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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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

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

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Becoming a published author is a common dream

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Speaker 1: not everyone can achieve. It takes hard work, determination, and

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Speaker 1: a healthy dose of luck. For many writers, a little

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Speaker 1: friendly help can go a long way, even if it

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Speaker 1: comes from the strangest of places. Pearl was born in

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Speaker 1: Mound City, Illinois, in three but her family packed up

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Speaker 1: and moved to Texas before she was a year old.

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Speaker 1: Pearl was not someone who enjoyed school. She almost never

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Speaker 1: picked up a book, and when her class work got

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Speaker 1: to be too tough, she shut down completely and just

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Speaker 1: stayed home. Pearl also lacked direction. She wanted to sing

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Speaker 1: for a living and didn't care about much else. Her

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Speaker 1: parents moved again when she was fourteen, this time to St. Louis, Missouri,

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Speaker 1: and Pearl started to take her dream a little more seriously.

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Speaker 1: School was a non starter for her, but she dove

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Speaker 1: head first into piano and voice lessons, and it seems

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Speaker 1: she had a talent for both. A career in music

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Speaker 1: seemed like a viable future for her, so when she

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Speaker 1: got a little older, she moved back to Illinois for

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Speaker 1: more advanced vocal training. From there, she got a job

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Speaker 1: working at a music company to make ends meet. At

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Speaker 1: twenty four, Pearl met a man named John Howard Curran,

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Speaker 1: and the two soon got married. Neither of them were

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Speaker 1: big readers, but they enjoyed the occasional game of cards

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Speaker 1: and lived a happy life together. Around July of nineteen twelve, though,

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Speaker 1: something changed in Pearl. She met a woman who had

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Speaker 1: always wanted to become an author. Her name was Patients,

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Speaker 1: and Pearl knew that she could help her. Despite having

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Speaker 1: a limited education and no prior interest in reading or writing,

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Speaker 1: Pearl transcribed the women's dictations onto the page. They worked

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Speaker 1: together for hours at a time, word by word, as

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Speaker 1: the beautiful prose took shape. Over the course of thirty years,

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Speaker 1: Pearl and Patients wrote at least seven novels, as well

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Speaker 1: as countless poems and short stories. Patients seem to have

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Speaker 1: a vast knowledge of other languages, different types of plants,

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Speaker 1: and other esoteric topics, and she passed that knowledge onto Pearl,

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Speaker 1: who was only too happy to assist. The two became

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Speaker 1: so popular folks used to visit pearl letter home to

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Speaker 1: watch as she and patients worked out the new story

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Speaker 1: or poem. Among those in attendance were the family of

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Speaker 1: Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. Critics hailed patience is

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Speaker 1: writing as vivid and descriptive. The editor of the literary

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Speaker 1: journal The Mirror became so enamored with her he practically

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Speaker 1: fell in love with her. He might have married her too,

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Speaker 1: if he had been able to see her. Unfortunately, only

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Speaker 1: Pearl was able to communicate with pay patients, because the

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Speaker 1: talented writer had died in sixte You see, on that

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Speaker 1: faithful summer night in nineteen twelve, when Pearl claimed to

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Speaker 1: have met patients, she and her good friend Emily Hutchings

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Speaker 1: had actually taken out a talking board to communicate to

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Speaker 1: Emily's late father, who had recently passed away, because Emily

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Speaker 1: wished to speak with him one last time. It took

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Speaker 1: several attempts over many nights, but finally a message came through,

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Speaker 1: but the message it spelled out did not come from

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Speaker 1: Emily's father. Many moons ago I lived, it said, and

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Speaker 1: again I come patients worth is my name. Except patients

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Speaker 1: hadn't come to talk to Emily. She had chosen to

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Speaker 1: speak through Pearl, who wrote down the spirit's messages one

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Speaker 1: letter at a time with the help from the talking board.

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Speaker 1: As news of Pearl's literary seances traveled throughout her neighborhood,

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Speaker 1: folks came to sit in her parlor and talk to patients.

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Speaker 1: They'd ask her questions, and she would write them poems

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Speaker 1: about the topics of their choice. Pearl's husband, John, also

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Speaker 1: took copious notes during each session. If patients used a

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Speaker 1: word that he didn't know, he would consult his encyclopedia

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Speaker 1: for a definition. Of course, neighbors weren't the only people

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Speaker 1: interested in patients in Pearl. Scholars, therapists, historians, and other

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Speaker 1: academics wanted to better understand the source of such literary skill,

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Speaker 1: and all kinds of answers were offered up Pearl was

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Speaker 1: channeling her unconscious mind, or that the talents of her

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Speaker 1: ancestors had been passed down to her. Charles Corey, who

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Speaker 1: headed up the philosophy department at Washington University concluded that

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Speaker 1: Patients was nothing more than one of Pearl's alternate personalities.

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Speaker 1: But none of these people had ever sat with Pearl

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Speaker 1: or studied her directly. Their deductions came from anecdotal evidence

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Speaker 1: provided by news articles and secondhand accounts. The truth is,

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Speaker 1: only one man ever got to sit down with Pearl,

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Speaker 1: Walter Prince, the head of the American Society for Psychical Research.

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Speaker 1: Prince wasn't a man to be trifled with. He had

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Speaker 1: previously worked to expose psychic fraud alongside none other than

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Speaker 1: Harry Houdini. Anyone studied by Walter Prince was inevitably found

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Speaker 1: to be a fake. And yet, despite the odds against her,

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Speaker 1: Pearl allowed Prince to watch. He read her husband's notes,

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Speaker 1: he interviewed her loved ones, and he attended her writing sessions.

