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Speaker 1: In the middle of Salisbury Plane in the southwest of England,

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Speaker 1: stands one of the most famous ancient sites in the world, Stonehenge.

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Speaker 1: For millennia, it has been a focal point of myth

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Speaker 1: and mystery. Whichever culture constructed it, they left no further

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Speaker 1: trace of themselves, no writings or firm indication as to

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Speaker 1: who they were or why they went to such great

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Speaker 1: effort to build their monument. Theories ranged from the practical

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Speaker 1: to the mystical. The Australian science writer Lynn Kelly posits

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Speaker 1: that Stonehenge served as anmonic resource for Neolithic Britons, that

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Speaker 1: the mathematics and information encoded in its construction could be

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Speaker 1: a way of passing down crucial knowledge in an era

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Speaker 1: before written language. Some people think it has things to

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Speaker 1: tell us about the stars. Modern archaeologists have pointed to

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Speaker 1: the site's astronomical alignments, perfectly framing the dawn rays of

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Speaker 1: the summer solstice and the setting sun on the winter solstice.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, the British astronomer Gerald Hawkins published

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Speaker 1: a paper identifying dozens of lunar and solar correlations in

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Speaker 1: the ancient complex. Two years later, he co authored Stonehenge

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Speaker 1: Decoded with JB. White, in which they described the site

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Speaker 1: as a neolithic computer, able to not just map, but

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Speaker 1: to accurately predict astronomical events. Others suggest that Stonehenge lies

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Speaker 1: at an important junction of lay lines, the theoretical grid

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Speaker 1: network of energies said to connect prehistoric edifices and important

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Speaker 1: natural features across Britain and the world. Still more esoteric

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Speaker 1: theories about the megalith include its supposed healing abilities, unique

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Speaker 1: acoustic properties that allow it to be played as a

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Speaker 1: giant instrument, or the claim that the entire site is

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Speaker 1: laid out to represent the female sex organs in a

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Speaker 1: grand system of fertility worship. Yet, as with so many

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Speaker 1: ancient structures freckled across the face of the modern world,

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Speaker 1: the question of why is secondary to the more pressing

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Speaker 1: problem of how, because the sheer physical theft of Stonehenge

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Speaker 1: presents its own great mystery. The Stonehenge complex comprises two

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Speaker 1: concentric rings of standing stone, of which ninety three are

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Speaker 1: still standing, though estimates suggest the Henge once included almost

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Speaker 1: twice that number. The outer ring is constructed from sarsen,

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Speaker 1: a silic rite sandstone found in large quantities throughout the

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Speaker 1: surrounding area. Even with such an abundant source of building materials,

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Speaker 1: the carving, lifting and positioning of the Sarsen stones appears

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Speaker 1: an almost superhuman feet. Each weighs roughly twenty five tons

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Speaker 1: and are capped by similarly massive little stones that have

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Speaker 1: been lifted over thirteen feet to rest atop the vertical columns.

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Speaker 1: But that is nothing compared to the logistics of the

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Speaker 1: inner ring. The smaller bluestones that comprise it, each weighing

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Speaker 1: two to five tons, have been traced to the Priscilli

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Speaker 1: Hills of Western Wales, roughly one hundred and fifty miles away.

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Speaker 1: Even more staggering is the mystery behind the circle's centerpiece,

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Speaker 1: the Altar Stone, a six ton mass of solid rock

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Speaker 1: that only in twenty twenty four was discovered to have

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Speaker 1: likely been transported down from the north of Scotland four

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Speaker 1: hundred an thirty miles away. Exactly how and why these

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Speaker 1: stones were quarried and transported from such great distances is

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Speaker 1: perhaps the greatest question that haunts the Great Stone Circle

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Speaker 1: even today. So much of Stonehenge's mystery relies on the

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Speaker 1: long passage of time. Looking back from our technological vantage point,

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Speaker 1: we wonder at the achievements of those we consider more

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Speaker 1: primitive people. Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza, Indonesia's Barda Valley Stones,

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Speaker 1: the Great Gate of the Sun at Bolivia's Tiwanaku. Each

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Speaker 1: of these baffles the modern mind because the scale and

