Lore - Episode 58: The Devil’s Beat

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

Human culture has a different expression no matter where you go. Despite that variety, though, we do share one common thread: music. And while it has typically been a source of joy, there have been moments when music has brought something else: fear, pain, and horror. * * * Official Lore Website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

In early 2012, a team of archaeologists discovered something groundbreaking inside a cave in southern Germany. They'd been working in the region for years, chasing a theory that early humans had followed the Danube River north into central Europe around 45,000 years ago. The caves had provided a mountain of evidence, early human jewelry, cave art representing humans and their growing collection of mythical heroes. This cave added a new element to our picture of that early culture. There, in the dust and sediment of this dark cavern, researchers found flutes.

They were all made of bone, some mammoth, some bird, but they'd all been crafted in a way that would be completely recognizable to us today. Animals were drilled into one side, spaced out at regular intervals. And they are, to date, the oldest instruments uncovered in the world. Music has been a part of human culture for thousands of years, and if you ask an archaeologist, she would probably tell you that even older instruments once existed. They're just impossible to find. Our voices, after all, are the original musical instrument, and shortly after that, scientists

believe it was percussion that was invented next. Music is in our blood, it's in our soul. The human experience, whether it was that of a nomadic, paleolithic hunter or a modern college student, would be incomplete without music. It pulls at our emotions, it inspires us, it helps us remember key lessons, and it's the central form of worship for billions of people around the world. Music is, well, it's life. But part of life is death, and pain, and sorrow, and fear.

And while it's not as common, music has been present in those moments as well. Sometimes, it's even caused them. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. One of the earliest physical instruments, according to most archaeologists, was the drum. It was probably a simple stone in the beginning, and the musician would bang another stone against it, or a stick, which makes it hard to nail down a date on the history of the drum because every early human dig site seems to be crawling with sticks and stones.

It wasn't until around 6000 BC that we started to see man-made drums, skins that were stretched tight over pottery or shells, but these early drums weren't unique to one place. We've uncovered them in Egypt, China, and almost every other ancient civilization we know of. And their uses are as varied as the cultures who've created them. They've served as instruments of worship, tools of communication, and as the driving force within ceremonial traditions that stretch back hundreds, even thousands of years. It's like a heartbeat, wherever there is human activity, there's percussion.

One significant use of drums throughout history, though, has been within the military. The ancient Chinese used drums to pass orders over vast distances and to synchronize the marching of foot soldiers. The war drum appears in the military history of the Aztec, West Africa, India, and most ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, and so many more. But it wasn't a prominent tool in Europe until the start of the Crusades. One unique moment in military history, as far as I can tell, happened in the aftermath of the English Civil War.

During the nine-year war between the royalists and the parliamentarians, soldiers on both sides of the conflict fought for the future of their country. And even when it ended in 1651, much of the military was kept active, known then as the New Model Army. But when Charles II reclaimed his father's crown, everyone was sent home. Many of these soldiers had been in service for years and had very little to go back to. No jobs, no homes, no fortunes. So one common procedure was to give soldiers permission to become beggars.

They were literally given badges and paper that made it legal for them to wander certain areas looking for charity or work. And military drummers were no exception. So there you go, a lot of history in just a couple of minutes. It might not be dark or frightening, but every historical moment needs context. Now let's shift gears, shall we? In the year following the return of the king in 1660, in a small town about 80 miles west of London, one man had an encounter with one of these licensed beggars.

John Mompasson was visiting a friend in the town of Lugershaw, and it was while he was there that he heard the sound of a drum from outside the house in the village. Now John was a former military officer, and like a lot of men his age, he'd served in the English Civil War. He knew the traditions and the rules, but he also knew how they were being abused. Plus, being a tax official, he had a professional interest in making sure that everyone with a license to beg did so within the boundaries of the law. So when he heard the drummer, he asked his friend, who was a local bailiff with a bit

of authority. His friend told him the beggar was a man named William Drury, and said that Drury had flashed his permit around town, asking for money and drumming for attention. John wanted to be sure, so he asked to meet the man. When John approached Drury, he asked to see the man's beggars badge and paperwork, which would have had the signatures of the military officers who issued the license. Drury cheerfully handed them over, but there was a problem. You see, John recognized the names on the paperwork.

Sir William Colley and Colonel Aleph were both men that he'd served with, so John was familiar enough with their signatures to recognize these as forgeries. Drury was caught in the act, and John had him arrested and taken into custody. Drury immediately confessed to the local constable, and in an effort to stop his illegal begging, the man's drum was taken from him. Drury begged for it to be returned, but instead it was moved to the bailiff's house where John had been visiting. So when the beggar was finally hauled off to jail, he went without his precious drum.

That was in March of 1661. The following month, John traveled to London for business and was gone for several days. I doubt that he thought much about the events in Lugershaw or the drummer who had tried to cheat the village. When John arrived back home, he probably hugged each of his three children and gave his wife a kiss, and then he made his way toward his favorite chair to rest his tired body after a long day of travel, and there, waiting for him, was a mysterious package. His wife explained that it had arrived while he was away, but she hadn't opened it.

