Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Experts use all kinds of
Speaker 1: methods when predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. Polls are
Speaker 1: the most common, but often unreliable way of taking the
Speaker 1: pulse of a nation. However, in the nineteen forties, the
Speaker 1: people didn't rely on polls or data to predict who
Speaker 1: might sit in the Oval office. They relied on Lady Wonder.
Speaker 1: She was born in Richmond, Virginia, into and raised by
Speaker 1: Claudia Fonda, who took her in like a mother. Claudia
Speaker 1: fed her by bottle every day, using their time together
Speaker 1: to teach her new things. Lady Wonder Or spent most
Speaker 1: of her time working with Claudia, learning the letters of
Speaker 1: the alphabet with the help of children's blocks. But Lady
Speaker 1: also loved children. She often played with them, letting them
Speaker 1: hide objects in the nearby pastures so that she could
Speaker 1: go over later and find them. And she did so
Speaker 1: every single time without fail. Except there was something strange
Speaker 1: about Lady For one, she was a horse, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't what set her apart from others. She stood out
Speaker 1: because she seemed to always know what someone was going
Speaker 1: to do right before they did it. For example, she
Speaker 1: would run toward Claudia just before getting the command to
Speaker 1: do so. Eventually, Ladies started answering questions, things like basic
Speaker 1: math and general knowledge questions, except she didn't reply by
Speaker 1: stomping her hoofs like other horses. She spelled out her
Speaker 1: answers using the twenty six wooden letter blocks in her stable.
Speaker 1: News of the brilliant Horse got around, of course, and
Speaker 1: reporters started pouring in from all over the country to
Speaker 1: see her in action. Whenever Lady performed, she closed her
Speaker 1: eyes and into a kind of trance. She'd solve an
Speaker 1: equation or spell answers to questions asked by the crowd.
Speaker 1: Then there were the more peculiar questions. She started answering
Speaker 1: things that no one horse or human should have been
Speaker 1: able to answer. For example, she once was able to
Speaker 1: spell out the date on a coin pulled from someone's
Speaker 1: pocket without ever having laid eyes upon it. Another person
Speaker 1: moved the hands of a clock to six ten PM
Speaker 1: and held the clock face against Lady's side, they asked
Speaker 1: what time the clock was on, and the horse responded
Speaker 1: in her own way, six one zero. But as Lady
Speaker 1: grew larger, so did her ways of communicating. Soon the
Speaker 1: blocks were too small for her to manipulate with her snout,
Speaker 1: so her trainer had a special kind of horse sized
Speaker 1: typewriter made with keys big enough for Lady to push
Speaker 1: with her nose. Whenever she pressed a letter down, the
Speaker 1: corresponding facsimile would pop up for the audience to see.
Speaker 1: When it seemed like Lady might just be a well
Speaker 1: trained horse, her trainer moved the letters around to confuse her,
Speaker 1: but it never worked. The horse could answer basic questions
Speaker 1: and also predict outcomes of major events, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: long before the stories about Lady Wonder had reached Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. One senator in the nineteen fifties was notorious
Speaker 1: for ignoring his constituents until he asked Lady Wonder what
Speaker 1: he should do. She also successfully predicted the outcomes of
Speaker 1: several elections. Even the police had come to depend on
Speaker 1: her for answers. In Massachusetts, in ninety one, a young
Speaker 1: boy went missing. Despite the police's best efforts, nothing turned
Speaker 1: up no evidence, no suspects, nothing, So the police asked
Speaker 1: Lady for help, and right away she plunked out the
Speaker 1: words Pittsfield water wheel. The police took that to me
Speaker 1: in a nearby place called pit Field wild Water pure enough.
Speaker 1: A search of that quarry led them to the boy's body.
Speaker 1: Lady Wonder even managed to convince a psychologist from New York,
Speaker 1: a man named Thomas Garrett, who was known for debunking
Speaker 1: supposed clairvoyance and fortune tellers. His dog had gone missing,
Speaker 1: and kennel in Long Island claimed that the dog had died.
Speaker 1: Lady told him it was untrue and that his dog
Speaker 1: was still alive. After a brief investigation, it turned out
Speaker 1: that the kennel had faked the dog's death and sold
Speaker 1: it to a sister location in Florida. Thanks to Lady Wonder,
Speaker 1: they were caught red handed. Paranormal researchers, magicians, and experts
Speaker 1: of all kinds performed countless tests on Lady to find
Speaker 1: the limits of her power, and what they found was complicated.
Speaker 1: She was capable of answering simple math equations, but more
Speaker 1: difficult problems stumped her. When they blindfolded her, all bets
Speaker 1: were off she got almost nothing right. What people like
Speaker 1: Duke University professor Joseph Banks Ryan finally figured out was
Speaker 1: that Lady Wonder wasn't so much a mind reader as
Speaker 1: she was incredibly observant. She would watch her trainer at
Speaker 1: Claudia for clues to the answer. With the blindfold on,
Speaker 1: her human cheat sheet was gone, turning her into just
Speaker 1: another horse, however intelligent she might have been. That said,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of times when Lady Wonder really did
Speaker 1: live up to her name, when she was able to
Speaker 1: predict the outcomes of elections, sporting events, and the locations
Speaker 1: of missing people. She might have been getting help on
Speaker 1: the basic questions, but even Claudia didn't know the answer
Speaker 1: to everything, and yet somehow Lady Wonder did. Clearly something
Speaker 1: was going on. What that something was, well, we'll never know,
Speaker 1: but we do know one thing. That's something. It was special.
