Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 48: Downriver

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

It’s time to revisit the notion of a cursed community. This remastered classic episode features brand new narration and a score by Chad Lawson, as well as a whole new Epilogue bonus story at the end. Researched, written, and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with music by Chad Lawson, with additional help from GennaRose Nethercott and Harry Marks. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ———————— This episode of Lore was sponsored by: 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. BIOptimizers: now to MagBreakthrough.com/LORE to get 10% off your Magnesium Breakthrough with offer code LORE, and find out this month's gift with purchase. Stamps: Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at Stamps.com/LORE. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here. ©2023 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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Today though, so many centuries later, its name is rarely spoken by those who live in the Basalicata region of Italy. There's something about it that gives local Italians a feeling of dread, and they'd rather not speak its name. Coloblaro earned that reputation though, if we're to believe the stories. It's said that in the early years of the 20th century, the town was home to a very successful, but very disliked lawyer named Biagio Virgilio. Virgilio was speaking in court one day, according to the story, when he pointed up toward the

ceiling of the courthouse. "'If what I say is false,' he shouted, "'may this chandelier come down,' and it did. It dropped right into the middle of the room, and shattered into a thousand pieces. And while no one was injured, the town's reputation took on a dark hue. It was cursed, they say, hexed, and later events only served to reinforce that belief. Landslides, car accidents, there are even stories of babies born with two hearts, or three lungs, and of course, tales of witchcraft." Locations take on a flavor over time, whether it's our hometown or just an infamous spot

in the area. We have a tendency of treating locations like people. They have a personality and a reputation. And some, if you listen to the locals, are even cursed. When life doesn't go the way we'd hoped, we look for reasons, claiming that our town is cursed is an easy way to make sense of the accidental, the unexpected, and the unfortunate. But sometimes the evidence is dark and deep, and includes suffering, death, and even utter destruction.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. There's this notion that's almost as old as time itself, that a city or nation that strays too far from its roots or from its moral center puts itself at risk of being cursed. Hebrew legend speaks of the Tower of Babel, which shows how the pride of one settlement brought about destruction and confusion. The ancient stories of Atlantis spoke of the island civilization as technologically and socially advanced, but it was their greed and immorality that led the gods to destroy

them. According to the interpretation of the ancient writers, they were cursed by their behavior. Other ancient stories speak of a city that once stood in the southern sands of the Arabian Peninsula. It's mentioned in the Quran, the Christian Bible, and even the Arabian Nights. It was known as Yubar, Iran, or Wubar, or the city of Ed, and after serving as a trade center for over five millennia, it vanished roughly 2,000 years ago. The satellite scans in the 1980s finally provided us with an answer.

The city, it turns out, was built on an enormous subterranean cavern, and sometime in 300 AD, it all collapsed. There are so many other examples. Port Royal in the Caribbean, the ancient Greek city of Helike, even Pompeii comes to mind, but these stories aren't limited to dusty cities spoken of in ancient texts. Even here in the United States, in a country that's relatively young compared to much of the world, we can find stories of cursed locations and horrible tragedy. On November 1st of 1886, tragedy came to Lafayette, Oregon.

That was the day that David Corker, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, was found dead in his general store by a customer. The shop had been broken into overnight and Corker had been killed in defense of his store. The suspect was a man named Richard Marple. He had moved there with his wife Julia and his mother Anna just the year before, and the rumor was that he had chosen a life of crime over gainful employment. The man, they said, was a thief. Add to that a handful of eyewitness reports about how Marple openly mocked the shopkeeper

and it was hard to ignore him as a suspect. The sheriff visited his home and found a bloody shirt, a scrap of paper in his pocket with blood stains on it, and a collection of tools used for breaking into locked buildings. Marple was convicted of murder on April 9th of 1887. His wife and mother both fought the charges. They provided a solid alibi and swore to his whereabouts that night. It didn't work, though. Marple was hanged on November 11th just a little over a year after Corker had been found

dead. Thirty locals gathered to watch as the man was strangled to death at the end of the rope for nearly 18 minutes. Marple's mother wasn't allowed to watch the execution, but she could be heard screaming from a distance. She cursed the town, they say, and predicted that three fires would burn Lafayette to the ground. It was easy to laugh off, though.

