Episode 214: Spoiled

This is the story of the one.

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Everyone loves a good loophole.

What heist movie or true crime drama would be complete without the suspect getting away from the authorities due to a gap in the law or a weird gray area that makes them untouchable?

It's the stuff at the center of so many good stories.

And it exists in real life too.

To understand what I mean, we need to talk for a moment about a Michigan State University law professor named Brian Colt.

About 20 years ago, he started to write an essay about the Sixth Amendment of the U.S.

Constitution, which, in simple terms, entitles people accused of a crime to a fair trial.

But some trials require a jury of peers, who are pulled from the same district and state that the crime was committed in, and Colt began to wonder, are there any areas in the U.S.

that don't have enough people to fill a jury?

Because if that were to happen, he suggested, no major crime committed there could legally be punished.

Now, it's all legal theory, but it certainly makes sense.

A zone on the map where crimes might be committed, but without residents who could be part of a jury.

And it turns out there is one such location in America.

It's a 50-square-mile slice of Idaho that's uninhabited for a very specific reason.

It's part of Yellowstone National Park.

And it's ironic, I think, that a place of such natural beauty, of such purity and tranquility in simple, gorgeous landscapes, could potentially play host to the perfect crime.

In fact, it's hard to see these protected spaces as anything other than special and good.

But sadly, history has given us plenty of evidence of at least one dependable truth.

The more unspoiled the canvas, the darker the possibilities.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

Open skies, crystal clear water, mountains and ancient trees that stretch to the heavens.

Whenever someone mentions a national park, these are ideas that come to mind.

Something untouched and pristine that has been frozen in time and left exactly as we found it.

Except that's not true.

It's easy to think that we've created all of these amazing national parks as a way of protecting nature, which we certainly did.

But we also did it to protect them from ourselves.

And a good example of that took place in the Yosemite Valley of California back in the middle of the 1800s.

The first Americans to arrive there and see the towering sequoias wanted to capture that beauty.

They painted copies of it, made engravings, and later on as it became more common, even took photographs.

And all of those images traveled back east where they captured the imagination of an entire nation.

Pretty soon there were people setting up makeshift hotels to earn some money off the first wave of tourists.

Then, in June of 1853, a group of gold rush miners passed through, and using chisels and a hand drill, they cut down down a 300-foot-tall tree that historians estimate to have been over 1,200 years old.

The bark of that tree was then removed and reassembled into an empty shell, within which people gathered to hear live music.

Within months, there was even a hotel built nearby, and the stump of that massive tree was used to host entire dance parties upon.

And more and more similar trees met the same fate.

They would take another decade for the federal government to realize what sort of treasure they were losing.

In 1863, they gifted the entire grove of ancient trees to the state of California to protect and maintain.

But that was just one battle in a war that would be waged across the entire country.

Niagara Falls didn't fare so well either.

Prior to 1850, that massive river was lined with wildflowers and old, beautiful trees.

But once people got a hold of it, those were all torn out in favor of gift shops and hotels.

In an effort to accommodate as many people as possible to see the spectacle and the beauty of it all, they have slowly chiseled that beauty away.

Now, while national parks might have restrictions today that prevent people from permanently living inside them, it's important to remember that many of these special locations had already been home to entire cultures for thousands of years, and a good example of that would be the legendary national park, Yellowstone.

For at least 11,000 years, the indigenous people of the region called it home, hunting and living on the same land that tourists visit today.

When American settlers headed west and started arriving, they would have found a landscape flourishing with life, from the abundance of animals and resources, to the people who managed it all.

But in the early 1870s, just after Yellowstone was officially established as a national park, the United States Army was used to push those people out of their home.

All of a sudden, they no longer had access to their hunting grounds or resources they depended on, like the obsidian they mined to create blades and arrowheads.

I mention all of this because it's important to hold everything within its proper context.

So, while our national parks preserve the beauty of the natural world for future generations, we can't forget that they only needed preserving because of our own parasitic nature as humans.

And in setting them up, we stripped many of them from their former caretakers.

Yes, they are special, but there's a dark shadow around their wonderful glow.

For those who like to keep track of records, the very first official national park was Yellowstone, established in 1872.

Today there are 62 of them around the country, broken up into hundreds of smaller units, and together they cover over 85 million acres of land.

The largest on the list is Wrangell St.

Elias National Park up in Alaska at over 13 million acres, and the smallest is the Thaddeus Koshusko National Memorial in Philadelphia at just over 870 square feet.

As I said before, no one is allowed to live inside these special places.

In the words of the 1872 Yellowstone Act, they are reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States.

