Legends 10: Haunted Melodies

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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.

French novelist Victor Hugo once wrote, music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.

Music is emotion laid raw, set on the plate of the listener to be devoured and digested.

It's artistic nourishment, meant to satisfy and sustain us when nothing else will.

When we're happy, we dance.

When we've suffered loss, we flood our ears with the songs of those who have suffered as well.

Music is all at once a solitary experience and a communal one.

We may grieve alone, but we're not the only people to find ourselves there, and we have the songs to prove it.

But music has other qualities as well.

It can be a time machine, transporting us back to our senior prom, or our first kiss with our spouse, or something as simple as listening to the radio in the kitchen while our mom makes us soup on a rainy afternoon.

Music can help us relive our best and even our worst memories.

It can even distract us from mundane jobs, allowing us to get lost in its melodies until it's time to clock out.

Music can be a salve, but it can also be an irritant.

It can amplify negative emotions, making us angrier or more depressed.

A certain song can remind us of the pain of losing someone close to us or remind us of how short our lives really are.

Or it can, if some legends are to be believed, even kill us.

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

People often come to music when they're young, taking up an instrument when they're still in grade school.

They join the band, play for a number of years, and then they go off to college and often abandon it for other pursuits.

But it wasn't going to be like that for Annie.

Annie would keep up with the violin throughout her life.

It's just a shame that life did not last longer.

Annie made quite the impact during her short time on Earth.

Born Harriet Annie Marshall on September 7th of 1879, she was the daughter of Dr.

Winfield Scott Marshall and H.H.

Eline Marshall.

The family lived in Centralia, Illinois, where Annie developed a love of the violin.

She took to the instrument in a way that most people could only dream of.

She was a prodigy, and by the time she turned 11, she'd become one of the most gifted players in the area.

But sadly, her fate was not to play the grandest auditoriums and arenas in the country for crowds of thousands.

Just after her 11th birthday, Annie passed away from diphtheria.

Although more dramatic versions of this tale say that her father beat her to death with her own violin.

Luckily, the truth is less violent.

Her parents loved her with their whole hearts and mourned her loss the way any parent would.

Following her death, her body was buried in Centralia Cemetery, known today as Elmwood Cemetery.

It's located west of the Raccoon Creek Reservoir, off of Grag and Sycamore Streets.

Today, the graveyard, which dates back to the 1860s, holds 17,000 buried residents.

But at the time of Annie's death, that number was far fewer.

She was buried in a unique grave for the time, too, one befitting of her gifts.

Her headstone was built to look like a temple, with four pillars seated upon a gray stone base, emblazoned with the name Marshall in arched letters.

There's a plaque there that reads, each year of your life was a new song more delightful than all before.

And on the top stands the most haunting piece of all, a life-size statue of Annie herself holding her treasured violin.

It's an elaborate and ornate grave for a young girl taken from the world far too soon, and it shows just how much she was missed by both her family and the community.

She was mourned by everyone, and the town lavished her resting place with flowers.

And over the years, the statue itself earned a simple but touching nickname.

It's called Violin Annie.

But there's something about a child's grave that's out of place.

The very notion of it seems wrong.

Children are meant to live long, fulfilling lives and die happily in old age.

And it's no wonder that Annie's burial site has garnered something of a reputation among those who live in Centralia.

They say that it's haunted.

But not in a scary way.

Her ghost doesn't torment the living the way that other spirits might.

Instead, hers is kind and warm, tied forever to the one thing she loved most in life, music.

Those who pass by the cemetery have been said to hear beautiful ghostly violin music emanating from Annie's grave after dark.

Visitors have also witnessed green tears flowing from the statue's eyes, sometimes in tandem with the song being played, as though she has been pained by her own performance.

Skeptics say that those tears are nothing more than green moss or lichen growing along the statue's cheeks.

But for those who visit Annie's grave on Halloween night, they might even see it glow.

Multiple people have described a sense of gentle warmth that comes over them as they move toward Annie's grave.

It's a testament to the kind of girl she must have been while she was still alive.

One who was both loving and beloved, who deserved to grow up with the family and friends who adored her.

Who knows how she might have turned out?

Perhaps we lost one of the world's greatest violinists without ever knowing it.

But what happened to the violin that she loved to play so much?

Was she buried with it?

Or did the family hold on to it as a memento to remind them of the joy in the music with which she filled the house?

Unfortunately, the cherished instrument went missing just after her death.

A relative had purchased an antique violin case from the family, but when they opened it up, they found it to be empty.

And yet the sound of her bow gliding across the strings can still be heard today.

All you have to do is visit Annie's grave in Elmwood Cemetery.

You can't miss it.

She remains standing there, waiting for her audience.

Music's very foundation is built on emotion.

