Legends 14: Scared Straight

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Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books.

So if you're ready, let's begin.

Relationships have always been complicated, from sorting out who's responsible for washing the dishes or making the bed to who manages the finances.

Being in a partnership is never easy.

But those relationships only get harder when they sit outside the usual expected romantic pairings.

Throughout history, people in love have had to keep their romance a secret for any number of reasons.

Perhaps they came from different economic classes, or perhaps their families had been at odds for generations.

Hello, Romeo and Juliet, right?

And up until a 1967 Supreme Court decision, interracial marriage was illegal in half of the United States.

It seems like frustrating obstacles to the purest thing of all, love, have always been around.

But then there are the relationships that have almost always been been frowned upon and still are, depending on where the couple lives.

Today's legends are all about the folks who longed for love but were blocked by others every step of the way.

They hid in plain sight, existing among everyone else, with a secret they would take to their graves.

From a student and her teacher, a famous author, even a couple of saloon dancers, some relationships have just been too beautiful for this world.

But don't worry, you know how tales of love and death tend to play out, especially especially in the world of folklore.

They carry on in the afterlife.

Their eternal slumber, though, isn't exactly peaceful.

Maybe that's because their deaths are more troublesome than their lives ever were.

Or perhaps it's just the power of love causing ripples and complicating everything around it.

Whatever the reason for their lack of peace, Today's stories make it clear that those unsettled spirits might be lingering right here on this mortal plane, unable to find rest and move on.

So settle in for tales of heartbreak and loss, two of the most common ingredients in so many stories from folklore, even the ones that are terrifying.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore Legends.

On March 30th of 1778, two Irish women ran away from home.

But this wasn't a pair of angsty teenagers angry at their parents.

Sarah Ponsonby was 23 years of age and Lady Eleanor Butler was 39.

The two had met 10 years earlier when Eleanor had been hired to tutor Sarah.

Sarah was enrolled in a boarding school that happened to be across the way from the Butler family castle in Kilkenny.

And it wasn't long before they discovered they both shared a passion for writing and literature.

Their friendship blossomed quickly.

Unfortunately, people in town started to talk.

Rumors began to swirl about the two women who were well past marrying age and spent all their time together.

Eleanor's parents were Catholic and believed sending her to a convent was the best course of action, while Sarah's Anglican guardians tried to marry her off to a more appropriate suitor, someone who also happened to be her elderly second cousin, Sir William Founds.

Unwilling to tie herself to a man so many years older than herself, never mind one only just a couple branches away on her family tree, Sarah pulled on some men's clothing one night and leapt out of her window.

By her side was her dog, Frisk, and for good measure, a gun.

Meanwhile, Lady Eleanor, also dressed in men's clothing, had already ridden away on one of her family's horses and hid inside Sarah's barn.

Once together, they escaped to the coast where they awaited a ship to take them to England.

When their families noticed they were gone though, a search party was sent out after them.

They'd been hiding in yet another another barn, awaiting their freedom, when Sarah's dog began barking.

Alerted by the sound, the search party found the pair and dragged them back to their respective homes.

After that, Eleanor was locked in her sister's house while her family searched for a convent that would take her in.

And as for Sarah, she fell seriously ill with a bad fever.

But Eleanor couldn't stay away.

She secretly moved into Sarah's house with the help of the maid, a lady named Mary Carol.

Almost two weeks later though, Eleanor was discovered there.

But rather than separate them again, they were given an offer.

Leave Ireland forever and they'll receive a modest allowance.

And so on May 9th of 1778, the pair headed for Wales with the maid Mary in tow.

After two years of traveling, Eleanor and Sarah finally settled down in a house near Shingoshen in the north of the country.

It was this picturesque and rustic area, isolated enough from the city, but close enough to let them feel like they were still part of a community.

They called their new home Plasnawyth, meaning New Hall in Welsh, and the neighbors were fascinated.

Many notable figures came to visit the couple while they lived there, including Princess Caroline of Wales and literary figures William Wordsworth and Lord Byron.

Their home also wound up in the local newspapers on more than one occasion.

Now, there's no proof that the pair had a physical relationship, but there was certainly a massive amount of love between them.

Thanks to letters and journals that they wrote, it was clear that they considered themselves married and were accepted by their friends as such.

But not everyone welcomed their untraditional marriage.

The press remarked on Eleanor's appearance as masculine and how she looked like, and I quote, a young man if we accept the petticoats which she still retains.

