Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: January fifteenth of nineteen nineteen was an unusually warm winter's
Speaker 1: afternoon in Boston. In the North End, near the waterfront,
Speaker 1: workers sat outside to eat their lunches. Firefighters were playing
Speaker 1: cards in the garage of the engine House, and near
Speaker 1: a warehouse on Commercial Street, a group of children were
Speaker 1: gathering firewood for their families when they heard a strange,
Speaker 1: metallic groan. It was come out from the fifty foot
Speaker 1: tall steel tank full of molasses that towered over the
Speaker 1: North End. The tank had been built a few years
Speaker 1: earlier by the Purity Distilling Company, and locals were used
Speaker 1: to its regular leaking and rumbling, but this time it
Speaker 1: sounded different. The rapid warming weather was causing the molasses
Speaker 1: in the tank to expand, putting increased pressure on the
Speaker 1: poorly constructed walls. The quiet groan grew into a deep growl,
Speaker 1: and then with a sudden bang, the rivets shot out
Speaker 1: of the tank, ripping the sides open and sending a
Speaker 1: twenty five foot wave of molasses crashing down the street.
Speaker 1: The sticky brown wave rolled through the North End at
Speaker 1: a shocking speed of about thirty five miles an hour.
Speaker 1: They was powerful enough to crush buildings and knock an
Speaker 1: elevated train off its tracks. The firefighters at the engine
Speaker 1: house ducked for cover as the walls collapsed around them,
Speaker 1: leaving them trapped in a waste deep huddle of molasses.
Speaker 1: A truck was picked up and hurtled all the way
Speaker 1: into to Boston Harbor and down the block. A man
Speaker 1: woke up in his third story bedroom to see a
Speaker 1: flood of molasses several feet deep surrounding his bed. He
Speaker 1: had to climb on top of the bed frame to
Speaker 1: keep from drowning. In total, about two point three million
Speaker 1: gallons of molasses poured into the streets, covering several blocks
Speaker 1: in two to three feet of gooey sludge. Within minutes, Police, firefighters,
Speaker 1: and Navy sailors rushed to the scene. They had a
Speaker 1: hard time maneuvering through the sticky streets. Especially as the
Speaker 1: molasses began to thicken in the cool winter air, but
Speaker 1: they worked through the night, pulling survivors and bodies out
Speaker 1: of the ruins. Despite the best efforts of the rescue crews,
Speaker 1: twenty one people died in the Great Molasses Flood, including
Speaker 1: two of the children who were collecting firewood nearby. Another
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty people were injured. It took hundreds
Speaker 1: of workers weeks to clean up the molasses in the
Speaker 1: immediate area, and even longer to clear the residue from
Speaker 1: the rest of Greater Boston. Clean Up crews had to
Speaker 1: fill a fireboat with water from the harbor and spray
Speaker 1: the streets with saltwater to dissolve the molasses. The Boston
Speaker 1: Harbor was stained brown until summer, and for decades after
Speaker 1: the disaster, the syrupy smell of molasses lingered over the
Speaker 1: North End, becoming a distinctive part of the Boston atmosphere.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Great Molasses Flood, survivors filed
Speaker 1: one hundred and nineteen separate lawsuits blaming the explosion on
Speaker 1: the tank's poor design and shoddy construction. This led to
Speaker 1: massive changes in construction laws nationwide, including a new requirement
Speaker 1: that engineers and building inspectors had to sign off on
Speaker 1: every project. More than one hundred years later, those new
Speaker 1: regulations have successfully ensured that such a sticky tragedy will
Speaker 1: never happen again. On November fifteenth of nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: two young couples were driving past an abandoned National Guard
Speaker 1: armory in West Virginia. It was a dark night, with
Speaker 1: only the headlights on their car to guide them. The
Speaker 1: armory was a strange place. Underground storage bunkers lay covered
Speaker 1: in graffiti, with their big metal doors lying open like gaping,
Speaker 1: yawning mouths ready to swallow someone up. Looking at one,
Speaker 1: you wondered what strange weapons might have been stored inside them,
Speaker 1: and what might remain. West Virginia was already a sufficiently
Speaker 1: spooky place all on its own. The Blue Mountains feature
Speaker 1: deep canyons dotted with thick tangles of trees hiding strange
Speaker 1: monsters and occasionally strange people. It is truly both beautiful
Speaker 1: and sinister, and that night these two couples, Roger and
Speaker 1: Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Malette, were about to
Speaker 1: learn this in spades as they traveled along the highway.
