Lore - Lore 258: Wall to Wall

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Beneath the waters of one city’s harbor waits countless tales of ghosts and demons from its past.  Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by Alexandra Steed and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Acorns: Acorns helps you automatically save & invest for your future. Head to Acorns.com/LORE to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today! To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [e-mail] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ———— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.  

Are you a business owner or marketer looking to reach highly engaged podcast listeners just like you? Advertise Cast can help. Whether you are looking to promote a national brand across Canada or a regional event or service, we've got you covered. Reach out today to Bob at AdvertiseCast.com. That's B-O-B at AdvertiseCast, as in podcast.com. They say you can see it from space, but that's not actually true. The Great Wall of China might be a wonder of the ancient world, but it's not actually

visible from outer space. Now, low Earth orbit might be another matter, but even then the conditions need to be absolutely perfect. As most astronauts will tell you, it can be very hard to spot. From the ground, though, it's more than obvious what it is. The structure is literally a great wall. The portions that you might recognize from TV or film, those long, winding stretches of wall that seem to slither over the forested hills like a snake,

those are mostly from the Ming dynasty, roughly 650 years ago. And their sheer bulk, about 16 feet wide and 25 feet tall, give the landmark its name. And while it might look strange weaving its way through the wilderness, it actually marked the boundary line between China and its hostile neighbors to the north. Sure, later additions to the wall would include watchtowers, barracks for soldiers, and even signaling stations. But at the end of the day, this massive wall does what walls were designed to do. Separate spaces to keep people on one side safe from those on the other.

There is danger at the edge. Whether we're talking about society or the physical places where we build our settlements, by nature we're drawn to community, like iron shavings caught in the grip of a powerful magnet. But every inhabited area has something outside it. Call it the outskirts, the borderlands, or the great unknown. The name doesn't matter. There's our little slice of protected land, and beyond it, there's danger.

And because folklore thrives in environments full of mystery and risk, it can often be fun to step outside the walls and see what's out there. Although in one particular city, that boundary line marks the difference between the safe and the frightful. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore. When most people think of history, they think of Boston. Now admittedly, I'm a little biased, having called the Boston area my home for over 25

years, but it's a connection backed by centuries of pivotal events and key figures. Beyond the Boston Tea Party and the Puritans, though, is a lesser known history that's just as powerful, and it centers around the harbor that forms the city's eastern border. Now, if you look at a map of Boston, you might notice a few things. First, the harbor is sort of gathered in by the peninsula of Hull to the south and Deer Island to the north. Second, that harbor is full of a bunch of small islands. And finally, most of those islands seem to be arranged in the same direction.

The reason for that is because the harbor is actually a drumlin field. Now, for the majority of us who are definitely not geologists, think of a drumlin as basically a scar left behind by a glacier. Without getting too technical, glacial meltwaters and the movement

of the glaciers themselves had a tendency to leave long, rounded hills behind, drumlands. And Boston Harbor has a bunch of them, all partially submerged in the water to form the islands that we see today. And those islands have always been attractive to humans. For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the local Native American people, groups like the Wampanoag, Massachusetts, and Nipmuc made it an annual tradition to row out to some of those islands during the summer where they fished, crafted tools, and held religious ceremonies.

The end of that tradition began in 1614 when English explorer John Smith sailed down the Atlantic coast and made contact with the indigenous peoples near what is now Boston Harbor. In fact, it was Smith who drew a map of the area and labeled that part of North America with a term that has stuck ever since, New England. Like most collisions between Europeans and Native Americans, there were a lot of casualties,

mostly thanks to the diseases that the white people inadvertently brought with them. By some estimates, upwards of 75% of the indigenous population died as a result. And as the native peoples retreated, colonists picked up right where they left off, putting those harbor islands to use for all sorts of things. And where there's a harbor, there are ships, right? Pretty soon, Boston Harbor

became an incredibly busy place to sail. Merchants bringing in goods from other parts of the world, pirates and privateers, fishermen making their way back to the wharf, even ships filled with human lives as part of the slave trade. But Boston has always had an undercurrent of freedom, too. Many ship captains pulled double duty, working by day and then transitioning to a boat version of the Underground Railroad by night. One prominent abolitionist was Austin Burce, who used his ship, the Moby Dick, to transport

escaped and slave peoples to freedom up in Canada. But that mix of high traffic and dozens of small islands added up to a dangerous situation for most sailors. Shipwrecks were a pretty common occurrence, which, honestly, given all the rocks out there just below the surface, shouldn't be a surprise. And if you run through the list, one of the most famous is probably a French vessel called the Magnefic. It was a warship sent from France to help the fledgling American forces during the Revolutionary War in 1782. And it would have been a big help, too. The ship was 170 feet long and bristled with over 70 cannons.

