset if I skipped over the Wright brothers. Fun fact for you, Wilbur and Orville Wright basically devoted their entire day-to-day lives to designing, building, and testing their early aircraft, which meant they couldn't cook or clean or care for themselves.

Instead, their sister Catherine did that, making their meals and running the household there where all three of them lived. Catherine, by the way, was a college graduate who was also fluent in French, making it possible for her brothers to communicate with French airplane designers and share ideas, and yet she was relegated to doing laundry and cooking for the men. In fact, when she finally got married at the age of 50 and left the house, that ticked Orville off so much that he basically disowned her. But of course, Wilbur and Orville finally reached their goal of powered, controllable flight on December 17th of 1903, and they kept working on it too.

Within five years, the U.S. government came knocking and ended up buying one of their planes for $30,000, roughly a million bucks today. Don't hate me for saying it, please, but they really must have felt like the sky was the limit. But there are very few human inventions that haven't been turned into instruments of death. When World War I began just nine years after the success at Kitty Hawk, modern warfare picked up a new tool, one that could take the battle to the skies. Now to be fair, airplanes started out as reconnaissance tools, as a way for one army to spy on another

from far above the bullets and bombs. These planes were so uncommon and knew that when one pilot spotted another in the sky, they would just wave at each other, whether or not they were enemies. But these are humans that we're talking about here, so eventually someone was bound to strap guns onto these early airplanes. By 1915, the first machine guns were used in the skies over Europe. After that, planes became bomb-dropping tools as well. Think about it, within a decade and a half of the Wright Brothers' historic flight,

planes were weapons, delivering pain and suffering and death in a whole new way. But there was a lot more death just around the corner. And if the stories are true, some of those instances left behind shadows, the kinds that were experienced, for many years to come. Early attempts at just about anything come with risk. For something as bold as flying high through the skies in a contraption made of wood and metal, that risk included death. And pretty early on, pilots became very aware of the dangers they were flirting with.

In April of 1912, the British Army established the Royal Flying Corps, the predecessor to today's Royal Air Force. Their first official military airfield was located in Montrose, up north in Scotland, and right away, it became the home and training ground for the No. 2 Squadron. A year later, Lieutenant Desmond Arthur showed up there to join them. He was Irish by birth, coming from County Clir, and was described as a little intense, although to be fair I have to believe anyone willing to pilot an airplane in 1913 would have to be intense. It took guts for sure. On the morning of May 27, Lieutenant Arthur climbed into his BE-2 biplane and took off

for a solo flight, heading east toward Lunan Bay. According to eyewitness accounts, he was descending from an altitude of roughly 4,000 feet when something went wrong. Part of the plane's right wing suddenly snapped off, triggering a cascade of disintegration that started to pull the aircraft apart. As the wreckage plummeted toward the earth, Lieutenant Arthur left his seat,

either thrown by the violent motions or in an attempt to jump free. But the fall was too Arthur left his seat, either thrown by the violent motions or in an attempt to jump free. But the fall was too much for his body and he died on impact. Strangely though, he landed feet first at such speed that his body embedded itself in the soil to a depth of four feet. Nearly every bone in his body

had been broken by the impact. Now, Desmond Arthur wasn't the first member of the Royal Flying Corps to die, but he was the first from Montrose to do so. He was soon buried with full military honors, the first pilot to ever be interred in the nearby Sleepy Hill Excemitery, a tragic ending to a young life. Of course, there was an investigation. By June, one report determined that a faulty repair of the wing had led to the accident,

but some weren't satisfied with that answer. Another report published in the summer of 1916 shifted the blame to Lieutenant Arthur himself, claiming that he had been flying too dangerously and made a tragic pilot's error. And then one final report in December of 1916 turned the blame back on the unknown mechanic who botched the repair. But no one was about to forget Desmond Arthur. One evening in the fall of 1916, Major Ciro Foggan was walking to the officer's mess

when he spotted another man in full pilot's gear, as if he were ready to jump into a plane. The figure appeared to walk into the mess hall, but when Foggan got inside, the tent was empty. Others would see the same man in the weeks to come, and all of the accounts have the same pattern, a fully kitted-out pilot heading toward the officer's mess only to vanish into thin air. Later one senior flight instructor woke up to find the stranger sitting at the foot of his bed, clearly visible by the light of the fire in his camp stove.

