REMASTERED – Episode 41: Hole in the Wall

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Folklore and superstition are fluid, flexible things.

There's no set formula for how they're born, no rules or recipes to create them.

They just happen.

Sometimes folklore is instructive.

It comes first and teaches us how to behave.

Other times it's reactive.

It sprouts up long after a key historical event, like a sapling that grows from an acorn buried by a forgetful squirrel.

Either way, it's always been a mirror showing us who we all really are.

There have been times though when people have crafted their own tales and then set out to convince everyone else of their truth.

Counterfeit folklore.

Sometimes it's done for the money and sometimes for that drug we all seem to be addicted to.

Attention.

Take George Hull, for example.

In 1868, he purchased a 10-foot-long block of gypsum from a quarry in Iowa.

Then he had it shipped to New York, where he paid a sculptor to carve it into the likeness of an enormous human corpse.

And finally, he transported it to the small New York town of Cardiff, where he buried it on his cousin's farm.

When that cousin, William Newell, hired two men to dig a well about a year later, he pretended to be shocked when they uncovered the stone figure.

They pulled it from the ground, and locals quickly decided it was a petrified man.

The Cardiff Giant, they called it.

Newell built a tent over it and sold tickets to anyone who wanted to see it.

He, and his cousin George, of course, made a lot of money off the prank.

Before the invention of things like the camera, the internet, and the telephone, it was a lot easier to pull the wool over people's eyes.

The lack of documentable proof helped those hoaxes grow and spread, and most of those fakes were harmless, thankfully.

History contains moments, though, when those lies have come with more serious consequences.

Social rejection, legal action, even imprisonment.

And on rare occasions, those lies have even cost innocent people their lives.

All because of a good old-fashioned hoax.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

In the years between the 16th century and the early 18th century, a wave of witch trials swept through Western society.

Most of us know this.

The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 have become something that few people haven't heard about.

And most know, if only anecdotally, that trials just like it happened across Europe and in the European colonies of North America.

Putting witches on trial is something that predates Christianity.

In fact, Charlemagne, who ruled much of Europe at the beginning of the 9th century, declared that anyone caught burning a witch would be executed.

But religious fervor in the late 1500s began to turn witchcraft into something that was more evil, more feared, and more panic-inducing.

A lot of the beliefs about witches that were common in the Salem trials actually came into the public mind through a trial in England in 1612.

The Pendle witches, as they were called, all confessed to have sold their souls to the devil himself.

They took credit for supernatural acts, claiming to have bewitched their neighbors.

After a short trial, all 10 of the suspected witches were hanged.

It was during this time that witchcraft laws were passed in England, Wales, and Scotland.

Each were designed to outlaw and prosecute anyone who practiced it, as well as those that supported them.

The Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 declared those crimes to be capital offenses, which meant they were punishable by death.

In England, it's estimated that roughly 500 people were tried as witches, but in Scotland that number was much higher.

Estimates range from 4,000 to 6,000 suspects brought to trial, and over 1,500 of those were executed.

The first major test of the Scottish Witchcraft Act took place in 1590.

King James VI had traveled to Europe to marry Princess Anne, sister of the King of Denmark.

When a terrible storm prevented their first attempt at a return trip, a Danish admiral made an offhand comment about witches, and that set off a witch hunt in both Denmark and Scotland.

As a result, over 100 people from North Berwick were arrested, and over 70 of those were convicted.

Most confessed under torture, although historians are unclear as to how many were actually executed.

Just seven years later, Scotland became caught up in what historians now call the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1597.

The first case came to light in March of that year with the trial of Janet Wissart of Aberdeen.

She was accused of using a cantrip and burned for the crime.

A month later, though, a key suspect was brought in.

Margaret Aitken from Balwiri was arrested and promptly tortured for information.

She struck a deal with her accusers, however, and promised to locate more witches in exchange for her life.

But remember, almost all of us would promise anything if it meant that the torture would stop.

