Legends 67: Northern Exposure

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Speaker 3 Colombia has a hippo problem. The hippopotamus, of course, isn't native to South America.
They're actually from Africa.

Speaker 3 But these 4,000-pound masses of pure muscle have hopped across the Atlantic to terrorize an entirely new continent, taking the crown as the heaviest invasive species in history.

Speaker 3 And you might be wondering how. Well, you can thank drug trafficker Pablo Escobar for that.
You see, he had a private zoo on the grounds of his estate.

Speaker 3 It was a full-on menagerie, complete with elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and of course, hippos.

Speaker 3 After Escobar died in 1993, the government took control of his residence. But nobody really knew how to tackle the hippopotamus problem.

Speaker 3 It wasn't necessarily impossible to move them, it was just dangerous and expensive, and so the hippos were allowed to stay until of course they escaped the confines of the estate.

Speaker 3 So yes, there are hippos in Colombia. Australia has camels.
There's even a bunch of feral parakeets in New York City.

Speaker 3 Basically, whatever your expectations are of a particular location, there are always exceptions to those assumptions. Which is why, if you were to travel across the border from the U.S.

Speaker 3 into Canada, you would be limiting yourself if you expect only maple syrup, hockey games, and very polite and considerate people.

Speaker 3 Yes, those things are all true, but looking through the pages of history, Canada has also had its fair share of something few people might expect:

Speaker 3 terrifying tales of witches.

Speaker 3 I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore Legends.

Speaker 3 The story begins the way all good stories do, with a murder. On the morning of January 27th of 1763, a 24-year-old named Louis-Étienne Daudier was found dead.

Speaker 3 Despite being a small frontier town with a limited population, Saint-Valier in Quebec was perfectly familiar with sudden deaths.

Speaker 3 18th century Canada was as dangerous as any other untamed wilderness, and the mortality rate amongst its earliest European settlers proved that.

Speaker 3 In Daudier's case, it was a cut-and-dried horse trampoline. He had been discovered in a horse stable with blunt force trauma to the head and cuts all over his body.

Speaker 3 It was pretty easy to put two and two together. Daudier was buried the very next day in the local parish churchyard, and then most of the town moved on with their lives.

Speaker 3 But some people just couldn't let it go. And so they spread rumors that Daudier had actually been murdered by his own family.

Speaker 3 You see, in such a tiny town, most secrets weren't actually all that secrets. And when it came to Daudier, it was a very open secret that he had a difficult relationship with his in-laws.

Speaker 3 Daudier and his father-in-law, Joseph Corivaux, had been known to argue over money. After his son-in-law died, Corivaux told everyone that he believed the death was accidental.

Speaker 3 But considering the two men's contentious history, nobody really believed the guy.

Speaker 3 In fact, the local commanding British officer, a guy named Major James Abercrombie, wasn't just unconvinced by this explanation, he was deeply suspicious of it.

Speaker 3 So following his instincts, Major Abercrombie ordered that Daudier's body be exhumed and re-examined. The new autopsy revealed that in fact none of his wounds were caused by horse hooves.

Speaker 3 Instead, it looked like he'd been beaten by a sharp object. And of course, everyone knew immediately who had done it.

Speaker 3 Only one month after his death, Daudier's father-in-law, Joseph Corovo, was arrested for his murder. And Daudier's wife, Marie Joseft, was arrested as an accomplice to the crime.

Speaker 3 Now, I know that I just threw a new name at you, but Marie Joseft wasn't new to Major Abercrombie. He had been keeping an eye on her for a while.

Speaker 3 In fact, based on what he knew, it made perfect sense that she might have been involved. You see, Daudier and Marie Joseft, to put it mildly, had a rocky marriage.

Speaker 3 Only a month before he died, his wife had petitioned the local authorities for a divorce. She said that her husband had been physically abusing her and she no longer felt safe.

Speaker 3 But her request was denied and she was ordered to return home to Daudier. And the official who forced her back into her marriage with her abusive husband was none other than Major James Abercrombie.

Speaker 3 In fact, this man had rejected petitions for Marie-Joseph's safety multiple times.

Speaker 3 Only a few days before the murder, her father had asked for something to be done about the man who was beating his daughter.

Speaker 3 When Major Abercrombie didn't take action, Corovo stormed away, muttering that, and I quote, some misfortune will happen. Unfortunately, it didn't matter why Corovo killed his son-in-law.

Speaker 3 As far as the justice system was concerned, the only thing that mattered was that he did it. And in the end, Corovo was condemned to hang while his daughter was sentenced to 60 public lashings.

Speaker 3 But the day before the execution, Corovo made a startling confession to the priest who came to do his last rites.

Speaker 3 He had not murdered Daudier, his daughter had, and he had volunteered to take the fall on her behalf. The very next day, Marie-Joseft was brought back to the court.

Speaker 3 Now faced with her father's confession, she broke down, admitting that she alone had been responsible for the murder.

Speaker 3 And with that, her father was released, and she was sentenced to be executed in his stead. Four days later, she met her fate.
After the hanging, she was not put to rest.

Speaker 3 Instead, her body was placed in an iron gibbet, which is essentially a cage in the shape of a human body. And then this macabre bird cage was hung up for everyone to see.

Speaker 3 Her caged body was hung at a crossroads for five weeks until so many people complained of the horrific scene that the governor ordered that it be cut down.

Speaker 3 And then she, along with her iron gibbet, were buried on the outskirts of a local churchyard. And that should have been the end of her story.
But it wasn't.

Speaker 3 You see, nearly 100 years later, the gibbet was uncovered during an excavation project. Apparently, there were actually still a few bones rattling around its sides.

Speaker 3 And so they reburied Marie-Joseph's unshackled remains, and then they took her cage on a world tour.

Speaker 3 At first, it was just put on display in Montreal and Quebec City, but soon enough, the infamous grifter P.T.

Speaker 3 Barnum got word of the gibbet's existence, and he brought it to his museum in New York City. And once in America, her story spread.

Speaker 3 And as it did, she gained a new moniker, La Coriveau, and a new backstory as well. According to this new version, La Coriveau wasn't a battered woman.

Speaker 3 She was a stone-cold killer who had murdered at least seven husbands. She had poured molten lead down their ears and danced on their graves.
And most importantly, she was a witch.

Speaker 3 The mythos surrounding La Corivaux claimed that she had made a pact with the devil who had taken ownership of her soul.

Speaker 3 But instead of dragging her soul to hell after she died, the witch's spirit was left to haunt the crossroads where she had been hanged.

Speaker 3 To this day, Travelers have reported hearing her cage rattle in the wind and feeling invisible hands attack them.

Speaker 3 Some people have even seen her ghost, and when this happens, she usually asks travelers if they would carry her across the St. Lawrence River so that she can attend a witch's Sabbath.

Speaker 3 There are no reports of anyone who has said yes.

Speaker 3 Today, Le Coriveau is the most famous witch in all of Canada, despite the fact that the real Marie-Josefte never so much as glanced in the direction of a cauldron.

Speaker 3 She's even been featured on a postage stamp, gibbet and all.

Speaker 3 And as for the man who beat her and the major who let it happen, their reputations, of course, are perfectly intact.

Speaker 3 In 1923, a teenage boy was tied up and left out on the ice to die. The incident wasn't reported until the spring of the following year.
By then, of course, it was too late. 18-year-old Atoll was gone.

Speaker 3 When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were finally sent out to investigate, all they could do was dig up his frozen body.

Speaker 3 The loss of a life was already devastating enough, especially when the victim was so young. But the rumors floating around about the murder were even worse.

Speaker 3 Locals said that the perpetrators believed Atoll had bewitched an old man.

Speaker 3 They had tied down the teenage boy in an attempt to drive the witchcraft out of him, but of course it had been a death sentence rather than his salvation.

Speaker 3 After only a few days of investigation, officials were able to arrest five people for the crime. There were four brothers, Dan, Jimmy, Clem, and Eddie Lute, along with a man named Big Alec.

