So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: The Electric Girl

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Angélique Cottin was not your typical 19th-century French teenager. For one, she could make huge objects move with the faintest touch. And despite being observed by doctors and scientists across France, no one could conclude anything more than that it had something to do with electricity. 

Telekinesis sounds pretty incredible, right? Moving objects without even touching them could be so convenient, especially massive things like furniture. Talk about redecorating made easy. But what if you couldn't control the way those things moved? If suddenly inanimate objects just launched away from your body whenever you tried to touch them? Even dangerous objects like knives and scissors, If suddenly inanimate objects just launched away from your body whenever you tried to touch them.

Even dangerous objects like knives and scissors. The kinds of things that could really hurt somebody if they fly across the room. Now, that sounds a little less magical and a little more terrifying, doesn't it? Well, in the mid-1800s, this is exactly what happened to a 14-year-old French teenager who could not explain what was going on with her body. Her name was Angelique Cotin. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, I'm looking at the case of Angelique Cotin, the so-called electric girl. This girl could move massive objects by barely touching them. Doctors and scientists at the time couldn't fully explain Angelique's powers,

and in all the years since, no one has been able to come up with an answer. I'll have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Before Angelique Coton was dubbed the electric girl, she probably barely had even heard of electricity. Scientists knew about it, but in 1846, it doesn't play a role in the average person's life, especially not if you're a peasant in the French countryside. Early prototypes of electric light bulbs have been invented, but they aren't regularly used in anyone's home. Houses are still warmed by fires and lit by oil or gas lamps and candles. That includes the house of Angelique Coton's aunt in Orne,

an area in France's Normandy region, where, on January 15, 1846, Angelique is working at a loom. This is a daily activity for Angelique. Even though she's only 14, her family needs her to work to keep everybody clothed and fed. There's no time or money for a formal education. Only weaving, specifically silk gloves. The loom is set up at a heavy wooden table. Angelique and three other girls are chatting and laughing while they work. It's stormy outside and has been all week, but otherwise things couldn't be more normal.

At least until the four girls start to feel something underneath their hands. It appears that the table is shaking. The odd part is nothing else in the room is moving, only this giant heavy wood counter which is definitely rocking back and forth and seemingly on its own. All of the girls step back nervously watching as the table keeps jerking violently and then flips itself over sending their whole workstation flying. Now the girls just stand by there for a minute totally gobsmacked waiting to see what happens next. But now the room is completely still. So they all turn to each other slowly and immediately start arguing. One of them must have been playing a trick on the others,

although none of them saw anyone push the table. Eventually, one of the girls is like, OK, enough. We have to let this go. These gloves aren't going to weave themselves. So it takes the strength of all four of these young women to turn the table over again. They set everything back up and return to work. At least for a few minutes before the table starts to wobble again. This time, the girls aren't annoyed.

They're freaked out. They just saw how heavy that table is, and they know that none of them could be moving it on purpose. The only other explanation that they can think of is witchcraft. And for a bunch of devout Catholics in the 1800s, this is a very terrifying and serious possibility, which is why it literally sends them running. They stampede out of the cottage screaming.

The neighbors hear them and rush over to help, but when the girls tell them what happened, the neighbors kind of just laugh at them, like there's gotta be a more grounded explanation for this. So the girls eventually calm down. Reluctantly, they agree that maybe they did overreact, and they head back to the loom and everything seems normal. That is until Angelique touches her yarn.

