Lore - Lore 283: On the Nose

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Folklore often preserves something from deep in the past in a way that can still be experienced in the present. But ghosts aren’t the only lingering reminder of days gone by that we might bump into. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop 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. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands, at Quince.com/LORE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Avocado Green Mattress: Shop now at AvocadoMattress.com, and save 15% on certified organic mattresses. ————————— 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.

Music Technology has accomplished a lot. In the last century alone, we've seen the invention of computers and the internet, countless vaccines, even putting a man on the moon. But there's one territory science has yet to conquer. That is, when you die, you stay dead. Now, we can talk about revenants and zombies all we want, but at the end of the day, real necromancy just isn't a thing.

No matter how much we might wish it, we simply can't bring our loved ones back once they've crossed to the other side. But according to one company, there may be a part of them we can resurrect. Their scent. In 2015, French startup, Collein, claimed it could bottle the scent of your dead loved ones. First, you mail them an item that smells

like your deceased person of choice. Their favorite old flannel, a pillowcase, maybe a scarf they wore often. Then the company uses a specialized process to extract the chemical scent from that object, allowing them to recreate it as a bespoke fragrance. Now, sure, one perfume expert deemed the product as, and I quote, cheap and unbalanced, as well as smelling nothing like the garment they had supplied. But nonetheless, the idea of bringing a lost scent back to life is a fascinating one.

And Kalein's founders aren't the only ones who have made such claims. Another brand called Future Society has designed a fragrance line called Scent Surrection, which has supposedly restored the scent of six extinct flowers from around the globe using DNA sequencing as a guide. Scent is a mysterious thing. It's invisible and intangible, and yet a single whiff can bring us back to bygone moments and memories. It can trail behind a person like a shadow and linger after they've left the room, or

even their mortal coil. A mere hint of what was once alive. In other words, what is a perfume, if not a ghost? I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore. The first perfume known to history was concocted 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. Accessible only to the wealthiest members of society, these scents came in the form of salves to be spread on the body. Now if you're wondering what these might have smelled like, archaeologists have actually found cuneiform tablets from 1239 BCE documenting recipes from an earlier perfumer.

Her ingredients included things like myrrh, lemon balm, balsam, and rose, all botanicals still used in fragrances today. But she also listed other materials. Mystery plants that modern translators are unable to identify. Maybe it's just a language issue, or maybe these scents are from botanicals long since vanished from the earth. Perfume was also big business in ancient Egypt, but not as a fashion item like it is today.

No, for thousands of years, perfume was a sacred tool for ceremony and ritual. When excavating royal Egyptian tombs, archaeologists have uncovered hundreds upon hundreds of fragrant ungeons intended to join the deceased in the next life. Egyptians even had perfumery gods, Nefertim and Shesmou. Often said to be brothers,

Nefertim was the youthful, bright deity of pleasant aromas and blue lotus flowers, which was the most essential ingredient in Egyptian perfumes. Shesmou, on the other hand, was a violent lion-headed god with a razor-sharp knife, perpetually gripped in his fist. He had a whole slew of names, too. Things like Maker of Precious Oils, Lord of Perfume, Lord of Ungeoned, but also Lord of Blood, Slaughterer of Souls, Butcher of the Gods, and He Who

Dismembers. And I get it, it may seem like a jarring combo for one figure to be both the God of Perfume and the God of Dismembering, but in the Egyptians' eyes, the two weren't so different. One involves stealing the essence of people, and the other stealing the essence of flowers. It was believed that perfume could act as a sort of telephone, connecting people to the gods, and that the gods themselves actually emanated perfume from their bodies.

Now, despite its holiness, nothing is safe from commercialism and shortly after year 1000 BCE, perfume went on the market for regular Egyptians to purchase. By the Greco-Roman era, Egyptian perfume had become coveted worldwide for its magical and cosmetic properties and thus one of history's most fantastical industries had begun. Another culture absolutely obsessed with perfume was 17th century Europe, particularly in France. You see, folks weren't bathing all too often around those parts, and masking body odor became pretty essential. Notably, Queen Elizabeth I couldn't stand bad smells, and so demanded that every public palace be absolutely soaked in perfume.