It eventually got bad enough that Sarah and Eleanor thought about suing for libel, but were advised to reconsider, lest they draw even more unwanted scrutiny.

And so the couple, along with their maid, Mary Carroll, lived happily together until Mary's death in 1809.

Eleanor passed away 20 years later and Sarah followed in 1831.

The women were buried in a three-sided grave in a local churchyard.

But not long after Sarah's passing, rumors started to circulate about Plasna Wyth.

People had begun to whisper that the house was haunted.

According to witnesses, eerie mists and strange lights could be seen in the photos taken of the house.

Some who have been inside have reported footsteps coming from inside locked rooms.

Others have spoken of mysterious cold cold spots and random, impossible-to-locate knocking sounds.

Back in the 1930s, a woman named Dr.

Mary Gordon, one of the first female physicians from England, was advised by psychologist Carl Jung to visit Shangoshan after experiencing a vivid dream about it one night.

She hadn't been there since she was a child and didn't even remember going to Plast the With, yet as soon as she entered the property, she felt two distinct presences within.

On another visit later, she reported that she heard barking coming from a nearby hillside where Sarah and Eleanor had once gathered Holly.

She wrote, Just at the moment I saw them, they turned their heads and appeared to me.

They were sitting so still that I thought they were in some kind of sleep, but in a couple of seconds they seemed to wake and touched one another as if to call attention to my advent and peered at me as though they were uncertain of my reality.

Dr.

Gordon claimed that she actually had a conversation with a ghostly couple and told them that their journals had been published, much to their shock.

The spirits then invited her to meet with them inside the home at 9.45 the following evening.

Dr.

Gordon agreed.

She arrived and took a seat on the sofa in the library.

After some time, just as she was growing tired, the ghostly figures of both women appeared.

Lady Eleanor took a seat right beside her, while Sarah seated into a nearby chair.

Once gathered, the trio spoke deep into the night about issues such as women, education, and modern marriage.

When the sun rose the following morning, Eleanor and Sarah disappeared, and Mary had everything she needed to write one heck of a book.

Hauntings in Great Britain didn't start in the late 1700s.

Reports of them go back a lot further than that, and one of the older tales on record is quite a doozy.

It all began in 1284 with the birth of Edward II in Carnarvon, Wales.

After the death of his father King Edward I in July of 1307, the heir apparent ascended to the throne, but not without burning a few bridges along the way.

As one of his first actions as king, he appointed all of his late father's opponents to the highest offices in his kingdom.

He also made a man named Pierce Gaveston his chief advisor and the Earl of Cornwall.

But it was a decision that didn't make the barons too happy.

Although that didn't matter, right?

Because Edward was in charge.

Now, maybe it didn't help that Gaveston had been raised as the foster brother to Edward.

So his new power could have been seen by others as a whole lot of nepotism.

The two men met around 1300 when they were in their teens, and they quickly became the closest of friends.

Gaveston was good-looking and athletic, and Edward admired him greatly.

Unfortunately, not everyone appreciated their close-knit friendship.

Edward's father, the king at the time, banished young Gaveston from the country only months before his son took the throne.

But young Edward couldn't bear to see his friend leave without a proper send-off, so he gifted him with a bunch of nice things.

A couple of high-quality outfits, plus some swans, herons, and five horses.

You know, the typical going-away gifts.

And then, as if that weren't enough, Edward joined him on his journey to Dover, accompanied by two minstrels, sort of the medieval equivalent of one friend helping another move to college with a stack of road trip mixtapes on the seat between them.

I'm sure it was fun.

But it was clear that the pair were more than friends, and it was hard to imagine the prince forgetting someone so close to him.

So, right after his father died, even before the late king was cold in the ground, the newly enthroned Edward II called Gaveston back, and to make things official, Pierce married the king's niece, Margaret, to further cement his position within the royal family.

And then in January of 1308, 23-year-old Edward departed for France to marry Isabella, the teenage daughter of the French king.

When he did, he left Gaveston in charge.

Edward was gone for an entire month, and when he returned to England with his bride, one chronicler reported that he greeted Gaveston with kisses and repeated embraces.

This only further alienated the Earl among the various political figures present at the king's return.

Remember, royal favor was like gold to these nobles.

I'm sure everyone was vying for the king's attention.

The fact that one guy seemed to be getting all of it could not have sat well with the others.

Another similar scene occurred later that same month at Edward and Isabella's coronation as king and queen.

At the ceremony, Gaveston took center stage as he walked ahead of the king, the royal crown in his hands.