As soon as her hand hits the thread, the whole frame of her loom starts to shake aggressively. The girls all back away. At this point, they don't even want to be in the same room as her, but they have to do something. So they decide to call in someone older and a bit wiser, Angelique's aunt. After hearing their story, Angelique's aunt comes to exactly the same conclusion as the girls. This has got to be witchcraft. Her niece must be possessed by some kind of demon. Now, I have no idea what Angelique was thinking or feeling at this point. Like most peasant girls at the time,

she most likely didn't know how to read or write, so she probably didn't leave any personal record behind. But it seems fair to assume she'd be horrified. I mean, being accused of witchcraft is no joke. Angelique would have definitely heard about the people who'd been burned at the stake, usually for far less than what she'd just done. So when her aunt takes her to the local minister,

Angelique probably figures she's in for some kind of nasty backlash. But instead, the minister just laughs. He thinks the whole thing must be their imagination running wild. Still, Angelique's aunt demands he perform an exorcism just to be safe, and he agrees under one condition. He's going to need a demonstration of Angelique's so-called curse. The teenager takes off one of her gloves and puts it down on the minister's kitchen chair, and then, without even touching the chair with her hands, it starts tipping over, almost like her glove had somehow transferred her power. The minister is baffled and sits on

the chair trying to steady it, but the seat just rocks harder and harder until it throws him on the floor. Now, at this point, all three of them are silent with shock. Something is going on, something that even the minister can't explain. But he doesn't want to accuse Angelique of black magic. There has to be a more rational explanation. So he tells Angelique she'd better go see a doctor. So a few days later, this local doctor visits the family's cottage to witness her powers firsthand. And as soon as Angelique starts working on the loom, the whole thing is thrown away from her all the way across the room. The doctor watches this happen over and over again, and he picks up on something

no one else has yet. Angelique's hands seem to stretch out instinctively as the loom flies away from her, almost like she's being pulled by the object. But then she's thrust backwards as if the attraction is followed by a repulsion. The doctor is fascinated. He has Angelique reset the loom one more time, only this time he tries to hold the loom to keep it steady. But once the shaking begins, he realizes the force is too strong. He gets thrown across the room along with the table and the loom, like the energy is too powerful for even a grown man to resist. The doctor can't explain it. He only gets more confused when he revisits Angelique a few days later because her abilities seem to have escalated even further. After Angelique sits down on a wooden chair, the seat flies backwards and

she's thrown to the ground. Even when three strong men try to hold the chair down, it still lands several yards away. And now when Angeljali's just walking around the house, small objects around her start to move without her even laying a finger on them. I'm talking tongs, books, even shovels go soaring through the house. The scissors she has strapped to her dress also go flying into the air. Her family even has to start dodging burning firewood. It's a nightmare. After a few days of this, the doctor admits he needs some backup. So he takes Angelique to the next town over to see two more doctors. And for this little demonstration, he decides to push Angelique a bit to see how far her abilities can really go. He finds a 150-pound wooden block and has Angelique sit beside it so her dress just

barely brushes the block. The slab immediately rises four inches off the ground then it falls and it does this over and over apparently as many as 40 times in one minute. Even when three men sit on the block it rises with the same force. There's absolutely no way Angelique could lift that much weight on her own. The problem is none of these doctors have a clue what's going on, which means they can't help Angelique when her abilities progress from weird to downright life-threatening. Coming up, Angelique's powers change her life for the worse. Now, back to the story.

After just a few days, Angelique's powers are becoming a hassle, to put it lightly. For starters, she kind of has to give up her sewing career. Being around sharp objects like needles and scissors is far too dangerous for her and everyone around her. But even smaller, more mundane tasks are proving to be a danger to the household. For example, there's one afternoon when Angelique is about to shell some peas. While she's reaching for the basket, her dress lightly grazes it and the basket flies away from her and somehow the peas shoot up into the air and scatter all over the room. By this point, her family has no idea what to do. The doctor knows they rely on Angelique's labor for support and he has an idea that might help temper her powers, at least

enough to get her work done. Now, I'm not totally sure where he comes up with this, but it seems like maybe the doctor understood a few things about electricity, including the fact that glass is a non-conductor, meaning it could stop the flow of electricity from moving from one object to another. So he figures maybe it will work with Angelique. He sets a chair on top of a sheet of glass. Then he has Angelique take a seat, making sure her feet are firmly planted on the paint. And the chair doesn't move.