In a sense, Margaret was helping to build a nesting doll of lies.

She would find the fake witches for the people who believed that witches were real.

Over 400 people from across the country were accused of witchcraft.

Many of those suspects were identified by Margaret, called out for the simple crime of being noticed by her.

It took the authorities over four months to discover that she herself was a fraud, but at that point it was too late.

Over 200 people had already been executed.

A second great witch hunt took place over the course of a year between 1661 and 1662, and this time nearly 700 suspects were arrested, and more than half of them were killed.

The methods varied, but most were burned, strangled, or drowned, or even crushed beneath heavy stones.

And I'm telling you all of this so that you can understand the fever that seemed to have spread throughout Scotland.

People were afraid.

They were afraid that witches might be real things and that their neighbors might secretly be one.

Mostly, though, they were afraid of being accused, because once the judicial system sunk its teeth into them, there was little hope.

That hysteria made an accusation deadly, you see.

You could call your neighbor mean or ugly or even a thief, but you rarely risked hurting more than feelings.

Call him a witch, though, and you could very well spark a wildfire that could consume your entire town.

And in 1697, that's exactly what happened.

In August of 1696, Christian Shaw became sick.

She was the 11-year-old daughter of a wealthy landowner in central Scotland, and thankfully for her, that position afforded her special treatment.

Right away, she was taken to nearby Glasgow for medical care, where she was quick to tell doctors what was wrong with her.

According to her, it was simple.

She had been cursed.

Shaw told a story that went something like this.

She had walked into the kitchen kitchen of her home on August 17th to find one of the servants, Catherine Campbell, drinking from a jug of fresh milk.

Shaw might have been 11, but she knew the rules.

She knew how that house functioned, and she understood that the contents of that jug belonged to her father, to her family.

It belonged to her.

Shaw must have been a bold child.

Here she was alone in the kitchen with a grown woman, and she stared Campbell down and told her that she intended to report the theft.

And that's just what she did.

Campbell, according to Shaw, replied with a curse, telling the girl that she wished the devil would, and I quote, haul her soul through hell.

That might have been something that she could have forgotten.

Harsh words in a heated moment, you know?

But just four days later, Shaw turned a corner and came face to face with Agnes Naismith, a local woman rumored to be a witch.

That made the threat real.

If Campbell wanted the devil to carry her away, it made sense that she would send Naismith to do it.

And that, she said, was how she ended up in bed, suffering through torment that her doctors could not identify or treat.

She would twist and writhe with seizures, often crying out in pain.

Other times, she would pass out and remain unconscious for hours.

She was actually taken to the doctor twice, but each time she and her family left, they did so without hope of relief.

The doctors were just as perplexed as the Shaw family.

Sure, this was late 17th century medicine, but it wasn't barbaric.

Even still, no one was able to find the cause of her pain and fits.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

Back home, Shaw's symptoms started to become more and more unusual.

Visitors to her room claimed that she would lean forward from time to time and vomit up objects.

Objects they said that didn't belong inside a little girl.

Feathers and pieces of bone, straw and coal, hairpins, charred wood, even gravel.

All of it was said to have come out of her mouth and everyone knew that that was impossible.

Unless of course, it was due to a curse.

In a moment of support, old Agnes Naismith actually visited Shaw in her room.

Family was there with her, partly for support, but also for protection.

Naismith was a witch, after all.

But the old woman wasn't there to curse the girl further.

She said she came to pray.

In the days afterward, Shaw claimed that Naismith was no longer tormenting her from a distance.

It was as if the old woman had called off her curse and called it quits.

Others though weren't off the hook.

Along with Catherine Campbell, the servant who had stolen a sip of milk, more names were uttered by Shaw in between her seizures and fits.

But when the symptoms failed to disappear or improve, she was taken back to Glasgow for another examination.

This time though, the doctor had new ideas to present to her family.

The doctor was a prominent Glasgow physician named Matthew Brisbane, and he suggested that the girl might actually be wrestling with a demonic force.

