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 2: Does anyone else have.
Speaker 1: A favorite Halloween party game? I think we can all
Speaker 1: agree that spooky season can last year round if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: But there are some games that can really only be
Speaker 1: played when the Great Pumpkin is ready to make an appearance,
Speaker 1: from treasure hunts to bobbing for apples. Most of us
Speaker 1: grew up with these traditions, but I have to say
Speaker 1: that there are some older and weirder ones than you
Speaker 1: would ever expect. So let's start off with the basics.
Speaker 1: Where do Halloween come from? It's really an amalgamation of
Speaker 1: different cultural traditions, but the roots stretched back to an
Speaker 1: ancient Celtic festival called sween, a word that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is often pronounced sam hayne because of the way it's spelled,
Speaker 1: but you're getting it straight from the source here. They
Speaker 1: believe that the veil between this world and the next
Speaker 1: was the thinnest at that time of the year, and
Speaker 1: so they conducted a series of rituals, festivals, and bonfires
Speaker 1: to appease or even banish any spirits that happened to
Speaker 1: make an appearance. This grew out of a combination of
Speaker 1: Celtic and Roman traditions, and some of the customs were
Speaker 1: pretty durable, like the turnips that they carved with faces,
Speaker 1: the precursors of modern day jack lanterns, dressing up in
Speaker 1: costumes to be mistaken for another spirit and left alone,
Speaker 1: although their costumes tended to be animal hides and paint.
Speaker 1: Even trick or treating has a medieval equivalent in the
Speaker 1: concept of souling traveling to wealthy houses and offering prayers
Speaker 1: in exchange for food and drink. That evolved into children
Speaker 1: trading poems or songs for snacks, a trick for a
Speaker 1: treat for some though, the creepy party games weren't just
Speaker 1: for the end of harvest time. They could be played
Speaker 1: year round. I think we've seen time and time again
Speaker 1: that the Victorians knew how to take macab to a
Speaker 1: whole new level. It turns out that they even applied
Speaker 1: that to their games. For much of the eighteenth and
Speaker 1: nineteenth centuries, ancient Egypt was the obsession d joure. The
Speaker 1: Europeans were fascinated with Egypt, and not just in the
Speaker 1: colonial sense. Egyptomania took over literature, art, and science, largely
Speaker 1: thanks to Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt and Syria. The treasures
Speaker 1: he brought back to Europe drove an interest that was
Speaker 1: sparked way back in the fifteen hundreds to new heights
Speaker 1: for anyone who wanted to access ancient Egypt. In London,
Speaker 1: Thomas Pettigrew was a good friend to have. Petigrew was
Speaker 1: an English surgeon, and he had recently developed a new
Speaker 1: form of entertainment. If you had some quick cash and
Speaker 1: were in the right place at the right time, you
Speaker 1: could get a ticket to the Royal College of Surgeons.
Speaker 1: It was like trying to rush Hamilton tickets at the
Speaker 1: box office. Some got lucky, didn't. Anyone who managed to
Speaker 1: get inside, though, could look forward to the spectacle of
Speaker 1: a lifetime. A live demonstration by Pedigrew on January fifteenth
Speaker 1: of eighteen thirty four. A wrapped audience stared, maybe enthralled
Speaker 1: or disgusted as the surgeon slowly unwrapped a mummy from
Speaker 1: the twenty first dynasty for science. Of course, that's right.
Speaker 1: Victorians went to mummy unwrapping parties the same way that
Speaker 1: you or I might catch a Broadway show or a
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones concert, just with more dust and corpses. Now,
Speaker 1: to be completely fair to Pedigrew, there were already weird
Speaker 1: habits surrounding mummies in Europe well before he started his demonstrations.
