Speaker 1: All Zone media.
Speaker 2: Happy Halloween, assholes. It's Jamie Loftus, host of sixteenth Minute here,
Speaker 2: and this week's episode is about the thieving of human bones.
Speaker 2: This is a crime of the past. Right, we're civilized people.
Speaker 2: We're less than a week away from another incredible election
Speaker 2: with amazing options.
Speaker 3: We're good now, right.
Speaker 2: No, No, dear listener, bone thieves have not disappeared. They've
Speaker 2: evolved with the tools made available to them. You may
Speaker 2: think of a nineteenth century grave digger when you think
Speaker 2: of a stolen bone. But what if I told you
Speaker 2: that bone thieves are.
Speaker 1: All around us at your school, in your neighborhood, on
Speaker 1: your phone, your first school is a TikToker? Okay, Ian
Speaker 1: we can get rid of the haunted house music for now.
Speaker 2: More specifically, we're talking about a TikToker named John's Bones.
Speaker 2: Here's his personal lore as he tells it. When he
Speaker 2: was just a child, John pichea fairy, received the skeleton
Speaker 2: of a mouse from his father as a gift.
Speaker 4: Okay, instead of taking it from a creepy, dark and
Speaker 4: spooky way, I looked at it really with a fascination
Speaker 4: and awe, John.
Speaker 2: Told ABC News in twenty twenty two, okay, and by
Speaker 2: the time he was twenty one years old, John had
Speaker 2: built a TikTok following of nearly half a million people
Speaker 2: talking about and showing off his gigantic collection.
Speaker 3: Of human bones.
Speaker 2: He got into the hobby in earnest, when he was
Speaker 2: in college at the Parsons School of Art and Design
Speaker 2: and the Thailand born Indiana Brad John was all in
Speaker 2: on bones after seeing a human skull for sale at
Speaker 2: Obscura Antiques and Oddities in Manhattan. According to a Curbed
Speaker 2: profile of him from twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4: I was like, is this legal? And they were like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's no problem.
Speaker 3: But is it a problem?
Speaker 2: Turns out it depends on if you're talking about the
Speaker 2: law or a given person's values, because what constitutes a
Speaker 2: legal transaction of human bones versus what I'd be comfortable
Speaker 2: with is pretty significant, it turns out, and John's Bones
Speaker 2: is very aware of that, because yes, this is our
Speaker 2: Halloween episode. We're having fun, but I want to be clear.
Speaker 3: Woo, let me be clear.
Speaker 2: This episode contains a lot of information about the laws
Speaker 2: around bones and bones in America specifically, and different religions
Speaker 2: and cultures have different views around what should be done.
Speaker 2: With bones, and with death rituals, and with human remains generally.
Speaker 2: So there's no prescriptive way to handle death or death rituals.
Speaker 2: I mean, listen, my dad's ashes are in this very room.
Speaker 2: They're about two feet behind me, and I can't deal
Speaker 2: with it. So no one is wrong with the way
Speaker 2: that they're handling this issue. It's fucked up for everybody,
Speaker 2: and everyone's culture and religion is going to vary. No
Speaker 2: one is wrong, that is, except the people we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about today. These people are perhaps the
Speaker 2: most wrong anyone has ever been. So who is John
Speaker 2: and why does he have so many bones? John's Bones
Speaker 2: was born in two thousand and became a bone influencer
Speaker 2: before he could legally buy Miller Lyte. And when I
Speaker 2: first heard about him and the fact that there was
Speaker 2: controversy surrounding this creator who made content around death, I wondered,
Speaker 2: did this just stem from people in the West's discomfort
Speaker 2: around death in general? Because that's absolutely a thing. Some
Speaker 2: of my favorite writers and creators working online are making
Speaker 2: material about death. Look no further than one of the
Speaker 2: greatest to ever do it, Caitlin Doty aka The Good
Speaker 2: Death aka ask A mortician on YouTube. Doty is a
Speaker 2: licensed and practicing funeral director and has been working in
Speaker 2: cremation since the two thousands, and her work is amazing
Speaker 2: and has really moved the needle on how I view
Speaker 2: American attitudes on death and death rituals. But everyone's reallylationship
Speaker 2: to death is different outside of the fact that it
Speaker 2: is coming for all of us.
Speaker 3: But Caitlin Dodie makes educational content about death, and while.
Speaker 2: She is a funeral director, there's nothing that she's doing
Speaker 2: that is like out of line or illegal for American
Speaker 2: funerals for instance, and maybe especially she is not selling bones.
Speaker 2: So John's Bones a key term you're going to need
Speaker 2: to know for this week's episode is osteology basically skeleton studies,
Speaker 2: and the term John's Bones most closely associated with. In
Speaker 2: spite of not having any overt credentials that we know
Speaker 2: of outside of having worked with bones in college, his
Speaker 2: TikTok launched just short of the COVID lockdown, and he
Speaker 2: saw a lot of growth in the account alongside the
Speaker 2: pandemic era growth of TikTok itself. And make no mistake,
Speaker 2: John's Bones had been posting bones to Maine since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: But as he gets more popular, he starts to do
Speaker 2: these fluffy, kind of unsourced TikTok history videos that you've
Speaker 2: seen before, but of course there's bones in them. Here's
Speaker 2: an early post.
Speaker 5: Just wanted to showcase something that I bet you guys
Speaker 5: probably haven't seen before. This is one of the largest
Speaker 5: human spine collections out there.
Speaker 2: With deepest regrets, I do need to describe this for you.
