Legends 63: Dance With the Devil

Imagine having hundreds of millions of dollars in your bank account, maybe even a billion.

Try to think about how you'd even go about spending that much money.

Would you put it all into real estate, designer handbags, comic books, and Pokemon cards?

Or maybe you're just a really good person and you would donate it all to charity.

It's a fun thought exercise, as long as you never calculate the odds of actually getting your hands on such an amount of cash.

Trust me, it will make you very depressed.

Very few people are ever given access to that kind of wealth and even fewer manage to spend it all.

But some have.

For example, back in the 1970s, Terrence Wantanabe inherited the Oriental Trading Company.

And then 25 years ago, he sold his shares.

Suddenly, he was worth an obscene amount of money and he knew exactly how he wanted to spend it all.

He was going to blow it all in Vegas.

You see, he had a bit of a gambling problem.

And not only that, he wasn't very good at it either.

Like at all.

He is known for having one of the worst losing streaks in Vegas history.

And in 2007, his wallet alone was responsible for 20% of one casino's annual revenue.

Within just a couple of years, he lost over $200 million.

In fact, he lost so much of his net worth that in 2017, he had to start a GoFundMe to pay for his own cancer treatment.

It's the ultimate cautionary tale: before you place a bet, you should always take a good hard look at yourself.

Because when you sit down to gamble, if you don't have what it takes to win, you're going to get played like a fiddle.

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

You don't have to be a gambling addict to lose everything in a bet.

I don't think people realize how quickly it can all go wrong.

Sometimes all it takes is one night in a casino, one playoff game, and then suddenly you're drowning.

The concept of betting isn't a new one.

Historians believe that gambling dates all the way back to the Paleolithic period before written records ever existed.

We have evidence that Mesopotamians were dice players in 3000 BCE.

Gambling houses popped up in China as early as the 1st millennium BCE.

And all over Europe, the Greeks were betting on animal fights as far back as the 7th century.

Humans are adrenaline junkies, after all.

We love a thrill.

And before roller coasters existed, one of the most consistent ways that you could get that heart-in-your-throat feeling was when you bet your last dollar on impossible odds.

It was, and still is, completely addictive.

If you're looking to enter the world of high-stakes bets, you don't need a deck of cards to put everything on the line.

For that matter, you don't even need money.

The real excitement starts when you gamble with your life, maybe even your soul.

And for that, there's only one man for the job.

The devil.

Satan, you see, doesn't roll the dice.

You won't find him at the craps table or the horse races.

His form of gambling takes takes the form of a pact.

And throughout folklore, the lesson has been clear.

If you make a pact with the devil, then you're taking a major risk.

Namely, whatever he gives you usually comes at the cost of your soul.

Now, sometimes people do wriggle their way out of having to actually pay what they owe him.

In fact, one of the earliest known stories about a satanic bargain has a happy ending.

All the way back in the 6th century, a cleric was ousted from his position in the church by a new bishop.

Furious and humiliated, he signed a contract with the devil, who claimed that he could reinstate the cleric.

All he asked in return was that the clergyman take a little trip to hell after he died.

Almost immediately after agreeing, the man regretted his choice, so he sought refuge with the Virgin Mary, groveling at her feet until she forgave him for his infidelity.

She brought him the deed so that he could tear it up.

The cleric survived and, assumedly, went on to a much nicer place after he passed away.

Usually though, the deal works.

Just about everyone knows not to gamble with their soul.

But that doesn't mean that the devil has given up.

It just means that he's had to get more creative.

So instead of playing his cards right, he plays music.

Music has long been associated with the devil.

Their folkloric connection goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, a time when priests warned their congregations about the evils of the world.

And nothing was quite so evil as secular music.

In the church's eyes, music was meant only for making a joyful noise to the Lord.

On top of that, religious music never used any instruments.

It was purely vocal.

Think of Gregorian monk chants, and you'll get the idea.

Now, you can't really cut a rug to that, and you weren't supposed to.

Dancing was seen as sinful, something that could lead to immoral behavior.

But secular music, with its drums and horns, practically compelled people to dance.

And according to one of the earliest fathers of the Catholic Church, Saint John Chrysostom, where dance is found, there is the devil.

Basically, if you danced, then you were sinning.

And if you sinned enough, then you would go to hell.

So it behooved the devil to make you dance.

And he did that by totally shredding it on the fiddle.