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Speaker 1: And when all was said and done, he declared Pearl

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Speaker 1: to be the real deal. He had found no reason

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Speaker 1: to believe Patience was anything other than what her medium

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Speaker 1: had claimed her to be, a spirit communicating with the

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Speaker 1: world of the living from beyond the grave. Even today,

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Speaker 1: the debate over Pearl's authenticity lives on The anti spiritualism

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Speaker 1: camp still considers her a fraud, while her supporters want

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Speaker 1: desperately to believe we can communicate with the world beyond

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Speaker 1: our own. But maybe will eventually solve the mystery. After all,

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Speaker 1: we have news articles, psychological analysis, and her husband's own

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Speaker 1: notes from all her sessions. Perhaps someday we'll be able

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Speaker 1: to piece the truth together. All it might take is

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Speaker 1: a little patience. Beneath the ocean's calm surface lives a

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Speaker 1: world brimming with life, from majestic blue whales to fearsome

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Speaker 1: great white sharks. There exists a delicate and rich ecosystem

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Speaker 1: of animals and plants, unlike anything on land. Over the millennia,

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Speaker 1: that life has evolved and adapted to survive a changing

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Speaker 1: ocean landscape. But there are still traces of its history

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Speaker 1: out there, and we might have come face to face

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Speaker 1: with that history in The Zooyomaru was a Japanese fishing

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Speaker 1: trawler sailing just off the coast of New Zealand. On

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Speaker 1: April it picked up a large, unidentified carcass that was

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Speaker 1: pale and decomposing. It had been discovered about nine feet down,

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Speaker 1: much deeper than a creature of that size should have been.

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Speaker 1: None of the men on the boat could figure out

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Speaker 1: what it was, but rather than keep the dead animal

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Speaker 1: and contaminate the fish they had already caught, Captain Akira

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Speaker 1: Tanaka told his crew to toss it back into the ocean.

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Speaker 1: As they were swinging the crane over the deck, the

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Speaker 1: rope slipped and the carcass landed at their feet. Surprised

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Speaker 1: by what he saw, one of the men on board,

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Speaker 1: who had studied oceanography, pulled out his camera and started snapping.

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Speaker 1: He took photos of the creature and recorded its measurements

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Speaker 1: as well. He even sketched out what he had witnessed,

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Speaker 1: but his drawings invited a lot more questions than answers.

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Speaker 1: The carcass had weighed almost four thousand pounds and measured

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Speaker 1: roughly thirty two ft long. There had been four large

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Speaker 1: fins on its side, a neck of about five ft long,

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Speaker 1: and a six and a half foot long tail. Its

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Speaker 1: internal organs had all been eaten out or rotted away,

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Speaker 1: but there was still skin on its bones. They dubbed

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Speaker 1: their discovery NeSSI, based on its resemblance to Scotland's famous

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Speaker 1: Luckness Monster, and then they tossed it overboard. The photographer

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Speaker 1: later hitched a ride on another boat and returned to Japan.

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Speaker 1: As soon as he stepped foot on dry land. He

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Speaker 1: used the fishing company's dark room to develop his photos.

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Speaker 1: He showed his findings to the owner of a company,

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Speaker 1: who then outsourced analysis to local biologists. The photos weren't

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Speaker 1: enough for any of them to identify it conclusively, but

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Speaker 1: they had their ideas. A press conference was held by

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Speaker 1: company executives to let the world know about their discovery.

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Speaker 1: As a result, more scientists came forward with answers of

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Speaker 1: their own of a person. A scientist from Sweden determined

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Speaker 1: that what the crew had found was nothing more than

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Speaker 1: a dead basking shark. It might have been bigger than

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Speaker 1: most others, but it wasn't anything unusual, according to an

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Speaker 1: article in New Scientists magazine. Further analysis of the evidence

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Speaker 1: seemed to confirm their assumptions. When a basking shark decomposed,

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Speaker 1: its lower jaw and fins were the first to go.

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Speaker 1: What got left behind looked like a very long neck

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Speaker 1: with a head on top. But not everyone agreed. Two

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Speaker 1: Japanese professors had a much different interpretation of the evidence.

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Speaker 1: To them, the animal in the photographs from the ship

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Speaker 1: looked nothing like a shark. Decomposing over Otherwise, there were

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Speaker 1: four well defined fins, a long neck, and a long tail,

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Speaker 1: and the anatomical drawings seemed to corroborate that belief. Although

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Speaker 1: no skin or tissue samples were taken, the pictures clearly

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Speaker 1: showed evidence of red flesh and large nostrils on the

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Speaker 1: front of its drooping head. Also, this carcass had been

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Speaker 1: found floating thirty miles off the coast. Most dead sharks

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Speaker 1: typically washed ashore before decomposing. The ones that didn't had

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Speaker 1: never been found as deep as nine feet under the ocean.

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Speaker 1: The professors concluded that what they were really dealing with

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Speaker 1: was a creature no one had ever laid eyes on

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Speaker 1: because it had gone extinct millions of years before. They believed,

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Speaker 1: as crazy as it might sound, that the carcass dredged

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Speaker 1: from the depths of the ocean wasn't a basking shark

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Speaker 1: at all, but a prehistoric creature from the Mesozoic era.

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Speaker 1: A plea csare I Hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour

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Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

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Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me, Aaron Manky

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

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Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,

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Speaker 1: and television show and you can learn all about it

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Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until

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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,