Speaker 2: John is panning over at least fifty human spines, just
Speaker 2: spines on the floor, without context. Where did they come from?
Speaker 2: Why does he have them? And look, I'm on board
Speaker 2: with all of us being skin bags that need to
Speaker 2: accept our own mortality, but this content just feels very
Speaker 2: removed from humanity, I guess. But as John's Bones posts
Speaker 2: grew in popularity, some viewers became uncomfortable with the casual
Speaker 2: of his work, with the unclearness of how he had
Speaker 2: acquired these damn bones, particularly when he started selling bones
Speaker 2: after graduating college. John says that the bones he sells
Speaker 2: on John's Bones is mainly used for medical research, but
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily true. He does sell a lot to
Speaker 2: medical institutions, by his account, but he also sells to
Speaker 2: anyone in states where it's legal. And I'm not kidding
Speaker 2: when I say this. On his website right now you
Speaker 2: can buy a quote adolescent medical skull with several cuts, unquote.
Speaker 3: For nearly four thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And I can't help but think, what whose bones are these?
Speaker 2: John's bones? Because this is the thing with bones. If
Speaker 2: you're looking at bones in a museum, in a medical setting,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, chances are you were probably looking at
Speaker 2: the bones of a poor person, and very likely a
Speaker 2: non white or indigenous person. There's no guarantee that the
Speaker 2: family of this skeleton gave their consent for it to
Speaker 2: be used in this way, or even knows that ever happened.
Speaker 2: For all intents and purposes, people who were disproportionately exploited
Speaker 2: in life are often further exploited in death in this way.
Speaker 2: And yes, there is a separate conversation about how it's
Speaker 2: increasingly popular to donate one's body to science, but as
Speaker 2: we'll find out, bodies voluntarily given to science are quite
Speaker 2: open to exploitation as well. And prior to it being
Speaker 2: more common to donate your body, the best way to
Speaker 2: have bodies to study was you guessed it grave robbing,
Speaker 2: and whose graves are easiest to rob those who do
Speaker 2: not have tombs or coffins, which means we're already playing
Speaker 2: a class game. Poor people who can't afford a deep
Speaker 2: ground burial or cremation are more likely to have their
Speaker 2: bone surfaced or if you're a grave robber, and I
Speaker 2: would be fascinated to know if any.
Speaker 3: Of you are grave robbers.
Speaker 2: But the bodies of people who can't afford traditional funeral
Speaker 2: routes are much more easily disinterred. So when you're looking
Speaker 2: at a publicly displayed skeleton or any human remains, it's
Speaker 2: not a question of what is that, it's who is
Speaker 2: that and how did.
Speaker 3: They get here.
Speaker 2: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular, there was
Speaker 2: a high demand in the skeleton trade as medicine and
Speaker 2: science expanded quickly, leaving plenty of bad actors resorting to
Speaker 2: grave robbing, swiping unclaimed bodies from local morgues, and even
Speaker 2: looking to prisons where people had been recently executed. At present,
Speaker 2: the most commonplace for bones to be sourced from is India, which.
Speaker 3: Had a multimillion.
Speaker 2: Dollar trade before the practice of selling bones was banned
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty six and what ended this industry while
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred skeletons of children were being illegally traded and sold,
Speaker 2: which led to a directive from the Indian Supreme Court
Speaker 2: to halt all sales permanently. But skeletons from this gruesome
Speaker 2: boom of time are now all but impossible to trace
Speaker 2: to specific people, partially because of poor documentation and a
Speaker 2: lot because of bone bleaching. Much of these samples identifiable
Speaker 2: DNA has been destroyed, and this has been a completely
Speaker 2: intentional practice for a very long time. Companies who sold
Speaker 2: these skeletons primarily targeted the vulnerable before destroying the skeleton
Speaker 2: of any defining features, slapping a label on it, and
Speaker 2: selling it as a product. And this is, as with
Speaker 2: many seemingly unrelated topics on this show, an extension of
Speaker 2: colonialism more than anything else. Scott Carney expands on this
Speaker 2: in his book The Red Market, explaining how demand for
Speaker 2: studiable bodies in English medicine caused the colonizing country to
Speaker 2: start sourcing bodies from the same places they had been
Speaker 2: colonizing Since the eighteen fifties. Calcutta, India was the global
Speaker 2: center of the bone trade and primarily sold the bones
Speaker 2: of their own disenfranchised people to the UK and the US,
Speaker 2: quite literally selling the brutal consequences of colonialism back to
Speaker 2: the colonizer. According to a twenty twenty two profile of
Speaker 2: John's Bones, who sources much of his collection to the
Speaker 2: companies that comprised these nineteenth century Western businesses, the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three Bengal famine.
Speaker 3: Was a boone for the bone industry.
Speaker 2: Because it had killed millions of poor Indian people who
Speaker 2: could not afford a proper funeral or had lost everyone
Speaker 2: in their family and had no one to advocate for them.
Speaker 2: So the degree to which the bone trade is connected
Speaker 2: to class, to race, and to colonialism really can't be overstated,
Speaker 2: and there should absolutely be serious criticism for people unwilling
Speaker 2: to acknowledge this kind of historic brutality while actively profiting
Speaker 2: from it. And John's Bones doesn't really have a response
Speaker 2: to this other than well, it's for education and it's
Speaker 2: technically legal. This is a post from early twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Hi everyone, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what
Speaker 5: I do because it always gets asked in the commons,
Speaker 5: So here I go. So Hi, my name is John,
Speaker 5: John I work with John's Bowen. That's my little business
Speaker 5: I started there you go and Chunky Boys a mascot.