Historically, the fiddle and sometimes even the flute were believed to be the devil's instruments, and anyone who played them was channeling Satan's spirit.

You know how nowadays people really love the lead guitarist of their favorite band?

How they always get the fame and the groupies?

Well, people in the Middle Ages felt that way about their fiddlers.

Except instead of acknowledging that musical skills just make people more charismatic and mysterious, they blamed the devil for making them think impure, lustful thoughts.

And if that killer fiddle solo forced them to dance like they had never danced before, well, that was the devil's fault as well.

But the devil didn't just rely on human musicians to do his dirty work for him.

That would be no fun.

So, over time, the devil also became known as a master musician himself, teaching people how to be the same.

The only price that he ever asks in the stories is their soul.

And the problem is, not everyone knows that that's what they're gambling away.

According to one folktale, a man named Tijan Gautier dreamed of being a great fiddle player, but sadly he was terrible at his chosen profession, until one day when he met a stranger who approached him with a magical charm that would turn him into the best musician in the world.

Tijan eagerly accepted, believing that all of his problems were now solved.

But once he applied the charm and started to play the fiddle, he realized that he couldn't stop.

And then his feet started moving, carrying him down to the public dance hall.

Once the revelers there heard his fiddle, they couldn't stop dancing either, no matter how hard they tried.

They danced for 12 hours straight until a priest had to step in and break the curse.

Sadly, there would be no relief for Tijan.

As soon as he stopped playing the fiddle, he was taken away to the fires of hell where he would spend an eternity.

It seems that the devil is a tricky fellow.

You may not realize that he's there to make a deal with you, but that's exactly why he shows up.

You don't have to sign on the dotted line or even shake his hand to seal the deal.

All you need to be willing to do is believe that your soul is worth the price.

Robert was at a metaphorical crossroad in his life when he met the devil in Mississippi.

Born in 1911 to a sharecropper family, Robert Johnson's life had not been easy up to this point.

As a black man in the Mississippi Delta, only one generation removed from enslavement, his options were limited, and the entire world was quite literally stacked against him.

Throughout his childhood, he bounced around the south with his mother.

Whenever he wasn't in school, he was working in the fields.

But that was difficult work and no one truly wanted to do it, especially not a young boy.

No, Robert had much bigger dreams.

Namely, he wanted to play the blues.

As soon as he heard the blues, he was hooked.

Instead of working after school, he would sneak away from the fields to fiddle around with his music.

When his childhood friends were interviewed many years later, they all claimed that Robert was a whiz kid on the harmonica and the jaw harp.

But they also said the same thing, that no matter how hard he tried, he was absolutely terrible at playing the guitar.

Well, despite his egregious lack of skills on the sixth string, he didn't give up his dream.

As a teenager, Robert paid his dues playing in any juke joint that would hire him.

No one knows how long exactly he worked as a traveling musician, but we do know that he took a small break when he was 18 years old to get married.

In February of 1929, Robert was wed to Virginia Tonkin.

Soon enough, she was pregnant and she moved back to her hometown so that her family could help her through labor.

Robert stayed behind to earn money for his fledgling family, playing the harmonica at juke joints wherever he could.

When it was finally time for Virginia to give birth, he traveled to see her, but when he arrived, her family gave him the devastating news.

His wife and their baby had died in labor.

Many years later, Virginia's family admitted that they blamed Robert for Virginia's death.

They believed that it was God's punishment for playing secular blues music.

It wasn't seen as proper.

In fact, some people even likened it to selling your soul to the devil.

In his grief, Robert threw himself into his music.

Without his wife or child, it was all he had left.

And for a while, he played the juke joint circuit, wowing the crowds with his harmonica skills and assaulting their ears with his terrible guitar playing.

Eventually, he landed in Robinsonville, Mississippi, and then one day, he just up and disappeared.

He showed up again 18 months later.

And when he came back, he could play the guitar.

And Robert didn't just suddenly know how to play.

He knew how to play well, really, really well.

And because of that, everyone wanted to hear him.

Suddenly, his stale music career was going places, and he was on his way to becoming the blues legend he had always wanted to be.

But it didn't take long for people to start whispering that he had made a deal with the devil.

Whispers that spread until very quickly it became a bona fide legend.

And that legend went a little something like this.

Robert, they say, had realized that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Driven by both his reckless grief and a fear that his talent had peaked, Robert allegedly took his guitar to a crossroads and waited until midnight when a large shadowy figure finally appeared.