Speaker 3 Apparently, the Lute brothers' father was the man who had been bewitched, and Big Alec had been the one who told the siblings that Atoll was the culprit.

Speaker 3 Now, Big Alec wasn't necessarily someone that I would call trustworthy when it came to situations like this.

Speaker 3 At one point, he had actually killed several of his own dogs because he suspected that they were guilty of witchcraft, but I suppose the brothers were desperate enough to believe him because they followed through on his advice.

Speaker 3 A few days later, their sister returned home from a trip. When she learned what her brothers had done, she was horrified.

Speaker 3 She forced them to bring Atoll inside, but by then the boy had already been out on the ice for six days. The very next morning, he was dead.

Speaker 3 The trial was held in August of 1925 and it transfixed the entire country. After all, how often do you see a witch killing in the 20th century? But it also drew attention for another, darker reason.

Speaker 3 You see, everyone involved had been a member of the Casca tribe. The Casca are an indigenous people native to British Columbia and the southeastern Yukon Territory.

Speaker 3 Technically, they were never formally suppressed the same way that most native peoples were.

Speaker 3 In fact, they had very few interactions with the white settlers and they didn't establish a relationship with fur traders until the early 1800s.

Speaker 3 Still, that doesn't mean that they hadn't suffered at the hands of white men. Hordes of miners swarmed their territory at the end of the 19th century, overwhelming the indigenous population.

Speaker 3 And suddenly, the dominant culture was no longer Casca. They had become strangers in their own land.

Speaker 3 Despite the bomb that white settlers had dropped onto their lives, most Canadians had never even heard of the Casca before Atoll's murder trial.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, the trial was not a great introduction to the world stage for the Casca peoples.

Speaker 3 During the court proceedings, it was revealed that the practice of using violence against children to force the witchcraft out of their bodies wasn't actually uncommon.

Speaker 3 One Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspected that he had once seen a young girl named Madeline who'd been tied up like Atoll and the rough treatment had permanently disabled her.

Speaker 3 He also said that the mother of a young boy named Seagull had cut the tip of her son's ear off, all in an attempt to stop him from cursing his sick little brother.

Speaker 3 And a few years later, Seagull told an anthropologist that the one who had accused him of witchcraft in the first place was actually Eddie Lut, one of the brothers who was on trial for killing Atoll.

Speaker 3 In the end, Eddie wouldn't make it out of Atoll's trial without a sentencing. But his punishment was significantly lighter than you might expect.

Speaker 3 In fact, he avoided jail altogether, despite the fact that he had been the one who actually bound the boy's wrists and ankles together.

Speaker 3 For the crime of leaving a boy out in the elements to die, he was only given a 10-year suspended sentence. His other three brothers were let off the hook entirely.

Speaker 3 And finally, Big Alec, the one who had convinced the brothers to do the deed in the first place, was sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.

Speaker 3 After the trial, the Canadian government decided to keep a close eye on the Casca to ensure that nobody else was killed.

Speaker 3 In 1926, they sent a patrol of policemen and a Christian missionary to work amongst the Casca.

Speaker 3 Two years later, that missionary wrote that the people there had, and I quote, the reputation of being addicted to witchcraft. But here's the strangest part.

Speaker 3 Just a few years before all of this happened, The Casca hadn't believed in witches at all.

Speaker 3 You see, when the miners had moved in and stripped stripped the land of all the resources the Casca needed to survive, they were forced to trade with the white settlers.

Speaker 3 This interaction brought humiliation as well as exposure to new diseases. It was, in a word, devastating, and they were desperate for something that could save them.

Speaker 3 And then, as the white Canadian culture overtook theirs, they learned about witches. Anthropologists have called this phenomena witch fear.
It's a trauma response, plain and simple.

Speaker 3 When fear of the unknown takes over, people will do anything to regain a sense of control, and the Casca desperately needed control. And here's the thing, that reaction isn't unusual.

Speaker 3 Almost every single witch trial from Salem to Bamberg started for the same reason. People were afraid.