Whether we've just broken up with a former partner or we're sitting on top of the world and looking down on creation, Music is there to carry us along.

Songs have the power to let us dig into our feelings, or they can change them for us.

Perhaps hearing a certain tune might make you remember a difficult time in your life, or an upbeat pop song can put a smile back on your face.

But there is one song that can do more than that.

In fact, legend has it, this diddy doesn't just make the listener feel sad, it makes them question their very existence.

Written in late 1932 by Hungarian pianist Resho Shereš, Vige a Vilagnak was very much a song of its time.

Its title translates to The World is Ending and was composed during the Depression, when fascism was rearing its ugly head in Hungary.

It was also written in the key of C minor.

Now, a minor key doesn't automatically make a song sad.

Survivor's 1982 hit I of the Tiger, as well as Queen's We Are the Champions, were also written in C minor.

But there was something about Sheresh's song that hit the ears of listeners differently.

The lyrics probably didn't help.

According to the English translation, the first few lines of Vigay a Vilagnak read, Sunday is gloom, my hours are slumberless.

Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless.

Little white flowers will never awaken you, not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you.

Dark, I know, but the original Hungarian lyrics are allegedly even more depressing.

The confluence of circumstances surrounding its creation, along with its soul-crushing lyrics, led to its nickname, the Hungarian Suicide Song Pretty soon legends began to cling to the song like tics the ones that bleed it of its benign sadness and infect it with a cursed reputation people whispered and gossiped that its nickname the Hungarian suicide song was more than just a funny moniker they believed the tune was tied to a rash of real-world suicides Over the coming years, reports of individuals taking their own lives started to rise and rumors of the song weren't far behind One teenage girl allegedly drowned herself while clutching the sheet music to the song.

Another woman was said to have overdosed while it was playing on repeats in the background and one man had scribbled its lyrics into his suicide note before taking his life.

In total, at least 17 separate suicides in Hungary were linked to the song.

Some believe the country banned the song eventually, but there's no proof of that ever happening.

Instead, its contagious effects did what every disease eventually does.

It spread.

And when it was translated into English English in 1935, that meant that the melancholy experienced by Hungarian listeners could now be felt by people across the pond.

1941 brought American audiences a bona fide hit, courtesy of Billie Holiday.

But even though the lyrics had been translated into a new language, its effects seemed to transcend all borders and barriers.

Whispers spread, claiming that American suicide numbers tied to the song were climbing as World War II progressed, with a number rumored to be as high as 200 at one time.

America, like Hungary, never banned the song outright, but British radio sure did.

Stations felt that it was just too depressing, that it would harm the morale of their troops.

Now, it's tragic, but Hungary has long held the record for the highest suicide rates in the world, so it's possible that the song had little to nothing to do with the number of deaths reported during the 1930s and 40s.

It very well could have just been bad timing.

But there is one essential true suicide linked very closely with the song.

Years after the war ended, in 1968, a man jumped from a building in Budapest.

He survived the leap and was taken to a hospital to have his injuries treated.

But he never left.

He wound up taking his own life while he was there.

What made this man special was that he had perhaps the most intimate relationship with the song of anyone else on earth.

After all, he was the one who had written it.

He was Reshoe Shuresh.

We've all done it before.

Probably while sitting in a restaurant as we wait for our food to arrive, we dip our finger into our water glass and rub it along the edge, creating a high-pitched, otherworldly tone.

Since as far back as the Renaissance, and perhaps even before then, the idea of rubbing glass to generate sound has inspired musicians to find new ways to make music.

This led to the creation of the glass harp, in which a dozen or more glasses were filled with varying amounts of water, each one capable of producing a different note when rubbed with a moistened finger.

But musicians weren't the only ones tickled by the idea of a musical glass.

Inventors also got in on the action, and one of those people was none other than founding father Benjamin Franklin.

It was sometime around 1761, while Franklin was watching his friend Edward Delaval play a glass harp that he was inspired to create a new glass instrument of his own.

It would be more versatile and easier for the average person to sit down and play, while simultaneously having more nuanced musical capabilities.

He collaborated with a glass blower named Charles James to construct it.

This new instrument was comprised of 37 glass bowls, each one a different color that corresponded to the notes they would generate.

The bowls were then placed on a long rod, rod, which was suspended horizontally over a wooden stand.

A wheel at the end would spin when the operator pressed a foot pedal on the floor, rotating the bowls under the player's finger.

Franklin called it a glassy chord, which for obvious reasons didn't stick.

Instead, he renamed it the glass harmonica, like harmonica but without the H, although it did go by harmonica as well.

And we mustn't forget its catchiest name of all, the hydrodactylopsychic harmonica, which is Greek for harmonica to produce music for the soul by fingers dipped in water.