But despite a local harbor pilot sailing out to guide it safely into port, the warship was driven onto the shore of Lovell's Island by a massive gust of wind. Now nobody died in the accident. Heck, it was barely a shipwreck at all, by movie standards at least. It just sort of ground to a halt on the coast and stayed there. But almost right away, stories started to be whispered about cargo that had been aboard the Magnafic, mainly a hold full of treasure. And for decades after, fortune seekers headed out to Lovell's Island to see what they could find. Most people walked away with nothing, while a handful of lucky

treasure hunters managed to uncover cannonballs, supplies, and tools, but no gold. And then, in the 1920s, a lighthouse keeper there on the island, a guy named Charles Jennings, found some gold coins in the sand. But he made two mistakes. First, he didn't pocket them immediately for whatever reason. And second, when a temporary replacement keeper came to give him a break, Jennings told the new guy about the find. When Jennings returned a few days later, that temp lighthouse keeper left without so much as a goodbye. And later on, Jennings figured out why. Those gold coins that he had set aside were gone, and possibly all the others that had yet to be dug up. Jennings couldn't prove it, but he had the feeling that this other guy had stolen his treasure.

And he might have been right. According to the stories, that replacement lighthouse keeper did a very strange thing not too long after his stay. He retired from work altogether and settled into a quiet life of luxury. The math is easy. With all those small dangerous islands and the shipwrecks they caused, there seems to be a never-ending supply of ghost stories. And while I can't cover all of them here, I can certainly share a couple of my favorites. Our first stop needs to be Long Island.

No, not that one. The Long Island in Boston Harbor is named so because, compared to the other islands, it's, well, long. It was also the site of a dark tragedy in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. You see, when the British lost, they packed up and prepared to leave. Along with troops, they were also taking thousands of loyalists, folks who'd been living in the colonies but wanted no part in the new American government. On one of those ships was a young newlywed couple, William and Mary Burton.

They were looking forward to starting life back in England, but needed one last moment on the deck to watch Boston fade into the distance. And that was when colonial forces in the city fired upon the retreating ship. One of those cannonballs found its mark, and Mary was caught in the blast. The ship stopped at Long Island to tend to injuries, and when Mary died from her wounds, William wrapped her body in a red blanket and buried her there in an unmarked grave. Ever since, visitors to the island have seen a ghostly figure, often described as a young

woman wearing a red cloak. In 1804, for example, some fishermen were shipwrecked there, and during their stay, they claimed to hear a painful wailing sound. Looking out into the night, they spotted a pale woman moving toward them, her head bleeding from some unseen wound. Before they could try and help her, though, she drifted away and vanished. But of all the stories in Boston Harbor, perhaps the darkest resides on Castle Island. Now, if you want to get technical, it really isn't an island anymore, having been connected to the mainland in 1928 with a causeway. But its history, and its stories, go back much further.

Because of its decent size, and its position up at the northern edge of the entrance to the harbor, Castle Island was the perfect place to build a military fort. The first one was built in the 1630s and then expanded upon for decades to come, even serving as an outpost for the British during the Revolutionary War, although they burned it to the ground when they retreated. Massachusetts soon replaced the ruins with a new state prison, but by the 1790s the federal government had taken control. How could they not, with it sitting on such a key piece of defensive land?

And all through the 1800s they expanded it into what can be seen today, the star-shaped Fort Independence. In 1827, a Boston man named Edgar Perry lied his way into service there at Fort Independence. Despite being just 18 years old, he enlisted with the age of 22 and quickly found himself inside the fort. And it was there that he bumped into a macabre story that would stick with him for the rest of his life. As the story goes, Perry noticed a gravestone on the island that belonged to someone named Lieutenant Robert Massey. After asking around, he discovered that Massey had been a very popular soldier there just a decade earlier, the sort of guy who was loved and respected by everyone else in the

fort. Well, almost everyone. On Christmas Day of 1817, Massey was playing cards with another officer named Gustavus Drain. In the middle of the game, the two men started to argue, and before long their disagreement had evolved into an illegal duel. Outside the fort, the two men squared off, paced away, and then spun and fired. Massey was the one to die.

But thanks to his popularity, the rest of the soldiers refused to let Drain get away with murder. Later that night, they got him so drunk that he passed out. And then, taking his unconscious body down to the old prison section of the fort, they placed him in a tiny cell, chained him up, and then bricked up the doorway. When Drain awoke from his stupor, he found himself inside his own tomb. I think it's fair to say that if the terror of the situation didn't kill him right away, those long days without food and water certainly did.