They say that Robert offered this mysterious visitor his own guitar, and the figure grabbed the instrument and then proceeded to tune it string by string.

And every time he handed the guitar back, Robert magically knew a little more about playing it.

They repeated this process over and over until Robert was a master, and the only thing it cost him, they say, was his everlasting soul.

Now, in some versions of the tale, Robert and this figure, who, surprise, surprise, was actually Satan, had a long conversation outlining the terms of the agreement.

In other variations of the story, it all happened without discussion at all.

But either way, Robert had made a deal with the devil.

Now for his part, Robert did nothing to dispel this fantastical rumor about his guitar skills.

In fact, he played into it, no pun intended, I swear, by writing songs about crossroads, devils, and damnation.

Many of his fans took all of this as subtle confirmation that his pact with Satan was real.

Today, most historians agree that it was just a clever bit of marketing.

Sadly, the remainder of his life was incredibly short.

Some of the legends claimed that for the rest of his days, Robert was always looking over his shoulder as if someone was following him.

In his final weeks, the stories say that he could hear the hounds of hell slowly tracking him down.

In the end, those hounds finally got him.

In truth, we don't know what killed him.

What we do know is that Robert's fame burned fast and bright.

He lived for less than a decade after this alleged deal, and in that limited time, he became a celebrated musician with hit records and sold-out shows.

But all too soon, the party was over, and by 1938, he was dead.

Robert Johnson's passing was never publicly announced, and no one even did an autopsy.

The rumors vary wildly, from poison and health problems to murder at the hands of the minions of hell.

There's even disagreements over where he's buried with three potential gravesites scattered across Mississippi.

But even though no one knows where his body ended up, everyone has a pretty good idea of where his soul went.

Or at least, they think they do.

In the decades since his death, researchers have learned that when Robert Johnson went missing for those 18 months, he was not taking lessons with the devil.

Instead, he was learning to play guitar with a musician named Ike Zimmerman, a blues legend in his own right.

And as a blues man, he was not immune to society's pearl clutching.

Because once people learned that Ike had taught Robert Johnson the blues, a new story emerged.

They said that, sure, Ike did indeed teach Robert how to play, but those lessons took place in a graveyard.

And maybe, they suggested with a wink, the devil had been there with them.

Rose Latoulipe was a little too flighty for her own good.

She was young and beautiful, and like most young and beautiful people, she felt like she was going to live forever.

After all, what could ever truly go wrong?

She had a loving father who would do anything for her, she had a bright future to look forward to, and most importantly, she had her fiancé, Gabriel.

Gabriel was the love of her life, or rather, she was the love of his.

Unfortunately for poor Gabriel, Rose was a well-known flirt, and she wasn't above fluttering her eyelashes at the occasional handsome stranger.

But despite her tendency to stray, she had agreed to marry him and in just a couple of months, the two would be wed on Easter morning.

They just had to get through Lent first.

For those who didn't grow up taking part in the season of Lent, all you really need to know is that it's a rather buttoned up time before Easter meant for reflecting on God.

The idea is that by giving up something important for a brief time, they can better focus on the coming Easter celebration.

Back when more people acknowledged Lent, it wasn't uncommon for there to be celebrations before the season kicked off.

That's actually how we got Mardi Gras.

Everyone just wanted to let loose and have fun before they were forced to behave for a while.

So, in the spirit of the season, Rose's father decided to host a party the night before Ash Wednesday.

Rose thought that this was an excellent idea.

She loved a party more than anything, even more than Gabriel.

And now she could show off her new fiancé in style.

Rose and Gabriel spent spent the entire night dancing together.

She was so delighted with everything that her eyes never strayed from his even once.

That is, not until 11 p.m.

when a sleigh pulled up to the front door.

Curious, the partygoers opened the windows to see who had arrived so late.

At once, they all exclaimed in surprise.

Outside, stamping his feet in the powdery snow, was the biggest black horse anyone had ever seen.

And if they thought that the beast was magnificent, well, its master was a work of art.

The man who knocked on the front door was so beautiful that it almost seemed unnatural.

With flowing dark hair, smoldering black eyes, and an easy smile, he immediately captured the hearts and attention of men and women alike.

When he asked if he could wait out a sudden snowstorm with the party, Rose's father immediately agreed.

And when he approached Rose saying, I hope, my pretty miss, that you will be mine this evening and that we will dance together always.

Well, she just couldn't say no.