Speaker 3 And instead of addressing the real threat, they created one within their community that would be easier to face head on.

Speaker 3 Thankfully, the witch fear didn't last amongst the Casca. It burned hot and fast like a wildfire, consuming them all.
And then it left just as quickly, leaving a charred community in its wake.

Speaker 3 The colony of New France was a scary place. The landscape was vast and there could be hundreds of miles between each town.
In 1660, there were fewer than 2,000 French settlements in the entire region.

Speaker 3 Even the capital city of Quebec only had a population of 800. If you left your tiny hub of civilization, then you were truly alone and ripe for the picking.
And that isn't a figure of speech.

Speaker 3 More than likely, you would genuinely be picked off. The indigenous population, all members of the Iroquois nation, were brutally violent in defending their territory.

Speaker 3 Many colonists died a bloody death at their hands. And if the locals didn't get you, then disease certainly would.

Speaker 3 Epidemics decimated entire communities, all of which were too remote for any of the colony's limited emergency medical resources to reach them in time.

Speaker 3 So, as you might imagine, the white settlers of New France were living in a state of constant anxiety. When you leave something as potent as fear to fester, it does something to your brain.

Speaker 3 Locals began seeing omens of doom. Phantom comets lit up the night and apparitions of canoes and fire floated through the sky.
And at one point, a loud, thunderous voice echoed across the hills.

Speaker 3 I tell you all of this to set the scene for our story. It's important to know that New France was in a free fall.

Speaker 3 Every single person was terrified for their lives every single day, and that terror had fueled a mass belief in some truly disturbing supernatural episodes.

Speaker 3 And it was against this backdrop that Barb Allay entered the picture.

Speaker 3 She was a teenager in the summer of 1659, but she already knew what she wanted out of life, namely a different life than the one that was waiting for her in Europe.

Speaker 3 So she had sailed to New France in hopes of carving out a name for herself. Unfortunately, she had already encountered a roadblock.

Speaker 3 During the long boat ride, she was harassed by a man named Daniel Vuil. He had attempted to seduce her, but she successfully rebuffed him.

Speaker 3 and soon after arrival, she found a job as a domestic servant at the Beauport Manor House located only six kilometers from Quebec. It was perfect, or it would have been, if it wasn't haunted.

Speaker 3 Soon after Barb arrived, strange things began to occur all over the house. Stones would hurl themselves against the walls as if thrown by an invisible hand.

Speaker 3 Disembodied voices rang through the hallways, and most horrifying of all, demons and witches began to visit Barb in her room at night.

Speaker 3 She described the demons simply as, and I quote, men, children, beasts, and specters of hell. As for the witches, she was more concerned about what they did to her than what they looked like.

Speaker 3 Whenever they arrived, they forced her to choke down foul food that made her vomit. Soon, it went beyond external torment.
Barb began to show signs of demonic possession.

Speaker 3 Whenever she experienced an episode, her limbs thrashed uncontrollably. Her head jerked from side to side.

Speaker 3 She would scream foreign words that were determined to come from the demon who inhabited her body.

Speaker 3 And whenever she spoke, her voice was unnaturally low and unfamiliar, as if a man were speaking through her. At least three different priests visited Beauport Manor to pray over her.

Speaker 3 Each and every exorcism that they attempted failed. And so Barb was sent to a Catholic hospital and entrusted into the care of a group of nuns.

Speaker 3 One in particular, Sister Catherine, took charge charge of Barb's care, trying everything from praying to sewing Barb inside a sack to keep the girl hidden from the demons.

Speaker 3 But not only did it not work, eventually the demons began appearing to Sister Catherine as well. They even beat her, covering her entire body in dark bruises.
At some point, Barb L.A.

Speaker 3 revealed that demons and witches weren't the only apparitions that visited her.

Speaker 3 Sometimes she also saw the form of Daniel Vuille, the man whose advances she had rejected while she was sailing to New France.

Speaker 3 Options at this point were running low, so officials did the next logical thing they could think of. They tracked down and arrested Daniel for witchcraft, and then in October of 1661, he was executed.