Now, obviously, it's the sort of story a person would have a hard time forgetting. Thankfully, young Edgar Perry was a writer in his spare time. He needed to, really, since his wealthy guardian John Allen had cut him off and left him penniless, and the military paycheck helped as well. But he hadn't just lied about his age to get in. He had also falsified his name. Roughly 20 years later, he would go on to publish a horrifying work of fiction that featured a man who was bricked up alive inside a wall.

And while you wouldn't recognize him by the name Edgar Perry, you'll certainly remember The Cask of Amontillado, published under his real name, Edgar Allan Poe. It's impossible to think of the coast and not think of lighthouses. Those little towers are filled with so much symbolism. They are guardians that keep ships safe, standing at the edge of the world to offer light and hope, but they often hold something else. Perhaps it's the dedication to the job that was required in the days before automation and electricity. All that passion and responsibility could very well turn a committed lighthouse keeper

into an equally committed ghost. That's true, at least, when it comes to Boston Light. It sits on Little Brewster Island, a patch of land maybe two acres in size that sits roughly nine miles from Boston. It didn't take long for the people of the area to realize just how dangerous the waters there really were and how much a lighthouse would help. So in 1715, the general court ordered that one be built and it was finished in the fall of the following year.

There have been many lighthouse keepers over the years there at Boston Light. In fact, it's still operated by a human being all these years later, being one of only five manned Coast Guard lighthouses in the country. But if you go looking for the origins of the folklore that surround the place, all arrows point back to the very first keeper, George Worthy Lake. He arrived there on the Little Island in September of 1716, along with his wife Anne, their four children and two enslaved persons, Shadwell and Dinah. There was the lighthouse, of course, but also a house next to it and a barn as well.

And for a couple of years, everything seemed to be going as planned. In 1718, though, tragedy struck. George had a friend visiting, so he and Anne brought him out to the boat for a row around the island. With them were their daughter Lydia, another man named George Cutler, and Shadwell. The day was clear, the waters were calm, and it seemed like the perfect way to pass some time. But despite those serene elements, the ocean is never truly safe, without warning their

little boat capsized, and every single person on board tragically drowned. According to the story, Dinah watched it all happen from shore, helpless to save them. All she could do was cry out Shadwell's name as he tried to stay afloat before all of them disappeared. News traveled fast. In Boston, a precocious and inventive 12-year-old boy set quill to parchment and wrote a poem about the accident that he called creatively the Lighthouse Tragedy. And then the world did what it's very good at.

It tried to move on. A new lighthouse keeper was brought on, and ships were safe once again. In 1974, though, over two centuries after the tragic events, keeper Russ Anderson and his wife Maisie began to experience strange things on the island. At first, it was random sounds where no one was supposed to be. And then it started to get a bit more personal. One day, while Maisie was out walking alone on the rocky shore, she heard the sounds of someone else walking behind her. When

she turned around, though, no one was there. And she brushed it off as just the trick of the wind. Moments later, it happened again, and she hastily headed back to the house. That same night, Maisie awoke to the sensation that someone was in her room. She sat up and looked around, but thankfully no one was there. Just as she was about to lay back down, though, a chilling cry could be heard coming from outside. Initially, she thought it was perhaps a bird, maybe a loon, but a moment later the scream returned and she could tell that it was a word, a name, really.

A voice crying out, Shadwell. Decades later, in the 1980s, a Coast Guard officer stationed there experienced his own eerie occurrences. His radio would often change stations on its own, which he and other workers there would jokingly blame on Old George, referring to George Worthy Lake. One day, though, the officer was sitting in the kitchen of the house when he looked out the window at the lighthouse and spotted a figure standing in the lantern room at the top. Since his assistant was right there in the kitchen with him, he decided to go and check

it out. It didn't help that from where he was sitting, it kind of looked like the man up there was wearing old-fashioned clothing. He climbed the stairs to the lantern room as quickly as he could, confident that whoever it was couldn't possibly leave the lighthouse without passing him on the stairway. But when he reached the top, he was startled by what he found. The room was completely and utterly empty. Boston Light has continued to offer up strange experiences over the years, right up to the

current lighthouse keeper. In a way, it's an amazing example of the staying power of local folklore. People can come and go. Generations can tick by for centuries even, and yet the stories manage to hold on. And I think you'll agree, I hope they never disappear. Oh, one last thing. That 12-year-old Boston boy who wrote the poem about the Worthy Lake boat tragedy? It might not have been his finest work, but thankfully he would go on to accomplish bigger

and better things. Among them, he invented the bifocals. Oh, and helped to write and sign the Declaration of Independence. His name? Benjamin Franklin. Boston Harbor is a busy and treacherous location. Sailors have understood for centuries that the water might look passable from a distance, but in truth there are jagged rocks and tricky winds waiting to dash them to pieces.

And the same can be said of folklore. So many of the stories whispered about the harbor have a certain appearance from a distance. After all, put enough years between you and any event and the truth and fiction will inevitably begin to separate. In some cases, that truth might just slip beneath the waves, leaving us with what appears to be an accurate story. But that's still up for debate when it comes to the tale of Edgar Allan Poe and the walled-up soldier at Fort Independence.

Remember, the ending hinges on one key detail, that Gustavus Drain was walled up and left to die. But while military records do confirm Drain was stationed there, they also show him receiving a promotion long after that day in December of 1827. We even know the date of his death, 1846. If Edgar Ellen Poe did indeed hear a story at the fort back in 1827 that involved a man getting bricked up alive inside a wall. It might have just been a very memorable, very powerful bit of storytelling

that the soldiers there had used to stay entertained. Powerful enough to still inspire him to write his famous story, whether or not the foundations of it were fact or fiction. But there's always a catch, isn't there? Because speaking of foundations, back in 1905, Fort Independence went through some renovations. And during that process, some of the workers discovered something grisly down below, inside the space between the fort's inner and outer walls. It was a skeleton. And hanging from its ancient bones were scraps of fabric that clearly belonged to a military uniform.

But if it can't have been Gustavus Drain, then who was he? Perhaps a prisoner from the very earliest days of the building's use, or a later soldier who fell victim to a plot that was similar to the one still being whispered about in the days of Edgar Allan Poe's time there. In truth, we will never know for sure, but it certainly makes you wonder what other bits of folklore lie hidden inside those walls. Boston Harbor is a folklore lover's delight, thanks to all those islands and the stories that live upon them. We only scratched the surface today, but I hope our little harbor tour gave you as many

chills to hear as it did for me. And yet, we're not quite done. My team and I have saved one final Boston Harbor story to share with you. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore was sponsored by BetterHelp. If I've learned one thing about social media, it's that comparison is the thief of joy. It's super easy to envy other people's lives. It might look like they have it all together on their Instagram, but in reality, they probably don't.

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Acorns advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures at acorns.com slash lore. There are many versions of the legend, and all of them are dark. But to find them, you have to know where to look. Nyx's mate would be easy to miss if it weren't for the black and white striped marker standing up from the rocky base. It was once an entire island that served as a landmark used by captains traveling the three busiest shipping lanes in Boston Harbor. And that island had a name, Gallops Island. It was called that because the 12-acre island was used by a local man

named John Gallop way back in the 1630s as pasture land for his sheep. The marker itself wouldn't arrive until 1805, but the marker's name, Nix's mate, well, that story might be even older. One thing to remember before we explore them, though, because of the island's position so close to the wharf, it was used for a very long time as a place to display the dead bodies of captured pirates. You'd see them, hanging there in chains, their corpses rotting in the sun day after day, every time you sailed toward the dock. A stern warning, if ever there was one. One story says that a pirate by the name of Captain Nix once sailed into the harbor and stopped at the island to bury the treasure he had on board.

It was probably a way for him to avoid paying a tariff on the gold when he reached port, but whatever the real reason, Nix and his first mate hauled it down to the island, dug a hole, and then tossed the gold inside. But secrets are a lot easier to keep when there's only one person involved. So while his first mate shoveled the dirt back into the hole, Nix stepped behind him, pulled out his pistol, and shot the man in the back of the skull. He then pushed the body on top of the treasure and then finished covering it up. And that, as they say, is why the marker is called Nix's mate.

But another story begs to differ. In this one, Nix is the captain of a ship at anchor in the harbor just off the shore of the island. They had arrived in the middle of the night and were waiting for morning to pull anchor and head to the wharf. But when morning came, Captain Nix was nowhere to be found. One of the men went to the captain's quarters and opened the door, only to find Nix had been killed during the night.

Searching the ship, they eventually discovered the first mate still asleep in bed, his clothes covered in blood. When they awoke him, he claimed that he was innocent, but they didn't give him a chance to convince them. They handed him over to the authorities, and he was quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged right there on Gallops Island and left there to rot. But just before the noose was tightened around his neck, the man cursed the island to sink

into the sea as proof that he was innocent. If the island was listening, it took a sweet time. Over the following decades, more and more pieces of the rocky island fell away, until all that remained was a tiny patch of stone, upon which would eventually be built the platform and the marker we can see today. And there are other explanations for the name as well, including a relationship to an old Dutch curse muttered by a passenger in 1700. But beneath all of these attempts to explain the Nix's mate marker, there's one thread of truth. The island used to be there, and today it isn't.

All we have left is a marker, a name, and a big gaping hole in the historical record. The perfect ingredients for a powerful bit of folklore. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Ali Steed and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like hearing the ads? We've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of Lore on Apple podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus, subscribers also get weekly mini-episodes called Lore Bites. It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the

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