WEBVTT - A Sticky Situation 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.440 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.119 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.840 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.519 January fifteenth of nineteen nineteen was an unusually warm winter's 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.120 afternoon in Boston. In the North End, near the waterfront, 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:48.000 workers sat outside to eat their lunches. Firefighters were playing 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.880 cards in the garage of the engine House, and near 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:54.040 a warehouse on Commercial Street, a group of children were 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:57.360 gathering firewood for their families when they heard a strange, 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.200 metallic groan. It was come out from the fifty foot 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.720 tall steel tank full of molasses that towered over the 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.119 North End. The tank had been built a few years 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.800 earlier by the Purity Distilling Company, and locals were used 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.160 to its regular leaking and rumbling, but this time it 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:18.400 sounded different. The rapid warming weather was causing the molasses 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.920 in the tank to expand, putting increased pressure on the 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:26.360 poorly constructed walls. The quiet groan grew into a deep growl, 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.000 and then with a sudden bang, the rivets shot out 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:33.240 of the tank, ripping the sides open and sending a 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.920 twenty five foot wave of molasses crashing down the street. 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.479 The sticky brown wave rolled through the North End at 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.520 a shocking speed of about thirty five miles an hour. 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.360 They was powerful enough to crush buildings and knock an 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:50.080 elevated train off its tracks. The firefighters at the engine 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.600 house ducked for cover as the walls collapsed around them, 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.880 leaving them trapped in a waste deep huddle of molasses. 0:01:57.200 --> 0:01:59.680 A truck was picked up and hurtled all the way 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:02.920 into to Boston Harbor and down the block. A man 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.560 woke up in his third story bedroom to see a 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:09.280 flood of molasses several feet deep surrounding his bed. He 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.480 had to climb on top of the bed frame to 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:16.040 keep from drowning. In total, about two point three million 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:20.560 gallons of molasses poured into the streets, covering several blocks 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:25.680 in two to three feet of gooey sludge. Within minutes, Police, firefighters, 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.520 and Navy sailors rushed to the scene. They had a 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.720 hard time maneuvering through the sticky streets. Especially as the 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.000 molasses began to thicken in the cool winter air, but 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.320 they worked through the night, pulling survivors and bodies out 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.840 of the ruins. Despite the best efforts of the rescue crews, 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:46.079 twenty one people died in the Great Molasses Flood, including 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.799 two of the children who were collecting firewood nearby. Another 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:53.520 one hundred and fifty people were injured. It took hundreds 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.240 of workers weeks to clean up the molasses in the 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.520 immediate area, and even longer to clear the residue from 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.280 the rest of Greater Boston. Clean Up crews had to 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.400 fill a fireboat with water from the harbor and spray 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:09.120 the streets with saltwater to dissolve the molasses. The Boston 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.919 Harbor was stained brown until summer, and for decades after 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.840 the disaster, the syrupy smell of molasses lingered over the 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.960 North End, becoming a distinctive part of the Boston atmosphere. 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.200 In the aftermath of the Great Molasses Flood, survivors filed 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.320 one hundred and nineteen separate lawsuits blaming the explosion on 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.120 the tank's poor design and shoddy construction. This led to 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.840 massive changes in construction laws nationwide, including a new requirement 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.040 that engineers and building inspectors had to sign off on 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.720 every project. More than one hundred years later, those new 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:49.280 regulations have successfully ensured that such a sticky tragedy will 0:03:49.320 --> 0:04:06.760 never happen again. On November fifteenth of nineteen sixty six, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.760 two young couples were driving past an abandoned National Guard 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.040 armory in West Virginia. It was a dark night, with 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.039 only the headlights on their car to guide them. The 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:21.240 armory was a strange place. Underground storage bunkers lay covered 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.200 in graffiti, with their big metal doors lying open like gaping, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.760 yawning mouths ready to swallow someone up. Looking at one, 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:31.839 you wondered what strange weapons might have been stored inside them, 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:36.440 and what might remain. West Virginia was already a sufficiently 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.680 spooky place all on its own. The Blue Mountains feature 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.880 deep canyons dotted with thick tangles of trees hiding strange 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:48.720 monsters and occasionally strange people. It is truly both beautiful 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.280 and sinister, and that night these two couples, Roger and 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.479 Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Malette, were about to 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.080 learn this in spades as they traveled along the highway. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.800 Something st came into focus. Several feet ahead of them. 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.719 Two bright red pinpricks of light shot out like flares 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:08.839 in the dark. At first, they thought these might be 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.440 the tail lights of another car, but the red lights 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.400 hovered off the ground as if they weren't attached to 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.520 any vehicle at all. Because they weren't lights. They were eyes, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:22.440 buggish orbs set into the gray fur covered head with 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.080 no neck, and below that, a gray bipedal body with 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:30.560 long insect like wings stretched out hideously behind it. The 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.720 couple screamed and the driver slammed on the gas. They 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.360 plunged forward, growing even more shocked as this hideous creature 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.400 simply jumped up into the sky, turned around and followed them, 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:45.120 flapping its wings with ease. They drove as fast as 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.839 they could to one hundred miles an hour, desperate to 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.680 escape the strange creature, but it seemed to keep up 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.359 with them with no problem. Everyone in the car looked 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.359 eagerly toward the approaching lights of the city. It was 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.600 their last hope. They crossed over onto the main thoroughfare 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:04.080 and looked behind them, and the creature was gone. The 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.960 most sinister part of this now infamous mothman story isn't 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:11.040 the eerie details of that first encounter, but the fact 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:13.840 that several other people claimed to see the exact same 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.839 thing in the coming days. Before the initial sighting was 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.279 well reported on, there was no opportunity for these witnesses 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.560 to corroborate their stories and get the details straight. It 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:26.840 seems they really did see this creature. One man even 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.440 claimed that it ate his dog. Within a few years, 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:34.520 a journalist named John Keel traveled across West Virginia documenting 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:38.680 these strange occurrences. He noted the mothman phenomenon as being 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.800 a part of a larger UFO sighting phenomenon going on 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.600 throughout the United States at the time. But the mothman 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:48.039 sightings seemed to come to a climax on December fifteenth 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.280 of nineteen sixty seven. That was when the Silver Bridge 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:56.280 connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipoli, Ohio, collapsed, killing over forty people. 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.480 There are claims that the mothman was seen flying around 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.440 the bridge just before the accident, as if it could 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.440 predict what was about to happen. John Keel ultimately came 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.880 to a conclusion that's arguably stranger than the initial phenomena. 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.800 He believed that UFOs, the Mothman, and every other strange 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.400 sighting at the time could be attributed to the work 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.280 of extra dimensional beings who were causing people to hallucinate 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.880 all of these different creatures. Of course, nothing has ever 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.960 come of this theory. The bridge collapse can be attributed 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:32.200 to structural failure, UFO sightings to human aircraft and mass paranoia, 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.960 and the Mothman, well, the Mothman is harder to explain away. 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:38.920 At the very least, it's difficult to provide a rational 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:43.480 explanation for those rapid initial sightings when the individuals involved 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.680 had no chance to build off each other's stories. And 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.680 as I mentioned, West Virginia can be a spooky place. 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.000 There's a long tradition in the area of folklore relating 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.960 to different kinds of monsters in the woods. Maybe the 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.800 people of Point Pleasant in the nineteen sixties were just 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.160 primed by those earth stories and ready to create a 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.560 monster of their own after seeing a large owl or 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.440 a crane in the dark. Mothman is now a beloved 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:13.040 cryptid on par with bigfoots or the Lockness Monster, and 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.280 the people at Point Pleasant have fully embraced the legend 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:19.080 by erecting a statue in the center of town and 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.040 holding an annual Mothman festival. Still, you're more likely to 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:26.480 see it depicted as acutesy plushy on Etsy than as 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:31.280 something sinister. But with no satisfying answers to the original sightings, 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.560 folks always will be curious about whether the monster could 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:37.040 have been real or not. Maybe it will come back 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:39.520 one day to chase down some more cars, or to 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:46.680 warn us of impending doom. I hope you've enjoyed today's 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.320 guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.080 on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:58.160 visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.800 me Aaron Mankey and partners with how Stuff Works. I 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.720 make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:08.760 book series, and television show, and you can learn all 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:13.280 about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:14.760 stay curious.