It was a logical explanation, given the era and circumstances.

There was something inside her that was producing mysterious symptoms, and medical care hadn't been able to identify the cause.

To him, that left the spiritual realm.

Christian Shaw, he believed, was possessed.

Back home, the local church stepped in to do what they could.

People fasted.

They prayed.

They gathered in the meeting house, but none of it seemed to help.

So as Christian Shaw continued to mutter more and more names of people that she claimed were tormenting her, her father wrote them all down.

And that's when he did what any father might have done in his place at the time.

He wasn't a noble per se, but he was the local laird and that title came with some political pull.

Angry, frustrated, and more than a little desperate, he went to the local authorities.

He pushed the list of names into their hands and then he demanded justice.

When that justice arrived though, it was more than bitter.

As a result of Shaw's list, a council was set up to look into the matter.

One of the first to be arrested was a woman named Elizabeth Anderson.

It's not clear whether she was tortured or just traumatized over the arrest herself, but she quickly confessed to witchcraft and then started to name others who had done the same.

Those others were already on the list, but hearing it from a self-proclaimed witch made it that much easier to go after them.

Anderson's confession earned her a lot of company in jail.

All told, records show that in January of 1697, 35 people were arrested and held for trial.

Evidence was heard, neighbors were brought in to speak to the character of the suspects, stories were told, and these stories weren't nice.

Yes, there were the main issues of Christian Shah being sick in bed in her father's house, and they covered that.

But other items came up as well.

It was as if the town had been given a platform to air all of their grievances and they wanted to take full advantage of that.

They might not have had buses back then, but they acted like it, throwing people under them with every word they uttered.

The trial stretched on for months.

Elizabeth Anderson's elderly father died in jail while awaiting a verdict.

Others were released as stories revealed their innocence.

In the end, seven suspects remained, including Agnes Naismith.

By June of that year, after five months of imprisonment, they were all sentenced to death.

One of them, John Reed, took his own life in jail before they could carry out his execution.

On June 10th, 1697, the final six were hanged in Gallow Green, in the west end of Paisley.

After the accused witches had been killed, their bodies were piled together and set aflame.

Superstitions of the time told people that even after being hanged, the witches might still be alive, so the fire was a precaution.

Even still, they didn't know when to let down their guard.

Local legend says that's just what happened there in Paisley that day.

One of the executioners actually borrowed a cane from someone in the crowd and after using it to nudge an arm back into the fire, tried to hand it back.

The villager refused to touch it.

After the flames died down and there was nothing more than a pile of ash, the remains were gathered together and buried.

A ring of cobblestones was arranged around the burial site, and a horseshoe, an ancient symbol used to ward off magic and protect specific locations, was placed in the center of the ring.

They did this because of something that happened before the execution.

There in the center of town, Agnes Naismith was said to have addressed the crowd that had gathered to watch.

She had cursed all of them and all of their descendants after them.

She cursed the town of Paisley and the Shaws and the trial and everything about it.

The horseshoe was meant to act as a seal, locking in that curse and preventing it from escaping.

Sadly, it was all a lie.

Every last bit of what happened in Paisley was built on a foundation of fraud and make-believe.

Naismith knew it.

That's why she cursed them, after all.

And if it wasn't for the irrational panic that had swept through the community, the villagers might have known it too.

They knew what we all do, that there's no such thing as a witch who flies on a broomstick and turns neighbors into animals with a word.

No one can make a young girl sick, cause her to vomit up feathers and pins.

It's not logical or rational.

It's not real.

We can see now looking back how this mess got out of hand so quickly.

Lie upon lie upon lie.

The human desire for self-preservation is a powerful weapon and it was used to justify behavior that wasn't normally acceptable.

It always has been.

It still is.

I wish I could tell you that this story ended justly.

that Shaw was caught in her lie and punished for building such a deadly hoax.

But that itself would be a lie.

She grew up and eventually pioneered the manufacturing of thread, something that fueled her town's economy for generations.