Speaker 1: Mummies were for sale in Egypt and abroad, and once
Speaker 1: people acquired a body, they did all kinds of distasteful
Speaker 1: things with it, and I mean literally. Some mummies were
Speaker 1: eaten as a source of medical practice. Mummia, a product
Speaker 1: made from mummified corpses, was sold in apothecary shops for
Speaker 1: centuries and consumed by the rich and the poor. It
Speaker 1: had to have tasted terrible, of course, but ground mummies
Speaker 1: were prescribed for everything from headaches to the plague. By
Speaker 1: the Victorian age, people weren't eating the mummies anymore, but
Speaker 1: that wasn't because they had gained any kind of respect
Speaker 1: for the dead. Mummy unwrapping parties became popular pastimes, creating
Speaker 1: a huge demand in Egypt for new subjects. This probably
Speaker 1: stressed out the people sent to scour tombs. There were
Speaker 1: only so many mummies to be found, and this resulted
Speaker 1: in forgeries rather than royal corpses. Some Europeans got peasants bodies,
Speaker 1: some fresher than others. Unwrapping was sort of a ritual
Speaker 1: in and of itself, and Victorians delighted in the combination
Speaker 1: of macab behavior and ancient Egypt. This from the people
Speaker 1: who were too scandalized to show up in public without
Speaker 1: a chaperone. Of course, usually a lecture preceded the festivities,
Speaker 1: and then the unwrapper would start unrolling bandages until the
Speaker 1: body itself was revealed. Oftentimes guests collected any objects or
Speaker 1: amulets encased within the body. One observer at the unwrapping
Speaker 1: of a woman named Nez noted offhandedly that the jeweled
Speaker 1: hawk on her necklace would make a lovely watch charm.
Speaker 1: All good things must come to an end. Of course,
Speaker 1: with the rise of preservation rather than desecration among the
Speaker 1: scientific and archaeological communities, mummy wrapping fell out of favor.
Speaker 1: It didn't completely stop, though, People are still curious right
Speaker 1: but thanks to the advent of X rays and full
Speaker 1: body scans, we can now see the person underneath without
Speaker 1: disturbing their final rest, proof that mummies, like so many
Speaker 1: of the other Halloween icons we know, aren't as simple
Speaker 1: as you'd first believe.
Speaker 2: They do in fact have layers. One of the.
Speaker 1: Best things about studying history is finding out that humans
Speaker 1: have always been well human if you know what to
Speaker 1: look for, the patterns of thoughts and actions are pretty clear,
Speaker 1: and I think it helps us be a bit more
Speaker 1: connected to those who came before us. Some bonds, though,
Speaker 1: are a little less pleasant. One thing consistently handed down
Speaker 1: from generation to generation is fear, and sometimes it's entirely logical,
Speaker 1: or it used to be anyway. Fear of bugs and
Speaker 1: certain animals is only sensible when trying to survive in
Speaker 1: an unpredictable, deadly world. Its common sense, rather than cowardice,
Speaker 1: that gives us the jitters whenever we're confronted with something
Speaker 1: that could cause us harm. Even if these things aren't
Speaker 1: as much of a threat now, we still have those
Speaker 1: leftover instincts from our ancestors. With new technology, many of
Speaker 1: these old phobias have been erased entirely or at least contained,
Speaker 1: but a few still hang on. I'm pretty sure everyone
Speaker 1: at some point in their lives has had the dream
Speaker 1: of getting buried alive. Tapophobia is the fear of being
Speaker 1: buried alive, and it's had a hold on humanity for centuries.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's Juliette wonders if she might wake in her own
Speaker 1: tomb if she isn't rescued in time. In the Victorian age,
Speaker 1: plenty of penny dress full magazines circulated throughout England with
Speaker 1: horrible stories of people waking up in their own coffins
Speaker 1: too late to be rescued. Hans Christian Anderson demanded that
Speaker 1: his veins be cut open after his death to ensure
Speaker 1: that he wasn't prematurely buried. And it wasn't just the
Speaker 1: poets and the artists who were afraid. It was everybody,
Speaker 1: and for very good reason. As it turns out, being
Speaker 1: buried alive was shockingly common in the days before brain scans.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was intentional, in the cases of punishment or sacrifice,
Speaker 1: but oftentimes people just didn't realize they were doing it,
Speaker 1: at least until it was too late, and it was
Speaker 1: a hideous way to go. There are accounts from the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century of John Dunn's Scotus's tomb being opened and
Speaker 1: his body found outside the coffin with bloody fingertips, suggesting
Speaker 1: the priest had tried and failed to free himself. While
Speaker 1: this tale might not be true or at least exaggerated,
Speaker 1: poor Alice Blunden's story is well documented. This seventeenth century
Speaker 1: englishwoman was knocked out after drinking too much poppy tea.
