Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Charlie grew up with
Speaker 1: an eye for the other world. As a child, his
Speaker 1: favorite nanny would entertain him for hours with eerie, dramatic
Speaker 1: tales of ghosts and monsters and things that go bump
Speaker 1: in the night. And these stories left their mark on him,
Speaker 1: a mark that would be visible for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. Later on, as an adult, he would profess
Speaker 1: no interest in the supernatural world, and yet those ghosts
Speaker 1: seemed to follow him around and haunt him. Once, on
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve in eighteen sixty three, he came face
Speaker 1: to face with those forces during a game with his children.
Speaker 1: They had built an elaborate set of wooden rods in
Speaker 1: black fabric, but something about it troubled Charlie. A few
Speaker 1: days before, he had been at the funeral of a
Speaker 1: dear friend, and maybe it was all that black cloth
Speaker 1: or the shape of the shadows on the wall, but
Speaker 1: something about that game reminded him of that somber gathering.
Speaker 1: Then again, perhaps Charlie was ignoring the spirit world he
Speaker 1: had grown up so aware of, because the following month,
Speaker 1: terrible news reached his home. Charlie's son, Walter, it seems,
Speaker 1: had passed away while serving with the British military and India.
Speaker 1: It had taken a long while for the news to
Speaker 1: reach him. Though the date of his son's death was
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve eighteen sixty three, there were other moments
Speaker 1: that brought the world beyond the veil a little closer
Speaker 1: to Charlie's life. Once, in eighteen fifty one, he stood
Speaker 1: nearby as his father was operated on to remove kidney stones.
Speaker 1: The procedure failed, and Charlie's father died soon after. A
Speaker 1: short while later, Charlie awoke in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and swore he saw the figure of his father
Speaker 1: sitting at the foot of his bed. He once claimed
Speaker 1: that the spirit of his wife's sister, a woman he
Speaker 1: had loved deeply before she died at a young age,
Speaker 1: actually followed him around for a while. Charlie claimed that
Speaker 1: she would be fully visible to him, but no one
Speaker 1: else could see or hear her. The spirit world, it seems,
Speaker 1: was a tricky realm. Few had the experiences that Charlie claimed,
Speaker 1: and while he might not have sought it out, he
Speaker 1: seems to have had an open mind about it all.
Speaker 1: It's true Charlie did grow out of his passion for
Speaker 1: the other world, but the spirits never really gave up
Speaker 1: on him. His adulthood was filled with great success and
Speaker 1: punctuated from time to time with these ghostly moments. From
Speaker 1: what I can tell, they did much to influence everything
Speaker 1: he went on to create. Charlie was a writer, you see,
Speaker 1: and a writer who frequently allowed ghost story used to
Speaker 1: slip into his creations. While he's mostly known for the
Speaker 1: tales without them, he wrote at least twenty ghostly tales
Speaker 1: during his six decades behind the desk, and we're grateful
Speaker 1: for all of them because Charlie's ability to see through
Speaker 1: the veil and into the world beyond our own has
Speaker 1: brought us wonderful moments of entertainment that are still with
Speaker 1: us over a century and a half later. Just who
Speaker 1: was this writer born with a knack for seeing the
Speaker 1: things that most of us are completely blind to. He
Speaker 1: was a literary giant, a champion of serial publication, and
Speaker 1: the creator of some of the most beloved characters in
Speaker 1: English literature. Without him, we wouldn't have one of the
Speaker 1: most famous ghosts of all, the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Speaker 1: Let's all be thankful that Charles Dickens had an open mind.
Speaker 1: There's a narrow strip of sea off the coast of
Speaker 1: Wales called the Manet Straight. It cuts through the land there,
Speaker 1: separating the mainland from the island of Anglesey. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the way the tides flow through the straight, shipwrecks are
Speaker 1: much more common there than other areas along the coast,
Speaker 1: and shipwrecks have a way of leaving debris for us
Speaker 1: to find, like wood and cloth and stories. In December
Speaker 1: of sixteen sixty four, a large boat containing eight one
Speaker 1: passengers was crossing the Straight when the tide rushed in
Speaker 1: and capsized them. Out of the entire list of passengers,
Speaker 1: only one person managed to survive and swim to shore,
Speaker 1: a man named Hugh Williams. Over twenty years later, another
Speaker 1: boat was crossing the straight, this time with sixty people
Speaker 1: on board. It was December, again, a season known for
Speaker 1: its bad weather, so it shouldn't surprise us that a
Speaker 1: storm blew in and capsized this boat as well. Everyone
Speaker 1: on the ship perished in that accident, everyone that is,
Speaker 1: except one man. His name was Hugh Williams. Thirty five
Speaker 1: years later, in eighteen twenty, a third boat capsized while
Speaker 1: crossing the Strait. According to the reports, there were twenty
Speaker 1: five people on board, and all but one of them died.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you can guess his name at this point.
Speaker 1: That's right, Hugh Williams. It's one of those stories that
Speaker 1: makes you scratch your head. How can three shipwrecks happen
Speaker 1: over the span of a century and a half in
Speaker 1: the very same location, and each of them have a
Speaker 1: single survivor who share the same name. It's too good
Speaker 1: to be true in a sense, poetic and coincidental, and
Speaker 1: seemingly scripted by fate herself. But there are good reasons
Speaker 1: why we shouldn't be surprised. For one, the Strait is
Speaker 1: infamous for the number of shipwrecks that occur there, and
Speaker 1: that means between sixteen sixty four and eighteen twenty there
Speaker 1: were a lot more accidents than just the three involving
Speaker 1: Hugh Williams. Dozens of ships went down in those waters,
Speaker 1: perhaps hundreds, making the coincidence a bit less odd. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's odd that there was only one survivor in each
Speaker 1: of these tales, but that's not uncommon either. In fact,
Speaker 1: another boat sank in the same place in eighteen forty two,
Speaker 1: taking fourteen souls with it and leaving one man alive.
Speaker 1: His name, though, was Richard Thomas, not Hugh Williams. It
Speaker 1: might also be helpful to know that the name Hugh
Speaker 1: Williams was incredibly common in Wales. Is it extraordinary so
Speaker 1: many of the soul survivors shared the same name, Sure,
Speaker 1: but it's not the work of something supernatural, just the
Speaker 1: laws of probability working in their favor. Sometimes people survive,
Speaker 1: and given enough instances, common names are going to appear
Speaker 1: on the list more often. The story changed a century
Speaker 1: or so later. Time has a way of doing that,
Speaker 1: of course. On light tenth of nineteen forty, while cruising
Speaker 1: through the Straight, a fishing boat struck a German mind
Speaker 1: the detonation toward the ship apart, taking the lives of
Speaker 1: everyone on board. Everyone that is, except for two men,
Speaker 1: not one, but two. The older of the pair was
Speaker 1: named Hugh Williams, as you were probably guessing. But it's
Speaker 1: the other name, the man's nephew. In fact, that should
Speaker 1: surprise you, his name was also Hugh Williams. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.