Speaker 1: Emily had someone following her, but she never saw who.
Speaker 1: She was a teacher in the mid eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: a good one. She was loved by her students, but
Speaker 1: had trouble holding onto job. She allegedly held nineteen separate
Speaker 1: teaching positions over the course of sixteen years, but It
Speaker 1: wasn't due to a lack of skill or boredom. It
Speaker 1: was something more difficult to explain. Emily Sage was French
Speaker 1: born but taught at a private girls school in Russia.
Speaker 1: The kids seemed to like her well enough. She was
Speaker 1: patient and sweet and inviting, but there was something about
Speaker 1: her that confused some of the students, mainly that she
Speaker 1: seemed to be everywhere at once. If one student went
Speaker 1: looking for her earn her classroom, she'd often be there
Speaker 1: at the same time another student would have eyes on
Speaker 1: her in another room in the school. At first, other
Speaker 1: students and teachers said the occasional coincidences were just tricks
Speaker 1: on the eyes, children seeing one thing and thinking it
Speaker 1: was something else. But the sightings kept happening. As the
Speaker 1: school year wore on, the incidents of Emily being in
Speaker 1: two places at once grew more frequent. Then during class
Speaker 1: one day, her students saw the reason why Madam Zell
Speaker 1: Saggi was often seen in two rooms at the same time.
Speaker 1: She turned to write on the board when someone else
Speaker 1: suddenly appeared in the classroom. They stood next to Emily,
Speaker 1: wearing the same clothes as her. Their hair was tied
Speaker 1: up exactly the same way, and as the teacher moved
Speaker 1: her arm up and down the board, the other person
Speaker 1: did the same. Although they weren't holding chalk or writing
Speaker 1: anything on the board, they were simply pantomiming the same movements.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, it was another Emily. Afterwards, school administrators
Speaker 1: talked to each member of the class, who all told
Speaker 1: the same story that an exact duplicate of their teacher
Speaker 1: appeared out of nowhere and started mimicking her actions. After
Speaker 1: the incident, another sighting happened when Emily was helping a
Speaker 1: student into her dress for a garden party. The girl
Speaker 1: looked in the mirror to admire her dress, and standing
Speaker 1: beside her teacher was the doppelganger, again performing the same
Speaker 1: movements as Emily, with nothing in her hands. It seemed
Speaker 1: that once they'd seen her in the open, the second
Speaker 1: Emily had no qualms about showing herself as often as possible.
Speaker 1: She'd stand behind the real Emily at a meal and
Speaker 1: act like she was feeding herself, even though she wasn't
Speaker 1: holding a fork or a plate. Other times, when the
Speaker 1: teacher would get up, the ghostly clone would stay behind
Speaker 1: in the chair. Perhaps the most bizarre sighting happened while
Speaker 1: students were gathered together to practice embroidery. Emily was outside
Speaker 1: picking flowers in the garden while another teacher watched the girls.
Speaker 1: Everyone could see her happily going about one of her
Speaker 1: favorite pastimes from the window. At some point, however, the
Speaker 1: teacher needed to attend to another matter and the students
Speaker 1: were left alone. The empty seat where the teacher had
Speaker 1: been sitting didn't remain empty for long, though Emily appeared
Speaker 1: in the chair. The children looked out the window and
Speaker 1: saw the real Emily sa Ghee still picking flowers outside
Speaker 1: in clear view of the students. She looked tired now,
Speaker 1: like she'd just run a race. The doppelganger didn't move,
Speaker 1: though it sat looking straight ahead. Two students who had
Speaker 1: gone through this before decided to conduct an experiment with
Speaker 1: the apparition. They both got out of their seats and
Speaker 1: approached her. One went to touch her and was able
Speaker 1: to pass her hand through her body, although with a
Speaker 1: slight effort, it felt like something was in the way,
Speaker 1: a dense fog or a thin fabric keeping the hand
Speaker 1: from moving smoothly through the other student managed to walk
Speaker 1: right through part of this other Emily before she faded away.
Speaker 1: The students caught up with the real Emily Sage afterward
Speaker 1: and asked what had happened. She told them she had
Speaker 1: been upset at the other teacher leaving them alone and
Speaker 1: felt they needed someone to watch them while she was gone. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: these strange occurrences add a negative effect on the school.
Speaker 1: Children who had gone home during Christmas or summer break
Speaker 1: periods often didn't come back. Eventually, the school had gone
Speaker 1: from forty two active students to only a dozen, and
Speaker 1: the reason for the drop was Emily Sage. The school
Speaker 1: had no choice but to let her go. Her whereabouts
Speaker 1: after that went largely known, though one student did keep
Speaker 1: in touch with her. The student visited Emily at her
Speaker 1: sister in law's home while she was in between jobs,
Speaker 1: and the children of this sister in law like to
Speaker 1: tell their guests how they had to aunt. Emily's Emily
Speaker 1: Sage story sort of ends there. Despite the numerous witnesses
Speaker 1: to her bizarre phenomena, the tale of two teachers has
Speaker 1: changed considerably as it has been passed down through the years.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that many of
Speaker 1: her former students might have wanted to forget what they'd seen.
Speaker 1: After all, two teachers in one place is bad enough. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: though it didn't mean double the homework. 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. H