Speaker 5: But essentially, the US is complete legal and there's no
Speaker 5: federal regulation against the ownership, possession, or selling of human
Speaker 5: blones and humanosity ology.
Speaker 2: I am so sorry about that fucking vocal filter. It's
Speaker 2: just sorry. I hate John's Bones. There I said, it
Speaker 2: feels good. But this explanation that these sales are for
Speaker 2: education and to possibly give stolen bones a second life
Speaker 2: obviously falls apart under scrutiny. It's why Sam Redman, author
Speaker 2: of the book Bone Rooms, pulled The Guardian in a
Speaker 2: profile of John's Bones.
Speaker 4: That there's no ethical way to buy and sell human
Speaker 4: remains because there is a clear link between the legacy
Speaker 4: of this and racism, and scientific racism and colonialism.
Speaker 2: John's Bones admitted in twenty twenty one that his collection
Speaker 2: was largely sourced from India, Russia and China, which most
Speaker 2: likely means that the bones belonged to poor people and prisoners.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say that America is any more
Speaker 2: advanced when it comes to bone trading. As we'll get
Speaker 2: into throughout this episode, laws around human remains are very
Speaker 2: state to state and have not really been updated to
Speaker 2: reflect inflation or advances in technology. As I'm recording this,
Speaker 2: there are forty two states where it's completely legal to
Speaker 2: sell human remains at your weird store. Selling human remains
Speaker 2: on Etsy was only discontinued in twenty twelve and on
Speaker 2: eBay in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: When asked the question.
Speaker 6: Where do you source your human remains from and is
Speaker 6: it ethical? Do you believe selling human remains for profit
Speaker 6: is ethical?
Speaker 3: John replied, well.
Speaker 4: The problem with these bones is that, regardless if you
Speaker 4: agree with the means of which they entered the public market,
Speaker 4: they exist. It is currently impossible to repatriate them due
Speaker 4: to the cleaning processes they underwent when they first were
Speaker 4: put on sale, and they can be destroyed because improper
Speaker 4: disposal of human remains is a crime that leaves an
Speaker 4: impossible object that has no easy solution for being dealt with.
Speaker 4: Our solution is to re enter them into the educational field.
Speaker 2: For profit, and not always for education, because while medical
Speaker 2: institutions seem to be the primary buyers of John's bones, again,
Speaker 2: he will sell to anyone. To quote Scott Karney in
Speaker 2: that Guardian piece.
Speaker 4: When we turn a human into a commodity. That's where
Speaker 4: you start getting enormous ethical lapses, and John is on
Speaker 4: the wrong side of that equation.
Speaker 2: Woo Okay, you're thinking, Jamie, a TikTok bone sale drama
Speaker 2: is wild, but surely an anomaly. Right, It's the result
Speaker 2: of a misguided young person with too many bones, not
Speaker 2: an issue that would eke out into a full on
Speaker 2: institutional crisis. Right right, Well, what would you do if
Speaker 2: I told you there is a current in litigation bone
Speaker 2: drama at Harvard University? Does that sentence sound like a
Speaker 2: Lana del Rey album? Sure it does, but it's happening.
Speaker 3: Wait, let's turn on some Laanna del Rey style music.
Speaker 2: What would you do if I told you there is
Speaker 2: a current in litigation bone drama at Harvard University. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I just had to try it, But it is true
Speaker 2: that happened. And unlike John's bones, the sale of human
Speaker 2: remains was done extremely under the table here, very illegally,
Speaker 2: because there is no world where the Harvard Medical School
Speaker 2: is supposed to be doing anything other with their collection
Speaker 2: than studying it. And for all of the reasons we
Speaker 2: talked about, this does not mean, by a long stretch
Speaker 2: that Harvard Medical School has their hands clean just because
Speaker 2: they're not selling the human remains in their possession. The
Speaker 2: bones on display and in possession of universities and museums
Speaker 2: are very often directly tied to colonialism and white supremacy.
Speaker 2: But for the sake of this scandal, Cedric Lodge, the
Speaker 2: manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue, and six others
Speaker 2: were indicted last year after over half a decade of
Speaker 2: poaching from the university's vast collection of human remains and
Speaker 2: selling them over state lines. Lodge was said to allow
Speaker 2: buyers to enter the morgue and tell him what body
Speaker 2: parts they were interested in buying, so he could then
Speaker 2: privately steal them and sell and mail them from his
Speaker 2: house in New Hampshire. And maybe most shockingly of all,
Speaker 2: the maximum prison sentence that they face for this is
Speaker 2: only fifteen years, in spite of the fact that, unlike
Speaker 2: many of John's bones, some of these stolen body parts
Speaker 2: from Harvard were very identifiable via donors who had given
Speaker 2: their bodies to science just in the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: To quote US attorney Gerard Kam.
Speaker 4: It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims
Speaker 4: here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to
Speaker 4: educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing.
Speaker 4: For them and their families to be taken advantage of
Speaker 4: in the name of profit is appalling.
Speaker 2: Cedric Lodge netted around forty thousand dollars from the stolen remains,
Speaker 2: and if you needed any more proof of how modern
Speaker 2: grave robbing is now evidence that proved his guilts included
Speaker 2: PayPal transactions with descriptions like head number seven and brains
Speaker 2: And fascinatingly, both of these bone dramas drew comparison in
Speaker 2: the media to what is considered to be the original
Speaker 2: online bone theft drama, one that it appears John Bones
Speaker 2: learned a lot from not because he thinks it's unethical
Speaker 2: to sell human remains online, nor did Cedric Lodge, but
Speaker 2: to do it smarter because the most famous example of
Speaker 2: human remains traded online put a witch in jail, the
Speaker 2: tumblr Bone Witch and bone Gazi. Your sixteenth minute starts now.
Speaker 2: S Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we look
Speaker 2: at the internet's main characters of the day, look at
Speaker 2: how their moment affected them and what their moment meant
Speaker 2: for the Internet and US, and today we're headed to
Speaker 2: the graveyard for a revisit of the infamous Humbler bone
Speaker 2: Witch story. And not to disappoint, but there is not
Speaker 2: an interview with the bone witch themselves here, and the
Speaker 2: reason that is will become clear. What we do have
Speaker 2: are interviews with a practicing non bone stealing which a
Speaker 2: graveyard preservationist in New Orleans and the only legal expert
Speaker 2: on human remains in the United States. There should be
Speaker 2: more than one, in my opinion. Now, as we've established,
Speaker 2: grave robbers have been around forever. It's one of the
Speaker 2: world's oldest professions and has developed alongside technology. It can
Speaker 2: look like a lot of things. John's Bones is skirting
Speaker 2: legalities to display disenfranchised people's bodies, as are most museums.
Speaker 2: People like Cedric Lodge are thriving by pilfering already ethically
Speaker 2: questionable collections. And you have things like the underground organ
Speaker 2: trade that's operated on and offline for years. But today's
Speaker 2: story is a little bit of old and a little
Speaker 2: bit of new, an old school grave robbery whose morality
Speaker 2: play acts out entirely online. I am genuinely very excited
Speaker 2: to talk about this story. It is a classic of
Speaker 2: the Internet, and both stories I told you about, particularly
Speaker 2: the John's Bones story, mentions the Tumblr bone witch story
Speaker 2: as the seminal social media grave robbing saga.
Speaker 3: What a distinction.
Speaker 2: Back when John's Bones was going through that controversy in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, a TikTok user named no Me named
Speaker 2: Davis posted this.
Speaker 5: I'd enjoy is my human spine collection and in the US,
Speaker 5: there's no federal regulation to get the owner.
Speaker 7: They tried to warn us, the Tumbla veterans. They tried
Speaker 7: to tell us that TikTok is exactly like Tumblr. And
Speaker 7: now here we are the great bone debate. Yet again,
Speaker 7: Yet again, are we here? Why didn't we heed the warning?
Speaker 7: Why didn't we need?
Speaker 2: The comparisons were being made to the point where John's
Speaker 2: Bones himself felt the need to respond, telling ABC News
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4: The Tumblr bone thief is an example of what I
Speaker 4: abhor and try to combat within the industry. We work
Speaker 4: to preserve osteology so that future generations can learn from it.
Speaker 2: Sounds legit to me, John's Bones, but this does speak
Speaker 2: to the lasting impact of this incident, which was eventually
Speaker 2: referred to by many as Bone Gazie the Place, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Speaker 2: The tumblr Bone witch story is a meme unto itself,
Speaker 2: but like every story on sixteenth Minute, it very real
Speaker 2: people living and dead, and it draws in a lot
Speaker 2: of social media patterns that have repeated in the years since.
Speaker 2: So come with me if you dare to. December twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: David Bowie makes his final public appearance before his death.
Speaker 2: In early twenty sixteen, attending the debut of his musical Lazarus,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump declares that if elected president, he will place
Speaker 2: a Muslim band across the US and in New Orleans, Louisiana,
Speaker 2: a practicing twenty something which named Endre Darling, who uses
Speaker 2: they then pronouns. While you'll find that coverage of this
Speaker 2: story often gets it wrong, is caught advertising the fact
Speaker 2: that they are mailing human remains over state lines without
Speaker 2: permission for witchcraft purposes. And let's get this out of
Speaker 2: the way. I'm pro witchcraft. I've lived in LA for
Speaker 2: almost a decade. Okay, i am pro witch and this
Speaker 2: looks really bad for ender Darling. Here's what happened, and
Speaker 2: I want to give a huge shout out to Diana
Speaker 2: Tourge advice for writing me definitive timeline of this story
Speaker 2: all the way back in twenty sixteen. On December eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, ender who it becomes relevant is white passing
Speaker 2: but is not white posted to a Facebook group called
Speaker 2: Queer Witch Collective. The description of the two thousand plus
Speaker 2: member group was as follows.
Speaker 6: We are a collective of queer witches, diverse in age, nationality, gender, race,
Speaker 6: class ability, and more. To strive for a better community
Speaker 6: for everyone, we must acknowledge how privileges and oppression intersect
Speaker 6: across these labels.
Speaker 2: And Darling's post said the following content warning graves, phone
Speaker 2: hunting comment if they're added, worn need it. About twenty
Speaker 2: minutes from my house in New Orleans is what we
Speaker 2: call the poor man's graveyard. Most graveyards around here are
Speaker 2: full of above ground graves because we live in a
Speaker 2: fish bowl. But there happens to be a graveyard where
Speaker 2: it's all in ground graves for those of us who
Speaker 2: are too poor to afford above ground burial. When it rains,
Speaker 2: of course, bones wash up. The older the grave, the
Speaker 2: more you find you can literally walk around and see
Speaker 2: Femur's teeth jaws, skull caps, et cetera, et cetera. This
Speaker 2: is where I go to find my human bones for
Speaker 2: cursework and general spells that require bone. I find human
Speaker 2: bones are easier for work with for me than animal bone.