Speaker 1: Something st came into focus. Several feet ahead of them.
Speaker 1: Two bright red pinpricks of light shot out like flares
Speaker 1: in the dark. At first, they thought these might be
Speaker 1: the tail lights of another car, but the red lights
Speaker 1: hovered off the ground as if they weren't attached to
Speaker 1: any vehicle at all. Because they weren't lights. They were eyes,
Speaker 1: buggish orbs set into the gray fur covered head with
Speaker 1: no neck, and below that, a gray bipedal body with
Speaker 1: long insect like wings stretched out hideously behind it. The
Speaker 1: couple screamed and the driver slammed on the gas. They
Speaker 1: plunged forward, growing even more shocked as this hideous creature
Speaker 1: simply jumped up into the sky, turned around and followed them,
Speaker 1: flapping its wings with ease. They drove as fast as
Speaker 1: they could to one hundred miles an hour, desperate to
Speaker 1: escape the strange creature, but it seemed to keep up
Speaker 1: with them with no problem. Everyone in the car looked
Speaker 1: eagerly toward the approaching lights of the city. It was
Speaker 1: their last hope. They crossed over onto the main thoroughfare
Speaker 1: and looked behind them, and the creature was gone. The
Speaker 1: most sinister part of this now infamous mothman story isn't
Speaker 1: the eerie details of that first encounter, but the fact
Speaker 1: that several other people claimed to see the exact same
Speaker 1: thing in the coming days. Before the initial sighting was
Speaker 1: well reported on, there was no opportunity for these witnesses
Speaker 1: to corroborate their stories and get the details straight. It
Speaker 1: seems they really did see this creature. One man even
Speaker 1: claimed that it ate his dog. Within a few years,
Speaker 1: a journalist named John Keel traveled across West Virginia documenting
Speaker 1: these strange occurrences. He noted the mothman phenomenon as being
Speaker 1: a part of a larger UFO sighting phenomenon going on
Speaker 1: throughout the United States at the time. But the mothman
Speaker 1: sightings seemed to come to a climax on December fifteenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty seven. That was when the Silver Bridge
Speaker 1: connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipoli, Ohio, collapsed, killing over forty people.
Speaker 1: There are claims that the mothman was seen flying around
Speaker 1: the bridge just before the accident, as if it could
Speaker 1: predict what was about to happen. John Keel ultimately came
Speaker 1: to a conclusion that's arguably stranger than the initial phenomena.
Speaker 1: He believed that UFOs, the Mothman, and every other strange
Speaker 1: sighting at the time could be attributed to the work
Speaker 1: of extra dimensional beings who were causing people to hallucinate
Speaker 1: all of these different creatures. Of course, nothing has ever
Speaker 1: come of this theory. The bridge collapse can be attributed
Speaker 1: to structural failure, UFO sightings to human aircraft and mass paranoia,
Speaker 1: and the Mothman, well, the Mothman is harder to explain away.
Speaker 1: At the very least, it's difficult to provide a rational
Speaker 1: explanation for those rapid initial sightings when the individuals involved
Speaker 1: had no chance to build off each other's stories. And
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, West Virginia can be a spooky place.
Speaker 1: There's a long tradition in the area of folklore relating
Speaker 1: to different kinds of monsters in the woods. Maybe the
Speaker 1: people of Point Pleasant in the nineteen sixties were just
Speaker 1: primed by those earth stories and ready to create a
Speaker 1: monster of their own after seeing a large owl or
Speaker 1: a crane in the dark. Mothman is now a beloved
Speaker 1: cryptid on par with bigfoots or the Lockness Monster, and
Speaker 1: the people at Point Pleasant have fully embraced the legend
Speaker 1: by erecting a statue in the center of town and
Speaker 1: holding an annual Mothman festival. Still, you're more likely to
Speaker 1: see it depicted as acutesy plushy on Etsy than as
Speaker 1: something sinister. But with no satisfying answers to the original sightings,
Speaker 1: folks always will be curious about whether the monster could
Speaker 1: have been real or not. Maybe it will come back
Speaker 1: one day to chase down some more cars, or to
Speaker 1: warn us of impending doom. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey and partners with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious.