September 12, 2019 • 11 mins
Our trip through the Cabinet today will introduce us to a smart girl and a persistent teacher. But nothing is as simple as it appears.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Experts use all kinds of
(00:28):
methods when predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. Polls are
the most common, but often unreliable way of taking the
pulse of a nation. However, in the nineteen forties, the
people didn't rely on polls or data to predict who
might sit in the Oval office. They relied on Lady Wonder.
She was born in Richmond, Virginia, into and raised by
(00:51):
Claudia Fonda, who took her in like a mother. Claudia
fed her by bottle every day, using their time together
to teach her new things. Lady Wonder Or spent most
of her time working with Claudia, learning the letters of
the alphabet with the help of children's blocks. But Lady
also loved children. She often played with them, letting them
hide objects in the nearby pastures so that she could
(01:12):
go over later and find them. And she did so
every single time without fail. Except there was something strange
about Lady For one, she was a horse, but that
wasn't what set her apart from others. She stood out
because she seemed to always know what someone was going
to do right before they did it. For example, she
would run toward Claudia just before getting the command to
(01:33):
do so. Eventually, Ladies started answering questions, things like basic
math and general knowledge questions, except she didn't reply by
stomping her hoofs like other horses. She spelled out her
answers using the twenty six wooden letter blocks in her stable.
News of the brilliant Horse got around, of course, and
reporters started pouring in from all over the country to
(01:55):
see her in action. Whenever Lady performed, she closed her
eyes and into a kind of trance. She'd solve an
equation or spell answers to questions asked by the crowd.
Then there were the more peculiar questions. She started answering
things that no one horse or human should have been
able to answer. For example, she once was able to
(02:16):
spell out the date on a coin pulled from someone's
pocket without ever having laid eyes upon it. Another person
moved the hands of a clock to six ten PM
and held the clock face against Lady's side, they asked
what time the clock was on, and the horse responded
in her own way, six one zero. But as Lady
grew larger, so did her ways of communicating. Soon the
(02:40):
blocks were too small for her to manipulate with her snout,
so her trainer had a special kind of horse sized
typewriter made with keys big enough for Lady to push
with her nose. Whenever she pressed a letter down, the
corresponding facsimile would pop up for the audience to see.
When it seemed like Lady might just be a well
trained horse, her trainer moved the letters around to confuse her,
(03:02):
but it never worked. The horse could answer basic questions
and also predict outcomes of major events, and it wasn't
long before the stories about Lady Wonder had reached Washington,
d C. One senator in the nineteen fifties was notorious
for ignoring his constituents until he asked Lady Wonder what
he should do. She also successfully predicted the outcomes of
(03:24):
several elections. Even the police had come to depend on
her for answers. In Massachusetts, in ninety one, a young
boy went missing. Despite the police's best efforts, nothing turned
up no evidence, no suspects, nothing, So the police asked
Lady for help, and right away she plunked out the
words Pittsfield water wheel. The police took that to me
(03:46):
in a nearby place called pit Field wild Water pure enough.
A search of that quarry led them to the boy's body.
Lady Wonder even managed to convince a psychologist from New York,
a man named Thomas Garrett, who was known for debunking
supposed clairvoyance and fortune tellers. His dog had gone missing,
and kennel in Long Island claimed that the dog had died.
(04:08):
Lady told him it was untrue and that his dog
was still alive. After a brief investigation, it turned out
that the kennel had faked the dog's death and sold
it to a sister location in Florida. Thanks to Lady Wonder,
they were caught red handed. Paranormal researchers, magicians, and experts
of all kinds performed countless tests on Lady to find
(04:30):
the limits of her power, and what they found was complicated.
She was capable of answering simple math equations, but more
difficult problems stumped her. When they blindfolded her, all bets
were off she got almost nothing right. What people like
Duke University professor Joseph Banks Ryan finally figured out was
(04:51):
that Lady Wonder wasn't so much a mind reader as
she was incredibly observant. She would watch her trainer at
Claudia for clues to the answer. With the blindfold on,
her human cheat sheet was gone, turning her into just
another horse, however intelligent she might have been. That said,
there were plenty of times when Lady Wonder really did
live up to her name, when she was able to
(05:13):
predict the outcomes of elections, sporting events, and the locations
of missing people. She might have been getting help on
the basic questions, but even Claudia didn't know the answer
to everything, and yet somehow Lady Wonder did. Clearly something
was going on. What that something was, well, we'll never know,
but we do know one thing. That's something. It was special.
(05:49):
Emily had someone following her, but she never saw who.
She was a teacher in the mid eighteen hundreds, and
a good one. She was loved by her students, but
had trouble holding onto job. She allegedly held nineteen separate
teaching positions over the course of sixteen years, but It
wasn't due to a lack of skill or boredom. It
was something more difficult to explain. Emily Sage was French
(06:14):
born but taught at a private girls school in Russia.
The kids seemed to like her well enough. She was
patient and sweet and inviting, but there was something about
her that confused some of the students, mainly that she
seemed to be everywhere at once. If one student went
looking for her earn her classroom, she'd often be there
at the same time another student would have eyes on
(06:36):
her in another room in the school. At first, other
students and teachers said the occasional coincidences were just tricks
on the eyes, children seeing one thing and thinking it
was something else. But the sightings kept happening. As the
school year wore on, the incidents of Emily being in
two places at once grew more frequent. Then during class
(06:57):
one day, her students saw the reason why Madam Zell
Saggi was often seen in two rooms at the same time.
She turned to write on the board when someone else
suddenly appeared in the classroom. They stood next to Emily,
wearing the same clothes as her. Their hair was tied
up exactly the same way, and as the teacher moved
her arm up and down the board, the other person
(07:18):
did the same. Although they weren't holding chalk or writing
anything on the board, they were simply pantomiming the same movements.
By all accounts, it was another Emily. Afterwards, school administrators
talked to each member of the class, who all told
the same story that an exact duplicate of their teacher
appeared out of nowhere and started mimicking her actions. After
(07:43):
the incident, another sighting happened when Emily was helping a
student into her dress for a garden party. The girl
looked in the mirror to admire her dress, and standing
beside her teacher was the doppelganger, again performing the same
movements as Emily, with nothing in her hands. It seemed
that once they'd seen her in the open, the second
Emily had no qualms about showing herself as often as possible.
(08:06):
She'd stand behind the real Emily at a meal and
act like she was feeding herself, even though she wasn't
holding a fork or a plate. Other times, when the
teacher would get up, the ghostly clone would stay behind
in the chair. Perhaps the most bizarre sighting happened while
students were gathered together to practice embroidery. Emily was outside
picking flowers in the garden while another teacher watched the girls.
(08:29):
Everyone could see her happily going about one of her
favorite pastimes from the window. At some point, however, the
teacher needed to attend to another matter and the students
were left alone. The empty seat where the teacher had
been sitting didn't remain empty for long, though Emily appeared
in the chair. The children looked out the window and
saw the real Emily sa Ghee still picking flowers outside
(08:51):
in clear view of the students. She looked tired now,
like she'd just run a race. The doppelganger didn't move,
though it sat looking straight ahead. Two students who had
gone through this before decided to conduct an experiment with
the apparition. They both got out of their seats and
approached her. One went to touch her and was able
to pass her hand through her body, although with a
(09:12):
slight effort, it felt like something was in the way,
a dense fog or a thin fabric keeping the hand
from moving smoothly through the other student managed to walk
right through part of this other Emily before she faded away.
The students caught up with the real Emily Sage afterward
and asked what had happened. She told them she had
been upset at the other teacher leaving them alone and
(09:34):
felt they needed someone to watch them while she was gone. Unfortunately,
these strange occurrences add a negative effect on the school.
Children who had gone home during Christmas or summer break
periods often didn't come back. Eventually, the school had gone
from forty two active students to only a dozen, and
the reason for the drop was Emily Sage. The school
(09:55):
had no choice but to let her go. Her whereabouts
after that went largely known, though one student did keep
in touch with her. The student visited Emily at her
sister in law's home while she was in between jobs,
and the children of this sister in law like to
tell their guests how they had to aunt. Emily's Emily
Sage story sort of ends there. Despite the numerous witnesses
(10:18):
to her bizarre phenomena, the tale of two teachers has
changed considerably as it has been passed down through the years.