Speaker 2: I can relate and work with the energy they carry,
Speaker 2: if that makes any sense. Anyways, I wanted to see
Speaker 2: if I started selling basically cover shipping to wherever you
Speaker 2: happen to be, if people would be interested. I know
Speaker 2: human bones aren't easy to come by, and I usually
Speaker 2: have leftovers. I only go once a month or when
Speaker 2: it rains here. The post is polarizing, but is received
Speaker 2: positively in the group.
Speaker 3: At first.
Speaker 2: Some commenters just say yes, I'm interested. Others say this
Speaker 2: sounds cool, but be careful of state laws. And Andrew
Speaker 2: Darling responds to these concerns pretty quickly, saying I looked
Speaker 2: it up and it's all good. I wouldn't even be
Speaker 2: offering if there was any chance someone would get in
Speaker 2: trouble me.
Speaker 3: Lol. Okay, put a pin in that.
Speaker 2: And others asked if Darling was making offerings to those
Speaker 2: they were taking from, which is a common practice among witches,
Speaker 2: and they respond that they bring honey and flowers and
Speaker 2: that me and my goddess have a pact. She provides
Speaker 2: the bones if I only take what the Earth gives
Speaker 2: and I leave offerings.
Speaker 3: Okay, put a pin in that.
Speaker 2: But it's not long before they start to get pushed
Speaker 2: back from people within the group who insist that the
Speaker 2: bones should be left in peace. Er Darling gets defensive
Speaker 2: and is supported by the mods of the Queer Witch Collective.
Speaker 2: They say, do not shame me for my work. Now.
Speaker 2: I was confused at first as to why the moderators
Speaker 2: were so supportive of Darling in this case, but it's
Speaker 2: connected to a pretty common rule in online communities, that
Speaker 2: being don't shame the participants. Darling explicitly mentions that shaming
Speaker 2: magical practices is not allowed in this group, and that
Speaker 2: was true at the time. It's an extension of creating
Speaker 2: safe spaces, and I've seen it as a commonly enacted
Speaker 2: rule anywhere from private queer spaces to women's spaces to
Speaker 2: in an outlier example, a right wing hate group that's
Speaker 2: a part of MENSA. The group was founded by millennials
Speaker 2: who per tourges piece were invested in the idea of
Speaker 2: decolonizing magic and not forcing a white or western lens
Speaker 2: onto a very diverse group's practice, and this is a
Speaker 2: good idea. Safe spaces are necessary, but complicated because in
Speaker 2: this case, Darling was asking to be kept safe from
Speaker 2: criticism of grave wropping, and that did not make other
Speaker 2: witches in the group feel particularly safe. So things spiral
Speaker 2: out of control pretty quickly from here. Many of Darling's
Speaker 2: loudest critics were people of color within the group, pointing
Speaker 2: out that the area singled out in the post was
Speaker 2: a burial site for primarily poor black residents of New
Speaker 2: Orleans spanning hundreds of years, and based on their location,
Speaker 2: most people guessed Darling was frequenting a place called Holt Cemetery,
Speaker 2: although they initially deny this. One of their critics commented,
Speaker 2: you were implementing white supremacist and colonialist tactics to do
Speaker 2: your bidding, like y'all are actually stealing bones. But at
Speaker 2: this point the controversy is still only within this Facebook group.
Speaker 2: But when black witches in particular begin to speak up,
Speaker 2: Darling and the moderators seem to realize that they need
Speaker 2: to change course, and they attempt to the same moderator
Speaker 2: who defended Darling hours before says.
Speaker 6: I support people discussing the use and distribution of racialized
Speaker 6: people's bones, especially the bones of black people, which very
Speaker 6: well may be in this graveyard being given to non
Speaker 6: black or especially white people.
Speaker 2: Darling echoed this feeling, but for many critics they were
Speaker 2: done with the Queer Witch Collective at this point, with
Speaker 2: the general feeling being some safe space. This fucking was
Speaker 2: and these moderators, who were white don't really know how
Speaker 2: to handle the situation. A founder of the group, a
Speaker 2: non binary trans which said the following about why they
Speaker 2: initially defended Darling.
Speaker 6: In the group, there is an immense amount of shaming
Speaker 6: directed at African diaspar religions by white witches, whether it
Speaker 6: be about animal sacrifice, hexing, cursing, jinxying, etc. All I
Speaker 6: saw was a person of color being attacked for their practice,
Speaker 6: even if it's something I did not understand or would
Speaker 6: never do myself.