But those laws, it seems, don't apply to ghosts.

Every legendary location deserves an equally legendary story.

And for those who visit Yellowstone, that's exactly what you can expect.

When most people think of Yellowstone, they picture Old Faithful, that dependable geyser that shows off the volatile power deep beneath the park.

But nearby is another frequently visited place, the Old Faithful Inn.

Built in 1903, it's a massive log cabin-style structure, quite possibly the largest of its kind in the world.

And one specific story has haunted guests there for years.

It tells the tale of a newly married couple who traveled to the inn from far out east in 1915.

It seems that the bride was the daughter of a wealthy businessman who had fallen in love with a servant who worked inside the family home.

Daddy didn't approve though and gave her a choice, ditch the poor man or take a small inheritance and never come back.

The daughter took the second option and the pair married and left town.

I don't know what their final destination was, but the road eventually brought them to the Old Faithful Inn.

But along the way, the groom had gambled away almost all of her small inheritance, and that left them in a constant state of tension and shouting matches.

They had checked into room 127 when they arrived, but no one saw either of them for days.

Finally, the hotel staff opened the door, only to find the bride's headless body, still wearing her wedding dress, they say, laying inside the bathtub.

It would take another few days to find the head, thanks to a growing odor that emanated from a public area at the peak of the hotel known as the Crow's Nest.

Ever since, guests have reported seeing the ghost of a headless woman dressed in white pacing around the staircase leading to the crow's nest.

Others have sworn they've heard the sounds of invisible footsteps running up and down the hallway.

And it would be easy to assume that the long-dead bride was cursed to forever search for her head.

Except for one small detail.

The story is all made up.

It's the creation of George Borneman, who worked there in the 1980s.

It seems he had been asked so many times by guests over the years if the hotel was haunted that he eventually invented a story to give them a satisfactory answer.

But what's oddest of all is that despite the legend being pure fabrication, guests continue to report identical sights and sounds near the crow's nest.

Maybe sometimes the folklore we create takes on a life of its own.

Miles away away at Yosemite National Park is a body of water known as Grouse Lake.

Tall pines stand above its rocky shores, giving the place a calm persona.

But if the stories are true, not everything there is so peaceful.

Back in 1857, a ranger named Galen Clark visited the lake and the indigenous people who live near it, and they took him on a deer hunt.

While out near the lake though, Clark claimed to hear what he described as the cries of a lost dog or a small child.

But the locals had another explanation.

Those were the cries of a ghost, the spirit of a boy who drowned there long before.

For a while, Clark assumed the locals were trying to prey on his gullibility.

Surely it must have been an unusual bird, perhaps a species no one had documented before.

But after standing on that rocky shore and hearing it for himself, he walked away fully convinced.

Grouse Lake is haunted.

And back east, one of America's most haunted national parks is actually a former battleground from the American Civil War.

Gettysburg National Park is a memorial to one of the war's most bloody battles, which took place back in July of 1863.

And right in the middle of the battlefield itself is a natural feature with an unnatural reputation.

The Devil's Den.

It's a collection of massive boulders that seem to have been dropped there in a pile by whatever forces shaped the landscape millions of years before.

As for the name of the place, there are all sorts of theories about where it comes from, but the most prominent is that it was once the home of a vicious legendary snake known as the devil, making the outcropping the devil's den.

During the battle, though, that collection of tall rocks offered shelter to soldiers.

But war is deadly, and it's said that over 2,500 men were killed on and around the boulders, and that much bloodshed is bound to leave a stain, as a number of visitors to the site have reported over the years.

Along with the random, disembodied cries of soldiers at war, many people have encountered a mysterious person in tattered clothing and bare feet.

Most who see him just assume that he's a local reenactment enthusiast or a tour guide in costume, but he's been seen for so long by so many people that he's becoming less and less likely to be either.

One day in the 1970s, a woman was there touring the battlefield.

but she had wandered away from her friends and was beginning to feel a bit worried and lost.

That's when she stumbled upon a man fitting the same description, bare feet, torn clothes, and long hair.

And the two made eye contact.

The strange man raised his arm and pointed in a direction somewhere over her shoulder.

And then he spoke, What you are looking for is over there.

Naturally, the woman turned to see which way he had pointed, hoping it would lead her back to her friends, and then turned back to thank him.

But when she did, her breath caught in her throat.

The man who had been there just moments before had suddenly disappeared.

Few national parks are as visible or memorable as the Grand Canyon.

In fact, it might just be the most famous of them all, known to people all over over the world thanks to its glamorous name and stunning landscape.

And it's easy to see why.

