Lore 248: Blowout

Hey folks, Erin here.

Before we dig into today's new episode, I have an important housekeeping thing to get in front of you, but I will try to keep it brief.

Let's talk about ads.

On lore, you're going to hear two different kinds of ads.

Some are voiced by me, and those are ads that I personally approved, which makes sense, I guess, seeing as how I recorded them with my mouth, right?

Other ads, though, sound more like TV or radio commercials.

The industry term for those is programmatic, and they don't get individually approved like the ones that I record with my own voice.

Which means that if you hear an ad in that TV or radio style, you can't assume that I support the message.

I bring that up because of a problem a lot of podcasters are having with programmatic ads right now.

You see, these ads are sorted into categories, things like outdoor living or automotive or vacations.

And we as podcasters can turn categories on or off based on what sort of topics we want to avoid on our show.

Me personally, I prefer to avoid hot-button political topics in my ads.

So I have political as a category turned off, as do most other podcasters.

But political activist groups know this, so they've started to categorize their ads deceptively as a way to get around those filters.

Which is why, from time to time, you might hear an ad on lore that talks about a political candidate or something like guns or abortion.

Here's an important thing that I need you to understand.

When you hear those sorts of ads, I didn't pick them.

In fact, I specifically requested not to get them.

But some organizations are cheating the system and I only find out about it when a kind listener like you tells me that it's happened.

So if you ever hear an ad like this, please don't get upset and unsubscribe from the show.

Instead, send me a message so I can have that ad turned off and flagged by the system as deceptive.

You can DM the show account on Instagram or reply to us on threads, and I've even created an email address specifically for this issue, ads at lorepodcast.com.

Look, folks, I want lore to always be secure so I can cover production costs and pay my team their well-earned salaries and give them health insurance.

And the way ads work in podcasts has evolved so much in the last nine years that we can no longer avoid these radio-style ads.

They are the new main ways that companies spend their ad bucks and the ways that shows like mine earn their revenue.

But you can help me fight the crooked ones who put ads I specifically requested to block into categories where they don't belong.

Be patient with me, extend a bit of grace, and always feel free to email ads at lorepodcast.com if you hear a questionable one.

And that's it.

That's our family meeting for the day.

I'll get off my soapbox now and let you enjoy some creepy stories.

And with that, on with the show.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and Whalen Jennings was no different.

Long before he had cemented his legacy as a country music star, he was just an unknown Texan kid working as a radio DJ.

And it was during his time time spinning records that he met another young Texan and the two started collaborating.

Eventually, this buddy offered him a job in his backing band on a US tour and Whelan took the gig.

But tour life was hardly the glittering rock star dream that you might imagine.

The hours were long and the tour bus was unheated, which, since they were driving through the Midwest in the dead of winter, was well, less than ideal.

In fact, it got so cold that the band's drummer ended up in the hospital with frostbite on his toes.

Enough was enough.

It would be more expensive, sure, but it would be worth it.

They would ditch the bus and fly to their next gig instead.

So, a private plane was chartered, but there was a problem.

It was only a four-seater, which meant that some of the guys would have to stay on the bus.

Whelan Jennings graciously offered his plane seat to a sick member of the team and accepted his frigid fate.

I hope your old bus freezes up, Whaylan's friend teased before he left.

Well, I hope your old plane crashes, Whalen retorted.

And those words would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Why?

Because that old plane did crash, killing all the passengers on board, including Whalen's buddy, Buddy Holly, that is.

Maybe it was dumb luck that saved Whalen Jennings on the day the music died, or maybe something in him knew to turn down that warm flight.

But sometimes those bright shiny invitations are just too enticing to ignore.

So open the envelope, send in your your RSVP, and join me as we attend four historical parties that went tragically awry.

I'm Aaron Mankey and this is Lore.

Originally, the French King Charles IV was known as Charles the Beloved, but that didn't last very long.

After killing four of his own knights during a psychotic episode, he earned a new nickname, Charles the Mad, and he certainly lived up to that title.

At one point, he refused to bathe for five whole months and grew so sick with sores and lice that his doctor had to forcibly wash him.

He would even fail to recognize his own wife and children.

And later in life, he would even begin to believe that his body was made of glass glass and would take extreme precautions to make sure no one accidentally shattered him.

Now, today, medical advancements allow those of us struggling with mental illness to access medicine and lead full, joyful lives.

Sadly for Charles, antipsychotics wouldn't be invented for another four and a half centuries.

So, his wife Isabeau decided to take another approach to heal her husband.

Parties.

That's right, an endless stream of parties.