Speaker 2: And this is a genuinely, very complicated issue. I won't
Speaker 2: pretend it's not. There are spiritual practices and rituals that
Speaker 2: involve human remains and might technically violate the law. In
Speaker 2: the eight States where things are more restrictive, which includes Louisiana,
Speaker 2: It's impossible to give the full scope of these spiritual
Speaker 2: practices here, but it is true that different shades of necromancy,
Speaker 2: or the practice of communicating with the dead, has included
Speaker 2: the use of remains across cultures historically. Few months before
Speaker 2: bone Gazi, there was a reckoning among whodoo practitioners, a
Speaker 2: spiritual practice brought from enslaved Africans forced to come to America,
Speaker 2: and one that remained a predominantly Black practice while mixing
Speaker 2: in elements of Christianity as time went on. In the
Speaker 2: fall of twenty fifteen, Vice reported on the appropriation of
Speaker 2: who do buy white witches? This was an active and
Speaker 2: necessary conversation, and Darling invokes these cultures in their next defense,
Speaker 2: singling out practices traditionally done by non white witches. However,
Speaker 2: as many witches, including Darling's critics and my witchy guest
Speaker 2: today can attest to, there isn't really a known practice
Speaker 2: that encourages engaging with the human remains of a total stranger,
Speaker 2: because the people who Darling was pulling bones from, by
Speaker 2: their own admission, were completely anonymous. Nonetheless, it takes over
Speaker 2: a week for this drama to leak outside the private
Speaker 2: Facebook group to where, well, where else was there going
Speaker 2: to be bone drama? In twenty fifteen, it was tumblry.
Speaker 3: For those of you too.
Speaker 2: Old, too young, or too protective of your peace of mind.
Speaker 2: Tumblr is a still technically active blog site that peaked
Speaker 2: in popularity in the mid twenty tens and was pretty
Speaker 2: unique as far as social media sites went. Humbler thrived
Speaker 2: on images on tightly knit, niche fan communities, on parasocial
Speaker 2: relationships largely done with anonymity, and we could talk about
Speaker 2: Tumblr all day. But like any online community dominated by young,
Speaker 2: anonymous people, the highs of Tumblr were fun and connective,
Speaker 2: and the lows could get dangerous. It was a chaotic
Speaker 2: place dominated by millennial women and queer people, making it
Speaker 2: a very likely place for the ender darling drama to
Speaker 2: end up with. A screenshot posted to user Hastel Pruveer's
Speaker 2: tumbler on December seventeenth, the post.
Speaker 6: Reads psa Tumblr user little fucking monster is stealing human
Speaker 6: bones from cemeteries in Louisiana. Please don't let them get
Speaker 6: away with this and spread the word slash signal boost.
Speaker 2: The post got immediate traction, around thirty thousand reblogs and
Speaker 2: a fair amount of skepticism, with other users asking for
Speaker 2: proof that this had actually happened. But in pretty short order,
Speaker 2: the original screenshot surfaced, and it's here that Ender Darling
Speaker 2: saga hit the internet in earnest. Not only was a confirmed,
Speaker 2: Darling's own Tumblr, Little Fuckin' Monster was exposed too, and
Speaker 2: the Internet went wild. Bone Gazi had begun.
Speaker 4: Today's big news Twitter, Martin Screli, Facebook, star Wars, Tumblr
Speaker 4: calling out a witch for actually stealing human bones from
Speaker 4: a cemetery.
Speaker 6: We have reached peak Tumbler. A call out post was
Speaker 6: made for someone literally stealing human bones and offering to
Speaker 6: sell them, with attached commentary about racism and classism, a
Speaker 6: your favor is Problematic esque discussion made in lieu of
Speaker 6: contacting the authorities. The post offering the bones had content
Speaker 6: warnings at the top. It is the end of twenty
Speaker 6: fifteen and Tumblr has become what it was always destined
Speaker 6: to be.
Speaker 4: Me on a date, So what do you think about
Speaker 4: real and dark witchcraft my date? It's okay, I guess
Speaker 4: pretty scary though I like that glittery honey wicca ooh
Speaker 4: ooh shit more me shoving my stolen human bones into
Speaker 4: my purse. Shit, I gotta go.
Speaker 2: And this is super goofy, although note the early what
Speaker 2: is this woke culture bullshit and the shout out to
Speaker 2: your favorite problematic Tumbler for an episode in a few
Speaker 2: weeks foreshadowing the back half of twenty fifteen was considered
Speaker 2: to be pretty dry in terms of big Internet stories
Speaker 2: after an influx of viral stories like.
Speaker 3: The dress Ever Heard of It?
Speaker 2: Check out that episode of sixteenth minute took place earlier
Speaker 2: that year. The tone of this discussion also said a
Speaker 2: lot about how Tumbler was perceived at this time too,
Speaker 2: a bunch of young people who were deeply entrenched in
Speaker 2: discussions around decolonization and identity politics but were often thought
Speaker 2: of as being naive and their approach to these pretty
Speaker 2: massive issues and bone Gazi was mocked quite a bit
Speaker 2: because to the average Internet user this seemed absurd and
Speaker 2: any witchcraft practice, particularly one that violated state law, seemed
Speaker 2: deserving of being mocked. But inside the witch in community,
Speaker 2: this incident really strained relationships and mutually held values, and
Speaker 2: part of that is because Darling themselves continued to double
Speaker 2: down on Tumblr once that call up post became popular.
Speaker 2: This post is long, So I'm just going to share
Speaker 2: some highlights.
Speaker 8: Long story short. A post that was posted in a
Speaker 8: queer witch collective where cell is understood to mean cover shipping,
Speaker 8: especially when I made that clear and curse is understood
Speaker 8: to mean any spell you can cast on another physical
Speaker 8: person was screenshot. Just my post, not the massive bread
Speaker 8: that fucking followed and removed from the group where it
Speaker 8: had contacts and posted. What has followed has been extremely racist,
Speaker 8: especially towards those who still practice indigenous craft. Physical harm
Speaker 8: has been threatened, including towards my child. Any who I
Speaker 8: made a choice in what I thought was a safe
Speaker 8: place for POC witch is especially POC which is who
Speaker 8: practice indigenous dark or otherwise not wicken fluffy magic to
Speaker 8: post something offering the little bits of bone I had
Speaker 8: sitting on my altar to other POC, which is who
Speaker 8: might use human bones in their practice. Somehow this blew
Speaker 8: up into me digging out fucking bones. I'm not, I repeat,
Speaker 8: I am not digging up bodies or bones. I've also
Speaker 8: been heavily shamed for my indigenous practices. Here's the thing,
Speaker 8: a bunch of focks. Magic is dark, magic is bloody.
