Lore - Episode 76: Talk Show

Episode Date: December 22, 2017

Life is a lot like a big budget movie. We click play, and then let the action wash over us. There are highs and lows, laughter and tears, and then it’s all over and the screen goes silent. The dead can’t talk back, something most people are thankful for. Still, there have been rare moments in history when that rule appears to have been broken—and the results were extraordinary. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They had assembled an artistic dream team. The legendary painter, Antoine van Dyke, had been hired to draw the face of King Charles of England from multiple angles. Next, those drawings were shipped to Italy, where sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini would bring them to life in the form of a bust. But his progress was much slower than the royal court back in England had expected, so they asked for an explanation. Bernini responded, telling them that every time he sat down to work on the bust,

there was something in the character of the king's face that unsettled him, and he would have to walk away, over and over again. Finally, in 1637, Bernini managed to complete his work, and it was transported back to England. The king, anxious to see the finished product, ordered it to be unveiled right there, outside the palace of Whitehall, and when he saw it, he smiled at its beauty. Then, as they stood there, a hawk flew over the crowd, a freshly killed animal in its claws, and from that animal, a single drop of blood fell, landing directly on the neck of this brand-new ghostly white bust of the king, which was then placed over a door in the king's private chambers,

without ever being cleaned. A decade later, though, Charles I would be arrested and beheaded by the parliamentarians, and those with an eye for detail have noted how that random drop of blood on the neck of his bust almost seemed to hint at his future death. Foreshadowing in all its macabre glory. Humans have always been obsessed with fate. We use the concept as a fitting explanation for coincidence and chance. But stories like that of Charles I have a way of leaving us wondering if something more is going on. What if fate could literally step through the door, materialize

right before our eyes, and tell us what we're supposed to do? If the stories are true, that's exactly what happened over two centuries ago on the rocky coast of New England. Yes, it sounds crazy, I know, but given how old human history really is, the odds are good that at some point along the way, crazy had to become reality. One might even say it was meant to be. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Community is a powerful thing. There's something about having people around us, supporting us, being there when life gets rough. Well, it's as powerful as folklore.

And that was just as true in the late 1700s, out there on the northern edges of Colonial Main, as it is today. Community matters. For the people of the village of Sullivan, community was also essential. They founded their settlement as a community. It worked as one, and struggled as one. Life was usually good and fair, but it was also hard. So when Eleanor died in childbirth on the 13th of June in 1797, it was the intersection of all of that. They mourned, they supported, and they did what had to be done. Eleanor's baby also died. Now, remember, this was 1797, and back then, death hovered a lot more closely to everyday life. Every time a woman went into labor, she had a one percent chance of

not surviving. Children had it worse, with something close to half of all babies failing to survive the first five years. For Nellie and her child, the odds were stacked against them. Nellie's widower was a man named George, and like so many before him who have suffered horrific tragedy, he mourned and struggled, and then slowly moved forward. He recovered. He healed as best he could. And within two years, he was courting a new woman. Her name was Lydia Blaisdell. Local legend says that Lydia's parents weren't too pleased with her choice in a suitor, but those legends don't actually give us a reason for that prejudice. Perhaps it was the fact that she was just 15 at the time, or maybe that they just wanted someone

less experienced than poor, tragic George. But that disappointment didn't stop the couple from staying together. In August of 1799, Lydia's parents began to notice sounds coming from their cellar. That wasn't unusual, though. As the weather turned colder, it was all too common for small animals to invade a home and settle in. But as autumn turned to winter, those noises also changed. Soon enough, they sounded less like the scratching of animals and more like knocking, and not the random knocking that might have been blamed on contracting timber in the cold weather. No, this seemed more human in origin. It was as if there was a hidden door inside the cellar, and someone was knocking on it, trying to get their attention.

Then, on January 2 of 1800, months after it all began, the family heard something new. Voices. Someone, it seemed, was talking in the cellar. So, Lydia's father, Mr. Abner Blaisdell, grabbed a lantern and carefully descended into the darkness beneath the house. I don't know what he was expecting to find, but apparently there was nothing to see. His ears, though. Well, they told him a different story. The voice called out again, louder now that he was in the cellar, but Mr. Blaisdell couldn't find the speaker. Who are you, he said aloud, scanning the shadows for the unwelcome visitor.