When he asked who the man was, the figure disappeared. The most disturbing story though took place decades later, in 1963. That was when a man named Sir Peter Macefield, very well known in the UK's aviation world, gave a lecture to some Royal Air Force officers at Iverness. After the talk, he and a few of the other men got drinks and shared stories, and naturally, the legend of Lieutenant Desmond Arthur came up. The following morning, Macefield was headed out to his small two-seat plane to leave Iverness for Brooklands when he bumped into a man on the runway who was also dressed and ready for flight.

Macefield felt like there was something familiar about the guy, possibly one of his drinking companions from the night before, so he said hello. And that's when the man asked for a ride. Macefield happily obliged, handing the man a headset so that they could talk during the flight. But not long after taking off, in the clouds high above an area close to the old Montrose airfield, something strange happened. He looked out the window and spotted an old BE-2 biplane descending from a higher altitude

nearby. And then, it happened. Part of the plane's wing broke off, the structure began to buckle and bend, and then silently, the plane dropped from the sky. And just as it did, Macefield could hear his passenger cry out into his headsets, a mixture of despair and fear that cut him straight to the core. Turning around in his seat to see if his passenger was okay, Macefield was shocked to find that the man was no longer in the plane. All that was left behind was the headset he had been wearing, resting safely on the rear seat.

Too shocked to fly anymore, he landed the plane on a golf course that was directly below him, right in front of a small audience of locals, locals who had seen him arriving from miles away but had no memory of a second plane. Later that day, as Macefield logged his flight, he noticed the significance of the date. It was May 27th of 1963, 50 years to the day since Desmond Arthur's deadly crash. By all accounts, Eileen was gifted. Born in 1892 in Ireland, she had a rough start in life. Losing both her parents and being uprooted to go live with her cruel aunt and uncle on

their farm was not easy. But it was there, while she watched some animals being slaughtered, that she first noticed something odd. She could see their spirits exit their bodies. She would later describe it as a gray mist, almost like smoke, that drifted up from each animal as it passed away. It was something that no one else could see, and it left her feeling very disturbed. Eileen grew up and eventually went to London, where she met and married an older man named

Clive Berry. She told him about her strange gift, and while he was supportive before their wedding, his tune changed not long after. He told her to give up on such a foolish idea and instead focus on running their household. But you can't put something like that away forever. The couple would go on to have three children, all of whom died in infancy. In each instance, Eileen saw it again, that gray smoke rising up from their dying bodies. And after that, life continued to hand her heartache and change, including divorce in

1917 and the start of World War I. During the war, Eileen supported herself by running a convalescent home for recovering soldiers, eventually even marrying one. When he was sent back to the front, she knew what would happen. A month later, while having dinner with friends, she was overwhelmed by a gruesome image of his body being blown to pieces on the battlefield, complete with his body parts raining down on the muddy earth. It wasn't long after that when she received word from the British government.

Her husband had been declared missing in action, and he was presumed dead. Not long after, Eileen began to pursue her unusual abilities in earnest, working to develop her abilities as a medium. It was a period of her life that saw her working with legendary ghost hunters Harry Price and Nandor Fodor, as well as rubbing shoulders with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But in 1926, something new arrived. She had been walking her dog in Hyde Park when she looked up to see an enormous silver dirigible in the sky over London.

Two years later, in 1928, she saw it again. Only this time, the vision also seemed to be giving off smoke, followed by some erratic movement before vanishing behind the clouds. In 1928, at the request of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Eileen held a seance. The stated goal of that night was to contact the dead husband of a woman named Emily Hinchcliffe. He had died while trying to cross the Atlantic by air. But soon after beginning, the seance took a turn when the man's spirit issued a warning for a still-living friend, a man named Ernest Johnson, who was apparently in grave danger.