Speaker 3 He is the only person to ever be given the death penalty for witchcraft in Canadian history. And it didn't help.

Speaker 3 Barb was still possessed and the demons made no move to leave her body despite the fact that their alleged dark master was now dead.

Speaker 3 So finally, the mistress of Beauport Manor, a stern woman in her 60s named Marie Renuar, took matters into her own hand. She stayed by Barb's side day and night for an entire year.

Speaker 3 And then in October of 1662, something changed. Marie was awoken in the middle of the night by yet another one of Barb's possession episodes.

Speaker 3 But this one would be different because this time Marie was bringing the big guns. For some reason, she was in the possession of the rib of a Jesuit martyr who'd been killed by the Iroquois in 1649.

Speaker 3 Technically, it was a holy relic, but Marie used it as a weapon. She set the rib bone next to Barb, and she didn't move it.

Speaker 3 Not when the demon violently contorted Barb's limbs and not when he begged her to take it away.

Speaker 3 That holy rib was there to stay, and when Marie told the demon as such, he howled in pain, screaming that it burned him.

Speaker 3 In response, Marie put the rib over Barb's heart, and then she invoked the names of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the saintly owner of the rib itself. And that was the final nail in the coffin.

Speaker 3 Marie saw a puff of mist pass through Barb's lips, and then suddenly the girl was speaking with her own voice and making the sign of the cross over her body.

Speaker 3 After that night, Barb was never bothered by a demon or a witch ever again. In fact, she went on to live an incredibly normal life.

Speaker 3 She got a job as a servant in the same Catholic hospital she had once been a patient. She married one of her coworkers, had a family, and died peacefully.

Speaker 3 It would seem that, for one colonist at least, fear was no longer an issue.

Speaker 3 Thankfully, Barb L.A.'s story has a happy ending. That is, of course, if you forget about the guy who was killed in the middle of it.

Speaker 3 Not only was Daniel Vuille executed, but he was the only convicted Canadian witch to have ever had that dubious honor. Usually they were just banished.
So what exactly happened here?

Speaker 3 Well, to explain that, we have to go back to the conception of New France.

Speaker 3 You see, in 1627, the Charter for the Company of New France had specified that only French Catholics were to populate the new colony.

Speaker 3 No other denominations were allowed, and that included Protestants.

Speaker 3 Catholics did not consider Protestants to be quote-unquote real Christians and were therefore a threat to the purity of the Catholic colony.

Speaker 3 But there's a darker underbelly to that reasoning than simple religious tribalism.

Speaker 3 Most of the other New World colonies were some flavor of Protestant, and the vast majority of those settlements were also allied with the Iroquois, the indigenous peoples that posed the greatest threat to New France's survival.

Speaker 3 In their minds, because they were buddies with the Iroquois, the Protestants were an even greater enemy there in the New World than they had been in the old.

Speaker 3 And so, according to New France's law, Protestants were to be treated as treasonous. And poor Daniel, as you might have guessed by now, had been raised as a Protestant.

Speaker 3 In reality, Daniel of Will wasn't killed because he was a witch at all. He was killed because of his faith.

Speaker 3 Witch trials and executions are a topic we typically relate to Europe and a few English colonies in the New World.

Speaker 3 So I hope today's trip across the border helped you see just how far that branch of folklore actually stretched.

Speaker 3 Fear is, of course, a powerful thing, and some people will build their entire lives around it. They will commit atrocities because of it, and even murder for it.

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Speaker 3 Maggie had just been arrested for witchcraft. Anyone who knew Maggie wouldn't have been surprised that she had been labeled a witch.

Speaker 3 She had been clairvoyant for her entire life, and she hadn't hadn't really kept it a secret. After all, why should she? Maggie had been born with these abilities.

Speaker 3 To her, it wasn't anything to be ashamed of. It just was.

Speaker 3 As a young girl, Margaret Maggie Pollack could see and communicate with the spirits of the dead. No one told her that this was unusual.
They just let her do her thing.