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Speaker 1: finesse of the construction seems to so far exceed the

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Speaker 1: technology available at the time. It's why the hint of

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Speaker 1: the other worldly adheres so closely to these places, why

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Speaker 1: conspira theories take root about the helpful hands of giants

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Speaker 1: or ancient extraterrestrial visitors. But what have we discovered such

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Speaker 1: a feat of inexplicable engineering in the modern age? A

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Speaker 1: wonder of stone constructed little more than a century ago,

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Speaker 1: when all the rewards of modernity were readily available. Yet

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Speaker 1: still we cannot determine how it was accomplished, Because, unlike

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Speaker 1: the mass efforts of Neolithic tribes, enslaved people's, or cultish devotees,

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Speaker 1: there is a modern megalith, often called America's Stonehenge, that

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Speaker 1: appears to be the work of a single man. And

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Speaker 1: what marvels he built? This is unexplained. And I'm Richard

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Speaker 1: McLean Smith, which about Edward Leedskalnin's life remains unknown or

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Speaker 1: in doubt. The man himself is almost as much of

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Speaker 1: an enigma as the remarkable things he achieved. What we

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Speaker 1: do know is that he was born in eighteen eighty

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Speaker 1: seven in what was then a Baltic province of the

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire, in a region that corresponds to present day Latvia,

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Speaker 1: but the specifics of his birth, both the exact day

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Speaker 1: and the precise location, are clouded by conflicting documentation. This

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Speaker 1: early shadow of ambiguity would cloak him all his life,

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Speaker 1: a sense that Edward was a man out of time

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Speaker 1: and without a natural place in the world. The fifth

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Speaker 1: and youngest son of tenant farmers, Edward spent his youth

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Speaker 1: working the fields with his family. He attended school until

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Speaker 1: he was nine years old, but that was about as

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Speaker 1: far as his formal education went. However, Edward had remained

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Speaker 1: a keen reader, and despite his many barriers to learning,

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Speaker 1: he would grow into a literate man, fluent in at

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Speaker 1: least three languages. It said he also learned the craft

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Speaker 1: of stonemasonry from his father, a skill that he would

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Speaker 1: put to use as a young man, carving local gravestones

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Speaker 1: and working on the homes of landowners, and one that

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Speaker 1: would ultimately come to dominate his lasting legacy. Like many

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Speaker 1: people in the Baltic regions at the time, the leed

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Speaker 1: scown In family lived a life of grinding rural poverty

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Speaker 1: with little chance of change. Imperial Russia was a society

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Speaker 1: where power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of

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Speaker 1: a few aristocrats and industrialists, while millions of small, old

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Speaker 1: farmers and factory workers remained trapped in hardship. The Czar

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Speaker 1: ruled as an absolute monarch who'd supposedly been chosen by

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Speaker 1: Gaunt to lead the empire. There were no elections or

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Speaker 1: any other democratic processes. His vast empire was policed by fear,

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Speaker 1: censorship of the press, surveillance by secret police, and the

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Speaker 1: threat of exile or execution for anyone who dared to

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Speaker 1: imagine a different world. For those who self identified as

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Speaker 1: something other than Russian, the sense of being held down

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Speaker 1: was even sharper. Russification policies smothered their language and culture,

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Speaker 1: and doors to education or professional life were kept firmly shut.

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Speaker 1: To be born financially impoverished usually meant you stayed that way.

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Speaker 1: There was no middle class to escape into no ladders

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Speaker 1: to climb, just a lifetime of labor, paying taxes to

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Speaker 1: a distant empire that seemed to exist simply to keep

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Speaker 1: you in your place. But then, in a bitterly cold

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Speaker 1: January in nine nineteen o five, something broke. In Saint Petersburg, Russia.

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Speaker 1: A crowd of workers marched peacefully through the snow toward

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Speaker 1: the Tsar's winter palace, demanding fair wages and political reform.

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Speaker 1: They carried icons and sang hymns, believing the Czar, who

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Speaker 1: despite everything many regarded as a caring, paternal figure, would

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Speaker 1: listen to them. But the Tzar wasn't there. Fearing the protest,

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Speaker 1: he'd already cowardly fled the city and authorized his Imperial

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Speaker 1: guard to take care of the matter. When the crowds

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Speaker 1: refused to disperse, the imperial guard opened fire on them.

