Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 2: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. If you talk to the
Speaker 2: residents of Pontianac, Indonesia, many of them will tell you
Speaker 2: that their city is haunted, and it has been for
Speaker 2: over two hundred and fifty years. Situated near the western
Speaker 2: coast of Indonesian Borneo, in between Singapore and the Philippines,
Speaker 2: Pontianac used to be a vast expanse of forest. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until seventeen seventy one that the contemporary Indonesian leader
Speaker 2: or Sultan, led a group of explorers to the area.
Speaker 2: He instructed them to start chopping down trees so that
Speaker 2: they would have a place to build his palace. And
Speaker 2: the Sultan, well, he didn't exactly believe in the eight
Speaker 2: hour workday. He made his employees work around the clock.
Speaker 2: The men chop trees at all hours of the night,
Speaker 2: making their way through the dense forest by the light
Speaker 2: of the moon. And then one night, when the moon
Speaker 2: was full, they heard something strange. It sounded like a
Speaker 2: baby crying, but it was so quiet that they couldn't
Speaker 2: be sure. A sour, putrid scent wafted on the breeze.
Speaker 2: Suddenly they heard a woman laughing, and then they saw
Speaker 2: a figure clad in a long white dress darting between
Speaker 2: the trees. They knew exactly what it was too. The
Speaker 2: Kuntilanak one of the most famous and fearsome creatures in
Speaker 2: Indonesian folklore. The Kuntilanak is said to have pale skin,
Speaker 2: black hair, and blood red eyes. Her fingernails are as
Speaker 2: long and sharp as knives, her canine teeth looked like
Speaker 2: fangs of a lion. Now, depending on the version of
Speaker 2: the myth, the Kuntilanach either died in childbirth or suffered
Speaker 2: a miscarriage. The loss transformed her into a vengeful, vampiric
Speaker 2: spirit known to hunt and eat men, and as her
Speaker 2: eerie laughter reverberated through the forest, the men ran to
Speaker 2: the Sultan and told him that there was a ghost
Speaker 2: in the woods. Now, I don't know about you, but
Speaker 2: if I was being hunted by a bloodthirsty spirit, I'd
Speaker 2: get a one way ticket out of town, but not
Speaker 2: the Sultan. He was determined to build his palace, so
Speaker 2: he took two anti ghost measures. First, he fired a
Speaker 2: few canons to scare the Kuntilanak away. Second, in case
Speaker 2: she ever came back, he named the settlement after her
Speaker 2: in the hopes of appeasing her anger, and that's where
Speaker 2: Pontianac came from. It's another name for the spirit. Whether
Speaker 2: or not the Sultan's methods worked is still up for debate.
Speaker 2: Some people think that Kuntilanak is just a story, but
Speaker 2: others believe the vampire spirit continues to haunt the city.
Speaker 2: Either way, the legend is an important part of local culture.
Speaker 2: A festival is held each year to commemorate the end
Speaker 2: of Ramadan and also to set off cannons then make
Speaker 2: sure the Kuntilanaks far away. Now, while most people would
Speaker 2: like the malevolent spirit to keep her distance, one man
Speaker 2: suggested that they embrace her. In twenty seventeen, the head
Speaker 2: of the city's tourism agency pitched an idea for how
Speaker 2: to bring more visitors to the area. Why not build
Speaker 2: a statue of the Kuntilanak right outside the local recreation center. Oh,
Speaker 2: and to make things even better, how about the terrifying,
Speaker 2: bloodthirsty ghost be three hundred feet tall. As you might imagine,
Speaker 2: people were not enthused about the prospect of seeing their
Speaker 2: nightmares brought to life.
Speaker 1: In fact, as news about the statue spread, locals were pulled,
Speaker 1: and ninety eight percent said that they were opposed to
Speaker 1: having a murderous spirit literally looming over their city. Within days,
Speaker 1: a group of citizens organized and gathered outside the city's
Speaker 1: parliament building, holding a banner that read community movement to
Speaker 1: reject ghost statue. Before long, the demonstrators were invited inside.
Speaker 1: Members of parliament said that they didn't understand why the
Speaker 1: protest was even happening. The city's head of tourism was
Speaker 1: known to have a sense of humor. It turned out
Speaker 1: the media had taken his joke about building a three
Speaker 1: hundred foot tall ghost statue and spun it into a
Speaker 1: story that ignited national outrage. The following month, the mayor
Speaker 1: of Pontianac issued a statement to put people's minds at ease.
Speaker 1: There would be no statue of Kuntilanak gracing their city.
