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 right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Salem has a long and notorious past with witches. The
Speaker 1: infamous Salem Witch Trials saw hundreds of innocent people, including
Speaker 1: children as young as four, accused of cavorting with the
Speaker 1: forces of darkness, and contrary to popular belief, they were
Speaker 1: not burned at the stake. Rather, they were hanged for
Speaker 1: their alleged crimes. Despite their novelty over the past three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty years, the Salem Witch Trials only lasted
Speaker 1: for one year between sixteen ninety two and sixteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: or did they Some time later, a panic gripped the
Speaker 1: Salem area. According to the newspapers, this small American town
Speaker 1: had become ground zero for a new threat. The devil
Speaker 1: had come to Salem, and a warlock was responsible. A
Speaker 1: local farmer named Jacob Culp suddenly found himself mired in controversy.
Speaker 1: Jacob had come to America from Germany, and he was
Speaker 1: described by the press as a quiet, unpretentious individual. His
Speaker 1: mother had recently passed away, and Jacob was at her
Speaker 1: funeral when he noticed his relatives were acting strange. He
Speaker 1: tried asking them what was wrong, but every person he
Speaker 1: spoke to simply turned away without a word. They could
Speaker 1: barely stand to look at him. Several days later, he
Speaker 1: spoke to a reverend at his local church about why
Speaker 1: his family had been shutting him out. At first, the
Speaker 1: reverend refused to say anything, but eventually he let Jacob
Speaker 1: know what was going on. His relatives had accused him
Speaker 1: of being a wizard, but this farmer wasn't a to
Speaker 1: hop a train to a magic school inside a castle. Instead,
Speaker 1: he would be subjected to a battery of questions and examinations.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Sadie and Fanny Loup, his sisters in law,
Speaker 1: their mother, Lydia, had fallen ill. The doctors couldn't make
Speaker 1: heads or tails of her condition, and none of their
Speaker 1: treatments were working, so her daughters sent for doctor Peter Burns,
Speaker 1: a local physician known as the pow Wow Doctor. He
Speaker 1: examined Lydia and told the girls that a close relative
Speaker 1: had bewitched her. He recommended that they get a second
Speaker 1: opinion from another doctor, a guy named Andrew hoff. Hoff
Speaker 1: was a seventy seven year old physician who confirmed Burne's
Speaker 1: diagnosis Jacob had been perverted by an evil power. He
Speaker 1: advised the family not to look the man in the
Speaker 1: eyes or get too close to him. Doctor's orders, lest
Speaker 1: they wanted to find themselves under his spell. Within a year,
Speaker 1: hoff promised that he would expel the devil from the
Speaker 1: farmer's body. So why had Sadie and Fanny accused their
Speaker 1: brother in law in the first place? While the answer
Speaker 1: there is a bit of complicated family life. Jacob had
Speaker 1: been married to Sadie's aunt Hannah until her untimely death.
Speaker 1: After she was gone, he wed her niece, Hattie, who
Speaker 1: happened to be Sadie's sister. Apparently, Sadie had given birth
Speaker 1: to a son out of wedlock several years prior, and
Speaker 1: it was believed that Jacob was the father of that child,
Speaker 1: but no one could prove it. On top of all
Speaker 1: of that, Jacob had done well for himself in business,
Speaker 1: much more so than the rest of the family, and
Speaker 1: they resented his success, so the Loop sisters and their
Speaker 1: husbands accused him of hypnotizing his neighbors in order to
Speaker 1: steal from them and to make matters worse. They also
Speaker 1: claimed that he had performed black magic on animals. Soon
Speaker 1: after the accusation started to fly, Lydia Loop passed away,
Speaker 1: and her daughters took their claims to the church. They
Speaker 1: presented their case to Homer B. Shelton, their class leader,
Speaker 1: as well as others in the congregation, and the church
Speaker 1: did what it always did with accusations of witchcraft in
Speaker 1: the community. They put the accusers on trial instead. That's right.
Speaker 1: Rather than put mister Culp on trial for being a
Speaker 1: wizard or a warlock, the Heart's Methodist Episcopal Church turned
Speaker 1: the tables on the Loops for their greedy and immoral
Speaker 1: attempts to discredit an honorable man. Sadie, Fanny, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the family were all expelled from the church
Speaker 1: the following January, while Jacob Culp was found innocent of
Speaker 1: all charges, a surprising turn of events given Salem's history
Speaker 1: with accusations of witchcraft, But this situation was different for
Speaker 1: a few reasons. You see the witch trials of Salem,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts did end in sixteen ninety three, but this particular
Speaker 1: trial occurred in eighteen ninety four in Salem, Ohio. In
Speaker 1: southern New Mexico, in the Embryo Basin, there is a
Speaker 1: small mountain only about five five hundred feet high. It's
Speaker 1: called Vitorio Peak, and looking at it, you might not
Speaker 1: think it's much It's made up mostly of rocks, sagebrush,
Speaker 1: and rattlesnakes. But Milton Ernest Noss, better known as Doc,
Speaker 1: had found a lot more than just a bunch of
Speaker 1: rocks and dirt. He'd come from Oklahoma to seek adventure
Speaker 1: in the open Southwest, marrying a woman named Ova Babe
Speaker 1: Beckworth in nineteen thirty three, before planting his feet in
Speaker 1: Hot Springs, New Mexico for good four years later. In
Speaker 1: November of nineteen thirty seven, Doc was on a hunting
Speaker 1: trip with his wife and a few friends. Now accounts
Speaker 1: differed depending on who was telling the story, but one
Speaker 1: version claims that as the group set up camp at
Speaker 1: the base of Victoria Peak, Doc set out on his
Speaker 1: own to continue the hunt. He hiked up the mountain
Speaker 1: in search of deer until the skies suddenly opened and
Speaker 1: it started to rain, so he sought out refuge beneath
Speaker 1: a large ledge near the top of the peak, and
Speaker 1: as he waited for the weather to change, he looked
Speaker 1: down at his feet. There was a large rock, one
Speaker 1: that appeared to have been touched by human hands. So
Speaker 1: he crouched down and he tried to move it, but
Speaker 1: it was too heavy, so instead he duck around it
Speaker 1: until he was able to get his fingers underneath. Then
Speaker 1: he heaved it out of the way. It had been
Speaker 1: blocking a hole in the ground, one that seemed to
Speaker 1: go on forever. Doc looked inside and saw what he
Speaker 1: felt was a mine shaft, so when the rain stopped,
Speaker 1: he ran back to his wife to tell her what
Speaker 1: he had found. They didn't share their news with the
Speaker 1: rest of the group, though. Instead he and Babe came
Speaker 1: back a few days later alone to explore the shaft.