The spirit said that Johnson was the navigator on a government project called the R101, and according to Hinchcliffe's ghost, it was doomed to crash. Eileen, though, didn't know what to do with this information. That is, until a year later in 1929, when she had her third vision of the silvery airship, followed by a newspaper article claiming that the government was working on a pair of large, rigid airships, one of which was called the R-101. Eileen tried to reach out to the authorities, but they laughed her off. The director of civil aviation was deeply invested in the project, and weird visions

from a strange woman weren't going to stop him. Even when his own pilot, Lieutenant Herbert Irwin, expressed his own doubts about the ship, it was quickly ignored. Of course, you know where this is going, don't you? On October 4th of 1930, the massive Silvery R101 took off from London, bound for India. It was over 700 feet long and carried 54 people on board between passengers and crew, including that civil aviation director, Sir Sefton Branker. Less than 24 hours later, the trip ended in a fiery crash in France.

A mixture of heavy rain, a lack of engine power, and poor balance led to the dirigible losing altitude. It fell to Earth in a real-life slow-motion dive, gently touching down before a spark ignited a build-up of flammable gas, engulfing the entire craft. All but six crew members died as a result. Eileen Garrett had experienced multiple premonitions of the tragic accident over a span of years. She had received messages from beyond the veil, warning her and others about the risks involved in the airship's flight, and she had tried to warn those with the power to

stop it, all without success. In a weird twist on history repeating itself, Eileen had found herself at the center of an event that repeatedly announced itself backward in time. But despite her unusual gifts and supernatural abilities, talents that set her apart from the rest of the world, she found herself leveled by one insurmountable challenge. She had been powerless to keep it from happening. I think almost everyone would agree, history does repeat itself. Sometimes it's the arrival of a particular kind of figure on the world stage, or an event

that seems to resonate with a similar one from deeper in the past. Heck, even fashion has a way of coming back around, as all the mid-century modern furniture in my house can attest to. History comes back, whether we like it or not. In the world of folklore, though, that's often coupled with an eerie tone. Tragedies and losses in the past that were so painful or violent that they left shadows that live on into the present. I have a number of friends who are professional ghost hunters, and all of them would agree.

Sometimes spirits stick around, replaying difficult moments from their lives, long after their deaths. But if my team's research on this topic has taught us anything else, it's that those spirits are often invested heavily in how our present events play out. Remember the ghostly sightings of Lieutenant Desmond Arthur? They only began in the days following the release of that second investigation, the one that blamed him for the accident instead of faulty repair work. More than that, those sightings stopped around the same time that report was retracted. Now, maybe Lieutenant Arthur was just upset that people were blaming him for something

he hadn't done. Perhaps his ghost was doing more than simply reminding people he existed. It could also have been showing people in some small way that he was still watching and still invested. And Eileen Garrett? While following the tragedy of the R-101, she spent countless hours in new seances, speaking with members of the crew who perished in the accident. Each of the spirits she spoke to offered detailed technical information about the airship, things that would not have been known to the public, something that was confirmed by the

few survivors of the crash. And more than that, some of those spirits told her that they had been documenting the flaws and dangers of the airship for months, writing them down in personal journals. They even told Eileen where to find those records, but try as they might, surviving family members were unable to locate the journals. To some, it was a sign of a government cover-up, whitewashing a preventable tragedy. To others, it was proof that Eileen wasn't nearly as prescient as she claimed to be. But before you decide which option you believe, let me offer you one final clue, which came to light in 1967.

That was the year a documentarian named Michael Cox was working on a program about the R101, and he managed to track down the widow of one of the crew members who died in the accident. And what did she have? His personal journal, a book that contained countless notes written down in the year leading up to the crash. The last entry in the book was dated two days before the airship took off, and it carried a frightening message. There are very many unknown factors, he wrote, and I feel that luck will figure rather conspicuously into our flight. Let's hope for good luck and our best. And if I may be so bold as to add to his wishes, let's also hope, in this case at least,

that history does not repeat itself. Today's journey through the tragic history of powered human flight might seem benign on the surface, but it has been a joy to uncover the more unusual aspects of these stories for you. And of course, we're not done just yet, with one more unexplainable aviation mystery for you to consider. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Laura was sponsored by Article. Every single day I sit down at my desk and I make podcasts, and that's something I've done for years on a desk from Article. The quality is