Speaker 8: Magic is scary magic isn't just fucking white light, fairy
Speaker 8: dust bowls of honey on your damn altar. You can
Speaker 8: all stop touting the threefold rule or wicked read or
Speaker 8: karma thing that should apply to only those who believe
Speaker 8: in it. Oh fucking stop. I'm not wicking, I'm not fluffy.
Speaker 8: I work with death and bones, curses, in hexes, the dark,
Speaker 8: and the things not for the feint of heart, and
Speaker 8: you ain't about to shame me for it. Fucking y'all
Speaker 8: want to pretend that I'm not in New Orleans where
Speaker 8: I have watched black voodoo priests break into crips and
Speaker 8: steal random full bodies. Y'all want to sit there and
Speaker 8: pretend that gravekeepers aren't actually selling bodies or bones to
Speaker 8: hospitals and colleges. Yeah, yeah, they have legal ways to
Speaker 8: do it. But if you honestly think people aren't being
Speaker 8: paid to bury empty coffins, you're way more naive than
Speaker 8: I need to point out. Y'all want to be mad
Speaker 8: at the kid who saves some phones from being crushed,
Speaker 8: because fuck getting the actual story.
Speaker 2: The post continues from here, and it was made the
Speaker 2: same day that that call up post got traction and
Speaker 2: it's here that we learn a little more about Ender Darling.
Speaker 2: They're saying that they have been dockxed and that they
Speaker 2: have a child, meaning that the call up post has
Speaker 2: put them potentially in harm's way. And again there's a
Speaker 2: split in how the Queer Witch Collective and now you know,
Speaker 2: all of Tumblr are reacting to this news. Most are
Speaker 2: not condoning doxing, and especially not to putting Darling's child
Speaker 2: at risk, But some people are baffled that Darling appears
Speaker 2: to be further confirming that they did indeed take bones
Speaker 2: from a local graveyard, while others still point out that,
Speaker 2: as Darling says, they're a person of color practicing indigenous
Speaker 2: magic and it's not their place to judge. And so,
Speaker 2: while the Queer Witch Collective's mission statement was well intentioned.
Speaker 6: To strive for a better community for everyone, we must
Speaker 6: acknowledge how privileges and depression intersect across these labels.
Speaker 2: This became difficult to enforce after the Tumblr post exposed
Speaker 2: the name of the group itself after a full week
Speaker 2: of Bone discourse had estranged their moderators from Vocal, which
Speaker 2: is within the group. When it became clear that Darling's
Speaker 2: most vocal critics were queer black witches. Within the Queer
Speaker 2: Witch Collective, the whole shield of no shaming suddenly held
Speaker 2: significantly less power and started to seem more like suppression.
Speaker 2: One commenter said, there is a difference between shaming and
Speaker 2: questioning possible ethics and possible oppressive practices. Why are we
Speaker 2: silencing a black witch? The white moderators of the group
Speaker 2: apologize for mishandling the situation, but the trust within QWC
Speaker 2: was far too thoroughly broken by this time. The founder
Speaker 2: of the group eventually ended up leaving, but the new
Speaker 2: moderator wasn't able to revive it after both suggesting white
Speaker 2: Witches stop posting altogether for a period of time to
Speaker 2: allow people of color to reclaim the space, and when
Speaker 2: that didn't work, purging the group altogether so that people
Speaker 2: would have to rejoin if they were interested in starting fresh.
Speaker 2: But most were not interested, and a year later the
Speaker 2: group had gone from two thousand to only seventy seven members.
Speaker 2: According to Weiss, bone Gazi had decimated the community. Things
Speaker 2: wouldn't be that simple for Ender Darling. In the aftermath
Speaker 2: of the Bone Fevery memes, there was originally some confusion
Speaker 2: between Facebook and Tumblr whether anyone had reported Darling to
Speaker 2: the authorities in New Orleans, but it became clear eventually
Speaker 2: that someone had To this day, it's not known whether
Speaker 2: this was initiated by a member of the Queer Witch
Speaker 2: Collective or someone who learned through the viral moment, but
Speaker 2: Ender Darling wouldn't be around to watch the fallout of
Speaker 2: the QWC because they were still in the process of
Speaker 2: defending themselves against the accusation that what they'd done was
Speaker 2: illegal or unethical. Long after they left the Facebook group,
Speaker 2: while the viral moment itself had cooled off by the
Speaker 2: end of twenty fifteen into the holidays, Darling's home was,
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to them, placed under periodic surveillance for about six days,
Speaker 2: and at the end of January the home was raided
Speaker 2: by the police, along with a subpoena issued that collected
Speaker 2: over twelve thousand pages of their Facebook correspondence, but they're
Speaker 2: not arrested at this time. There was a weed charge
Speaker 2: to them in their roommates, and there were bones removed
Speaker 2: from the home eleven bones plus fourteenth to be exact,
Speaker 2: and these were taken to be tested to confirm that
Speaker 2: they were in fact human, and for reasons I will
Speaker 2: truly never understand. Their next move was to give an
Speaker 2: interview to The Advocate in early April of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: A lot was revealed in this interview. By this time,
Speaker 2: Darling had apparently relocated to Florida and was continuing to
Speaker 2: defend their actions. They tell reporter Jim Mustian.