Predictions like that always are. So that's what they did. No one was suspicious when a blaze ripped through town in 1895. Towns, especially those mostly built out of timber, have a knack for catching fire. Six buildings were leveled by the flames. Two years later, another fire broke out, destroying four more. And then, in 1904, a fire destroyed 16 buildings as it raged across town. A random series of accidents.

Or the product of the curse of a very angry mother. For some, that isn't an easy question to answer. Another location that's haunted by tales of a curse is the Dutch village of Saftinga. Well, it was. Up until the late 1500s, that is. Well, let me explain what I mean. Saftinga was a middle-aged hub for the harvesting of peat. They were situated in what is known as the polders, the floodplains that were separated

from the ocean by man-made dykes and dams. And because peat was used at the time as a popular source of fuel, Saftinga was an important community in the region. Peat was in such high demand that, according to some historians, the farmers of Saftinga were said to dress in fine silks. They even decorated their workhorses with gold and silver jewelry. Of course, this led to a reputation of greed and selfishness, which wasn't helped by the fact that the townsfolk would chase newcomers away with weapons and dogs.

Basically, they weren't friendly people, and no one likes a jerk, right? As the story goes, a farmer was fishing outside Saftinga one day when he reeled in a real-life mermaid. Apparently, she could speak Dutch, and she warned the farmer that unless the town straightened up and fixed its greed, something horrible was going to happen. The farmer laughed at her, and then decided that a pet mermaid would be nice to have, so he tied her up. Even when the mermaid's husband surfaced and begged for her release, the farmer refused,

so the merman uttered a curse. The lands of Saftinga will fall, he said. Only its towers will continue to stand tall. In 1570, a flood swept through the Dutch coast, flooding the land around the town. Fourteen years later in 1584, the Dutch army was fighting the 80-years war and destroyed one of the dykes that held back the ocean. The town of Saftinga was overcome by an enormous wave, and was never seen again. Today the region is known as the Fear Drunkenland, the Drowned Land, but locals say that not

all of Saftinga is gone. Somewhere beneath the marsh and water, if the stories are to be believed, the old church tower still stands tall. And on foggy days, they say, you can still hear the bell toll. In the southwestern corner of Illinois is a city on the edge of the Mississippi. Now it's easy to limit the history of a place to our American experience, but Illinois is older than that. In fact, the entire area, from the Arkansas River up to Green Bay, was once controlled

by the French. They explored the region in 1673, and then claimed it for the crown shortly after. They called it Upper Louisiana, and sometimes Illinois Country. Most of the settlers who moved into the area were French Canadians from the north, and the biggest draw for them across the whole stretch of the new territory was fur trapping. The Upper Mississippi Valley was apparently a goldmine for trappers and hunters, and so they moved south to chase their fortunes. They built six major settlements along the eastern edge of modern-day Illinois.

One of those was built near a tribe of Native Americans who took their name from a small tributary that joined the larger Mississippi. There were a lot of variants of that word. White Europeans were rarely ever good at taking a Native American word and carrying it over to French or English in a consistent way. But everyone there began to call the place Cascascia. Before we move on, though, let me briefly explain the geography of this area. You see, Cascascia was a settlement built right on the tip of a small peninsula that

stuck out into the Mississippi River. To the east, you could walk deeper into Illinois territory, looking west from town would give you a spectacular view across the Great River. That was the territory now known as the State of Missouri. Cascascia, in a lot of ways, was a place caught in between. And not just geographically. On a social level, the settlement was a mixture of French-Canadian fur trappers, Jesuit missionaries, and local Native Americans.

The Jesuits brought the structure. The trappers brought the economy. And the indigenous people brought, well, they'd already been there. And like so many other stories about the early days of this country, that meant that they weren't going to get a fair shake. One story clearly highlights this disparity. In 1698, about 25 years after the settlement was founded, a Frenchman named Jean Bernard immigrated to Cascascia, along with his wife and daughter Marie.

Like a lot of people who moved there, Bernard was a fur trader, and the abundant resources of the area promised to make him a wealthy man. He set up his trading post on the edge of town, where it would be easily accessible to the trappers moving up and down the western edge of Illinois. They brought in the fur, he purchased it from them, and then sold it to buyers outside the wild frontier. It was simple and lucrative, and before long, he had a thriving business. As the trading post grew, Bernard brought on more help.

