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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world

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Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an

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Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there

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Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Everybody likes a deal. From Black

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Speaker 1: Friday to Cyber Monday to Labor Day weekend, people love

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Speaker 1: to line up and log on for big savings. The

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Speaker 1: deals aren't always worth the effort, though. The percentage might

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Speaker 1: be too low, or the brand might not be top tier.

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Speaker 1: But sometimes an opportunity comes along that's just too good

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Speaker 1: to pass up. Along the southern edge of Nebraska is

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Speaker 1: a city, though you wouldn't know it by looking at it. Harvard, Kansas,

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Speaker 1: spans less than one square mile and boasts a whopping

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Speaker 1: population of about a thousand people. It was founded when

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Speaker 1: the Burlington and Missouri Railroad laid down tracks there in

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one. Two years later, Harvard was incorporated as

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Speaker 1: a village. It took its name from the prestigious university

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Speaker 1: in Massachusetts, and just like its namesake, it's not without

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Speaker 1: its own list of famous former residents. Ida Bengston was

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Speaker 1: born there in eighteen eighty one and went on to

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Speaker 1: become a groundbreaking bacteriologist. She was also the first woman

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Speaker 1: to work at the U S Public Health Services Hygienic

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Speaker 1: Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. And who could

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Speaker 1: forget Paul Revere, No, not that Paul Revere. Paul Revere

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Speaker 1: Dick was the leader of the hit nineteen sixties rock

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Speaker 1: band Paul Revere and the Raiders. He was born in

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Speaker 1: Harvard in nineteen thirty eight. But the city wasn't just

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Speaker 1: home to scientists and rock stars. Families of all kinds

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Speaker 1: raised their children there, business owners open shops, and of course,

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Speaker 1: a place even as small as Harvard needed a police department,

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Speaker 1: although given the size of the town a large prison

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Speaker 1: was deemed unnecessary. Yet there needed to be a place

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Speaker 1: to hold people in case they broke the law, as

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Speaker 1: rare as that was, and so a small brick jailhouse

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Speaker 1: was built and had a single door on the front

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Speaker 1: and a few small windows on the side to let

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Speaker 1: the light in, but otherwise it was barely bigger than

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Speaker 1: an average sized dorm room. In n three, the town

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Speaker 1: decided to put some of its land up for sale

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Speaker 1: to raise money. A sixteen year old boy named Robert Pinckney,

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Speaker 1: who happened to be the son of a local physician,

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Speaker 1: was interested in buying a plot for himself. He planned

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Speaker 1: on using it to grow a victory garden to support

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Speaker 1: the war effort. As he was reading through the list,

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Speaker 1: he noticed something strange though someone had included the town

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Speaker 1: jail as one of the properties for sale. Pinckney, ever

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Speaker 1: the good samaritan, tried to warn the city about its mistake.

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Speaker 1: Instead of listening, though the city council laughed him out

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Speaker 1: of the room. Pinckney figured that if they weren't going

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Speaker 1: to remove it from the listing, then he would buy

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Speaker 1: it for himself, and he did for one dollar and

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Speaker 1: fifty cents. Officials refused to admit their screw up, and

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Speaker 1: Pickney signed the papers. He officially became the owner of

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Speaker 1: the Harvard City jailhouse, and all it had cost him

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Speaker 1: was a buck and a half. The police still went

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Speaker 1: down with business as usual, though, tossing criminals and drunks

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Speaker 1: into the jail when they had to. But Pinckney wasn't

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Speaker 1: thrilled with his property being used without his permission. Now

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Speaker 1: he was the landlord after all, so with the help

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Speaker 1: of a lawyer, he sued the town for back rent.

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Speaker 1: Harvard agreed, but on the condition that Robert tended the

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Speaker 1: jail as though it was his own home. He was

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Speaker 1: required to pull the weeds, trim the trees on the property,

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Speaker 1: and get rid of the sidewalks or face heavy fines.

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Speaker 1: Pinckney thought it might be easier to just tear the

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Speaker 1: whole thing down altogether. Harvard couldn't have that happen, though,

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Speaker 1: so they made a deal to buy the jail back

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Speaker 1: from him. There was just one problem. He wasn't old

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Speaker 1: enough to sell it. He'd have to wait until he

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Speaker 1: turned twenty one. So the city did its best to

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Speaker 1: hide its squabble with the budding real estate mogul, but

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Speaker 1: word of Pickney's pettiness got out to the press that

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Speaker 1: even made national news. Suddenly people came crawling out of

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Speaker 1: the woodwork to buy the jail from him. One person

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Speaker 1: offered him one and fifty dollars for it, while someone

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Speaker 1: else asked to rent it for thirty five dollars a month.