It stretches 277 miles from one end to the other.

And while the average depth of the canyon is around 4,000 feet, some parts go as deep as 6,000.

That's over a mile if you're keeping track.

And naturally, it's breathtaking.

One of my favorite anecdotes about the earliest Europeans to see the place is how in 1540, Spanish explorers set eyes on it and wrote it off as a wasteland.

In fact, for three centuries, it was sometimes referred to on maps as simply the Great Unknown.

And when white settlers did return, they just couldn't wrap their heads around why anyone would want to live there.

In the 1850s, a U.S.

Army first lieutenant named Joseph Christmas wrote that, Ours is the first and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality.

Just a reminder of how fun it is when people are so utterly and spectacularly incorrect.

And as with any location that's so vast and dangerous, there are countless ghost stories to fill that space.

Some are old, like the tales that are whispered about at El Tovar Hotel, a building that sits just 20 feet from the edge of the south rim of the canyon.

Legend says that there's a painting inside the inn that features a person with eyes that seem to follow people around the room.

Other stories claim that a ghostly gentleman has been spotted in the lobby.

He's been known to walk up to guests and invite them to his holiday party.

Oh, and then there are the spirits that haunt the rooms, sometimes tugging on the bedsheets as people sleep.

But some stories are newer as well.

Back in 1956, two passenger planes took off from Los Angeles International Airport, only minutes apart, both headed to destinations in the Midwest.

But somewhere over the Grand Canyon, their flight paths intersected, and those planes, United Flight 718 and TWA Flight 2, collided in the sky.

Each of the collective 128 people aboard the flights died that day, and the wreckage dropped into the canyon below, a location some today refer to as Crash Canyon.

And it was a deadly tragedy that left a mark on the spiritual landscape of the area there, as one story in particular demonstrates for us.

It seems that one night while camping in that same region of the Grand Canyon, a park ranger reported seeing mysterious lights in the distance.

From her tent, she spotted a group of a dozen dozen or so men and women, all dressed in business attire.

They were slowly walking in a line down the trail, led along by a handful of Native American men.

But when this ranger stepped out to confront them, they had vanished.

Oh, and maybe this is a good time to mention that this little part of the canyon has been said to be a sacred Native American site for generations.

In what way?

It's reportedly a place where this world and the next are closer than normal, allowing the dead to pass through the veil.

One last story.

Far to the northern end of the Grand Canyon, there are stories of the wandering woman.

Think of her as the Grand Canyon's own version of La Yorona, often described as a woman dressed in a white gown with small blue flowers embroidered on it, who wears a scarf on her head as she wanders the trails near the north rim.

Those who have encountered her have reported that she's almost always weeping, as if she's experienced some enormous personal tragedy.

Sometimes people will hear the sound and approach it, assuming someone needs help, only to find no one there.

Of course, like most ghost sightings, there are legends to fill in those gaps.

Some say she once lived in the area, but sometime around the 1930s, she received word that her husband and son had both died in a hiking accident, and so she took her own life.

It's the sort of origin story that is both impossible to prove and easy to believe.

thanks to the lack of evidence in either direction.

Well, most evidence.

It seems that many years ago, a ranger who worked in the area was inside his cabin there when he heard the sounds of a person crying.

That first night, he ignored it, but the following night the crying resumed.

He claimed he assumed it was simply one of the other rangers, perhaps homesick or distraught over some personal issue.

But when the sounds returned for a third night, he opened his door to get to the bottom of the matter.

Looking out into the darkness of the night, with the stars spread out like diamonds above the land, he glanced toward the path that passed by the camp.

And that's when he saw something.

It was a ghostly woman in white walking down the trail.

I might be stating the obvious, but America is a huge, diverse, and wonderful yet flawed place to live.

There's a lot of beautiful stuff out there to see, but much of it has a tinge of darkness.

And while many people look at our national parks as a spotless treasure, the truth is somewhat different.

At the end of the day, our job as citizens of the world is to recognize two very opposite things.

Our past is filled with good intentions, but it's also loaded with tragic mistakes.

People aren't perfect, so maybe that's the best we can hope for.

Either way, we'd be good to remember that even our national parks are far from unspoiled.

And yet the march of progress and exploration continues to show us new places that need to be set apart and protected, from industry, from greed, and yes, even from our own mismanagement.

Heck, even as the pandemic of 2020 began to rear its ugly head, a brand new national park was established, continuing that long tradition.

The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is located in West Virginia and covers over 70,000 acres of the New River, just east of Mount Hope.

Today, it's a place where people from all over can hike, climb, mountain bike, and even do a bit of whitewater rafting.