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Speaker 1: Hundreds were slaughtered in the snow, with the massacre becoming

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Speaker 1: known as Bloody Sunday. The news spread across the empire

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Speaker 1: like a shockwave. In Riga, the future capital of Latvia,

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Speaker 1: ten thousand protesters gathered on the banks of the Dowgava River,

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Speaker 1: demanding change. Soldiers fired on them too. Some were killed,

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Speaker 1: where they stood. Others were forced to flee over the

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Speaker 1: river's frozen water, only for the ice to crack beneath them,

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Speaker 1: plunging them to their deaths. The unrest of nineteen oh

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Speaker 1: five was a moment that revealed the truth of the

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Speaker 1: Russian Empire that it would rather kill than reform. But

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Speaker 1: this only strengthened the resolve of those who wanted change

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Speaker 1: and the possibility of self determination. In response, many future

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Speaker 1: Latvian families, like the leed Scownins, were drawn into a

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Speaker 1: fervor of revolution that quickly engulfed the region. Edward's older

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Speaker 1: brother was arrested and imprisoned, and there is some suggestion

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Speaker 1: that Edward himself joined a local militia waging guerrilla rebellion

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Speaker 1: from the forest near his home Roome. Whether or not

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Speaker 1: this is true, it's certain that the climate of violence

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Speaker 1: had an impact on the eighteen year old Edward. Having

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Speaker 1: watched loved ones die, suffer imprisonment, or face exile in

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Speaker 1: their pursuit of what ultimately seemed like an impossible freedom,

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Speaker 1: he began to dream of a better future for himself.

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Speaker 1: For Edward, as for so many individuals toiling in the

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Speaker 1: remnants of oppressive old empires. There was one place above

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Speaker 1: all that offered the chance to break free and maybe

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Speaker 1: one day lived the life he aspired to, a shining

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Speaker 1: beacon of hope and freedom against the insufferable darkness of

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Speaker 1: authoritarianism America. Edward kept his dream alive, but then in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, when he was twenty four, he became besotted

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Speaker 1: with a sixteen year old girl named Agnes Scuffs. He

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Speaker 1: proposed to her later that year. The couple set a

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Speaker 1: date to be married in a small Lutheran church in

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Speaker 1: the nearby town of vetual Bene on the day, with

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Speaker 1: friends and family in attendance, including Agnes's disapproving mother. When

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Speaker 1: asked by the reverend if he took his fiancee to

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Speaker 1: be his lawfully wedded wife, Edward proudly answered I do.

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Speaker 1: But when Agnes's turn came, she paused for a moment before,

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Speaker 1: as the story goes, promptly turning around and striding out

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Speaker 1: the church without a word. Maybe she bought at marrying

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Speaker 1: a much older man, or maybe her mother's warnings about

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Speaker 1: his lowly prospects had finally cut through. Either way, left

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Speaker 1: alone at the altar, Edward burned with embarrassment, Edward too,

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Speaker 1: ran out of the church. Whether the couple reconvened outside

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Speaker 1: for a brief moment or not, we will never know.

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Speaker 1: What is known is that from that day on, Edward

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Speaker 1: turned his back on his home. With the danger of

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Speaker 1: Czarist retribution, for the numerous protests still lingering, and the

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Speaker 1: shame of a broken engagement, it was time for Edward

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Speaker 1: to leave. On March twenty third, nineteen twelve, at the

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Speaker 1: Hamburg Docks, Edward leed Scownan bordered the SS Pennsylvania, bound

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Speaker 1: for New York in search of a new life. After

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Speaker 1: a fortnight at sea, the Pennsylvania docked at New York's

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Speaker 1: Ellis Island on April seventh, ed disembarked with two friends,

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Speaker 1: Ernst Warsaw and Bertha Schmidt. A photograph captures him at

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Speaker 1: the border desk, clean cut and well dressed, with a

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Speaker 1: thick mustache and tidy dark hair under a bowler hat.

