Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Henry had made fools
Speaker 1: of all of them. As he stood there in the
Speaker 1: middle of the crowd of people who had come for
Speaker 1: the museum's new gallery opening, he couldn't help it smile
Speaker 1: my how far he had come. Decades earlier, he'd been
Speaker 1: a brilliant young artist. His paintings were spectacular and eye catching,
Speaker 1: and he had a promising career ahead of him. And
Speaker 1: yet well, he was just a bit too honest. When
Speaker 1: an art critic offered to print a favorable review of
Speaker 1: his work for hefty price, Henry refused. The resulting review
Speaker 1: destroyed his career before it and even begun. But standing
Speaker 1: here in the middle of the exhibit crowd, while hundreds
Speaker 1: of people filed past his work, all of the suffering
Speaker 1: seemed worth it. Along the way, of course, he had
Speaker 1: picked up new skills and transformed himself into an entirely
Speaker 1: new artist. That's how you learn and grow, after all.
Speaker 1: But Henry took it one step further. The exhibit you
Speaker 1: see was for a newly discovered Vermeer painting. There weren't
Speaker 1: many of the seventeenth century Dutch masters paintings in existence,
Speaker 1: so finding a new one was guaranteed to draw a crowd.
Speaker 1: What none of them knew, though, is that Henry, and
Speaker 1: not Vermir, had been the man to paint it. It
Speaker 1: was his sweet moment of revenge. All of those critics
Speaker 1: and peers that had doubted him and pushed him down
Speaker 1: were now nothing more than fools, tricked into believing that
Speaker 1: a painting Henry had created was actually the work of
Speaker 1: a Dutch master. It was validating that was. Over the
Speaker 1: next few years, Henry tried his hand at more forgeries.
Speaker 1: He managed to sell another fake Fremier to the infamous
Speaker 1: Nazi Herman Guring, one of the most powerful figures in
Speaker 1: Hitler's Germany. Guring had been gathering stolen artwork all across Europe,
Speaker 1: but occasionally purchased pieces he loved. A newly discovered Vermier
Speaker 1: was just too tempting to pass up, and Henry walked
Speaker 1: away with half a million dollars. When the war ended
Speaker 1: and Guring's horde of treasure was recovered, experts began to
Speaker 1: look through the collection and attempt to identify which Peace
Speaker 1: came from where the new vermir though proved tricky. After
Speaker 1: months of chasing leeds, the authorities managed to arrive at
Speaker 1: henry store step. At first, they arrested him for collaborating
Speaker 1: with the Nazi forces, believing he had stolen the painting
Speaker 1: and given it to Guring personally. Henry insisted, though, that
Speaker 1: the painting was a fake and that he had actually
Speaker 1: fooled going into buying it for a long time, though
Speaker 1: no one would believe him. After all, how could this man,
Speaker 1: this unknown, washed up artist, ever managed to create paintings
Speaker 1: that might be confused with the work of the legendary Vermier.
Speaker 1: So Henry proved it. Under the supervision of the authorities,
Speaker 1: Henry gathered the tools, chemicals, and paints necessary to complete
Speaker 1: another of his knockoff masterpieces, and then got to work.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, he wasn't even finished with the
Speaker 1: painting before the experts caved in and accepted defeat. Henry
Speaker 1: really was that good. In the end, the court convicted
Speaker 1: him of forging signatures and delivered a short one year
Speaker 1: jail sentence. Henry, however, had a heart attack a few
Speaker 1: days after the trial and passed away before he could
Speaker 1: serve his time. Oh and the one last thing. After
Speaker 1: going through everything recovered from Henry's home, the authorities found
Speaker 1: the bag of cash that Goring had used to purchase
Speaker 1: the fake former Henry had barely touched it, already wealthy
Speaker 1: from the sale of other fakes to a handful of
Speaker 1: European museums. That's when they discovered something absolutely amazing. The
Speaker 1: cash was fake. The unlikely fraud, it seems, had become
Speaker 1: the victim of his own game. Thomas was a plantation
Speaker 1: owner in Colonial Barbados, an island in the Caribbean. He
Speaker 1: lived there with his entire family and preferred it to
Speaker 1: life back in England. But when you live someplace, there's
Speaker 1: always the risk of dying there as well. In eighteen
Speaker 1: oh seven, Thomas purchased a large family vault in the
Speaker 1: local cemetery in Anti, a patient of just that sort
Speaker 1: of eventuality. That same year, the family suffered through the