But just a century ago, it was home to a different sort of activity.

Coal mining.

As was so often the case, the boom in mining along the river valley also brought a boom in new settlements.

Communities would pop up almost overnight to serve the needs of people who worked in the mines there.

And by some estimates, there was one town for every half mile of river.

Train stations, lamp houses, general stores, hotels, you name it.

The mining industry attracted it all like moths to a flame.

Today, though, just about all of those towns are empty, abandoned in the decades leading up to the 1950s.

One such place is Thurmond, which had its own train depot and boasted a bar that never closed at the Dun Glen Hotel.

Back then, the place had a reputation for gambling and heavy drinking, but today it's just a collection of empty buildings.

Well, maybe not entirely empty.

One park ranger recently claimed that it's common to lock up buildings for the night, only to return later and find all the doors wide open and water running in some of the sinks.

Perhaps some of the former residents aren't too happy to see their once-bustling community left to fade away.

It makes me wonder, as we continue to welcome additional national parks into the fold of protected space, how many more forgotten stories from the past will they reveal?

And how many more ghost towns will be given a second life?

As the old saying goes, not everything that glitters is gold, and not every treasured national park is pristine and spotless.

In fact, quite a few of them have a blemished past, and I hope today's exploration of their twisted trails was more than a little revealing.

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Some national parks are a slice of pristine nature.

Some are our best attempt to build a wall around a disappearing landscape so others can enjoy it.

And a few are something more.

A new chapter in a dark story many have long since forgotten.

In Kentucky, they have a number of things in abundance, including bourbon, horse racing, and bluegrass music.

But beneath all of that is another natural resource, caves.

In fact, Kentucky is home to the largest known cave system in the world, with over 400 miles of subterranean tunnels already mapped, and another estimated 600 miles to be waiting for explorers.

Folks started noticing the caves pretty much right as settlers were moving into the area.

By 1816, there were already people offering guided tours and charging admission.

Heck, if you want some entertaining Saturday morning reading, do an internet search for the Kentucky Cave Wars and then bask in its weird glory.

Many historians believe the cave system as it exists today wouldn't have been studied if it hadn't been the work for an enslaved man named Stephen Bishop, who was rumored to have placed a narrow rickety ladder across an opening called the Bottomless Pit and then crawled across it with a lantern clenched in his teeth.

It was Bishop's personal maps of the cave system, drawn from memory with his own hand, that guided explorers for years until modern equipment finally became available and his routes were confirmed.

Without him, the national park might not even exist.

But before the cave system became Mammoth Cave National Park in 1941, there was a darker story playing out there.

It started in 1839, when a doctor named John Krogan purchased Mammoth Cave for the modern equivalent of about $300,000, hoping to use it for medical purposes.

Izzy Krogan was battling tuberculosis, and one of the prevalent treatment theories of the time was fresh air.

He had encountered the unusual damp air of the caves before and found them to be invigorating.

So he bought the caves and then began setting up a recovery center inside them.

In the winter of 1842, 16 of Dr.

Krogan's patients moved into a collection of wood and limestone huts that had been constructed inside the cave, where they hoped the change in atmosphere would give their bodies a chance to recover.

And they paid good money for this opportunity too.

And for a while, it seemed to be working.

Dr.

Krogan saw improvement in his patients early on, a good sign that his intuition had been correct.

But over time, that progress began to fall apart.

Looking back on the events now, though, historians are pretty sure why.

Living inside a cave where a number of fires and oil lamps were constantly burning actually flooded their lungs with smoke and ash, which reduced their ability to absorb oxygen.

As their health failed them, more and more patients left the cave-based recovery center.

But not all all got out alive.

Before operations were shut down in early 1843, five people died inside the cave.

Their bodies were placed on a long, low slab of rock known today as Corpse Rock, and then everything was simply abandoned.

Corpse Rock is still there today, as are a few of the limestone huts that Krogan's patients stayed in.

But there are other echoes of the past that haven't faded away as well.

Some believe that an unseen spirit follows them on journeys through the tunnels, and while they can't prove it, they are convinced it's the spirit of Stephen Bishop, still at work inside the cave.

Others think that they've seen him too.

According to one story, a tour group stopped in a large cavern known as the Chief City Room and spent some time listening to the guide there.

At one point though, a number of people looked up above the guide and pointed toward a stone known locally as Sacrifice Rock.

There,

as if perched on the rock high above them, was a figure holding a lantern.

The figure of a black man in old-fashioned clothing.

This episode of lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Cassandra De Alba and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

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Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

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