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Speaker 1: Already for a fresh start, the trio gave their forward

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Speaker 1: destination as the New Jersey city of New Brunswick. Though

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Speaker 1: no one thought anything of it at the time, Ed's

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Speaker 1: immigration papers hint at something slippery about the man under occupation.

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Speaker 1: He listed himself as a day laborer, which was true.

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Speaker 1: More surprising, however, he gave his nationality as Russian and

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Speaker 1: his ethnicity as Lithuanian. Oddly, Ed also gave his height

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Speaker 1: as five foot six, when in fact it was much

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Speaker 1: closer to a flat five feet. Having spent a few

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Speaker 1: weeks with Bertha and Ernest in New Brunswick, Ed decided

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Speaker 1: to move on. For four months, he traveled through the

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Speaker 1: Midwest on a rough northwest trajectory towards the Pacific coast.

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Speaker 1: In August of nineteen twelve, he crossed into Canada and

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Speaker 1: took up work at a logging camp in Cranbrooughritagtish, Columbia.

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Speaker 1: On the paperwork he filed for both the border crossing

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Speaker 1: and the job, Ed this time listed his height as

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Speaker 1: five foot nine. It must have been palpably untrue, but

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Speaker 1: labour was needed, and Ed, however, small, was nothing if

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Speaker 1: not a hard worker. But again, after just a few months,

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Speaker 1: a restlessness overtook him and Ed crossed back into the

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Speaker 1: United States. This time he told immigration officials that he

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Speaker 1: was bound for Spokane, Washington, but from there he vanished

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Speaker 1: from documentation for three years, reappearing in Elkhorn, Oregon. In

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Speaker 1: June nineteen seventeen to dispute his draft registration for the

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Speaker 1: First World War. Though Ed had been in North America

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Speaker 1: for five years, he had yet to seek citizenship. Some

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Speaker 1: suggest that he was merely biding his time, waiting for

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Speaker 1: the Czarist regime to fall before returning home. Others theorized

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Speaker 1: that Ed had been following the unfolding of the First

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Speaker 1: World War in Europe from Afar with understandable horror, safe

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Speaker 1: in the knowledge that as a foreign citizen in America,

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Speaker 1: he would remain free from the US draft. In the

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Speaker 1: latter case, at least he was right. Ed avoided the war,

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Speaker 1: and once again dropped out of view. Seven years later,

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Speaker 1: in the early winter of nineteen twenty three, a real

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Speaker 1: estate agent named Reubin Mosa was driving on a country

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Speaker 1: road thirty miles north of Miami in Florida when he

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Speaker 1: suddenly slammed on his brakes. In a ditch at the

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Speaker 1: side of the road was the heaped body of a

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Speaker 1: man lying face down in the dirt. He looked like

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Speaker 1: a stringless puppet. Mosa rushed from the car, relieved to

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Speaker 1: find the man was alive, but only just His breathing

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Speaker 1: was thick and labored, and he couldn't stand without assistance.

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Speaker 1: The man was Edward Leeds, Scowning. The real estate agent

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Speaker 1: helped him up and got him into the car. Then

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Speaker 1: together they drove on to moses home in nearby Florida City.

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Speaker 1: Once there, Moses's wife, Francis, immediately called for a doctor.

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Speaker 1: Doctor Ekman arrived to attend to the stricken Ed. It

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Speaker 1: didn't take long for Eckman to realize that Ed, who

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Speaker 1: was desperately pale and skinny, was suffering from tuberculosis. As

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Speaker 1: Beckmann explained to the Moses and the semi sensible Ed,

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Speaker 1: the prognosis wasn't good. Even if Ed were to recover

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Speaker 1: from the immediate crisis, he said sombly, he would likely

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Speaker 1: only have six months at most before he succumbed to it.