Speaker 1: The opiate put her in such a deep sleep that
Speaker 1: her doctor held a mirror under her nose, and she
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be breathing. Not wanting the body to smell,
Speaker 1: her family buried her quickly, and it might have been
Speaker 1: a sad but ordinary story for the time, except children
Speaker 1: playing near her grave started hearing noises. When they ran
Speaker 1: to get the schoolmaster to check, he could hear Blundon
Speaker 1: screaming inside, still alive. It took another day to fully
Speaker 1: exume her, and she was so sick and exhausted from
Speaker 1: her struggle that she looked dead and was returned to
Speaker 1: her coffin. This time the family posted a guard, but
Speaker 1: he deserted his post, and in the morning, luckless Alice
Speaker 1: was found dead once more. She'd made one final attempt.
Speaker 2: To free herself.
Speaker 1: So how did people combat this horrific scenario. Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out that folks were willing to do just about
Speaker 1: anything to avoid the worst, including but not limited to
Speaker 1: having their fingers cut off, creating waiting mortuaries and tobacco
Speaker 1: smoke enemas. Yes, someone would literally blow smoke up your well.
Speaker 1: You know, I can only imagine the shock of what
Speaker 1: was happening would blow over quickly once someone realized what
Speaker 1: they had avoided. The people only grew more innovative in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as outbreaks of cholera and
Speaker 1: several bacterial infections swept across Europe and the Americas, leaving
Speaker 1: so many people drained and dehydrated that they barely looked alive. Luckily,
Speaker 1: there was a deluge of new inventions for invalids to
Speaker 1: rely on, something called the safety coffin. They came in
Speaker 1: all shape, sizes, and models. Some had glass panels that
Speaker 1: fogged up if the person inside was still breathing. Some
Speaker 1: had tubes that reached up through the earth that a
Speaker 1: groundskeeper could sniff every day to make sure the body
Speaker 1: was decomposing on schedule. Most basic models had noisemakers attached
Speaker 1: like bells or horns that rested above the ground so
Speaker 1: a passer buyer could hear the clamor and come investigate.
Speaker 1: The victim had a string attached to their hand in
Speaker 1: the coffin, and the other ends stretched to the bell
Speaker 1: next to their grave. Presumably if they woke up, they
Speaker 1: pulled for dear life, hoping someone passing by would hear them.
Speaker 1: There's no indication of what would happen if a gust
Speaker 1: of wind moved the bell or knocked it over, and honestly,
Speaker 1: maybe it's best not to ask now. Plenty of these
Speaker 1: safety coffins were patented and advertised to willing customers, and
Speaker 1: the designs only improved over time. German doctor Adolph Gutsmith
Speaker 1: created his own coffin in eighteen twenty two that had
Speaker 1: a tube designed to feed the unfortunate and give them
Speaker 1: air until they could be exhumed. He demonstrated the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of his device by getting buried alive and spending several
Speaker 1: hours underground, even enjoying a lovely meal before emerging unscathed.
Speaker 1: And as far as we can tell, there are no
Speaker 1: records of the effectiveness of these devices or if anyone
Speaker 1: managed to use their primary feature as intended. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: hope they never had to, but it's nice to know that,
Speaker 1: in the rare cases that they did, these folks would
Speaker 1: be saved by the bell. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Ques Curiosities subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey 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 Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.