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Speaker 1: But Pickney had a better idea. He put the jailhouse

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Speaker 1: up for auction to raise money for war bonds. One

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Speaker 1: person came forward and bid ten thousand dollars. Well, person

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Speaker 1: isn't quite the right word for him, is he. Charlie McCarthy,

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Speaker 1: who won the jail in the auction, was a dummy,

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Speaker 1: and that's not an insult either. He was a literal dummy,

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Speaker 1: belonging to the world famous fren triloquist Edgar Bergen. Charlie

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Speaker 1: gave the jail back to Harvard soon after. It's still

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Speaker 1: there too, with a plaque outside that explains its tumultuous history,

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Speaker 1: and no dummy, real or Wooden, ever put it up

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Speaker 1: for sale again. Everyone has something to hide. It might

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Speaker 1: be an illicit relationship, or reckless spending habits, or even

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Speaker 1: something as harmless as a cupcake when they think no

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Speaker 1: one is looking. Regardless of what it is, it seems

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Speaker 1: like no one is without a skeleton or two in

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Speaker 1: their closets. And just be careful if you start digging,

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Speaker 1: you might not like what you find. Jenny Minton certainly

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Speaker 1: did not. It was August of two eleven and these

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Speaker 1: sixteen year old Oregon native had been clearing out a

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Speaker 1: closet in a local lodge. You see her mother was

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Speaker 1: a member of a social group known as the Daughters

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Speaker 1: of Rebecca, who used the space for their gatherings. Minton

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Speaker 1: stumbled upon a strange site during her cleaning. It was

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Speaker 1: a coffin. Now. Her first thought was that it had

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Speaker 1: been a prop maybe from an old theatrical performance held

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Speaker 1: at the lodge. But she and her mother, Linda, opened

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Speaker 1: the lid they realized that there was nothing fake about it.

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Speaker 1: Inside the five foot long casket were bones, lots of

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Speaker 1: them too, and they had yellowed and molded. Among the

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Speaker 1: desecrated remains were teeth, a jaw, and even a skull.

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Speaker 1: Jenny and her mom thought they had found something sinister,

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Speaker 1: so they called the police. I have a skeleton in

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Speaker 1: the closet, Linda told the dispatcher, we all do. The

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Speaker 1: person on the other end of the line said, little

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Speaker 1: did they know that Linda and her daughter actually had

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Speaker 1: found a skeleton in the closet of the watch. A

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Speaker 1: detective arrived to collect the bones for analysis. The police

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Speaker 1: then conducted an investigation of the scene, but no foul

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Speaker 1: play was detected. A similar experience happened to Paul Wallace

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Speaker 1: in Warrington, Virginia in two thousand one. He'd been fixing

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Speaker 1: the electrical wiring in a brick building when he noticed

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Speaker 1: a small door in one of the walls. Wallace opened

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Speaker 1: it up and pulled out a black box similar to

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Speaker 1: the one Jenny Minton would find ten years later. Inside

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Speaker 1: it was a skeleton and several white candles. Not wanting

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Speaker 1: to disturb a possible crime scene any further, Wallace pushed

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Speaker 1: the box and its contents back behind the door and

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Speaker 1: alerted the authorities. They executed a search warrant immediately and

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Speaker 1: took custody of the skeleton. Though Warrenton had never experienced

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Speaker 1: such a grizzly discovery before, similar incidents had unfolded in

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Speaker 1: attics and crawl spaces all over the country, and they

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Speaker 1: would continue to do so for years to come. Jim

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Speaker 1: Lushka from Missouri thought that he had snagged a great

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Speaker 1: deal on a couple of prop caskets for his local

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Speaker 1: theater group. Little did he know that one of them

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Speaker 1: contained real bones that had once belonged to a living

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Speaker 1: human being. But these coffins weren't a serial killers trophy,

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Speaker 1: nor were they the work of a murderous cult. The

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Speaker 1: buildings that the bones have been found in belonged to

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Speaker 1: the fraternal organization known as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

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Speaker 1: It was formed in eighteen nineteen by English philanthropist Thomas

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Speaker 1: He had started the order as an offshoot of the

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Speaker 1: original Odd Fellows fraternity, which had gotten it starts in

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Speaker 1: England back in the seventeenth century. Soon after its incorporation,

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Speaker 1: wildly began traveling all over the US to open up

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Speaker 1: lodges and established new chapters. Throughout its history, the Odd

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Speaker 1: Fellows have been linked to secret societies like Freemasons and

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Speaker 1: the Illuminati. In reality, they were nothing like them at all.

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Speaker 1: Their mission statement claimed that the Odd Fellows visited the sick,

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Speaker 1: relieved the distressed, buried the dead, and educated the orphan.

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Speaker 1: In other words, they helped people wherever they could. However,

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Speaker 1: like those other organizations, Initiation had its own set of

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Speaker 1: rituals and customs. One such ritual involved a new member

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Speaker 1: interacting with the skeleton, literally coming face to face with death,

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Speaker 1: as a reminder to make the most of the life

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Speaker 1: they were given. To do that they had to dedicate

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Speaker 1: that life to helping others. In recent years, the skeletons

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Speaker 1: have been replaced with plaster fact similes. However, there was

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Speaker 1: a time when an odd Fellow could purchase a real

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Speaker 1: one from a company specializing in their procurement. It's typically

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Speaker 1: those remains that wind up kicking off police searches and investigations.

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Speaker 1: As lodge as close, the people cleaning them out don't

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Speaker 1: realize the meaning behind the boxes of bones that they

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Speaker 1: find today, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows boasts six

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand members and ten thousand lodges across twenty six countries.

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Speaker 1: There is also a female focused branch known as the

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Speaker 1: Daughters of Rebecca, the organization Jenny and Linda Minton belonged

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Speaker 1: to back in two thousand eleven. Given the number of

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Speaker 1: lodges remaining, it's only a matter of time before someone

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Speaker 1: unwittingly stumbles upon another skeleton. Everyone meets death eventually, but

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Speaker 1: most people don't expect to meet it inside their closet.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

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Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works. I make another Award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television

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Speaker 1: show and you can learn all about it over at

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Speaker 1: the world of Lore dot com. And until next time,

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Speaker 1: stay curious, Yeah,