The Glass Harmonica made its public debut in London at Spring Gardens with instrumentalist Marianne Davies at the bowls.

Davies became a hit with the contraption and took it on tour with her, performing alongside her sister, Cecilia, who sang soprano.

Audiences loved the harmonica, whose sound closely resembled the calliope music that plays on a carousel.

It grew so much in popularity that great composers, such as Mozart and Beethoven, wrote music for it, and it even found its way to the homes and fingers of non-musicians as well.

Marie Antoinette was ahead of the curve when she started taking Glass Harmonica lessons, and George Washington even had a go at it himself after attending several performances.

Franz Anton Mesmer, the father of mesmerism and the concept of animal magnetism, incorporated the glass harmonica into his seances, believing it had the power to cure depression and heal all manner of illness.

But Mesmer's insistence on giving the instrument a supernatural bent eventually led to a backlash against Franklin's masterpiece.

Rumors began to spread about its use in erotic occultism, and that angelic sound that had been beloved by audiences all over the world now resembled something haunting, not wholesome.

Doctors at the time insisted that the sound produced by the glass harmonica resulted in dangerous side effects that honestly sounds like they're pulled straight from a modern pharmaceutical commercial on TV.

Melancholia, epileptic fits and seizures, premature births, anxiety, dizziness, hallucinations, and cramps.

Some even claim that listening to its ghostly tones would drive listeners insane.

They also came up with different diagnoses for harmonica-based mood disorders, and some people claim that the high-pitched frequencies reached by the instruments had the power to summon the spirits of the dead.

After a young German boy died during an harmonica concert, the musical bowls were banned all over the country, and audience members weren't the only people affected by it either.

Cecilia and Marianne Davies continued to tour with the instrument, but Cecilia soon began to spiral into depression.

But could glass-created music really do these things to people?

It's possible, but there are other explanations that might offer some more insight.

One suggested reason for the harmonica's negative effects was lead poisoning.

Lead had been an ingredient in both glass making and in the paint paint used to color the instrument.

Had the players running their fingers along the bowls suffered memory loss and behavioral changes due to lead poisoning?

Well, it's doubtful.

Experts claim that the glass would have only contained trace amounts of lead, not enough to cause illness from touching it.

So, what about its frequency?

Well, the harmonica produced a sound within the 1 to 4 kilohertz zone, a range that our brains have a difficult time locating spatially.

In other words, when people heard the harmonica, they couldn't tell tell where the sound was coming from.

This only helped its reputation as an eerie, otherworldly instrument.

But as with all new musical trends and fads, the glass harmonica became the victim of a prudish culture unable to cope with its effects on the youth.

Between its more clear novelty and its association with Mesmer's erotic seances, it was only a matter of time before Franklin's glass bowls caused a moral panic across Europe.

A musical instrument killed by by the power of folklore.

There was another Mary Ann.

She was also a well-known harmonica player.

Born in Germany in 1769, she suffered about with smallpox when she was just four years old, which left her blind.

But that didn't stop her from having a passion for music.

At age six, she started with lessons on the harpsichord, a kind of piano where the strings were plucked when the keys were pressed, rather than being struck with a hammer.

And she was apparently quite talented for her age, something that only seemed to grow as she got older.

Five years later, she was introduced to the instrument that would alter the course of her life, the glass harmonica.

She started by taking lessons from the local choir master, who trained her for a decade before Mary Ann struck out on her own.

In 1791, she joined journalist Heinrich Bosler and his wife, who followed Marianne on tour as she played the Glass Harmonica for crowds all over Europe.

She spent the next 10 years, traveling from Berlin to Prague, to Dresden, to Leipzig, and more, entertaining audiences with the dulcet tones of Franklin's invention.

While in Berlin, she played four separate times for King Frederick Wilhelm II.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was even in attendance for at least one of her performances and was so taken with both the instrument and the woman playing it that he went on to write two pieces for the Glass Harmonica.

And then, around 1794, Marianne moved to London where she had a new harmonica built for her there, one that would last her for all of her tours going forward.

Sadly, while traveling through Germany, Mary Ann fell ill and passed away.

She was only 39 years old.

And her death was attributed to pneumonia, which had also caused inflammation in her lungs.

But there was something more, a nagging feeling that her demise was the result of something her doctors might have missed.

You see, those who had followed the rumors of the Glass Harmonica's powers couldn't help but wonder if Franklin's cursed instrument had a part in Marianne's passing.

After all, a child had already died, and many other people had fallen ill as a result of listening to the instrument's ethereal tones.

Also, Cecilia Davies had been stricken with melancholia after being exposed to the instrument for so long.

And so the question was, had Marianne Kirschgessner died from a fever as her doctors said, or had she succumbed to the effects of prolonged use of the glass harmonica?