Speaker 1: Armed with ropes and flashlights, they repelled down roughly sixty
Speaker 1: feet until they found themselves in a small ante chamber.
Speaker 1: The walls of the room were covered in drawings, perhaps
Speaker 1: painted by a local Native American tribe long ago, and
Speaker 1: there was another narrow shaft that kept going down into
Speaker 1: the mountain. By the time they'd reached the end. They
Speaker 1: had descended another one hundred and eighty six feet. The
Speaker 1: pair entered a massive cave about two thy seven hundred
Speaker 1: feet long, where Doc immediately noticed a human skeleton. Considering
Speaker 1: the tunnel was man made, perhaps one of the workers
Speaker 1: had died during the dig, Except the skeleton was on
Speaker 1: its knees and had been tied to a stake in
Speaker 1: the ground, and its hands were tied behind its back.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't the only one. In total, there were
Speaker 1: twenty seven human skeletons in the Victorio Peak, well, twenty
Speaker 1: seven the Doc Noss had found at least He and
Speaker 1: his wife, though, pressed on deeper into the cavern, and
Speaker 1: those skeletons gave way to treasure, gold, coins, jewelry, statues,
Speaker 1: and historical objects, including a solid gold statue of the
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary. There was also a pile of letters dated
Speaker 1: as recently as eighteen eighty. But Victorio Peak still had
Speaker 1: more to offer, because beyond that treasure room there were
Speaker 1: stacks of iron bars, thousands of them. Well that's what
Speaker 1: Doc thought at first. Each bar weighed as much as
Speaker 1: forty pounds, and after careful inspection, it was Babe who
Speaker 1: realized that they weren't iron at all. They were gold.
Speaker 1: Thousands of bars of gold, just sitting in the middle
Speaker 1: of a mountain in New Mexico. Who had put them there?
Speaker 1: And why was going to wait around to find out?
Speaker 1: He started filling his pockets with whatever he could carry
Speaker 1: and climb back out to the surface with Ova. Together
Speaker 1: they set up camp near the entrance to the cave
Speaker 1: and spent the next few years hauling out bars of gold, jewelry,
Speaker 1: and anything else they could get their hands on. But
Speaker 1: the story doesn't end there. In nineteen thirty nine, Doc
Speaker 1: tried to make a wider opening to get the treasure
Speaker 1: out more easily. Instead, he accidentally caused a cave in
Speaker 1: and blocked off all access for good. He worked for
Speaker 1: nine long years to sell those two hundred gold bars
Speaker 1: that he and Babe had managed to smuggle out, but
Speaker 1: had no luck, not until he met a man named
Speaker 1: Charlie Ryan in nineteen forty eight. Ryan agreed to buy
Speaker 1: fifty one of those bars. But there was something about
Speaker 1: this Ryan guy that rubbed Doc the wrong way. So
Speaker 1: rather than sell the gold, Noss and a buddy buried
Speaker 1: it in a new hiding spot instead. Well, Ryan didn't
Speaker 1: like being given the run around, so he confronted Doc
Speaker 1: the next day with a gun. Noss tried to get away,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't outrun a bullet. Ryan shot and killed
Speaker 1: him where he stood. Babe and her children worked for
Speaker 1: the next three years to try and clear out the
Speaker 1: rocks blocking the entrance to the cave, but they were
Speaker 1: only twelve yards from the main cavern when their efforts
Speaker 1: were halted. The US Army had commandeered the land around
Speaker 1: Victorio Peak for missile testing and kicked Babe and the
Speaker 1: nos family out for good. Of course, rumors of the
Speaker 1: treasure started floating around among the troops and they decided
Speaker 1: to finish what the Nosses had started. Pretty soon, the
Speaker 1: soldiers struck gold, literally, but rather than let them keep
Speaker 1: it for themselves, the army set off dynamite to block
Speaker 1: access to the treasure permanently. Since then, others, including Babe Noss,
Speaker 1: have tried to find their way back into the cave
Speaker 1: to claim the rest of the treasure, but to no avail.
Speaker 1: As far as the rumors and legends will tell us,
Speaker 1: that treasure is still there today waiting to be found.
Speaker 1: Maybe Nicholas Cage is available to take on the job.
Speaker 1: Hop If you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities, subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.