Speaker 1: loss of Thomas's aunt, and she became the first to
Speaker 1: occupy the tomb. The following year, Thomas and his wife
Speaker 1: lost a daughter, Mary Anna, and in July eight twelve,
Speaker 1: another of their children passed away. It was a lot
Speaker 1: to work through, for sure, Losing a child is never
Speaker 1: an easy thing, but each of them had a home
Speaker 1: in the family tomb. Later that same year, Thomas himself
Speaker 1: passed away. When they opened the vault, though they were
Speaker 1: met with a surprise. All three of the coffins inside
Speaker 1: were no longer where they had left them, neatly arranged
Speaker 1: in a row on the stone floor. Instead, they seemed
Speaker 1: to have been tossed against the wall, and some of
Speaker 1: them had even been opened. The family suspected grave robbers,
Speaker 1: but there didn't appear to be anything missing. In the end,
Speaker 1: they simply replaced all the coffins and added Thomas's to
Speaker 1: the room, and then made sure to lock up and
Speaker 1: seal the vault, and then life moved on. In eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: another of the children passed away, and after a somber funeral,
Speaker 1: the family took the small casket to the family tomb
Speaker 1: and unlocked the door inside. Though chaos had visited the
Speaker 1: original coffins once again, they were beginning to think that
Speaker 1: something darker was going on, that an unseen force might
Speaker 1: be at work. Just two months later, the family lost
Speaker 1: another of their own, and they returned to that all
Speaker 1: too familiar vault. Again, the door was still locked, and
Speaker 1: again the coffins inside had been tossed against the walls
Speaker 1: and into general disarray. They straightened up things like before,
Speaker 1: but word began to spread around the island about what
Speaker 1: was going on in their tomb. When another of the
Speaker 1: family passed away in eighteen nineteen, news spread fast enough
Speaker 1: that the Governor of Barbados himself, Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton,
Speaker 1: traveled to the cemetery on the southwest corner of the
Speaker 1: island to watch the burial with his own eyes. Inside
Speaker 1: they found the same scene of disarray, and the governor
Speaker 1: personally inspected it before helping with sealing the tomb. This
Speaker 1: time at his request, they covered the floor of the
Speaker 1: tomb with a layer of sand, hoping it would reveal
Speaker 1: footprints if it were ever to happen again. Then they
Speaker 1: locked the door, sealed it, and even placed secret marks
Speaker 1: on the door frame to help them know if the
Speaker 1: vault had been tampered with. It was less than a
Speaker 1: year before the authorities were made aware of reports of
Speaker 1: noises from inside the tomb. Governor Cotton made the journey
Speaker 1: back to the tomb, and the community and family gathered
Speaker 1: around to watch him. Inspected, he reportedly found the seal intact,
Speaker 1: but when he unlocked the door and pushed it inward,
Speaker 1: it resisted suspiciously. With help, he was able to open
Speaker 1: it wide enough to look in, which is when he
Speaker 1: discovered two very different clues. First, the coffins had all
Speaker 1: been tossed again the wall, which explained why the door
Speaker 1: was difficult to move. Some had tipped over and others
Speaker 1: were standing on end. But to make matters more confusing,
Speaker 1: the sand on the floor was as smooth as it
Speaker 1: had been in eighteen nineteen. Not a single footprint could
Speaker 1: be seen, which, of course reinforced the local belief that
Speaker 1: the tomb was home to more than just wooden coffins.
Speaker 1: There was a spirit in there as well, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't happy. This was apparently the final straw. In April
Speaker 1: of that year, the family pulled all of the coffins
Speaker 1: back out and transported them to new underground graves, and
Speaker 1: left the old family vault empty and unused. The spirit
Speaker 1: never gave them trouble again. Over the years, people have
Speaker 1: offered up their own theories about why the coffins kept moving.
Speaker 1: Some blame earthquakes, while others think of cemetery has been
Speaker 1: plagued by flooding from underground sources. To be honest, no
Speaker 1: one really knows for sure, leaving this story in the
Speaker 1: realm of myth rather than fact. When it's all said
Speaker 1: and done, I suppose there really is only one truth
Speaker 1: we can glean from this tale. Let's all hope our
Speaker 1: final resting place is exactly that RESTful. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.