Everyone is shocked. They still don't get what's going on, but at least this provides some sort of relief. But unfortunately for Angelique, it's not quite enough. Because let's going on, but at least this provides some sort of relief. But unfortunately for Angelique, it's not quite enough. Because let's be real, she can't always be perched on a sheet of glass. Not to mention her powers are still growing stronger. Like she can't even lie down in bed without disaster striking. As soon as she climbs in, the whole bed shakes., try getting to sleep like that. By February 2nd, two and a half weeks after this all began, Angelique is at her wit's end, which is when another local physician, this guy named

Dr. Verge, offers to take Angelique to his home. For the Coton family, this might be a relief. With Angelique out of the house, they can get back to their daily life without watching over their shoulders for flaming logs or darting scissors. But there's a catch. Dr. Verger wants to host demonstrations of Angelique's powers for the public. The first two days alone, more than a thousand people come to watch Angelique. And for rural France, pre-cars, that's a lot. But everyone gets what they came for. Like Angelique does not disappoint. But by the end of each show, she's exhausted, which on the bright side is when her powers seem to diminish. It's about the only time she can sit down on a real chair without it shooting off in the opposite direction.

For a little while at least. Because by the next morning, her powers are always back in full force. By February 6th, more than 2,000 people have come to gawk at Angelique. And as horrifying as this all is, it gives the Coton family an idea. Up until now, the demonstrations have been free. But if so many people are interested, maybe they can start charging for admission, you know, to recoup what they've lost since Angelique can't work anymore. Now, the doctors advise the family against this. Angelique is still a young girl and no one has any idea what her condition is yet. The focus should really be on curing her. But Angelique's father is not deterred. The way he sees it, it doesn't have to be an either-or. After all, in 19th century France,

the best place to put on a show is also the best place for scientific research, Paris. So they head out for the big city. And one of the first people the Cotons visit in the capital is a doctor named Monsieur Tonshu, and he verifies a lot of what the country physicians have already seen. But Tonshu is especially careful to verify two things, the attraction repulsion that Angelique has towards the objects and the glass trick that her first doctor came up with, both of which seem to connect Angelique's condition to electricity. And Dr. Tonchou makes some other observations that no one's really noticed before. For starters, Angelique's left side seems to exert a stronger force than her right. Her left hand is also much warmer than her right, and it trembles a bit. Her pulse is irregular, and her heartbeat is very fast, bouncing between

100 and 120 beats a minute, while the average person is somewhere between like 60 and 100. When she exerts her powers, a cool breeze seems to blow off her, and when her fingers touch the north pole of a magnet, she receives a shock, but when she touches the south pole, nothing happens. Tan Chu also notices that Angelique's powers vary over the course of a day. She's most powerful between seven and nine in the evening,

which Tan Chu suspects may be a response to the main meal of the day, which Angelique eats at 6 p.m. She's also more powerful when she's calm, happy, and even distracted from her powers. Meanwhile, stress seems to weaken her. But for all of Tan Chu's observations, he still doesn't have any concrete answers

for the girl's condition. He figures that maybe this isn't a job for a physician. So he writes up a report and brings it to the Academy of Sciences. These are the bigwigs, the most respected scientists in the country. They span all different fields from mathematics to anatomy. If what's happening to Angelique is rooted in science, then they're the best guys to figure it out. When they first see Tanchu's report, plenty of them are skeptical. But Angelique is

already the talk of France. So the members agree. They're going to dedicate a committee of six scientists to studying Angelique. They're going to figure out exactly what's causing her powers, no matter what they have to do to their test subject in the process. Coming up, scientists push Angelique too far. Now back to the story. It's February 17th, 1846, a little over a month since Angelique's powers appeared. Six of France's top scientists are observing her at the Jardin des Plantes, the city's famous botanical garden. Angelique repeats her signature flying chair demonstration, and as soon as she sits down, the usual thing happens. One of the committee members even tries to hold down

the chair, to no avail. Without doing much further observation, the scientists agree with Dr. Tonshu. This must somehow be related to electricity, and it's time to put that theory to the test. What they do is they put Angelique's hand on a voltaic battery, which is basically one of the first batteries ever invented. It's not something Angelique would hand on a voltaic battery, which is basically one of the first batteries ever invented. It's not something Angelique would have been familiar with, but it looks pretty innocent. Unlike the other component they use, which is a dead frog.