That was John's business after all. Now maybe it was in a sack, or perhaps it was wrapped in cloth like a present. However it had arrived, John set about opening the package up, and then, suddenly, he stopped. The object inside was a drum. It wasn't just any drum, of course. It was THE drum, the beggar's drum. But according to John's wife, the drum wasn't the only unusual thing to arrive while he was gone.

She told him that the night after his friend, the bailiff, had dropped off the package, a group of thieves had come to the house. It seemed to her as if a dozen or so men had run around the outside of the house, pounding on all the doors for a short while. Then they vanished. The next night, the men were back. If they were thieves or bandits, they never tried to break inside, but they pounded. John's wife knew this because she could hear it, loud as ever, right inside the house.

And needless to say, she was glad for John's return. And then, three nights after he'd come back from London, it happened again. In the middle of the night, they were both startled by the sound of someone pounding on the front door. John slipped out of bed, grabbed two pistols, one in each hand, and then cautiously approached the door. Then, carefully, he opened it. There was no one there.

Outside, the darkness was still and silent, but before he could close the door, the knocking started up again from a different part of the house. John locked the door and ran as fast as he could to the new one. Maybe whoever was outside was just confused about which door to knock on. Maybe they needed help, or maybe they were playing a game. Filled with an odd mixture of fear and frustration, he ran. This door, though, was like the first. No visitor was waiting for him on the other side.

No bandit was there, gun in hand. The doorstep was empty. But before he could consider the reasons why, the knocking sounded for a third time, this time high up on the second floor of the house. John dashed to the stairs as fast as he could. He probably could have guessed what he'd find. He knew it before he opened the door that led out onto the roof of the second floor, but he did it anyway.

And sure enough, there, just outside the door, was nothing. No midnight visitor, no bandit, no trickster, just darkness. But not silence. Not this time, at least. As John stood there, staring out into the night, he claims he heard something. It was like the sound the wind makes on a stormy night, except it was different. More sinister. He described it as hollow.

It seemed evil and empty, almost hungry. John closed and locked the door, and prayed for it to stop. And for a while, that seemed to be the case. He climbed back into bed, and he and his wife tried to sleep. But the noises picked up again later, still pounding. But this time, it seemed to come from the very air around their home, as if someone were knocking on thin air. However much John wished it could have been an isolated event, it wasn't.

For the next month, the pounding continued each night. It was loud and constant, almost rhythmic, almost like a drum. And then the noises crept inside. They were just as loud, but now they were emanating from the room where John kept the confiscated drum, the one William Drury had begged to have returned to him. And John couldn't help but wonder, what if Drury had died? What if the drummer was dead because of what he'd done? And now the man was back to haunt him.

The events that followed were completely unnerving to John and his family. The furniture would shake along with the drumming sounds. But only at night, only when they were trying to get rest. It would start up, wake the whole household, and then fade away after an hour or two. To make matters worse, that hollow sound, the sound that John had heard outside after returning from London, was back. But like the drum, it too had moved indoors. Week after week, month after month, the torment continued.

It seemed as if it would never end. And then John's worst fears came to life. You see, if the events so far were indeed caused by the angry spirit of the beggar William Drury, then sounds could hardly be seen as definitive proof. But over time, the activity evolved. Acts were moving now. John's elderly mother, who lived with the family, even found her Bible in the fireplace buried in the ashes.

And then things got personal. It started to attack the family. It was the children who seemed to be the focus of the attacks. Some nights their beds would shake violently, as if something invisible were slamming into them. Other times, loud scratching noises could be heard beneath the beds. On a few occasions, the children themselves were even affected. Mysterious, invisible hands lifted them up until they were suspended in midair over their

beds. Fearing for the safety of their children, John and his wife moved them to another room in the house where nothing unusual had taken place so far. But once they were settled there, the invisible forces followed them in, and everything continued. And it wasn't just the children who were encountering the unexplainable. One of the servants who lived and worked in the household was, confusingly, also named John. According to John Mompasson's own account, early on the morning of November 5th, 1662,

this servant named John ran into the room where the children were sleeping because the noises had started once again. Across the room, the servant could see two boards that had been placed there, leaning against the wall, and one of them was moving. I'm not sure what inspired the servant to do this, but he spoke and asked for the board to be brought to him. There was silence for a moment, and then one of the boards floated up from the floor and moved toward him, stopping about three feet from where he stood.

The servant extended a hand and asked again, and this time the board moved right into his hand. John, the homeowner, walked in a moment later to find the servant passing the board back and forth with the invisible force. Frightened by what it might mean, John told the servant to stop, which he did, but that was a breaking point for John Mompasson. Something was in his house, something he couldn't see or control, and it was interacting with his family.