If a king was distracted by revelry and entertainment, the queen figured that he wouldn't have time to live up to that nickname, Charles the Mad.

So in 1393, when Queen Isabeau learned that one of her own ladies-in-waiting was to be married, for the third time no less, it seemed like the perfect excuse to throw a special kind of shindig.

The party would be a shariverie, a kind of rager-slash-folk tradition, essentially intended to mock an older widow for remarrying, which seemed like a pretty mean-spirited party theme to me, but hey, what can you do?

The main event at this particular chariverie would be a performance, a dance really, in which six high-ranking knights would dress as wild men of the woods, a common European mythic motif.

The wild men were thought to be feral, they were covered in hair from head to toe, and so to make the dancers look the part, they would have to wear elaborate costumes, linen garments that were soaked in pitch to make them sticky, and then they were coated in shaggy strands of flax that resembled hair, and hairy masks hid the men's identity.

And this last detail was important because there was a prank hidden in this shariverie.

You see, in truth, there were only five of the king knights among the dancers.

The sixth dancer was the king himself.

Now, before I go on, I know what you're thinking.

This pitch-soaked linen outfit situation sounds rather flammable for an era when all lighting came from a live flame.

And you aren't wrong.

But the court wasn't stupid.

They banned all candles and open flames during the performance portion of the night.

Unfortunately, not everyone got that memo, namely the king's brother, Louis-Duc d'Orléon.

And right in the middle of this wild man performance, Louis and his friend Philippe Debar charged drunkenly into the room, torches in hand.

Most sources say that Louis, late to the party and wanting to see what the hubbub was about, stumbled in close, holding up his torch to one of the dancers' faces to get a better look.

I can just imagine it, the Duke tumbling into the ballroom and slurring a French version of, what's all this then, before leaning in.

A spark from his torch lifted into the air, spun down like a tiny shooting star, and landed right on the dancer's leg.

Now, I say most sources because there is one theory that Louis actually threw the torch, which seems far-fetched, except for the fact that Louis had been there the year prior when his brother had killed those four knights and had attacked Louis himself during the encounter.

But whether an act of revenge or just a drunk guy trying to get a good look at a weirdo in a mask, what came next was the same.

Chaos.

The lit dancer flailed to put out the spark and in doing so collided with another dancer, catching him on fire too.

Oh and by the way, another detail about these costumes, multiple sources claim that not only were they soaked in resin, but they were also, all six of them, chained together.

The fire spread, jumping from one man to the next until a new dance had started, one of terror and death.

Now remember, the king was one of these costumed men.

A 14 or 15 year old duchess named Joan recognized him despite his disguise and thinking quickly, she stuffed him under her skirt, tamping out his flames.

At the same time, one of the other dancers, Seur du Nautuer, leapt into a barrel of water or maybe wine, saving himself.

The remaining four, though, weren't so lucky.

The wild men burned alive right in front of the horrified audience, releasing streams of blood onto the ballroom floor.

The events went down in infamy, remembered as the ball of burning men.

And suffice to say, after that, whatever shred of sanity King Charles had been clutching onto was gone for good.

For the rest of his life, although he remained on the throne, he was king in title and ceremony only.

Now, if the ball of the burning men had gone as planned, it would have been a pretty good time.

Drinking, dancing, funny costumes, what's not to love.

But if one celebration from history is any indication, some parties are cursed from the start.

By the time Domitian took his place as the emperor of Rome, he was already well acquainted with power.

The year was 81 CE and his father Vespasian and brother Titus had both been emperor before him, making Domitian the third member of the Flavian dynasty to sit upon the throne.

He was a paranoid and harsh ruler, but he also got stuff done, and this productivity actually made him pretty popular with his subjects and the army, who were thankful for the stability that Domitian brought to Rome after long periods of war.

But not everyone loved the guy.

In fact, some people hated him.

And by some people, I mean the Senate, who as emperor he was forced to work with quite intimately.

And Domitian hated the Senate right back.

His dislike was no secret.

In fact, Domitian was vocal about wanting to destroy it entirely, viewing it as a force standing directly in his political way.

So of course, the senators were immediately suspicious when Domitian sent them invitations to a banquet.

Now, in ancient Rome, banquets were hedonistic and lavish, like any other ruling class feast, but they were also about control.

They gave the host an opportunity to exhibit his wealth and power over his guests, to show everyone who was really in charge.

And in 89 CE, eight years into his reign, Domitian figured it was time to do exactly that.

On the night of the banquet, the guests, mostly senators, trickled one by one into the banquet hall.

And if you're like me, you're already yelling at them like they're a bunch of teenagers in a slasher film who just decided to split up and cover more ground.