Not just any dead frog, this one has been skinned and partially dissected so that its spinal nerves are exposed. And the scientists put it right on Angelique's bare arm. She holds still, absolutely terrified, and waits until the dead frog actually jumps. Poor Angelique is horrified. Now, I should note, the frog hasn't actually come back from the dead.

It moved as a result of the electrical current that ran from the battery through Angelique and into the frog, which honestly could have happened with anybody. It doesn't require an electric girl like Angelique to be a conduit. Now, I'm not totally sure what the committee members were hoping to get out of this. Maybe they didn't know enough about electricity to realize that this test was pretty useless, but they aren't deterred. They have plenty of other experiments that they plan to test out on Angelique, except they never get the chance. Because after this first meeting with the scientists, Angelique's abilities quickly diminish. This might be because she's traumatized by what happened with that frog.

Apparently, every night she dreams of dead toads coming back to life. And after all, Dr. Tonshu did find that stress had a big effect on her powers. Through early March, Angelique is occasionally able to lift a table, but none of the committee members are ever there to see it. So they don't get to do any real scientific study on Angelique. Eventually, the Academy of Scientists puts out a report with very lukewarm, inconclusive thoughts. They admit that they once saw Angelique move a chair, but they couldn't say why it was happening. By the end of March, Angelique's powers were totally gone. And, as far as I know, they never came back.

In the end, she never really got answers to what was happening. Although, there were other so-called electric girls who came after Angelique, both Americans. The first was Lulu Hurst, the Georgia Wonder, who performed in the early 1880s. Around the same time, there was Dixie Haygood, who went by the stage name Annie Abbott, the Little Georgia Magnet. Both of these women made names for themselves as performers, not as subjects of scientific study, and they did well too. They could move heavy pieces of furniture, even when they were held down by a few strong men. And they publicly claimed that their abilities were fueled by electricity, although they never explained exactly how they'd gotten that power or how it worked. That is, until Lulu actually wrote an autobiography admitting that her abilities were all stage magic, and Dixie Haygood most likely used similar tricks.

But this doesn't mean Angelique's powers weren't real. After all, they happened in multiple locations, which would have made stage magic pretty difficult to pull off consistently. Not to mention, she lost her powers right before she started profiting off of them. If this was all an elaborate hoax, you'd think she would have put on a show for paying customers instead of just country doctors and baffled scientists. And those experts who studied Angelique extensively could not debunk it at all. One of them said, quote, very learned, but we are often very mistrustful. In the present case, we have examined, re-examined, taken every possible precaution against deception, and the more we have seen, the deeper has been our conviction of the reality of the phenomenon. We have to assume that whatever was going on with Angelique, she wasn't faking it,

which leaves us stranded in the same conundrum as all those doctors and scientists in the 1800s. You'd think that today, with almost two centuries of scientific progress, we'd have a better understanding of what was happening, but not really. If anything, it's even harder to explain knowing everything we do about science. Like, there are living creatures that can generate electric fields all on their own. They're called electric fish. This may have actually inspired the doctors and scientists who examined Angelique. After all, if a fish can carry its own electric charge, then why not a human, right?

In the late 19th century, the understanding of how these electric fish worked was limited, but today we know a lot more about them. They have a special electric organ, sort of like an internal battery that generates the electricity. And since the human body isn't equipped with anything similar, it seems unlikely that Angelique was operating in the same way as these fish. But even today, it's not like scientists have figured out everything. If all the discoveries of the past few centuries have taught us anything, it's that just because we can't explain something, that doesn't mean it's not real or not possible.

And in the end, there's a very fine line between science and magic. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.