She even wore leather gloves drenched in rich fragrances, and as a tutor, her favorite scent was predictably rose. Time went on, with the invention of synthetic scents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a whole new perfume heyday boomed, and with it came a new phenomenon, celebrity perfumers. And bear with me as I give you a quick hit list of some of my favorite characters from this time, because it really feels like an Avengers Assemble type of lineup. First, there was Harriet Hubbard Ayers, who, after losing a child in the great 1871 Chicago Fire, ran off to Paris before starting a cosmetic business, only for her family to commit

her to a mental asylum in a plot to steal her company. Then we have Lily Dashie, not only a perfumer, but also a hat maker to Hollywood stars. Although if that seems like multitasking, you clearly have not met Esme Davis, who in addition to being a perfumer was also a ballet dancer, watercolorist, musician, lion tamer, and elephant trainer. But my favorite has to be Ahmed Salman El Mawardi, also known as the Perfume King of Cairo. He claimed that his ancestors had been perfumers to the Egyptian pharaohs, but regardless of

whether that marketing was true, his shop was still something to behold. Namely, it featured a clockwork fountain shaped like the Pharaoh Ramsay's, which poured a constant stream of perfume from its mouth. I can only imagine how amazing that shop must have smelled. Although all that said, while perfumes may smell lovely, some of their ingredients are anything but. Take for example, civet. Use of this material dates back to 10th century Arab perfumers

And I have some questions for these guys Mainly exactly whose idea was it to use this stuff in perfume because civet doesn't come from a flower or a plant It comes from well a civet which is kind of like a mongoose more specifically the ingredient comes from the civet's anal gland Which apparently oozes this secretion when the animal is stressed out. By all accounts, it smells awful on its own, but when small quantities are mixed into floral perfumes it can add a pleasant musky scent, plus help the perfume last longer. By the way, this isn't some obscure ingredient. You've probably smelled it yourself.

Because you see, civet is an essential ingredient in the world's most popular perfume, Chanel No. 5. Although, granted, the company claims it has used only synthetic civet since 1998. One other ingredient used to extend a fragrance's longevity is ambergris. And like civet, it too comes from somewhere pretty darn gross. From the French for gray amber, ambergris is basically sperm whale puke or excrement. It's not actually clear how the stuff gets out of the whale, but it's definitely made in a whale's intestinal tract. One National Geographic article refers to it as, and I quote, intestinal slurry. After sitting out in the sun and salt, though, it loses its fecal smell and hardens into

what is basically a rock. And while I wish this episode would come with a scratch and sniff guide, a description will have to suffice. It smells musky, amber-y, tobacco-y, and with hints of the ocean. It may sound unappealing, but ambergris is actually so sought after it's sometimes referred to as floating gold. Good quality ambergris can cost thousands of dollars per ounce. Just a caveat though, before you change your name to Captain Ahab, ambergris is illegal in the US due to sperm whales protected status. Then again, there are many perfumers in other

parts of the world who still use ambergris every day. I wish I are many perfumers in other parts of the world who still use amber grease every day. I wish I could say perfumers drew the line at civet and amber grease, but alas, there is more. Castorium lends a warm, leather-like scent to fragrances and happens to come from the castor sac, which sits near the genitals of both male and female beavers. Basically, this grayish-yellowish molasses-like goop is what beavers excrete to mark their territory. By the way, have you ever noticed how in medieval bestiaries, beavers are often depicted in the act of what looks like ripping off their own testicles?

Yeah, that comes from the belief that beavers would bite off their castor sacks to avoid the hunters pursuing them for their castorium. But for as disgusting as all of this might sound, this topic actually has a whole other level of weirdness for us to explore. Because some of the strangest of ingredients of all are said to hold supernatural powers. The text of the spell was clear. Use fragrances associated with the sun, it instructed, known for bringing blessings of confidence, clarity, and luck. It went on to offer a list of suggestions, too. Sunflower, almond, clove, and cedar oil, along with frankincense

and saffron. If combined, this potion was supposed to make your wishes come true. But this was no ancient perfume recorded on a cuneiform tablet. No, it's actually an excerpt from a 2022 article entitled, Use Perfume Magic to Manifest Your Destinies, published by none other than Teen Vogue. It may seem that culture has come a long way since ancient Mesopotamia, but some things it appears have stayed the same, like the fact that perfume is still linked to witchcraft. Now, it certainly makes sense how it all got started, right? After all, those early priests would have smelled strongly of their ceremonial incense and herbs. It's only natural that people would come to associate that smell with the magic

makers themselves. And the connection continued into literature. In the ancient Greek epic Argonautica, which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts, the poet takes particular care to describe what the legendary sorceress Medea smells like. Ambrosia, nectar, and sacrificial incense. Her actions, too, are closely linked with fragrance. She gives Jason a perfumed ointment to make him invincible, then she uses a powerfully scented drug to lull the serpent guarding the Golden Fleece to sleep, and even uses the smell of magical herbs to lure her own brother to his doom. Later, during the Augustan Age, the poet Horace wrote of a witch named Canidia, who uses magical perfumes to enchant her victims.