And then, the voice replied, clear and understandable. I am the dead wife of Captain George Butler, born Nelly Hooper, the invisible speaker said. It's not clear what Abner Blaisdell's immediate reaction was. We don't know if he dropped the lantern and ran, or slowly backed up the stairs like some character in a Scooby-Doo episode. Maybe he chatted more with the mysterious voice, or maybe that was all the information he needed. What we do know is that soon he was back upstairs with his family, where he told them what he had heard. After a bit of discussion, they all decided that there was only one way to determine whether this was a morbid prank or not. They needed to bring Eleanor's loved ones in for a second opinion.

So, two of the Blaisdell children were sent out into the snow. One traveled over six miles to reach the home of Eleanor's parents, the Hoopers. The other headed to Butler's point, where George lived alone. But George apparently wasn't alone. In fact, Eleanor's very own sister, Sally, was visiting George along with her husband, and all of them declared it to be a sick joke, and they refused to play along. But Eleanor's father, David, was more intrigued. Despite the snowstorm that raged outside in the darkness, he bundled up and followed the Blaisdell messenger home.

When he arrived, Abner Blaisdell led him into the cellar. We don't have a record of the words spoken to David Hooper that night, but when he came back up, he was convinced the voice was indeed that of his dead daughter. She told him things that only his Nelly would have known. It was proof positive that the unthinkable had happened. Nelly had returned from the grave. The voice also told David Hooper something else though. She said that her entire purpose for returning was to deliver her approval. She knew that George had moved on and was courting young Lydia, and so Nelly had arrived to tell them that they had her blessing.

It was only after this powerful new element of the story was revealed that George Butler agreed to visit the cellar and hear for himself what the voice had to say. The next day he arrived and stood beside Lydia in the cellar, and then he called out to it. Who are you? he asked, squeezing Lydia's hand. I was once your wife, the voice replied, and then she went on to reveal private conversations that only the real Nelly would have known about. And that's when something began to appear in front of them there in the close quarters of the cellar. Butler later described it as the ghostly figure of a woman, a woman, he said, who held an infant in her arms. Overwhelmed by emotion and confused

by what his eyes were looking at, George is said to have slowly extended his hand and reached out toward the figure. Then, after taking a deep breath, he touched it. The moment he did, though, the ghostly figure faded into the air and vanished. In the following days, the events in that dark cellar began to spread, like a cloud of smoke billowing up from a choked fireplace. And the first of those encounters happened right outside the Blaisdell house in broad daylight in the middle of a snowy field. That's where Lydia's brother Paul was when he looked up and caught his breath. Right there, floating above the snow, was the same ghostly figure of a woman, and she was slowly drifting toward him. Naturally, Paul was terrified

and he turned and ran back home as fast as he could. And let's be honest, most of us would have done the exact same thing. The following night, Paul went down to the cellar. Then I have no idea why, because he knew that the voice and ghostly visions had all started there. Maybe his parents sent him. I don't know. Whatever the reason was, he did go. But while he was there, the same female voice called out his name. Again, he ran. But even as he did, he could hear the voice calling out, asking why. The ghost said she was offended. Paul had been rude to her, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get out of the cellar as fast as he could. Once back with his family, he told them what had happened. The trouble was, you can't share a story like that and not expect it to spread.

Remember, community is a powerful thing. Yes, having people around you means that you have support when life gets difficult. Community can be a lot like the wooden concrete forms around the foundation of a house, holding everything in until it's solid again. But community can also be a circus. So as the story spread of these encounters in and around the Blaisdell household, neighbors began to travel over to see for themselves. Spectators, curious onlookers, rubber-neckers, call them whatever you want. These neighbors came for a show. Boy, did they get one. People constantly filled up the Blaisdell house, and everywhere they went, they heard the voice. Oftentimes, it was in various rooms of the house, but the vast majority of sightings,

if we can call them that, were down in the cellar. Everyone heard them, too. It was entertaining. It was powerful. And it was frightening in how believable it had all become. On one occasion, Abner Blaisdell had escorted 14 other people, neighbors and strangers alike, down into his cellar. While they were there, he decided to test the ghost, what everyone had come to refer to as the specter, and asked her about his elderly father who lived almost 200 miles away. Abner knew his father had been sick for some time, but if this entire ghostly, disembodied voice experience was just a hoax, the odds were good that the prankster had no idea. Unexpectedly, she responded in a somber tone,

telling Abner, your father is in heaven, praising God with the angels. There were other reasons to suspect a hoax, though, and the biggest of them was the entire reason for Nelly's return. She had told the Blaisdells that she only wanted to deliver her blessing to George and Lydia, to tell them it was acceptable for them to move forward and be married. And to a lot of people, that felt a bit too convenient. So convenient, in fact, that many people assumed Lydia was somehow behind the entire thing. To them, this specter was clearly not the ghost of Eleanor Butler, Mack from the grave, to issue her approval. It was Lydia herself. Some thought she was