As much as possible, Shaw got away with it.

But lives were lost.

People were tortured and killed.

Families were torn apart and forever altered.

Shaw had spread lies that hurt others.

Then those people told lies that hurt still more.

And finally, the rest of the town lied to itself and accepted it all as gospel truth.

Because of fear, because of social pressure.

And because sometimes it's easier to let the current wash you away than it is to swim against it toward the truth.

No one knows why Christian Shaw did what she did.

Maybe she was bored.

Maybe she liked the attention.

Maybe she truly hated some of the people she accused.

In the end though, those people died and all because of a hoax.

There are theories.

It's possible that she suffered from conversion disorder, where anxiety is converted into physical symptoms.

It's also been suggested that she might have been exhibiting signs of Munchausen syndrome, a condition where people pretend to have a disease or illness in order to draw attention or sympathy from others.

These ideas are certainly true, but it's also possible that she just flat out lied.

People are very good at lying, after all.

If we're honest with ourselves, we're a lot more gullible than we'd like to admit.

Spend some time on Facebook and you'll witness the power of a good old-fashioned hoax.

Sometimes a lie can fool people because they're blind to reason or because their prejudice and hatred prevent them from seeing the truth.

Sometimes though, lies persist because superstition feeds the flames.

No matter the reason, people get hurt.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

Well, you get the idea, right?

In 1839, we came one step closer to understanding the how of what Christian Shaw did in 1696.

That year, two researchers were examining the Shaw home and discovered something on the wall where the head of Christian's bed would have been positioned.

It was a hole.

The hole was cut at an angle, making it nearly invisible to anyone entering the room from the hallway.

But from the bed, it was perfectly positioned for moving small objects through.

Objects like feathers and pins.

And don't ignore the other question that this new detail begs us to ask.

Who passed those items through?

Shaw, it seems, had a helper.

In the 1960s, the original horseshoe, the one that marked the grave of the victims of the trial, went missing following some roadwork.

Decades of economic hardship followed, reminding some of the curse uttered by Agnes Naismith, the curse that the old horseshoe was meant meant to repel.

The town placed a new horseshoe over the grave in 2008.

Maybe, like the people caught up in those lies three centuries earlier, we still have a hard time today separating fact from fiction.

And maybe, we always will.

There's something both reassuring and disappointing about history.

It shows us that tricksters and frauds have always been around and reminds us that they're still here today.

The upside, I suppose, is that it means there are more stories for us to explore.

In fact, I have one more to share with you today.

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

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People invent hoaxes for all sorts of reasons.

It might be to further a political agenda or make money or because there's just nothing better to do.

But what happens when a hoax grows into something more?

What happens when the truth turns a hoax into a worldwide phenomenon?

In the Scottish Highlands, southwest of Iverness, is a loch or lake.

It measures 22.5 miles long, nearly 2 miles wide, and it holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined.

It's called Loch Ness, but its measurements aren't why people know it so well.

For that, we can thank what is believed to be swimming in its murky, peat-filled waters, the Loch Ness Monster.

Also known as Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster is perhaps one of, if not the, most famous cryptids in the world.

The earliest documented sightings of monsters in the loch date back to 565 AD.

In August of that year, an Irish missionary named Saint Columbia saved a monk's life after spotting a monster swimming in the river Ness.

It was about to take a hearty chump out of him when Saint Columbia shouted at it to leave, sending the beast swimming away.

However, even though monster sightings go back as far as the 6th century, the Nessi craze didn't really kick in until the early 1930s.

Think beetle mania, but for mythological creatures.

It started in 1933, when a man named George Spicer and his wife were driving near Loch Ness.

They noticed something strange crossing the road in front of their car before disappearing into the water.

Mr.

Spicer described it as, the nearest approach to a dragon or prehistoric animal that I have ever seen in my life.

His story was published in the Courier newspaper, and the report drew thousands of tourists to the area, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Nessie.