She herself, though, is presented as smelling like, and I quote, "...rot, gravedirt, blood, garlic, and poison." And that's important to point out, because from then on, a new precedent was set. The ingredients that witches used in their spells smelled good for sure, but witches themselves were believed to smell horrible. In fact, the stench of a witch became such a common concept that it even played a role in witchcraft trials. For some unlucky folks in the days before deodorant, having a foul body odor was enough

to brand you as a witch. After all, everyone knew that witches smell bad, so therefore, if you smell bad, you must be practicing witchcraft. Why did witches smell bad, you might ask? Well, according to one 16th century demonologist, it came from copulating with demonically possessed corpses. Charming, I know. And yet, despite the stigma, the use of perfumes in witchcraft and spellcasting continued

to be practiced well into the modern era. Alastair Crowley believed that perfumes vitally linked the physical and the astral planes. A particular fragrance known as Hungry Water was believed to magically preserve youth and beauty. And then there's the mystical cologne Florida Water. Now, when I hear the words Florida Water, I tend to envision an alligator basking on a sea world waterslide more than, say, the sacred elixir of life. But this perfume is viewed by many communities to be just that.

Created in the year 1808 by perfumer Robert Murray, Florida Water is a citrusy, eau de cologne, smelling of cinnamon, rose, bergamot, and orange flower. Murray himself lived in New York, but probably named his product after rumors that the legendary Fountain of Youth itself was hiding in none other than the Florida territory. And this cologne? Well, it was used for a lot more than just smelling nice. By the mid-1800s, it had become a common household essential in not just the U.S., but the Caribbean and South and Central America as well.

Folks poured it into their bathwater, dabbed it on sick family members, and even downed shots of the stuff as a quick pick-me-up. And then, of course, there were the magical uses. Now, to understand the true occult power of Florida water, we have to go back to the days of the transatlantic slave trade. Although enslaved people were forced by their Christian enslavers to practice Christianity, many developed their own religious practices in secret. As people from all over Africa blended their ancestral traditions with Christian teachings,

new rituals emerged, rituals that required holy tools. And being enslaved people, they had little access to supplies, but they did likely have access to Florida water. Basically, this stuff was as common as Axe body spray and would have been sitting around in slavers' households where domestic slaves would have encountered it every single day.

Some even claim that it was used to wash the decks of slave ships. And so it's believed that for these enslaved tradition makers, Florida water took on the role of holy water. One small sprinkle and bad energy would run for the hills. And that was it. The match had been struck. From those roots, Florida water spread to spiritual traditions such as Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Santeria. In Voodoo, Florida water was an essential tool in cleansing rituals. In Santeria ceremonies, the fragrance was used to manifest everything from attracting money to winning back a lost lover or even staying out of jail.

And here's the thing, all those true believers may have actually been onto something because Florida water happens to be 81% alcohol, strong enough to be a viable hand sanitizer. That's right. It actually can purify and protect you from the bad energy of disease. Since its earliest invention, perfume has been attributed with a mystical power that no other cosmetic can match. And perhaps its most powerful magic of all is to connect us to the past. It was the summer of 2000 when the expedition descended into the abyss.

The two submersibles, Mir 1 and Mir 2, plummeted deeper and deeper into the ocean, and as they sank, the world of humanity fell away. First the sun, then animal life as we know it. By the time the divers reached 3,800 meters, it had become the domain of sea spiders and eyeless crustaceans scuttling in the dark. And there, in the ghostly light of the headlight beam, it appeared. The wreck of the RMS Titanic. For those keeping track, this was the sixth expedition to the Titanic since its discovery

in 1985. It was a salvage mission, with the goal of retrieving sunken artifacts to display in an upcoming exhibition. And as it turned out, the mission would be a major success. Back on the surface, a team of conservators waited aboard a research vessel, ready to examine whatever treasures might arrive. I can only imagine their excitement when the divers returned with the Titanic's main wheel and steering stand, two engine telegraphs, an automatic whistle timer, and more. But to everyone's amazement, the greatest treasure of all was tucked away in a small,

unassuming leather satchel. Here is the description from researcher Bill Sauter in his own words. And I quote, When you recover stuff from the Titanic, it's wet, it's rusty, and it's rotten. And the smell that comes off it is pretty alien, perfectly fetid. You know, it's a kind of death you have never experienced. And so the lab is kind of unpleasant.