He also got to fasten the left ceremonial spur onto the king's foot, while Isabella's uncle took care of the right.

Every step of the way, no pun intended, Pierce Gaveston was there, at the king's side.

Days after the coronation, Parliament met in a session that allegedly focused on how much everyone hated Pierce Gaveston.

They resented him for the power that he held over the king, and there was even talk of removing him from his perch, by any means necessary.

In August of 1311, a group of 21 English barons joined forces and wrote the Ordinances, which demanded that Edward banish Gaveston, just as his father had done.

And the king seemed to listen, making a big show of sending his friend to Flanders that November, taking his possessions in the process, only to have the Earl return just a few months later.

Edward then decreed that Gaveston's banishment had been unlawful and gave him back everything that had been taken from him.

And this blatant disregard for their concerns left everyone else feeling rather bitter, the sort of bitterness that might fuel a civil war, which is exactly what happened next.

First, Gaveston was excommunicated from the church by the Archbishop in March of 1312.

And then all of them, Gaveston, along with Edward and Isabella, were all run out of town together by the angry nobles.

But somehow the worst was yet to come.

You see, those angry earls managed to capture Gaveston at Scarborough Castle, where he was hiding out.

To save him, Edward left his pregnant queen to fend for herself, but he couldn't get there in time.

The former Earl of Cornwall was tried for treason and then tied to a mule, which carried him to the top of Blacklow Hill.

And it was there that Gaveston was impaled by a sword before being decapitated.

His body was left to rot for some time until Dominican monks came and took it back to their Oxford monastery.

They managed to sew his head back on, but his body was unable to be buried on hollowed ground due to that excommunication, so the monks kept it for two years.

He was finally buried on January 2nd of 1315 at a Dominican monastery in Kings Langley, and 500 years later, a monument was built on the hill where he was executed.

But that's not where you'll you'll find Pierce Gaveston's ghost.

No, instead it's believed that his spirit inhabits Scarborough Castle, the place of his betrayal and capture by the other nobles.

Today that castle lies in ruins, having been heavily damaged by German shelling during World War I, but those who visit the site have reported seeing the ghostly figure of Gaveston at various times of the day and night.

And that ghost is of course said to be headless, with blood pouring from the ragged stump that once supported his skull.

Many witnesses have reported being shoved by unseen hands.

Others have heard the sounds of footsteps in the distance.

And perhaps most alarmingly, Gaveston's ghost has been known to tempt people toward the edge of the castle's battlements or the nearby cliffs before attempting to push them over the edge.

If that's true, it means that his spirit isn't just restless, it's also angry and it wants revenge.

Across the Atlantic lives the tale of another pair of doomed lovers.

Unlike the ladies of Shangoshen or Pierce Gaveston, this one isn't based on actual history.

But of course, that doesn't mean that it isn't a great story.

Bella Rawheide and Timber Kate lived in the Wild West of the late 1800s.

Now, depending on who you ask, they could have resided anywhere from Reno, Nevada, Phoenix, Arizona, or even Spokane, Washington.

But as with so much of folklore, the setting isn't nearly as important as the women themselves, who, when asked about their relationship, claimed that they were just sisters.

Except it was much more likely that they were lovers and performers.

In fact, the sisters line was part of their act.

You see, Bella and Kate were saloon dancers.

Now, Bella was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed femme who would sing a song called Eve's Leaves.

She would strut on stage wearing nothing more than some strategically placed gilded fig leaves, which could be removed by a man for payment in the form of a pinch of gold dust.

Bella was known for her sweet disposition and sunny personality.

Not Timber Kate though.

No, she was known more for her right hook.

She was six foot six and strong.

Her hair was red and curly like a wildfire, framing a pair of brown, hardened eyes.

But she had other jobs as well.

She also worked as Bella's manager and their publicist for their act, putting up posters all over town to advertise their performances.

And they were doing quite well for themselves too, until someone new wandered into their lives.

His name was Tug Daniels, a beady-eyed grifter with black, greasy hair and a mouthful of yellowed teeth.

He heard that Bella and Kate were flush with cash, and of course he wanted in.

He started by seducing Bella, and once he had her under his spell, he worked his magic on Kate.

Pretty soon, both women were head over heels for this new man in their life.

But things quickly turned sour for the trio.

According to some retellings, Timber Kate was jealous of the relationship between Bella and Tug.

If true, it was probably devastating when Tug skipped town with her and headed for Carson City, Nevada.

He set Bella up in a brothel called the Beehive on North Quincy Street.