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Speaker 1: Feeling suddenly responsible for this stranger who had so unexpectedly

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Speaker 1: come into their lives, the Moses offered to let him

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Speaker 1: stay with them for the foreseeable future. With great charity,

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Speaker 1: they moved him into their tool shed slowly, along with

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Speaker 1: their daughter Lois. Against all odds, they succeeded in nursing

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Speaker 1: him back from the press abyss, and over time he

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Speaker 1: told them all about who he was and where he'd

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Speaker 1: been in the last few years, As he explained, having

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Speaker 1: been seduced by an advert seeking migrant workers to fill

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Speaker 1: jobs in the Pacific Northwest logging industry under the promise

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Speaker 1: of bright, sunny climes just like California, he'd arrived to

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Speaker 1: find it anything but it rained endlessly, and at times

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Speaker 1: it seemed the sun barely shined at all. But having

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Speaker 1: no money left, he had little choice but to stay

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Speaker 1: and find a jomp. The work was brutally hard and

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Speaker 1: not well paid. Meanwhile, the mills were damp and filthy

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Speaker 1: places festooned with mold, the sort of conditions that clung

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Speaker 1: to you wherever you went. When ed started coming down

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Speaker 1: with something, he made the decision to leave the state

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Speaker 1: and headed south in search of warmer weather. Though he

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Speaker 1: never explained exactly how, Ed claimed to have come into

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Speaker 1: money at some point after leaving his logging job, and

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Speaker 1: eventually made it all the way down to Florida. Joe

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Speaker 1: Bullard Junior, whose two thousand novel Waiting for Agnes fictionalized

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Speaker 1: the life of Edward Leedscowning, relates a story told to

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Speaker 1: him by a man who claims his father won met

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Speaker 1: ed on a street in Jacksonville. According to this story,

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Speaker 1: the man's father was working as a bank clerk when

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Speaker 1: he saw a short man pass by the window holding

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Speaker 1: a witching stick, also known as a dowsing rot. Some

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Speaker 1: believe with the use of such a stick, holding it

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Speaker 1: out in front of you until it moves, it's possible

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Speaker 1: to find water or sources of energy under the earth.

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Speaker 1: When the man asked ed what he was searching for,

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Speaker 1: he replied, when I find it, I'll know, and with

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Speaker 1: that he promptly carried on his way. Florida City is

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Speaker 1: four hundred miles from Jacksonville. Did Ed walk the entire

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Speaker 1: way there dowsing for whatever unspecified prize seem to be

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Speaker 1: eluding him? And such a question is quickly followed by

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Speaker 1: a more intriguing one. How far had Ed walked already

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Speaker 1: by the time he reached Jacksonville, all the way from

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Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps it is one of the many

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Speaker 1: mysteries that surround the eccentric man. Either way, it appears

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Speaker 1: he never filled in this blank to the Moses, nor

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Speaker 1: did he reveal how exactly he ended up in that

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Speaker 1: ditch and where he'd been living in the weeks prior

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Speaker 1: to that. As the weeks passed, convalescing in the Moses shed,

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Speaker 1: day by day, Ed got better. Knowing that sunlight was

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Speaker 1: said to be beneficial to tuberculosis patients, they set up

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Speaker 1: a chair for him in the garden. Once he was

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Speaker 1: well enough to leave his bed, Ed would sit for hours,

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Speaker 1: basking in the sunshine that never really vacates the sky

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Speaker 1: in southern Florida. There are those who think that sunlight

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Speaker 1: was the answer to Ed's recovery, though medical studies have

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Speaker 1: found a correlation between UV light, or rather the victim

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Speaker 1: and d that the body converts it to, and the

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Speaker 1: suppression of tuberculosis. Sunshine alone could never have cured someone

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Speaker 1: as far gone as Edward, but there are other theories.

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Speaker 1: A neighbour of the Moses apparently described author Joe Bullet

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Speaker 1: that they had seen it lying out in the sun

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Speaker 1: with wires and cables wrapped around his torso, coiling away

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Speaker 1: to a generator near his lodgings. Bullet, who he must remember,

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Speaker 1: fictionalized Ed's life, draws the startling conclusion Ed was treating

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Speaker 1: himself with electromagnetic current, possibly to somehow augment and intensify

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Speaker 1: the benefits of the Sun's UV light, whatever he was doing.

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Speaker 1: As early as February of nineteen twenty three, just weeks

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Speaker 1: after the Moses had taken him in, the man who'd

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Speaker 1: otherwise it's been at death's door was now miraculously well

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Speaker 1: enough to begin looking for a place of his own.