So the handsome stranger whisked Rose to the dance floor, leaving poor Gabriel behind.

The pair stayed together for the next hour, never leaving each other's arms, much to her fiancé's chagrin.

Finally, when the clock struck midnight, Rose's father announced that the revelries must come to an end because they should not be dancing on Ash Wednesday.

But the stranger asked for one more song, and feeling strangely compelled to oblige, the father agreed.

As this strange visitor swept Rose away once again, legend says that he whispered in her ear, You promised me, pretty Rose, to be mine all evening.

Why wouldn't you be mine forever?

With a half-hearted protest at his proposal, she pointed out that she was in fact engaged to Gabriel.

Within a matter of moments though, this visitor had convinced her to forget her hang-ups and marry him instead.

With a flourish, he held out his hand to her, give me your hand, he said, as a pledge of your promise.

But as soon as she obliged, she pulled back with a small scream.

Something had stung her.

And moments later, she had grown so pale that she had to excuse herself from the dance floor.

Unbeknownst to the partygoers, all the way across town, a cleric who had spent the entire day in prayer opened his eyes suddenly.

Through his meditations, it had been divinely revealed to him that one of his parishioners was in trouble.

And so, like some kind of avenging angel, he ran to the Latoulip house, hurtling through their front yard so quickly that he didn't even notice that the snow directly beneath the giant black horse had all melted.

The cleric burst into the house, screaming, begone, Satan, and then he slapped the handsome stranger across the face and began chanting in Latin, which, all things considered, was really quite brave of him.

With an inhuman screech, the devil instantly vanished.

At the sight of his disappearance, poor Rose swooned, dropping away in a dead faint.

When the cleric finally managed to wake her up, she panicked and told him that she had given herself to Satan.

The cleric told her not to worry because he could fix it.

In the end, fun, flirtatious Rose never did marry Sweet Gabrielle and she didn't marry the devil either.

Instead, she became a nun and joined a convent and that is where she remained for the rest of her life.

A life, I'm sorry to say, that was tragically short.

Because like most people who sell their souls to the devil, willingly or not, Rose didn't survive very long after the deal was struck.

They say she died just five years later, and it's anyone's guess as to where her soul ended up.

Folklore makes it clear that the devil loves to dance, and that if you let him, he'll dance you right into your grave.

Satan tricking people with music is not a new concept.

It doesn't matter if he's using a fiddle, a guitar, or a country dance line.

It all has the same result ⁇ eternal damnation.

The story of Rose La Toulipe is almost as varied as the lore about the devil himself.

This particular iteration of the folktale comes from Quebec, but there are plenty of others.

They all share the same basic premise, though.

People let loose and dance before a holy day, and then a stranger shows up.

Sometimes he dances with them and sometimes he plays the music, encouraging them to to keep dancing through the night.

They all party past midnight and then they are punished.

In England, the legend of Stanton Drew echoes this plot perfectly.

Written in the 18th century, it tells the story of a wedding party that was dancing in a field.

When midnight struck, announcing the beginning of the Sabbath, the fiddlers stopped playing, not wanting to sin by playing secular music on a Sunday.

But then a replacement fiddler stepped up and just kept playing, and in response, the wedding party kept dancing.

They danced and danced until they all turned to stone.

And then the offending fiddler, who was of course the devil, went on his merry way.

Now, not every version of this story is that old either.

The most recent one that we could find comes from April of 1979.

A local legend claims that in McAllen, Texas, a young woman defied her conservative parents and went out partying.

And in a very 1970s move, she ended up at a popular disco.

While she was dancing, a handsome stranger arrived and danced with her all the night.

They danced themselves into such a frenzy that they began to float.

They spun in the air, levitating up to the ceiling.

And then, the stranger dropped her to the ground and vanished into thin air, leaving behind only the smell of sulfur.

Some versions of this particular legend say that the girl was covered in horrible burns.

Others say that she immediately dropped dead or that she actually lived and is still alive to this day.

Either way, everyone is in agreement about one thing.

That night, she had danced with the devil.

Now, if you've listened to this show for any amount of time, you know how educational folklore can be.

It's often been conjured up as a way to teach a lesson, usually as a warning against danger.

And within all this dancing devil folklore, there's a crystal clear message.

Behave yourself.

If you don't give in to your passions, they say, then Satan will leave you alone but if you decide to risk it with a night of dancing then you're gambling with your soul because the devil will find you even

at a disco

the devil is the ultimate villain He's always out to do something evil and us humans are usually the ones who pay the price.