In early December of 1662, John wrote a desperate letter to a relative named William Creed, who happened to be a professor of divinity at Oxford. If anyone had the wisdom and knowledge to help him, John assumed that this would be the man. Sadly, Creed was just as perplexed as everyone else. There were more and more new experiences each day. John noticed that an odd odor would fill the house from time to time. They heard the sound of heavy chains being rattled and dragged along the floor.

Loud voices came from empty parts of the house. Even heavy breathing, as if some large and invisible force were standing in the room with them. And all the while, the drumming continued, sometimes so loud that the neighbors could hear it. And all that noise drew public attention. People traveled from across the area just to hear the drumming and experience the hauntings for themselves.

But with fresh eyes and ears, also came fresh news. You see, up to this point, John Mompasson had assumed the drummer had died or had been killed and that his spirit was the cause of all their troubles. But word reached him in the summer of 1663 that this wasn't true at all. William Drury was alive and well. Then after a short stint in a Gloucester jail for stealing some pigs, the man had escaped. Then he purchased himself a new drum and had gone back to wandering the area again. But there were other rumors, rumors that still seemed to offer John some answers.

It was said by some that Drury had bragged to more than a few people about bewitching John's house. And according to the beggars' old military friends, Drury had a reputation for being a sorcerer. Of course, rumors didn't mean that Drury really was a sorcerer. It could very well have just been a lot of unchecked superstition. But for a man as desperate as John, these notions represented hope. He was looking for a logical explanation for his situation, and these tales of witchcraft

did the trick. So Drury was brought to Salisbury, where he was put on trial for the spiritual equivalent of aiding and abetting a criminal. They accused him of sorcery and brought the evidence against him. The drumming. The invisible forces in the house. The rumors. All of it.

In an age when witchcraft was considered real, possible, and punishable, Drury's freedom was suddenly on the line. Judge Isaac Burgess listened to it all. He weighed the evidence. And it seems he brought common sense to the table. Because on August 3rd of 1663, Drury was acquitted. Not easily, they say. It was a tough choice, but in the end he wasn't charged with witchcraft.

He wasn't off the hook, though. There was still the theft charge, and so that very next day he was taken back to a Gloucester Jail. The results of that trial are important to our story, because when he was finally convicted of that crime, Drury was placed on a prison ship and sent to live in a penal colony. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the drummers hold over the mampus and household. The drumming. The noises.

The invisible hands. All of it. Just stopped. Their nightmare was finally over. On the surface, this is just one more story of a haunted house, in a long line of haunted house stories. I get that. Trust me.

But the drummer of Tedworth is much more than just a spooky poltergeist tale. It's the story of one family's struggle to rationalize their unusual experiences in a world that was quick to reach for supernatural explanations. It's a story that had what many other tales always seemed to lack, eyes on the ground, contemporary documents that still exist today, and multiple outsider testimonies about what they experienced at the house. Still, it is a haunted house story. It's a tale that plays with our ability to suspend disbelief.

It presents us with something that, at first blush, seems trivial, almost laughable. A household of normal, rational people, held hostage by a drum. It's easy to wonder, though. Was it a haunting or was it witchcraft? Because those are very different things in folklore. It resembles so many different types of supernatural activity that it's a hard story to pin down. But perhaps, in the end, it was something much more mundane. There's a good chance this story was actually grounded on something less superstitious, but

no less dark and evil. Politics. You see, as I said earlier, William Drury was a drummer in the English Civil War, and he served with the parliamentarians. John Mompasson, on the other hand, served as an officer on the side of the royalists, which means that he and the drummer were political enemies. It would be like watching a union officer and a Confederate soldier meeting each other just a year after the end of the American Civil War.

You can end a war, for sure, but bad blood is a lot more difficult to put a stop to. But then, something happened. Nine weeks after the events in the Mompasson household, after a long period of silence and peace, it all started happening again. The noises and breathing and moving objects. And the drumming. We don't have to take John's word for it, either. There are witnesses to this.

One pair, an attorney named Anthony Ettrick and his friend Sir Ralph Banks, actually spent the night and reported knocking sounds, a claim to be able to request that the spirit knock in specific numbers, and that it complied willingly. Naturally, this perplexed John Mompasson. It frustrated him, too, and maybe even frightened him. So he began asking around. He had connections, after all, and soon enough, he received the news he'd already feared. William Drury had escaped again and was already back on English soil, back and in the area.

If the drummer needed to be in close proximity to the house in order to be in control, his return certainly seemed to prove it. Proof that a political argument rarely finds a peaceful solution, or one more clue that hints at a supernatural explanation. Either way, it's proof of the magical nature of music. If you can hear it, it has power. Today, Midas fixes more than you know, and now there's a new Midas opening in Calgary for all your tire and car care needs.

As a grand opening special, Midas is offering a $49.99 conventional, $89.99 full synthetic oil change, with a multi-point checkup included. So stop by the new Midas on 61st Avenue today, or call ahead to request an appointment for tires, brakes, oil, and repairs. Most vehicles see store for details, other oils, and specialty filters extra, not valid with other offers. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett.

Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

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