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Speaker 1: Ed's seeming return to sudden health so soon after doctor

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Speaker 1: Beckman's ominous prognosis is certainly unusual, and in the weeks

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Speaker 1: and months that followed, his health only got better. Some

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Speaker 1: years later, Ed would publish a scientific pamphlet titled Magnetic Current.

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Speaker 1: It posits a mystifying reorganization of electromagnetic and atomic theory,

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Speaker 1: arguing that it is magnets, not atoms, that formed the

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Speaker 1: building blocks of the universe. It was Ed's belief that

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Speaker 1: all matter is made up of a swirl of north

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Speaker 1: and south poles magnets, each smaller than the atom, smaller

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Speaker 1: even than particles that will eventually be identified in emerging

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Speaker 1: subatomic science. The pamphlet is incomprehensible to the lay person,

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Speaker 1: but it was the output of years of private research

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Speaker 1: and amateur experimentation. Edward Leed Skalman was contemptuous of mainstream

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Speaker 1: professional science, According to him, scientists were looking in the

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Speaker 1: wrong place for their understanding of electricity and were cognizant

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Speaker 1: of only one half of the whole concept, as he

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Speaker 1: put it. There are some who believe that Ed had

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Speaker 1: used his unique understanding of magnetism to somehow recalibrate and

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Speaker 1: expunge the tuberculosis riddling his body. There are some, too,

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Speaker 1: who believe he might have used it for a very different,

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Speaker 1: but equally startling feat. When Ed was well enough to

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Speaker 1: start looking for somewhere else to live, he wasn't interested

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Speaker 1: in buying a han else or an apartment. Instead, he

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Speaker 1: was looking for land to build upon. There would have

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Speaker 1: been plenty of plots to choose from. At that point

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Speaker 1: in time, Florida City was ill deserving of its name.

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Speaker 1: It was much more a loose collage of farms, scrubland,

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Speaker 1: and swamp, with a total population still under one thousand people.

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Speaker 1: With the money Ed had mysteriously come into, he could

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Speaker 1: have purchased any patch he wanted, but he wanted something specific.

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Speaker 1: He was looking for a certain kind of rock to

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Speaker 1: build on. Technically it was classified as oolite limestone, but

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Speaker 1: more commonly known as coral. It's found all over the world,

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Speaker 1: but in very high quantities in southern Florida. Was coral

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Speaker 1: what Ed had been so woching for on his possible

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Speaker 1: long travels across the country. Did his witch stick lead

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Speaker 1: him to Florida in pursuit of the perfect materials for

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Speaker 1: the strange project that had been fermenting in his mind.

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Speaker 1: If so, he was a doubly lucky man, because it

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Speaker 1: just so happened that the greatest quantity of coral in

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Speaker 1: Florida City lay directly under the land of the family

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Speaker 1: who'd saved his life. On February twenty seventh, nineteen twenty three,

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Speaker 1: a small notice ran in the local newspaper, The Homestead Enterprise.

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Speaker 1: It said, simply, E leedscownin, a Californian, has purchased one

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Speaker 1: acre of the R. L. Mosa Homestead and was planning

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Speaker 1: to erect a home soon. For such a short report,

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Speaker 1: it got a lot wrong. Ed was no Californian, and

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Speaker 1: he actually bought two acres of Reuben Moses land. The

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Speaker 1: reporter did get one thing right, though. Ed was planning

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Speaker 1: to make a home, but what he eventually built would

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Speaker 1: be so much more than that you've been listening to

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Speaker 1: unexplained season nine, Episode four, To Each Man His Castle,

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Speaker 1: Part one, the second and final episode, will be released

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Speaker 1: next Friday, November twenty eighth. This episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Neil McRobert and Richard mclin Smith. Thank you as ever

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Speaker 1: for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created

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00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,

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Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained.

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Speaker 1: The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.

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00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:55,639
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and

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Speaker 1: other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever

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00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: you get you podcasts, and feel free to get in

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00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've

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00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or

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00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: a story of your own you'd like to share. You

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00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:14,199
Speaker 1: can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and

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Speaker 1: reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod

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Speaker 1: A m