Although, if you really dig into the details of any legend, you can always find flaws and lies.

North Quincy Street never actually appears on any maps of the city, so take that with a grain of salt.

But as the legend goes, the two of them made a fortune together, while Timber Kate was left alone to try her hand at a new solo act.

Kate started performing feats of strength dressed in men's attire.

Well, before stripping everything off to reveal her feminine body.

And this continued for several years until Tug Daniels left Carson City without Bella.

He did, however, remember to take all of the money that she had earned.

Tug played the the long con, you see.

And it worked.

So Bella, with her tail between her legs, reconciled with Kate, who came to join her at the beehive.

But according to the story, it wasn't long before Tug returned.

And the moment Kate saw him, she attempted to land one of her legendary right hooks.

Tug was too slippery, though.

He sidestepped the blow, causing her to fall over at his feet.

And that's when he pulled out a knife and cut her open, brutally eviscerating her.

As Timber Kate lay dying, Tug Daniels escaped into the night, never to be seen again.

And Bella apparently never got over the death of Kate.

Despondent and alone, she took her own life two years later by poisoning herself with cleaning fluid.

Ever since, it's been said that Timber Kate's ghost haunts the streets of Nevada, wandering through town in a white nightgown covered in blood, clutching her stomach and reliving the night of her death.

But whether the town is Carson City or Reno depends on who's telling the tale.

Others claim that the ghost of Bella Rawheid has been spotted in a morbid reenactment of her own death, her fingers grasping at her mouth and throat as she staggers away.

If the reports of some witnesses are true, people have reportedly also seen the lovers together at an old opera house in Washington state, their spirits reliving happier times.

It's a building that had once been a venue where the pair were said to have performed.

In one version of the accounts, the caretaker of the opera house claimed to have seen two women dancing together on stage.

One of them was quite tall, with red tights and spangles, while the other was shorter, clad in a pink ruffly outfit.

The smaller woman jumped into the hands of her taller partner just as the caretaker flipped on the house lights.

Instantly, they were gone, and the stage was empty once again.

And if I'm honest, I think that's the legend that I would prefer to remember.

A pair of troubled souls left to spend eternity doing what they love rather than reliving the worst moments of their lives over and over again.

Folklore, after all, has enough horror and violence.

Considering what Bella and Kate went through, they deserve to have some peace.

Relationships are almost always tough.

Whether it's family, friends, or romance, the road to happiness is never easy and even less so when much of society has set the rules against you.

Maybe that's why folklore has always been filled with tales of love, lost love, betrayed love, forbidden love.

It's the one thing everyone desires above everything else, which is why it's so often a source of pain and tragedy and the inspiration for so many legendary stories.

The tale of Bella Rawhide and Timber Kate is a great example of that principle in action, but it doesn't end with their deaths, nor does it stop at the sightings of their spirits dancing on an empty stage.

No, it's an ending that was foreshadowed by their occupational roles.

As I mentioned before, Kate worked as the promoter of the act that she shared with Bella, putting posters up all over the towns where they performed.

In fact, some of those posters are still around today, and if you're lucky enough, you might stumble across one in your travels.

The most popular one was said to portray Timber Kate wearing a spangled outfit of red and gold as she held a pink-clad bella in the palm of her hand.

Bejeweled like that, it's easy to think that she made the whole place shimmer.

Naturally, to find one of these advertisements intact after all these years would be a thrill.

Any collector of vintage Americana would want an item like that on their wall at home.

But be forewarned.

It's best to leave the poster where you found it.

Because according to legend, anyone who attempts to take it down is said to come face to fist with one of Timber Kate's famous punches, as one unfortunate tobacco store owner found out the hard way.

The man in question ran a shop on a Carson City street corner.

One night he was closing up a bit later than usual.

Perhaps business had been booming that day, or maybe he'd gotten caught up balancing the books that evening.

Whatever the reason, he eventually locked the doors and set out for home, just as he always did.

Except this night, he spotted something on the block.

Well, someone.

It was a figure, tall tall and strong, standing next to a brick wall.

The shop owner slowly approached and noticed that they were clad in the most unusual outfit.

Cowboy boots, a sombrero, and a skirt.

It was a woman, and she was putting up a poster.

The man stepped closer, careful not to frighten her, until he was standing right behind her.

Suddenly, like a trick of the light, she vanished before his eyes.

So he just stood there, looking incredulously at the poster she had left behind.

It was an advertisement for a musical act starring two performers, Bella Rawheide and Timber Kate.