Speaker 3 It wasn't until she was a teenager that she realized that nobody else had conversations with their dearly departed grandmother or their long-dead neighbor. As she aged, her powers evolved.

Speaker 3 Eventually, she was no longer known as the Ghost Whisperer. Instead, she gained a reputation for being able to supernaturally locate any lost or stolen objects.

Speaker 3 Her neighbors came to her for help constantly, and she was happy to oblige.

Speaker 3 She usually didn't charge them for her time, although some people opted to leave a small amount of money as a thank-you gift anyway.

Speaker 3 Her clients described the entire process as a seance for an object rather than a person. First, Maggie would hold an item item that was owned by the seeker.

Speaker 3 Then she would fall into a trance and would have visions that told her the location of the lost object. Then sometimes the vision wasn't even necessary because the ghosts would tell her instead.

Speaker 3 During one particular incident, a woman named Grace Sinclair asked Maggie to help her locate a diamond ring that had been an heirloom from her late mother.

Speaker 3 In response, Maggie said that Grace's mother was standing right next to her, even though she had been dead for six years.

Speaker 3 And the ghost told Maggie that the ring had been thrown out of the house with a pan of dust. Once the snow melted, Grace would find it.

Speaker 3 And sure enough, when the spring thaw came, that diamond ring was exactly where Maggie said it would be.

Speaker 3 And believe it or not, Maggie was a Christian woman and she viewed her powers as a gift from God. She believed that it was her responsibility to share this divine gift with the masses.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately for her, the Canadian government did not agree with her on that whole sharing thing.

Speaker 3 You see, under Section 443 of the Canadian Criminal Code, it was illegal to claim that one had the ability to speak with the dead or to use those unholy powers to recover lost or stolen goods.

Speaker 3 It was a law that the courts took seriously, despite the fact that none of this was happening in the 17th century.

Speaker 3 No, when Maggie was finally arrested for her not-so-devious crimes, it was June 30th of 1919.

Speaker 3 In court, it was charged that Maggie, and I quote, did unlawfully pretend, from her skill and knowledge in an occult and crafty science, to discover where and in what manner certain goods and chattels, to wit, certain grains and oats supposed to have been stolen from one John Leonhardt, could be found.

Speaker 3 This was referencing an incident from 1918 in which she had described a thief and his horse to John Leonhardt, who had just been robbed of his grain.

Speaker 3 In return, the man had paid her 50 cents, about $9 today. It was completely innocent, but the courts didn't see it that way.
She was actually convicted of the crime.

Speaker 3 In 1920, they heard her appeal, during which her lawyer argued that Maggie hadn't been pretending to have some mystical powers. She actually had them.
And the proof was right there in the pudding.

Speaker 3 John Leonard had been able to locate the grain thief based solely on her descriptions. Her predictions had been accurate, so the court didn't have a leg to stand on when they said that she was faking.

Speaker 3 The judge was not impressed by this legal workaround.

Speaker 3 Regardless, they did let her off easy, under the stipulation that in the future she was only to give her personal opinion about where someone might locate a lost object and not to claim that the answer had come to her by way of any supernatural power.

Speaker 3 Basically, Maggie could still help people. She just wasn't allowed to publicly claim that she was doing so through any sort of clairvoyant power.
And almost overnight, Maggie's mailbox exploded.

Speaker 3 People from all over Canada and the United States had followed her case, and every single one of them wanted to hire her. Even local law enforcement asked for her assistance on a few cases.

Speaker 3 Maggie allegedly found the bodies of multiple drowning victims on behalf of the police.

Speaker 3 And when one man's horse disappeared, she was able to name the exact sinkhole that the poor thing had gotten trapped in.

Speaker 3 You would think that Canada would have taken that archaic law off the books after Maggie was exonerated. But that isn't what happened.
The law stayed in place as firm as ever.

Speaker 3 In fact, for decades, people continued to be charged for unlawfully claiming that they practiced witchcraft, right up until the law was finally repealed. The year

Speaker 3 2018.

Speaker 3 This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, writing by Alex Robinson and research by Cassandra DeAlba. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you.

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Speaker 3 I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.