But remember, Domitian was the emperor.

If he told you to be at his banquet, you didn't really have a choice.

So the senators sucked it up and followed their host into a dark room.

And as their eyes adjusted, their caution was replaced with full-on terror.

The floor and the walls had been painted black, complemented with slabs of black marble.

Instead of the typical lush sofas expected of an emperor's dining hall, there was only black morning furniture, the same they might find at a Roman funeral.

Black draperies spilled over everything, and the only light ebbed from a row of cemetery lamps.

But the guests weren't alone with their hosts.

All around the hall, naked servant boys stood as silent as ghosts, painted head to toe in black, nearly vanishing into the dark walls.

But the piece de resistance waited at each senator's seat.

Instead of place cards on the tables, each setting was marked by a large tombstone, the guest's name carefully carved into the slab.

At this point, the senators were freaked.

They were essentially convinced that the emperor was going to execute them right there at the dinner table.

As they sat down to the meal, no one spoke.

Not the servants, not the guests, no one except Domitian himself, who rambled on and on about one topic and one topic alone, death and slaughter.

As the senators trembled, the painted servants began to lay out the food, night black plates and cups, holding cuisine that had been dyed black to match.

Oh, and also, the meal was not the menu that you typically offered at an emperor's table.

No, all of the food served was traditional funeral food, food usually given as offerings to the dead.

The senators trembled.

Surely at any moment, their throats would be slit.

Of course, they tried to eat, although they must have wondered at least once whether there was poison in the food.

Surely they were thinking of all their unfinished business, their loved ones who they would never see again, of Rome to which they had dedicated years of their lives.

And then suddenly, the plates were cleared, the emperor stood, and the banquet was over.

Miraculously, the senators were still alive.

With their hearts in their throats, each guest was escorted out by one of the emperor's men, afraid that perhaps they would be executed on the way home.

But no, the senators were returned safely.

Later, a messenger was sent to their homes, bearing with him the personalized gravestones, which, by the way, turned out to be made of pure silver, along with the fine onyx dishes on which they'd eaten and even one of the painted servants now washed clean and perfumed.

Why?

Well, everyone loves party favors, right?

While the senators may have escaped the knights unscathed, Domitian's message was searingly clear.

They easily could have been killed, and yet by his grace, they survived.

Domitian held the power, and he could end their lives anytime he desired.

A small disclaimer here, we don't know for certain how much of this account is true.

The historical document recording it wasn't written until 100 years after the banquet had taken place, and by then Domitian had garnered quite a villainous reputation.

So perhaps the tale, or parts of the tale, have been fabricated.

That said, it certainly sounds like the sort of thing that this guy would have done.

While some of those guests did eventually meet a grisly demise, it was Domitian who himself was ultimately assassinated.

And I know for the senators involved, the Black Banquet must have been one of the worst nights of their lives.

But to to be honest, as a lover of the macabre, it kind of sounds like my dream party.

And while I'm being irreverent, what is Domitian if not the perfect goth interior decorator?

Add a DJ playing dirges and some after-dinner fireworks, and you'd have yourself a perfect night.

That is, as long as the fireworks erupt the way they're supposed to.

Because trust me, that's not always the case.

The numbers don't lie.

If you take a peek at Wikipedia's list of fireworks, accidents, and incidents, you'll find a compilation of explosive disasters at factories, warehouses, and nightclubs around the world.

The figures are devastating, too.

Seven deaths at once, or 12, or in some cases, all the way up to 60.

One horrifying event at a nightclub in Russia claimed over 150 lives and left another 78 injured.

And yet one incident is completely missing from the list.

A fireworks disaster that's, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was the deadliest fireworks disaster in history.

So how on earth was it left off the list?

Because while the fireworks did cause the carnage, it was something else entirely that did the killing.

The year was 1770 and King Louis XV was in power.

And one thing to know about this guy, he loved fireworks.

In fact, he was so into them that he even had a family of famous pyrotechnicians under his employ, the Ruggieri brothers, who, fun fact, developed many of the fireworks technologies we still use today, like colored fireworks, shaped fireworks, and more.

So when Louis's eldest grandson and the heir to the throne became engaged and the wedding drew near, the king figured there was no better way to celebrate than by lighting off the greatest fireworks display that Paris had ever seen.

Now, if we've learned anything from the ball of the burning men, French parties and flammable things seem to be a notoriously bad match, so you can probably guess where this is going.

But first, one more bit of background.

France and Austria had been enemies for 300 years until 1756 when they put their differences aside and became allies.

And to seal the deal, Louis's grandson was pledged to marry the daughter of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.