trying to convince her parents to allow the marriage. Others assumed George was having second thoughts, and this was some trick that she had devised to keep him close. She was behind it either way. They were sure of it. But there was a problem with that theory. You see, people had seen the specter. Multiple eyewitnesses reported the same vision, a pale ghostly woman, sometimes holding an equally ghostly infant and sometimes alone. Many heard her speak and watched her move. Theories were great and all, but it was hard to believe them when proof was standing right in front of you. And not just visions in general. Oftentimes the specter of Eleanor could be seen beside Lydia, in the cellar of her house, in other rooms upstairs, even outside,

as Lydia walked to neighboring homes, following along almost like a travel companion. It very clearly couldn't be Lydia in a costume when she herself was standing right there in plain view. It was in the midst of all of this that something happened. One day, a knock was heard in the Blaisdell house, but this one came from the front door. Abner opened it to find a messenger with a letter, and he welcomed the man inside. This man said he'd come to deliver news, news of Abner's father. It had taken him over a week to travel north, but he'd wanted Abner to know as soon as possible. Yes, his father had indeed been sick, but that illness had finally taken his father's life. The ghost of Nelly Butler had been right all along,

and if it was right, that meant something else, something much more powerful and ominous and frightening. The ghost might very well be real. Abner Blaisdell was one of the few in town who actually needed convincing. Most people had bought into the idea that this specter, this ghostly echo of Eleanor Butler, was actually real, and from what the stories go on to tell us, she was also more than a little bossy. This wasn't one of those ghost hunter episodes where you're on the edge of your seat for an hour waiting for a spirit to knock against a pipe in response to a question. No, this spectral visitor took charge, telling the living people around her to do things. Sometimes those requests

were benign, such as instructing people to stand in certain locations or to walk beside her as she moved from place to place. She also asked for more witnesses, telling the people of the village to go and find others who could stand in her presence, but that wasn't always as fruitful as everyone hoped. It turned out there were some who were sort of immune to her. They could stand in the same room as the whole crowd of witnesses, and while everyone else might see and hear Eleanor clearly, they would see nothing and only hear distant mumbles that might or might not actually be words. There were other, more unusual experiences too. On more than one occasion, the ghost of Eleanor was said to have appeared as a tiny version of herself, and then slowly expanded to full size.

And then there was the time when she requested that the people of Sullivan actually exhume the body of her dead child, and then moved it to another location in the very same graveyard. The people complied, by the way, when the legend says that as they completed this morbid task, the ghost of Eleanor hovered nearby like a protective mother. All of this activity continued for months. Winter had turned to spring, and then summer. By mid-August, a full year after the unusual noises had begun in the cellar of the Blaisdell home, this ghostly talk show had reached fever pitch. People traveled far and wide to come witness the spectral spectacle. Most of them believed it all to be true, but there were some who mocked

the experience. Eleanor would attack them, declaring, Some of you say I am not a spirit, others that I am evil, but I shall see you all when you will not laugh. There was even a suggestion that her appearance hinted at something darker. Folklore said that ghosts often appeared when a person had died of violent death. Some of the records even indicate that a small informal investigation was launched, but it was never officially documented. Whether that notion of violent death hinted at murder, or was simply connected to her tragic, untimely death during childbirth, no one can say for sure. Community thrives on variety, though, so it is no surprise that there was at least one vocal

skeptic of the whole ordeal. There was a man named John Millar who lived near the Blaisdell home, and it was his belief that all the stories were pure fiction, drummed up just to get attention. He even suggested, falsely, of course, that the ghost had never been witnessed outside the cellar. When his words reached the people gathered in the Blaisdell house, they relayed Millar's message to the ghost herself, who clearly took the notion personally. So she did something unexpected. She gathered all of the people there, a crowd of many dozens, according to reports, and then led them out of the house and into the fields.

Then she marched slowly in the direction of John Millar's home. The whole experience has been compared to a funeral procession, with all the living participants slowly walking in a long, orderly line, completely normal, except for the spectral figure leading the way, of course. Finally, once the group had reached their destination, the ghost turned her back on the house of John Millar to face a crowd of over 50 people. And right there, in the field beside the house, she spread her arms wide and began to preach. Everyone stood in silent awe, listening intently to a sermon,

delivered to them in the middle of the day, by a ghost. When she was done a short while later, the spectral vision of Eleanor Butler flickered and faded, until finally, there was nothing left to be seen at all. Friends glanced at one another with a look of confusion on their faces, but the ghostly figure was no longer among them. Eleanor was gone. A community is a lot like the human body. When something unexpected enters it, like a virus, there's always the chance that the entire thing will be affected or changed.