Following George Spicer's sighting, the London Daily Mail decided to get some evidence of its own.

The paper sent actor, director, and famed game hunter Marmaduke Duke Wetherell to Loch Ness with one job, track down proof of Nessie's existence.

Wetherell got to work investigating the area around the loch and noticed tracks in the mud.

They were large, four-toed footprints, unlike any animal that would have lived in that environment.

Plaster casts were sent out to a lab for analysis, but not before word of his discovery was made public.

Wetherell became a household name overnight.

Eventually, the lab results came back and the verdict was in.

Duke Wetherell had indeed discovered hippos.

The tracks had been made by hippopotamus feet, but hippos didn't live near the lock, so how did they get there?

Hippos used to be hunted.

Their feet turned into umbrella stands for rich tourists to put in their homes.

Someone had used their umbrella stand to create the tracks in the mud and fool people like Wetherell.

The announcement ruined his reputation.

Even the Daily Mail, which had hired him in the first place, took shots at him.

One year later, however, new evidence surfaced, and this time, it looked as though the Daily Mail had finally caught its monster.

On April 1st of 1934, the paper published a black and white photograph of a long curved neck and a head emerging from the depths.

It looked like a sea monster or an ancient plesiosaur.

This was was the world's first look at Nessie in all her glory.

It immediately cemented itself as the most famous and reputable photographic proof that the Lachness monster was real.

Today, any photo posted on the internet is immediately deconstructed by teams of self-described experts, but back in 1934, the public took this photo at face value.

Why?

Because of who submitted it.

Dr.

Robert Kenneth Wilson.

Wilson was a highly respected gynecologist whose opinion was not questioned or discounted.

He was a man of science and integrity, and if he, a doctor, said that he had snapped a picture of the Loch Ness monster, then there was no reason to doubt his claim.

The photo became known as the surgeon's photograph and is the image that appears wherever someone looks up the Loch Ness monster online.

It drove untold numbers of monster hunters to the shoreline, keeping the Nessie mythos alive for decades.

And for many, it was hoped that somewhere among the peats and muck was a real creature, a living remnant from an age gone by.

Then, nearly 60 years after that photo hit the front pages of papers all over the world, another man came forward.

His name was Christian Sperling.

He was 93 years old and had something he needed to get off his chest before he died.

You see, back in 1934, Christian had worked as a model maker.

A man had come to hire him to make a model.

It was to be made of plastic and curved into a long hook-like shape.

Some might have said it resembled the neck and the head of an animal.

Sperling crafted a simple sculpture and mounted it to a toy submarine.

The whole apparatus measured between 8 and 12 inches tall, and when it was finished, it was taken to Loch Ness, where it was photographed.

And that's how the surgeon's photo was created.

It's impossible to tell the model's size in the photo since it's surrounded by water, but anyone looking for proof just needs to dive down to the bottom of the lake and look for themselves.

Sperling's benefactor and another co-conspirator sunk it to the bottom after they were done.

So, who exactly hired Sperling to create the fake Nessie that had captivated the globe for so long?

Well, it was kind of a family affair.

You see, Christian Sperling wasn't just a model maker.

He was also Duke Wetherell's stepson.

After being made a fool of by the Daily Mail, Wetherell wanted revenge, so he hired his stepson to make the Nessie model for him.

He then convinced Robert Kenneth Wilson to sell the photograph of the model to the Daily Mail as his own, knowing Wilson's reputation would contribute to its authenticity.

Duke Wetherell may have pulled one over on the Daily Mail for ruining his good name, but Scotland got the last laugh in the end.

The country sees $80 million in tourism annually thanks to the work of people like Christian Sperling and George Spicer.

But even though the photo has been debunked, that hasn't changed people's belief in Nessie.

To a lot of monster hunters, she's still out there somewhere, gliding beneath the water's surface, just waiting for her close-up.

This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with additional research help from Jenna Rose Nethercott and additional writing from Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.

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 is available over at lorepodcast.com.

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