Throughout centuries of history and folklore, if there's one name that has cemented itself as the biggest baddie of all time, it is that red-faced, cloven-hoofed dealmaker and gambler.

But I think the part that surprised me the most is just how common an element that dancing was in so many of these stories.

And if today's episode is making you want to cut a rug, then by all means, have at it.

But before you do, We have one last dancing tale on our set list.

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

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Hell is empty because the devil is here and his name is William Henry Harrison.

No, I'm not talking about the long-dead president.

This is a different William Henry Harrison and because later in life he would take on the nickname of Grancer, that's what I'll call him today to avoid any confusion.

Now, Grancer may not have been the president, but he sure acted like he was large and in charge.

This probably had something to do with the fact that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Grancer came from privilege, and that privilege stuck to him like tar through the rest of his life, a thick, viscous stain that he never really tried to wash out.

We don't know much about his childhood, but we do know that he was raised in a wealthy family because usually only men who came from generational wealth could afford to start their own plantations, and that's exactly what he did.

In the 1830s, Grancer and his wife Nancy established a cotton plantation in Coffey County, Alabama.

and with the plantation came the enslaved.

The more successful Grancer became, the more enslaved people he purchased.

Eventually, he established a cotton empire, and as he did, he became the largest human trafficker in Coffey County.

Now, when we imagine someone selling their soul to the devil, we usually picture the pair standing together face to face, right?

But oftentimes, folklore shows these transactions without Satan showing up at all, because some people have done a good job of handing over their souls without the devil's help.

So, make no mistake, Grancer sold his soul.

He traded the suffering of dozens of people for his own financial gain.

There was no physical document, no dotted line.

He wrote this contract in blood and eagerly signed his name.

In fact, I would argue that he took it one step further because while he was on earth, he did the devil's job for him.

Grancer ran a cotton plantation in Alabama.

That's in and of itself was probably as close to hell on earth as you could get.

But somehow, he made it even worse.

Because on top of all the backbreaking field work, he forced all of the people he enslaved to do extra work at his parties.

Now, Grancer had some serious money, so these events were always lavish.

He made his enslaved workers tear down dozens of trees and burn them for days so that he could host the biggest barbecues the county had ever seen.

They were forced to build a track for his horse races, and of course, they also had to take care of those horses.

But what Grancer loved more than anything else was dancing.

And of course, that created extra work as well.

Every weekend, Grancer would host a dance.

Eventually, the parties became so big that he couldn't contain them inside his house anymore.

So he ordered a dance hall to be built on his property.

And of course, he spared no expense.

The hall was gigantic, complete with gleaming hardwood floors that had to be polished every day, and a huge stage for his plantation band to perform on.

The band was, of course, made up of his enslaved workers.

Several days a week, he would force them to play for hours at a time while he practiced and perfected his dance moves.

They played until their fingers bled, but they only stopped when he said they could.

Dancing was such an integral part of Grancer's life that when he passed away, he wanted to be interred within view of his dance hall.

He ordered his enslaved peoples to build a tomb for him, brick by brick, right outside the hall.

It had to be large enough to hold his feather mattress and his sparkling dancing shoes, because Grancer was not about to spend eternity without the finer comforts of life.

In May of 1860, he finally did pass away.

He was laid to rest on his mattress and his tomb was sealed.

His family continued to host parties, but over the years, the invitations slowed down until they trickled to a stop.

And Grancer, who had believed that he would spend his death watching dance parties from the comfort of his grave, was left without any entertainment.

And so, he decided to do it himself.

Soon after his family stopped hosting parties, people reported that they heard music coming from the abandoned dance hall every Saturday night.

Then they started to hear a male voice call out dances as if he were leading a whole host of partygoers.

All the neighbors could hear him as clear as day.

Now swing your partners two by two, he would say.

We'll dance, dance the whole night through.

As more and more people heard the stories, They all came to an agreement.

Every week, Granter's spirit was leading a ghost dance.

There was clapping, stomping, and underneath it all, the mournful sound of a fiddle.

A fiddle for the devil himself.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas.

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Of course, lore is much more than just a podcast now.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, in hardcover and paperback, and two seasons of the TV adaptation on Amazon Prime.

Information about all of that and more is available over at lorepodcast.com.

And you can also follow this show on places like Threads, Instagram, Blue Sky, and YouTube.

Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.