It was common in those early days of Cascascia for European business owners to hire local Native Americans to do the manual labor, and that was how one man in particular came to work for the Frenchman. History doesn't remember his name, but the tale does describe how Jean Bernard mistreated the man. It was cruel and unfair toward him, and always gave the worst of the labor to him and the other Native Americans who worked in the shop. But this man was different from most of the other Cascascians in the region.

It seems that the Jesuits had worked with his family decades before, and he himself was raised to speak both his native tongue and French, and that made him more flexible than most. Because of this, Bernard took a liking to the young man, and they formed a good working relationship as a result. But Jean Bernard wasn't the only person to take a liking to the Cascascian. Apparently his daughter Marie fell in love with the man as well, something that her father was strongly opposed to.

The legend says that he fired the young man, and then spread word around town that he wasn't to be hired by any of the other businesses. His goal was to drive the man to leave town in search of employment, and apparently, it worked. Marie, of course, was heartbroken, but there was nothing she could do. And then, a year later, a group of traders rode into town, and hidden among them was her lost lover. He had returned to claim her hand and take her away, to end their separation and build

a new life together elsewhere. Somehow he managed to pass a message to her, and they arranged to meet in a secret place later that night. Once together, the couple left town, disappearing down the great Mississippi. It's never that simple, though. Yes, they had a head start, and yes, they had love on their side. But Marie's father wouldn't be defied so easily. The moment he learned of his daughter's escape, Bernard gathered together a large group of

men, and they rode out of town to hunt the couple down. I don't know how they knew to ride north, but that's what they did. Maybe they assumed her lover was looking for work in one of the bigger settlements. Maybe they knew he had friends or family north of Cascassia. Whatever their reason was, they followed the Mississippi northward. It would have taken them hours, but eventually they tracked the young lovers down just outside of Cahokia. The town of Cahokia was another ancient Native American settlement that had become home to

a French outpost. Like Cascassia, it was home to a mix of French Canadians and Native Americans, and that made it a good hiding place for a couple like Marie and her true love. When Bernard's group found them, they immediately separated the couple. Marie was kept safe and watched over, while the man she loved was beaten and bound with rope. They dragged him to the very edge of the river, and then began searching for a large branch or fallen tree that they could manage.

When they found it, they dragged it toward their prisoner. The young man was tied to the log with yet more rope. We know he spoke French, and so did Bernard and his men, so there was apparently a lot of conversation. It's likely that he begged for his life, begged for Marie, begged for freedom. But the wrath of an angry father isn't something that words can sway. Not for Jean Bernard, at least. So the work continued.

When they were satisfied with their knots, the men pushed the log into the dark waters of the river. I imagine them waiting out a bit, pushing it along, making sure it made it past all the debris and vegetation growing along the bank there. And then they let it go, and watched as the young man drifted down river with a current. We don't know if Bernard made his daughter watch it all. We don't know if she was whisked away back to Kaskaskia before she could see it all unfold. But we do know that the man she loved shouted from the river as he drifted away.

His words, they say, carried a powerful curse. Bernard would be dead within a year, he claimed, and he and Marie would be reunited forever. And then he added that the town of Kaskaskia itself would suffer. The French there would be destroyed, and even the dead would find no rest in their graves. Later that year, Jean Bernard got caught up in a bad business deal. He accused another man of cheating him and challenged him to a duel. Bernard lost the duel and his life. Later that year, Marie herself died.

They say she wasted away from a broken heart, but her death allowed her to reunite with her lover, and nothing would ever keep them apart again. By the 1740s, the British were making moves to take over the territory controlled by the French. They bribed a number of neighboring Native American tribes to join them in a war against the settlers there, and by 1765, the French were run out of town. It seems Marie's true love was right about more than a few things. Kaskaskia did its best to persevere, though.

After the American Revolution, it became the capital of the Northwest Territory, and then in 1818, it became the first capital of the state of Illinois. But that's only lasted for about a year, and all along the town kept growing, and by the mid-1800s, it was home to roughly 7,000 people. And then the Mississippi River got involved. In 1844, a flood nearly wiped the town off the map, and very few of the citizens stayed to rebuild. Instead, they went looking for a safer place to live.