Flip through the pages of history, and you'll find countless examples of that sort of infection. Politics, religion, science, war, all of them have a way of changing a community. The specter of Sullivan was another of those moments, just on a local scale. Still, everyone reacted to the ghost's mission in their own way. Hundreds of people believed it all to be true. John Millar was a lot more skeptical. Abner Blaisdell, who'd been opposed from the start to the idea of marriage between his daughter Lydia and George Butler, didn't change a single bit, despite what he had experienced. And Lydia herself felt as if she were being forced into something,

so she ended their courtship. Yes, she loved George, but she also wanted to make her own choices, not follow the whim of some spectral matchmaker. Her parents were elated, and George, of course, was heartbroken. Even as the ghostly visitations of Nellie Butler were bringing travelers from far and wide, Lydia was planning to leave the town for good. And then she changed her mind. Some say that Eleanor appeared to her personally and demanded that she marry George, while others believe she simply gave in and let love lead the way. There's an option in there for just about everyone, I guess,

the paranormal enthusiast or the hopeless romantic. So right in the middle of that bizarre, unexplainable year of the specter, on May 28th of 1800, in fact, George and Lydia were finally married. The visions continued, of course, as did the eyewitness reports, and then it all came to a crescendo that August afternoon with Nellie's sermon in front of John Millar's house. And it really does seem like the ghost of Nellie Butler got what she wanted. She was upfront about her motives from the start and maintained focus throughout it all. George and Lydia were meant to be married. It was almost as if she had simply returned to make sure that marriage was guided safely

into the port of fate. If it's true, it's frightening. The idea that people can return from the grave to influence the lives and decisions of the living, that they can make demands, command authority, and literally walk among us. That's not an easy pill to swallow, so it's easy to see why people might doubt that it happened at all. Then again, if it is all just a work of fiction, at least it's romantic, right? Their love and marriage were faded to take place, it seems. What better proof could we ask for than two soulmates who belonged together? It was, as George McFly once said, their density. But Nellie Butler appeared to have had one more bit of fate to reveal to the happy couple.

It's said that on the day after their wedding, she appeared before them privately and gifted them with a warning. Be kind to your wife, she told George, for she will not be with you long. And then the ghost went on to explain what she meant. She will have but one child and then die. In March of 1801, just 10 months after the couple were married, Lydia went into labor with their first child. The infant, sadly, did not survive. Lydia herself died the very next day. Hey there, you're still here? Well, let me share one last tale with you since you stuck around, because life in Sullivan, Maine would never be the same. A lot had changed in the five years since the specter of Sullivan had shaken up the community

and then disappeared. The sightings had stopped. Life had settled back into the mundane routine that everyone remembered. People just sort of moved on. For no one was this more true than George Butler. After Lydia died, he took all of her belongings and placed them in a rowboat, which he lit on fire and then pushed out into the sea. Maybe he was trying to rid himself of all that destiny and fate that seemed to follow him around. If that sort of thing can work, it did. He married Mary Guggins a short time later and she managed to outlive his first two wives by decades, passing away 60 years later at the age of 85. Abraham Cummings was a minister who lived near the village of Sullivan,

where he cared for the members of his church and went about his normal everyday life. He'd been interested in the sightings of Nellie Butler's ghost but never plucked up the courage to go see it all for himself. And maybe he regretted that just a little bit. So, when he heard a rumor in July of 1806 that her ghost had returned, he didn't think twice. He followed the details of that rumor to a field somewhere in Sullivan, and then he walked around by himself, trying to find her, this spectral visitor from another place. And it worked. At first, Abraham said he thought it was a pale stone hovering above the ground, but that shape grew and changed, finally becoming the ghostly white figure of a woman.

She glowed, he said, almost as bright as the sun above them, and he was so overwhelmed with excitement that he didn't even speak to her. He just ran as fast as he could to a nearby house to grab the people inside and bring them out to see her. When they returned to the field, though, the sheet was gone. Abraham later wrote that it was one of the greatest errors of his life. If he had regrets before, those paled in comparison to this new mistake. Here he was, a minister of God, presented with a chance to speak to someone who had gone through the veil and then somehow returned, and he dropped the ball. He would go on to write about his experience,

as well as the experiences of so many others from five years before in a short book he published called Immortality Proved by Testimony of Sense. But that was it for Abraham. His chance had arrived, but like smoke in the wind, it was gone. The ghost of Nellie Butler was never seen again.