And then all of a sudden, somebody opens up this satchel, this leather satchel, and out comes the fragrance of heaven. It's all these flowers and fruity flavors and it's delicious. It's the most wonderful thing you've ever had. It was just a complete overwhelming experience. It was like all of a sudden the fragrance of heaven, you know, kind of goes through the room. So instead of being surrounded by all these dead things, for those few, the ship was alive again. What the conservators had unveiled was 65 vials of perfume. And although a few had broken during the retrieval process, hence the wafting scent in the room, most were miraculously preserved.

These scents had slumbered on the ocean floor for nearly a century, and now, like a genie let out of a lamp, they had been set free. The fragrances, it turns out, had belonged to a chemist named Adolf Sauffeld. Born to a German-Jewish family in 1865, he moved to England as a young man and married an Englishwoman named Gertrude. Eventually, Sauffeld became the chairman of a company that sold perfume and scented oils. And that company, much to his delight, was proving to be a success. It was doing so well, in fact, that plans were made to expand to the American market.

And so, in 1912, Adolf Saffeld boarded a ship for America. His ticket cost 30 pounds and 10 shillings, the equivalent of nearly $4,000 today. It was a lot of money, yes, but it would all be worth it. Because tucked into his luggage, Saffeld carried with him something precious. It was a satchel made of leather containing 65 vials of perfume samples and raw ingredients alike. In other words, the key to Saffeld's future. That future was looking brighter than ever as he sat down to write a letter home to Gertrude. He described the wonderful boat that would convey him across the sea, a boat that everyone said was unsinkable.

On the night of April 14, Adolf was in the first class smoking room. I imagine there was music playing, drinks swaying softly in their glasses with the rolling waves. Perhaps Saffeld noticed the fragrance of cigar smoke cleaning to the ship's velvet curtains. And then the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg. From there, everything was a blur. Crew members attempted to usher women and children into lifeboats, but many refused believing that the big ship would be safer than those tiny little boats. And so Saffield was placed into one instead.

And you have to understand, at this point no one thought the ship was going to sink, nor had any idea just how few lifeboats there really were. Saffield had no idea he was being given a coveted spot. In fact, authorities probably placed him in the ship specifically to convince women and children that it was safe enough to join him. He would later go on to write, and I quote, "...all expected to go back after damage patched up, but as we drifted away gradually we saw Titanic sink lower and lower and finally lights on her went out.

And then, even though his lifeboat was nearly two miles away by this point, the sounds of screaming began slicing through the night. Saffield mercifully survived the fame disaster, but I wonder at what point he realized that he had left his priceless satchel with perfume on board the doomed ship. After the sinking, he faced immense stigma as a male survivor. Only 20% of male passengers had survived and nearly all of them were accused of being cowards. He suffered from what we would now call PTSD, lying awake long into the night. Sometimes his chauffeur, Patch, would even drive him around until he fell asleep. covered from what we would now call PTSD, lying awake long into the night.

Sometimes his chauffeur, Patch, would even drive him around until he fell asleep. Adolf Saffield passed away in 1926. His obituary remembered him as a warm, witty, and intelligent man who was, and I quote, a father to the fatherless and ready to help those in need. And little did he know, 74 years after his own death, his drowned perfume would come back to life. According to one perfume historian, sinking to the ocean floor may have been the best thing that could have ever happened to those vials.

You see, they found themselves in the ideal conditions for preserving scents, fully sealed and in a cool, dark place. Which is why, when the satchel was opened all those years later, it felt like a ghost had walked into the room. I'll leave you with this memory from Ken Marshall, whose Titanic paintings inspired the James Cameron film and who also happened to be in the lab that day. It was unreal, he said, just wonderful. It smelled as fresh and sweet as if an elegant lady from 1912 had just walked into the room.

That scent, he continued, pervaded the room for days. It was all over the conservator's gloves, of course, which ended up in the trash. Needless to say, I snatched those gloves out of the garbage and save them. There is no sense that can hurtle us into the past quite like our sense of smell. You may catch a passing stranger's aftershave on the breeze and suddenly be four years old again sitting in your grandfather's lap. Or a whiff of laundry detergent might send you right back to that friend's basement where everyone hung out in high school. But this power extends beyond our own memories. For those lucky witnesses in the Titanic laboratory, they got to close their eyes

and travel back in time to someone else's life. With that said, if you're left with a nagging urge to smell Saffield's perfume for yourself, I've got good news. In 2012, the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, a perfume called Legacy 1912 was released. According to the perfume makers, the scent was inspired by those very vials recovered from the ocean floor, surrounding the wearer with, and I quote, "...delicate lemon and nerlis alongside blushing rose and warm, sheer amber." And while the company seems to have retired it, don't worry, because there's a second way to achieve your white star line dreams.