The Mississippi has always flooded. It still does, and that made life difficult for anyone who lived along its banks. After 1844, a lot less people in Kaskaskia were willing to take that risk. In the years that followed, the Great River did something extraordinary. It moved. Slowly, it began to change course, shifting to pass by the town on the eastern side rather than to the west. What was once a peninsula was slowly becoming an island instead, and after another major

flood in 1881, the shift was complete. Today, Kaskaskia is on the western shore of the Mississippi. Thanks to an act of Congress, it's a little pocket of Illinois on the edge of Missouri. Not that most people would notice, though. By 1950, there were only 112 people left to call the place their home. I think that there are a couple of indisputable facts buried in these stories that we would be wrong to ignore. First, people love to curse their own town, or the town of their enemies, or whatever

town they had a bad day in. We like to blame others for our own misfortune, or tell stories that explain away our bad luck and tragedy. It can't be our own fault, after all, so maybe the town itself is to blame, right? And second, no place is safe from tragedy. At some points, whether it takes decades or centuries, every location is going to experience its own fair share of loss and misfortune. Fire, floods, natural disasters, or human error.

No matter what the cause is, every location will eventually receive a visit from adversity. And on their own, these are both sad truths. Together though, they create a new world, one where cities are cursed and the tragedies they experience are rooted in supernatural causes. Oftentimes, the easiest thing to believe is also the most irrational. Still, some locations do seem to have an unusual amount of tragedy heaped upon them, Kaskaskia being a prime example. And it didn't end in 1950.

Even after that flood, the remaining citizens rebuilt the old Jesuit church and tried to move on. That's all they could do, I suppose. Still, they had to wonder. And then, on April 4th of 1973, the Mississippi rose nearly 40 feet above normal levels. The north levees broke, and the river rushed in, threatening much of the town. Hundreds of college students from nearby Southern Illinois University, along with the residents of the mainland and dozens of prison inmates, all gathered there to lay sandbags and fight

the flood as best they could. But it was no use. The new church and most of the town around it were all washed away. And that included the cemetery. People legend says that the flood of 1973 caused a number of graves to burst open, washing hundreds of caskets, along with their occupants, into the depths of the river. The dead, just as Marie's lover had predicted, had risen from their graves. I hope you've enjoyed today's tour of Cursed Locations.

Clearly, we humans have been enamored with the idea of places in the world that reject peace and tranquility for a very long time. Our stories are full of them, and even the most modern versions seem to have the ring of truth to them. But our travels aren't finished just yet. My team and I have tracked down one final spot that you need to know about. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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For your potential with BetterHelp, visit BetterHelp.com slash lore today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash lore. This episode was also made possible by Bioptimizers. If you're anything like me, sleep is a huge priority. The better my sleep, the better my day is going to be. I went through a period of time recently where I wasn't sleeping well because of stress and it left me exhausted, cranky, and feeling less than my full potential.

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They're opposites, and yet also equals. One can cancel out the other, but they each can be as harmless or as deadly as they choose to be. In some cases, they move as though they are alive, with wills of their own. Curses in particular can be blessings, eliminating old death to usher in new life. In some cases, however, they can be nothing short of a curse. And nobody knows curses like the people of Brunswick, Vermont. Despite Vermont's idyllic image of trees in the fall, their branches alight with the

reds and yellows and oranges of the changing leaves, it's not as wholesome as we might think. Brunswick, in the northeastern corner of the state, is home to a group of mineral springs. They're tucked into a lush, forested area known as the Northeast Kingdom, just a hop-skip and a jump away from the Canadian border. These springs, which run smack dab into the Connecticut River, are special. These six different springs, each only a few paces from each other, all flow into a different pool, each one possessing a different mineral, magnesium, calcium, sulfur, bromide, iron,

and arsenic. At least that's what people say. There's no scientific proof that it's actually true. In fact, geologists over the years have tried to explain the science behind this prism-like split in the minerals, but no one seems to agree on exactly what causes it. Of course, that didn't stop Ripley's believe it or not, from calling Brunswick Springs the eighth wonder of the world. That said, Ripley's might have held that title back if they'd known the other thing