Speaker 8: They were coming against seriously expecting to find bodies and
Speaker 8: human organs, and having me and my roommates arrested for
Speaker 8: black marketing human remains. You should have seen their faces
Speaker 8: when they walked into the house and found a bunch
Speaker 8: of sleeping hippies. It was just a bunch of little
Speaker 8: shards of bones and pieces of teeth I'd picked up
Speaker 8: off the ground. I said to the agents, here you go,
Speaker 8: there's probably human bones in there, but I know better
Speaker 8: than to give you that answer.
Speaker 2: And again their continued doubling down makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, man, my feeling, Jamie's feeling
Speaker 2: is never talked to the cops, especially to confirm that
Speaker 2: you have human bones in your house like this interview
Speaker 2: is baffling to me, and it really does seem to
Speaker 2: further sabotage ender Darling's case because, as it was revealed
Speaker 2: in September twenty sixteen, just a few weeks shy of
Speaker 2: ken bones, Big moment, Everything's connected. Indre Darling was arrested
Speaker 2: and was presently in jail in New Orleans.
Speaker 3: By this time.
Speaker 2: The Advocate reported that they had, under their government name
Speaker 2: Devin Marie Michuka, fled guilty to simple burglary and marijuana
Speaker 2: possession and admitted that, unlike they'd said previously, they had
Speaker 2: indeed taken human remains from Holt Cemetery as accused. They'd
Speaker 2: been arrested back in July while living in Florida, after
Speaker 2: New Orleans detectives spent six months confirming that the bones
Speaker 2: taken from Darling's residence in January were in fact human.
Speaker 2: Once they were arrested, they were brought back to New
Speaker 2: Orleans and spent several weeks in jail before making a
Speaker 2: plea bargain, and from what we can tell, walking free.
Speaker 2: So just to recap, we started here.
Speaker 8: This is where I go to find my human bones
Speaker 8: for cursework and general spells that require bomb and we
Speaker 8: ended here are you pleading guilty to burgerlary of Holt
Speaker 8: Cemetery because you are in fact guilty of the charge.
Speaker 8: Bar Us asked, yes, ma'am, Darling said, but.
Speaker 2: Daring's true legacy is encoded in Louisiana law. This incident
Speaker 2: is said to have been influential on a piece of
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen legislation called the Louisiana Human Remains Protection and
Speaker 2: Control Act, the first update to human remains laws in
Speaker 2: the state since nineteen fifty. Included in that legislation.
Speaker 4: The legislature further finds that existing state laws do not
Speaker 4: adequately protect against the illicit trade in human remains, and
Speaker 4: that such trade needs to be stemmed in order to
Speaker 4: minimize looting and desecration of cemeteries.
Speaker 2: I mean, a legacy can look like anything. The Tumblr bone,
Speaker 2: which who identified by the Spanish term Bruja by the
Speaker 2: time they were in court, hasn't cropped up online since
Speaker 2: Ender Darling Devin Matchuka is thoroughly offline now from what
Speaker 2: I can tell, I was not able to find them
Speaker 2: or speak to them for this episode, and that it
Speaker 2: makes sense. If anything, A clear lesson to be learned
Speaker 2: from their saga is to perhaps say less and stop posting,
Speaker 2: because if you'll excuse the pun. They mistakenly dug themselves
Speaker 2: a major hole here, and after going through this story,
Speaker 2: I felt pretty stumped because the way I see it,
Speaker 2: what Enter Darling did was clearly wrong and something that
Speaker 2: doubling and tripling down on made it clear that they
Speaker 2: may not have actually been well versed in the practice
Speaker 2: of magic and did not have a connection culturally to
Speaker 2: this practice, and certainly not to the potter's field bones
Speaker 2: they were stealing. But my question really is does that
Speaker 2: mean that a twenty somethings single parent should have been
Speaker 2: thrown in jail?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: And what's fascinating is that this wouldn't have been an
Speaker 2: arrestable offense in many states. Darling's biggest mistake legally was
Speaker 2: doing this in Louisiana, a state that I learned has
Speaker 2: extremely strict laws around human remains. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: collect a number of perspectives here, like so many bones
Speaker 2: in the rain, And that's what we're gonna do this Thursday,
Speaker 2: when I get to the bottom of what bone law is,
Speaker 2: what American witchcraft looks like today, and whether it's the
Speaker 2: bone witch was innocent after all. And until then, here's
Speaker 2: your moment of fun. A question I've been asking for
Speaker 2: almost ten years would beetlejuice, come wet or dry scabs?
Speaker 2: Now keep in mind the wet scabs would sound like
Speaker 2: an old laser jet printer printing out a full page
Speaker 2: color photo and calming. Dry scabs would sound something like
Speaker 2: a deck of fresh cards being shuffled. Thank you for considering.
Speaker 2: Please send me your responses common subscribe.
Speaker 1: We need this. I love you, Goodbye.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and
Speaker 2: iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: It is written, hosted, and.
Speaker 2: Produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie
Speaker 2: Lichterman and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our
Speaker 2: supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 3: from Grant, Creator and Pet.
Speaker 2: Shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson my Kat's Flee and
Speaker 2: Casper and by pet Rockbert who will outlive us all Bye.