And they had waited years for both kids to come of age.

So when the French Dauphine was 15 and the Austrian Archduchess was 14, the time for the marriage had arrived.

On April 19th of 1770, a wedding by proxy took place in Vienna, with the bride's brother standing in for the Dauphine.

This was followed by an official wedding in Versailles a month later on May 16th.

The ceremony, of course, showcased the monarchy's extreme wealth.

The Dauphine was dripping with diamonds and gold, and afterward, his young bride received a wedding gift of an ornately carved cabinet filled with jewels.

Festivities in the streets began, complete, of course, with lots of drinking.

And those celebrations continued for two weeks until May 30th, building up to a grand finale in the form of a massive fireworks display near the River Seine in Paris, at a location now known as the Place de la Concorde.

King Louis XV was no stranger to fireworks, but his displays were usually gated off, visible only to the royals.

This one though would be an exception, visible to all of Paris.

And so thousands of ordinary people crowded into the square, shoulder to shoulder, excited to see these legendary artificial lights, as they called them, for the first time.

Now, I want you to close your eyes, unless you're driving, of course, and imagine the sights and sounds of the square.

Thousands of people shouting and laughing, food and drink and excitement, and in the center of the square, a wooden temple-shaped structure stacked with a pile of Ruggieri Brothers' finest rockets, all waiting to launch.

And then it began.

The first few fireworks went off without a hitch, but then a gust of wind blew some partially exploded rockets back into the crowd, and the launch structure itself caught fire.

And with that, panic struck.

Waves of terror flooded through the tightly packed crowd, and that soon became a stampede.

People shoved and screamed, trying to get out of the square.

Some began to fall.

Many were trampled to death, and still others were pushed into the Seine where they drowned.

When the dust cleared, the government announced a death toll of 132.

But that wasn't exactly the truth.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the disaster actually caused closer to 800 deaths, and some historians believe the number was even higher, closer to 3,000.

Yes, you heard that right.

3,000 human lives.

In fact, the chronicler Louis-Sebastien Mercier later wrote, there was scarcely a household which had not to lament the death of a relative or friend.

And he should know, because he witnessed it all with his very own eyes.

Parties are supposed to be fun.

They are times when we come together with friends and family.

We fire up the barbecue.

We eat cake.

We dress up in our fanciest clothes and dance to our favorite songs.

Parties have existed almost as long as humans have.

And I think that says something meaningful.

It proves that at our core, people have always considered it important to make room for joy.

Which is why, when things go wrong, it's all the more painful.

This ritual that is supposed to be about happiness and camaraderie transforms into something else, something more sinister.

All that prep and planning, all the looking forward, the nerves and excitement, the hanging of streamers and filling of balloons, only for a party to end in suffering, well, it almost feels like a betrayal.

In the wake of the stampede that claimed so many French lives, the young bride and groom were understandably horrified.

After all, like any party, their wedding was supposed to be about celebration, not sorrow.

But they weren't just upset by the death.

No, they also feared the damage it would do to the monarchy's reputation.

The royal family, you see, was already in poor standing with the people of France.

And surely, this disaster would not help.

They were right, of course.

The catastrophe stirred immense hatred and distrust for the royals.

And unbeknownst to the newlyweds, it also served as an omen of things to come.

a dark start to what would become an even darker story.

You see, the groom would go on to become Louis XVI, the last king of France.

And his teenage bride, well, her name was Marie Antoinette.

It was Oscar Wilde who famously wrote, Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

And based on all the weird, wonderful, and most importantly, true stories I've explored in my research, I think he just might be right.

But there's another side to this coin.

Sometimes not only does life imitate art, but so does death.

And I want to invite you to one final party that proves it.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

This episode of Lore was sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Trends come and go.

Pet rocks, the Charleston, beanie babies, and party trends are no different.

From the cherie-verees of the 14th century to roller skating parties of the 1980s, the way we let our hair hair down says a lot about what we value with each passing decade.

So if I were to ask you what you thought a Victorian blowout might look like, you would probably go right to the stereotypes.

Something macabre and haunted, probably involving tall candelabras and memento mori.

And you would be absolutely right, which is why I have two words for you, ghost parties.

Now, I'm not talking about seances and spiritualism here, although of course the Victorians were all about that too.

But this was different.

Unlike seances which were intended to be legitimate otherworldly affairs for contacting the dead, ghost parties were just that.

Parties.

They mostly took place around the holidays, perhaps because of another trend of the time, the recently published A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Scrooge's haunting tale made telling ghost stories a Christmas tradition, and what better occasion to share a ghost story than at a shindig with all your friends?