about the springs. They're cursed. You see, centuries earlier, the Abenaki people had believed that the water from those springs was sacred, possessing powers used in all kinds of healing practices. Although they had no trouble using the water whenever they needed it, the legend says that the Abenaki refused to spend too long near the springs themselves. They would never sleep there. One, because the area was hallowed ground, and two, because spirits were known to walk

nearby. According to the stories, in 1748, a soldier in the French and Indian War wound up wounded during battle. In some versions, the soldier was French and aided by his Abenaki allies, while others claim that it was actually a British soldier and the Abenaki had taken pity on him. Regardless, the soldier nearly lost his arm, so the tribe took him to the springs where the mineral-filled waters healed him. After the war ended, the soldier, looking to make a little money, returned to the springs

with an idea and a business plan. He wanted to bottle up and sell the spring water to others, which offended the Abenaki. They refused to allow colonizers to abuse their land and the springs for profit, but that didn't stop other white men from trying to do the same thing. Eventually, the disputes between the Abenaki and the outsiders became so heated that one of the white men shot and killed an Abenaki father, as well as his child. Legend states that the child's mother was a sorceress. Distraught over the murder of her child, she proclaimed, whoever will try to profit from

this heavenly water would always fail. Unsurprisingly, the Abenaki were systematically wiped out and moved away from the springs. Over time, the area became overrun with white residents who had converted portions of their homes into boarding houses for ill tourists hoping to be treated by the miracle springs of Brunswick. By 1820, there were 12 Brunswick families, hosting borders as patients and running their operations around the rumored properties of the springs. They claimed that the spring water could cure almost everything, from tuberculosis and kidney

disease to rheumatism and glandular problems. And when a railroad was built through the area, the spring water tourism hit a fever pitch. A man named Charles Bailey arrived in town in 1860 and built a hotel there called the Brunswick Springs House, which he sold 20 years later to a dentist named D.C. Raul. Raul not only ran the hotel, but followed in that original legendary soldier's footsteps. He bottled up and sold the springs water.

And maybe he didn't know about the curse, or perhaps he just didn't care about it. Whatever the case, he soon felt its wrath. Brunswick Springs House went up in flames in 1894 and kicked off a series of disasters that would follow for years to come. In response, Raul built a new resort elsewhere near the springs, naming it the Pinecrest Lodge. When he died in 1910, so too did the resort he started. How?

It collapsed into the Connecticut River. John Hutchins was next. He was a wealthy land developer and real estate agent, as well as a mortician and a drugist, and he set his eyes on the magical waters of Brunswick Springs. As with those who had come before him, though, Hutchins didn't see magnesium or bromide. All he saw was dollar signs. He tried his hand at building a grand luxury resort with a focus on the spring water's healing properties.

But on September 19th of 1929, before anyone could sleep in its beds or even turn its locks, the building burned down. Maybe his problem was his ambition. A smaller hotel surely would have been a better start, right? So he got to work with a modern four-and-a-half-story building with plate glass windows. Of the 60 rooms, 30 received fresh water from the springs, a good vision, until that hotel burst into flames and turned into a pile of ash in May of 1930. You know that old Einstein quote, the one that goes, Insanity is doing the same thing

over and over and expecting different results? It's hard to believe that that wasn't written about anyone other than John Hutchins. He soon got to work on yet another hotel, one that would be built with 100 rooms and plumbing to carry spring water directly into each one. He even appropriated Native American imagery for his brochures, you know, to sell the whole package as authentic. It didn't work though. On April 23rd of 1931, this third hotel met the same fiery fate as all the others.

It seems that when it came to opening hotels near the springs, the colonizers were 0 for 5. Hutchins finally got wise and refused to build anything else there, as did every other developer going forward. To this day, no one has tried constructing a hotel or a boarding house near Brunswick Springs. But this story surprisingly doesn't end on a sour note. The Swanton Abinaki that reside near the springs today formed a non-profit, their goal, to raise

money and buy the land back for themselves. Which amazingly, they did. The area is once again under indigenous ownership, safe from outsiders and their business plans. For the first time in over 250 years. This episode of Lore was research written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with additional research help from Jenna Rose Nethercot and additional writing from Harry Marks, and music from Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. You can find more information on all of those things and more over at LorePodcast.com. You can also follow this show on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.