Speaker 1: As for her spirit, though, well, that was something he
Speaker 1: couldn't guarantee. When you hear the word dinosaur, an image
Speaker 1: of a t rex probably springs to mind. In this
Speaker 1: post Jurassic Park era, where kids grow up playing with
Speaker 1: miniature versions of prehistoric beasts. Dinosaurs are well known, but
Speaker 1: if you lived in eighteen forty and someone said dinosaur,
Speaker 1: you would have absolutely no idea what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: The word didn't even exist yet. Although the first dinosaur
Speaker 1: bone was discovered in the seventeenth century, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two that English biologist Richard Owen coined the
Speaker 1: term dinosauria, which means terrible lizard. Owen was a leading
Speaker 1: paleontologist during his time, and he aimed to educate the
Speaker 1: public about these so called terrible lizards. That's why in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, Owen teamed up with famous sculptor and
Speaker 1: natural history artist Benjamin Hawkins. The pair hatched a plan
Speaker 1: to bring lifelike dinosaurs to London. Using Owen's scientific background
Speaker 1: and hawkins artistic skill, the men created dozens of life
Speaker 1: sized dino sculptures, which were put on display at Crystal
Speaker 1: Palace Park in South London on the day the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: were unveiled in eighteen fifty four, Over forty thousand people
Speaker 1: crowded into the park to get a look. The display
Speaker 1: was so groundbreaking that one modern paleontologist credits Owen and
Speaker 1: Hawkins with making dinosaur's mainstream. Fast forward to eighteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: While Owen continued his work in England, Hawkins moved to America.
Speaker 1: He worked on a few different projects, like a series
Speaker 1: of lectures on paleontological art. During one of these talks,
Speaker 1: he mentioned how much he'd liked to create more dino
Speaker 1: sculptures like those in London. The next thing he knew,
Speaker 1: he was contracted by the Administrative Board of New York
Speaker 1: City's Central Park. It seems that they had a project
Speaker 1: that was right up Hawkins Alley, an American equivalent of
Speaker 1: London's Crystal Palace Dinosaurs in true American fashion. The board
Speaker 1: wanted Central Parks display to be bigger and better. With
Speaker 1: a budget of seven point five million in modern day dollars,
Speaker 1: they dreamed of an exhibition chronicling life in North America,
Speaker 1: including sculptures of the dinosaurs that once lived in the region.
Speaker 1: Then it would be called the Paleozoic Museum. For Hawkins,
Speaker 1: the commission was a dream come true. He spent the
Speaker 1: next two years hold up inside his studio. He made
Speaker 1: the Hadrosaurus, a long tailed bipedal dinosaur with a beak
Speaker 1: like nose, and the Dryptosaurus, which looked kind of like
Speaker 1: a mini t rex, but many is a relative term.
Speaker 1: The Dryptosaurus was still twenty five five feet long. When
Speaker 1: you consider the scale of these sculptures, you realize that
Speaker 1: Hawkins really had his work cut out for him, and
Speaker 1: the process wasn't all smooth sailing. He got kicked out
Speaker 1: of his original studio and had to move all of
Speaker 1: his work into a temporary shed. Just imagine a middle
Speaker 1: aged guy trying to get his twenty five foot dinosaur
Speaker 1: statue into a U haul. And then there was the
Speaker 1: issue of Central Park's administrative board, which was full of drama.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy, a man named William Tweed was one
Speaker 1: of New York's state senators, but he was also the
Speaker 1: de facto leader of New York City. One of the
Speaker 1: most corrupt politicians in state history, William Tweed was more
Speaker 1: commonly known as Boss Tweed. He ruled the city like
Speaker 1: a mafioso, and he placed his cronies in charge of
Speaker 1: Central Park administration cronies like Henry Hilton and Tweed and Hilton, well,
Speaker 1: they weren't fans of the Paleozoic Museum. Now. The exact
Speaker 1: reasons why are still up for debate. Some people think
Speaker 1: that Tweed had a religious opposition to science, while others
Speaker 1: believe that he simply thought the project was too expensive.
Speaker 1: But perhaps the most interesting theory surrounds another museum entirely.
Speaker 1: You see, at the very same time that the Paleozoic
Speaker 1: Museum was in the works, so was the American Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History, which is obviously still up and running today.
Speaker 1: The Museum of Natural History was to be built right
Speaker 1: next to Central Park, and it also featured dinosaurs, which
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily be a problem. I mean, the more dinos
Speaker 1: the merrier, right, Well not if you were Henry Hilton.
Speaker 1: You see, Hilton had been a very vocal proponent of
Speaker 1: the Museum of Natural History, and he didn't want any
Speaker 1: competition hindering its success. In December of eighteen seventy, Benjamin Hawkins,
Speaker 1: our dinos sculptor extraordinaire, received a letter from the Administrative
Speaker 1: Board letting him know that the entire project had been canceled.
Speaker 1: The note wasn't signed by Tweet or Hilton, but it
Speaker 1: was pretty clear what had happened. Hawkins, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: was bitterly disappointed and as if things couldn't get worse.
Speaker 1: One day in May the following year, he arrived at
Speaker 1: his workshop to find the floor littered with shards of plats,
Speaker 1: master and cement. Someone had broken into his shed and
Speaker 1: smashed every dinosaur to bits. As for the culprit, while
Speaker 1: there's no definitive proof, it is believed that Henry Hilton,
Speaker 1: who had a pension for bizarre and violent behavior, committed
Speaker 1: the assault himself. Soon after this final blow, Benjamin Hawkins
Speaker 1: returned to England, where he lived out his final years
Speaker 1: as a recluse. But despite this sad ending, he still
Speaker 1: made his mark on New York City. According to one historian,
Speaker 1: the broken pieces of hawkins dino sculptures didn't remain in
Speaker 1: his warehouse. There's evidence that the material was ground down
Speaker 1: and used to pave parts of Central Park. And that's
Speaker 1: history for you, right. Even a sidewalk can tell you
Speaker 1: a curious tale. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.