No one is quite sure, but her death didn't help extend the device's longevity either.

Its use eventually fell out of fashion, and musicians moved on to other, less erotically occult instruments.

Well, everyone except one person, Benjamin Franklin, who enjoyed playing his glass harmonica all the way up until his death at the ripe old age of 84.

Music and mystery seem to have a long history together.

From devilish instruments to the tragic deaths of those who play them, folklore is filled with tales of deadly music, and that idea has been around much longer than you'd think.

In fact, I've saved an old one for last.

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In 1922, a team led by British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the long-lost tomb of Egyptian king Tutankhamun, buried within the Valley of the Kings.

And as Egyptologists are wont to do, Carter opened it.

Tutankhamun, or King Tut for short, was known as the boy king, who reigned from the time when he was eight years old in 1332 BC until his death at the age of 17 in 1323.

According to the legend, King Tut's tomb was sealed with a curse, one that would be released upon its opening.

George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was a friend of Carter's and had financed the excavation.

He'd also tagged along to watch its opening firsthand.

Shortly after Carter breached the seal of the tomb, Herbert was bitten by a mosquito.

The bite grew infected, which led to blood poisoning, a disease that took Lord Carnarvon's life four months and seven days later.

But he was only the first.

Four other members of the excavation team, or visitors to the tomb while it was being explored also died prematurely in the years after it opened.

According to the legend, those involved with opening Tutankhamun's final resting place were being punished for their transgression.

But while the curse of King Tut's tomb is quite famous, less so is the story of a specific set of artifacts that he was buried with, and they had a curse all their own.

Among the artifacts interred with King Tut's sarcophagus was a pair of trumpets.

One was made of sterling silver with a wooden core.

The other had been crafted from bronze or copper, and both had been engraved with ornate patterns and images of the gods.

The bronze-colored trumpet was found among various military objects.

Pictures of the instrument were also found in wall paintings depicting different battles.

It's likely that they had been used during times of war to summon soldiers to battle.

And neither one had been played in over 3,000 years.

17 years after the tomb's discovery, radio presenter Rex Keating had an idea.

He wanted to play the trumpets live on the air for listeners all over the world.

He managed to convince the Egyptian Antiquities Service to lend him the silver trumpet, with the honor of playing it falling on a member of the British Army who also happened to be an expert musician.

The soldier first tried playing multiple notes, which the trumpet was not designed to do.

He then attempted to slide a modern mouthpiece over the opening, which caused the ancient horn to shatter.

The trumpet was eventually repaired, and a short time later, a second attempt was made to play it.

This performance would be carried out by James Tappern, another musician from the British Army.

Live from the Cairo Museum, Tappern lifted the instrument to his mouth.

In the audience was Alfred Lucas, one of the last surviving members of Carter's original expedition.

And honestly, he looked worried.

Did he fear that another crack at playing it would damage it further?

Or did he know something else, something that no one else was aware of?

Just five minutes before Tappern was set to play, the lights in the museum suddenly went dark.

Candles were lit and the broadcast continued as planned.

According to one report, Lucas's hands trembled.

Finally, the trumpeter placed his lips on the mouthpiece, another modern one like the one that had been tried before, except this time it fit.

Tappern blew into the instrument and played several notes at varying intervals.

The sound was strong, but it wavered as though either the horn or the player were unsure it would hold together.

But it did, much to the amazement of everyone present.

Yet with those notes came another curse.

You see, these horns would have been blown during times of war, and now they were sounding again.

It was inevitable that war would follow once again.

Four and a half months after Tapparon's performance, World War II broke out.

This fell in line with Lord Carnarvon's death roughly four months after being bitten by a mosquito.

Then, in 1967, the trumpet was played again for the first time since that 1939 broadcast.

Soon after, the six-day war between Egypt and Israel began.

In 1990, a student researching King Tut's collection played the trumpet, which hadn't been touched since 1967.

The Gulf War broke out shortly after, and in 2011, it was blown into by a museum staff member who had been documenting it for the facility's collection.

One week later, the Egyptian Revolution began.

Now, it's important to point out that all but the original 1939 performances were done in private within the museum.

There was no audience present to verify that they happened at all, and each instance was reported by the same person.

But the lack of a secondary source wasn't necessarily a problem because the man who had disclosed all of them happened to have intimate knowledge of the exhibit.

It was Hale Hassan, the curator of the Tutankhamun collection at the Egyptian Museum, and he asserted that the instruments do indeed hold magical powers to create war.

this episode of lore was produced by me Aaron Mankey with writing by Harry Marks and research by Jenna Rose Nethercott lore is much more than just a podcast there's a book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video check them both out if you want more lore in your life information about all of that and more more is available over at lorepodcast.com.

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And as always, thanks for listening.