Thinking it was something special, the man reportedly dug his fingers in around the edge and started to peel it off the wall.

Before he could finish though, and without warning, he felt something strike the back of his neck.

Instantly he collapsed to the ground where he was discovered many hours later.

Folklore can be vicious.

It can expose our prejudices, break our misconceptions, or fill in the blanks we long to complete.

But more often than not, folklore aims straight for the heart, hitting us right in the center of our emotions and our deepest fears.

I hope you enjoyed today's journey through the legends spanning the troubled waters of love and social boundaries.

Apparently, no one is safe from folklore, and people like Timber Cate and Pierce Gaveston have been right there in the pages of history, showing us the dangers of romance.

But we're not done quite yet.

I've saved one more tale of troubled love to share with you, and it's bound to give you chills.

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Oscar Wilde died tragically young.

When the famed Irish poet and playwright passed away from a bacterial infection on November the 30th, 1900, he was only 46 years old.

And despite his prolific literary output, he died a pauper.

Even worse, his death was more than preventable.

It had been the two years of hard labor he'd been sentenced to in the Reading Jail in 1895 that had destroyed his health.

And what horrible crime had he been charged with?

Maybe murder or grand larceny?

No, he was sent to prison for being gay.

Now, those of us who read in a folklore or bask in the goodness of creepy legends might expect Wilde's ghost to haunt that jail.

That would be poetic, right?

A spirit trapped on earth, reliving the pain and suffering in the place they experienced it.

But if the stories are true, Oscar Wilde Wilde picked a few different spots to hunt.

Writer George Sylvester Virek, a man who went on to become a Nazi propagandist, had a theory that Wilde was actually undead.

You see, he believed that the author of Picture of Dorian Gray was a vampire.

And Virek suggested that Wilde had faked his own death in order to join the ranks of those evil bloodsuckers.

There was, allegedly, a supposed passage written in a letter by Wilde to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, while he was in Reading Jail.

The letter had been published following the author's death.

The passage, taken from the original German translation, read, Terrible as are the dead when they rise from their graves, the living that come back from the grave are far more terrible.

But of course, not everyone believed Virek's wild claim.

In 1905, a group of Italian intellectuals claimed to have met Oscar Wilde's spirit and they asked him what he had thought about his trial.

To which the ghost replied, it was typically English, perjurers, hypocrites, puritans.

Shifting locations a bit, some visitors to the Waverly Inn in Halifax, Nova Scotia have also reported seeing Oscar Wilde hovering outside one of the rooms that he used to stay in on his visits.

He's often been spotted wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a cape draped across his shoulders.

Even Wilde's own nephew, the poet Arthur Cravan, had several encounters with his uncle's spirit.

He published depictions of two of those accounts in the Parisian literary magazine that he founded in 1912 called Matinon.

In the first one, published under the pseudonym W.

Cooper, he described his uncle's ghost as having a, and I quote, Greek profile, aristocratic nose, and a sculpted mouth curved like an antique mask.

He claimed that his uncle entered the room the way a French king might with an elegant nonchalance.

The second article discussed Wilde's appearance in Craven's Paris apartment.

It happened on a rainy night, and the ghost was in a far different state than before.

He was rotund with big arms and legs, yet small feet.

They talked for a while before Cravan turned on him and yelled at him to leave, calling him a bum and a good-for-nothing.

The spirit left, seemingly forever, but eventually returned, as Cravan wrote, a desolate man.

12 years after that, the medium Hester Travers Smith published a collection of messages that she received from Oscar Wilde from Beyond the Grave titled, Oscar Wilde from Purgatory.

Apparently, he demonstrated his usual clever wits while complaining about the afterlife saying being dead is the most boring experience in life.

That is if one accepts being married or dining with a schoolmaster.

And finally, Wilde's ghost is believed to haunt Oxford's Maudlin College, which he attended on a classics scholarship.

A student attending there in 1934 claimed to have seen the late author gliding across the quad in his graduation gown.

That same year, his ghost was spotted in various dorms as well, close to where he had stayed as a student.

Even today, Maudlin College students still encounter Wilde's spirit from time to time.

He's been seen looking out from balcony windows and even steering a boat beneath Maudlin Bridge, which honestly sounds like a pretty nice way to spend one's afterlife.

Or as Wilde once wrote himself, Death must be so beautiful.

To lie in the soft brown earth with the grasses waving above one's head and listen to silence, to have no yesterday and no tomorrow, to forget time, to forgive life, and to be at peace.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Cassandra De Alba.

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