And so ghost parties became all the rage.

Starting in the Midwest during the early 1870s, they then spread outward through the US up into the 1900s.

One 1902 newspaper article even exclaimed that they, and I quote, threatened to have a greater popularity than the game of ping pong.

So now you know that was serious.

But what exactly was a ghost party?

Well, first, guests would receive an invitation, perhaps a delicate paper skull and crossbones, or a cursive note penned on funeral cards.

And then, when the big day came, the guests would arrive dressed as, you guessed it, ghosts.

I think this quote from a 1906 article in the Baltimore Sun sums it up best.

Each participant is invited to bring with him an old sheet and a pillowcase.

The sheet is to drape artistically about his noble person, and the pillowcase is supposed to be slipped over his head and down over his shoulders, enclosing his arms and the trunk of his body.

A ghost party is one of those affairs in which the guest wears a pleased, expectant smile whenever he is looking at the hostess, but all the time holds black murder in his heart.

Another article written by society woman Linda Hull Larned and published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1904 had slightly different fashion guidelines.

She wrote, The guests are to appear as their own specters.

Women will wear white cheesecloth gowns, white slippers and white gloves, and will add chiffon wings to their white gowns to give ghostly airiness to their appearance.

Gentlemen are to wear white sheets with white trousers and white tennis shoes and with their masculine heads draped in pillowcases.

But Linda's instructions didn't stop there.

She went on to insist that no one speak above a whisper and everyone act solemn and laughter?

Oh no, that was out of the question.

Now, I have a feeling this last part didn't hold, especially given that the Baltimore Sun article described ghost parties as an excruciatingly funny affair to which everyone comes prepared to make an ass of himself.

But there's more.

Hosts and ghosts are to greet each other with groans and the occasional shriek, wrote Mrs.

Larnard.

And of course, no good party is complete without snacks, so thematic food would be served.

You can think of this meal as the opposite of the black banquet.

All white food on white plates with a white gauze tablecloth and white flowers in white vases.

Guests would sip mulled wine out of skull-shaped cups, ladled from a punch bowl decorated with tiny skeletons all clamoring over the brim.

Now, I have a feeling feeling that Mrs.

Larnet was being a bit persnickety about her rules, and the reality of these parties was a lot more lax, and likely mostly involved people putting on sheets and flirting.

But the main event?

Well, that would be the ghost stories.

The guests would sit around in low lights and tell the most frightening tales they could conjure.

Which is a pretty great image, don't you think?

A room full of ghosts sitting in a circle talking about,

well, themselves.

One ghost-themed New Year's party in 1905 featured a black-draped home with a giant spider dangling from the ceiling, a flaming cauldron of burning alcohol, and a hostess's hand which, upon shaking it in greeting, would fall off.

Honestly, I'm going to check my mailbox every day, hoping for my invitation to one like that.

But then again, the fun can't last forever.

And in 1910, one ghost party became all too real.

On April 8th of that year, in Brooklyn, the young women of Adelphi College decided to host a ghost party.

Over 50 female students were in attendance, all draped in sheets with pillowcases tied around their heads and eye holes cut out to see through.

It was an initiation ceremony of sorts that the juniors were putting on for the freshmen.

The invitation had even sported a black hand holding a threat.

If the freshmen didn't attend, they would be severely punished.

You know, ghost hazing.

And the party was being hosted inside a classroom.

All the electric lights had been turned off, replaced by a homemade alcohol lamp created by mixing salt and alcohol together in a saucer and then lighting it on fire.

Everyone was dancing and telling ghost stories and having a blast when suddenly there was an actual blast.

No one quite knows what caused it.

Either an open bottle of alcohol was left too close to the flaming saucer and the fumes caught fire, or one of the girls was replenishing the alcohol in the saucer but didn't think to blow out the fire first.

Either way, boom.

There was a flash of noise and light and then screaming.

Several students' sheets had caught fire and they frantically tried to beat out the flames.

Those not on fire ran screaming through the halls calling for help and others dove out through windows.

Meanwhile in the chaos, some of the women struggled to get their pillowcases off, only growing more and more twisted in their costumes, leaving them unable to see anything but the glow of rising flames through the fabric.

And I can only imagine their terror, especially that of 19-year-old Suzanne Lustgarten, who, as her friends escaped, was consumed by fire and killed.

Three days later, another sort of ghost party was held, bigger and bolder than the last: Suzanne's funeral, with over 500 mourners in attendance.

It seems that Suzanne had tragically gone from playing a ghost to becoming one.

This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, and was researched and written by Jenna Rose Nethercott with music by Chad Lawson.

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