According to Ken Marshall, of Glove Stealing Fame, a cologne called Vetiver by the Parisian company Guerlain smells exactly like that wonderful fragrance from the laboratory. So naturally both our researcher Cassandra and our writer Jenna Rose acquired little bottles of the stuff and they can attest that it not only smells quite nice but a dab on the wrists does make them feel very, very haunted. There's something ghostly about a scent that lingers on all those years later. Perhaps it's because usually fragrance doesn't exist on its own. The smell of rose is tied to a physical rose, a solid living flower emitting that smell.

Your grandfather's aftershave is tethered to your grandfather. But imagine how spooky it would be if suddenly an entire empty room filled unprompted with the scent of roses, or your grandfather's scent, long after he passed away. This is what perfume does. It takes an invisible essence that should be paired with a living body, and it isolates it and preserves it, almost like it's plucking out a person's spirit. And by the way, that word spirit, it comes from the Latin spiritus, which means breath. And that makes sense, because it is through the act of breathing that we take in all the

odors of the world. I hope you've enjoyed today's little spritz of olfactory history. It's fascinating, really. A carefully blended perfume can evoke a wide carousel of emotions. Nostalgia, calm, happiness, you name it. But it turns out that humans are good at smelling and producing another scent all on their own. Fear itself. And I have one last story to demonstrate what I mean. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Shop now at Avocadomatris.com and save 15% on certified organic mattresses. Avocado mattress, dream of better. Auto Mattress Dream of Better When the skydivers jumped from the plane, they were terrified. No one in the group had ever been skydiving before, after all. And despite everyone's excitement, one can only imagine the panic flooding through their nervous systems as they plummeted toward the Earth. Except, well, we don't have to imagine it, because there's scientific proof. Let me explain. Fear is mental, sure, but it's also chemical. When we're frightened, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood through our bodies. And in 2008, a research team at Stony Brook

University in New York had an idea. What if those chemicals, when inhaled by someone else, could make that stress contagious? In other words, what is the smell of fear? And so the Stony Brook researchers organized a tandem skydive of 144 first-time jumpers with a very specific goal, to collect their sweat as they fell. They did this by taping absorbent pads to their armpits. Not exactly high-tech, I know, but it did the trick. And then next, a new group of volunteers joined the study, but these folks weren't jumping out of any airplanes.

No, they were placed into fMRI machines. And then that skydiver's sweat was wafted under their noses. Which is when the scanners began to light up. Their brains were showing undeniable signs of fear. And I know what you're thinking. Plenty of people feel panicked inside of MRI machines. Was it really the sweat causing it? Well, the researchers were one step ahead of you.

Because unbeknownst to those skydivers, they weren't all smelling the same sweat. Some of them had been given skydive sweat, while others were given sweat collected from those same skydivers, but on a different day, while simply running on a treadmill. And as it turns out, those who inhaled the treadmill sweat showed noticeably less activity in the fear zones of the brain than those huffing on skydiving sweat. In another study, volunteers were given stress-infused sweat to smell and then shown pictures of human faces bearing various expressions. Those who inhaled the stress sweat were better able to point out

subtle anger than those who didn't. That's right, smelling someone else's fear actually heightened their ability to identify a threat. And I have to say, all of this has some pretty chilling implications. Because if fear can be induced by a mere scent on the air, what is stopping us from turning that into a weapon? And sure, there could be less sinister applications for this, like making training for stressful jobs more realistic, or even being a stimulant to keep drivers awake on long road trips. But like witches' perfumes of old, there are also concerns that this fear chemical could be synthesized and used for evil. Imagine an invisible mist of dread and horror rolling over a crowd of protesters or concertgoers.

What panic would ensue? Could it cause stampedes? Would friends and family members turn on one another? But before you get too worried, I should tell you that experts aren't concerned. To quote one psychologist, even if the chemical was to be unleashed in a crowd, it would be highly unlikely to cause mass panic. Fear is biological, of course, but the important thing is the psychology and how you cognitively appraise the situation.

I don't think you'd get terrified for no obvious reason. But then again, if you've ever sprinted up the basement stairs certain of an invisible threat at your back, then you know full well people get terrified for no reason at all, all the time. And there's a good reason to be wary. Because here's the thing. The group that originally funded all of this research was a little organization called This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing the ads?

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