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at checkout. That's article.com slash lore for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This episode was also sponsored by Simply Safe. Did you know that according to FBI property crime data, most home break-ins happen in broad daylight as the days get longer this spring, protect your home with Simplyafe. It's the award-winning home security I use and recommend. Honestly, as the days get longer and we spend more time out and about, I know my family and I are grateful for the reassuring help of SimplySafe protecting our home. Both experts and customers love SimplySafe for its comprehensive protection. It was just named

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And finally, the show is sponsored by BetterHelp. A lot of us spent our lives wishing we had more time. The question is, time for what? If time was unlimited, how would you use it? Me? I would probably get in some extra reading time. You might take a nap though, or go for a run, something that feeds your soul or helps you relax. The best way to squeeze that special thing into your schedule is to know what's important to you and then make

it a priority. And therapy can help you find what matters to you so that you can do more of it. I know firsthand just how helpful therapy can be to bringing clarity to my priorities and decisions. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself, because therapy isn't just for those who have First hand, just how helpful therapy can be to bringing clarity to my priorities and decisions. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself, 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. Learn to make time for what makes you happy with better help. 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. The U.S. Navy Pilot On March 3, 1945, a U.S. Navy pilot named James Houston, Jr. died in combat. He had taken off from an aircraft carrier named the USS Natoma Bay during the Battle of Iwo Jima, but was struck by enemy fire.

When the propeller of his fighter plane was knocked off and his engine destroyed, he lost all ability to stay in the air. Moments later, he and the plane both crashed into the Pacific Ocean, vanishing forever. Now you don't have to be a military historian to know that there were a lot of moments like this in World War II. Thousands upon thousands, sadly, and oftentimes the only thing differentiating one tragedy like this from the rest is the name of the pilot. James Houston Jr. was no different in this regard. But what happened next might very well be unique.

James Leninger was born in 1998. By all accounts, he seemed like a normal little boy. But in 2000, at the age of two, he started having nightmares. These horrible dreams would happen upwards of five times a week. His panic crying, always bringing his parents into the room to see what was wrong.

Thankfully, little James Leninger was a well-spoken child. Even at two years old, he was ready to help his parents understand. And what did he tell them his nightmares were about? He had dreamed about an airplane crash. Plane on fire, he told them. Man can't get out. As the months went on, James offered more information about those dreams.

Slowly his parents were able to learn that this plane had been shot down by Japanese forces after taking off from a big boat. A boat, by the way, the James said was an American ship called the Natoma. More intriguing, as the months went on, James began to enact these dreams with his toys, breaking off their propellers and crashing them into the carpet. Even his artwork took on elements of an aerial battle between American and Japanese forces. Of course, his parents were curious, so they began to research the details of his story. What they discovered, though, was far from what they expected. A real-life pilot

named James Houston Jr. who had died in the Battle of Iwo Jima, which might also have explained why their son signed his artwork with a curious title, James III. The Lennagers actually traveled to the USS Nathoma Bay reunion and claimed that their son recognized one of the veterans there purely by his voice. Several other crew members agreed that little James looked an awful lot like James Houston Jr. Then, in 2006, at the age of eight, the family went even further, paying a visit to Chichijima, the closest island to Houston's last known location in 1945. There, James threw a bouquet into the water, marking the spot as a memorial while saying

goodbye to Houston. And according to reports about his unique experience, that was a turning point for the young boy. After that, the nightmare stopped, and his artwork took on a more peaceful tone. And look, I can't tell you what to believe in regards to this story. The critics of their claims all say that the story ignores just how obsessed the father was with World War II, taking the family to visit aviation museums and watching videos of actual war footage from 1945. Footage, they claim, that little James could have seen and internalized.

Others though point to this story as proof that reincarnation is a real possible thing. They see James Leninger as James Houston Jr. reborn, complete with memories of his final moments. All I can say is that history always seems to find new and unique ways to repeat itself. Maybe an open mind will help us find new examples of that age-old pattern. Or perhaps we've become so accustomed to repetitive historical elements that we've started spotting them in places they don't actually exist, like shapes in the clouds. I'll let you decide for yourself, but whichever side you end up on, don't forget the power

of that one simple act that got us here in the first place. Keeping one eye on the future, and one on the past. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Cassandra De Alba and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing ads? We've got a solution. There's a paid version of lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.

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