It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that many of
her former students might have wanted to forget what they'd seen.
After all, two teachers in one place is bad enough. Hopefully,
though it didn't mean double the homework. I hope you've
(10:42):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(11:04):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. H
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Experts use all kinds of
(00:28):
methods when predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. Polls are
the most common, but often unreliable way of taking the
pulse of a nation. However, in the nineteen forties, the
people didn't rely on polls or data to predict who
might sit in the Oval office. They relied on Lady Wonder.
She was born in Richmond, Virginia, into and raised by
(00:51):
Claudia Fonda, who took her in like a mother. Claudia
fed her by bottle every day, using their time together
to teach her new things. Lady Wonder Or spent most
of her time working with Claudia, learning the letters of
the alphabet with the help of children's blocks. But Lady
also loved children. She often played with them, letting them
hide objects in the nearby pastures so that she could
(01:12):
go over later and find them. And she did so
every single time without fail. Except there was something strange
about Lady For one, she was a horse, but that
wasn't what set her apart from others. She stood out
because she seemed to always know what someone was going
to do right before they did it. For example, she
would run toward Claudia just before getting the command to
(01:33):
do so. Eventually, Ladies started answering questions, things like basic
math and general knowledge questions, except she didn't reply by
stomping her hoofs like other horses. She spelled out her
answers using the twenty six wooden letter blocks in her stable.
News of the brilliant Horse got around, of course, and
reporters started pouring in from all over the country to
(01:55):
see her in action. Whenever Lady performed, she closed her
eyes and into a kind of trance. She'd solve an
equation or spell answers to questions asked by the crowd.
Then there were the more peculiar questions. She started answering
things that no one horse or human should have been
able to answer. For example, she once was able to
(02:16):
spell out the date on a coin pulled from someone's
pocket without ever having laid eyes upon it. Another person
moved the hands of a clock to six ten PM
and held the clock face against Lady's side, they asked
what time the clock was on, and the horse responded
in her own way, six one zero. But as Lady
grew larger, so did her ways of communicating. Soon the
(02:40):
blocks were too small for her to manipulate with her snout,
so her trainer had a special kind of horse sized
typewriter made with keys big enough for Lady to push
with her nose. Whenever she pressed a letter down, the
corresponding facsimile would pop up for the audience to see.
When it seemed like Lady might just be a well
trained horse, her trainer moved the letters around to confuse her,
(03:02):
but it never worked. The horse could answer basic questions
and also predict outcomes of major events, and it wasn't
long before the stories about Lady Wonder had reached Washington,
d C. One senator in the nineteen fifties was notorious
for ignoring his constituents until he asked Lady Wonder what
he should do. She also successfully predicted the outcomes of
(03:24):
several elections. Even the police had come to depend on
her for answers. In Massachusetts, in ninety one, a young
boy went missing. Despite the police's best efforts, nothing turned
up no evidence, no suspects, nothing, So the police asked
Lady for help, and right away she plunked out the
words Pittsfield water wheel. The police took that to me
(03:46):
in a nearby place called pit Field wild Water pure enough.
A search of that quarry led them to the boy's body.
Lady Wonder even managed to convince a psychologist from New York,
a man named Thomas Garrett, who was known for debunking
supposed clairvoyance and fortune tellers. His dog had gone missing,
and kennel in Long Island claimed that the dog had died.
(04:08):
Lady told him it was untrue and that his dog
was still alive. After a brief investigation, it turned out
that the kennel had faked the dog's death and sold
it to a sister location in Florida. Thanks to Lady Wonder,
they were caught red handed. Paranormal researchers, magicians, and experts
of all kinds performed countless tests on Lady to find
(04:30):
the limits of her power, and what they found was complicated.
She was capable of answering simple math equations, but more
difficult problems stumped her. When they blindfolded her, all bets
were off she got almost nothing right. What people like
Duke University professor Joseph Banks Ryan finally figured out was
(04:51):
that Lady Wonder wasn't so much a mind reader as
she was incredibly observant. She would watch her trainer at
Claudia for clues to the answer. With the blindfold on,
her human cheat sheet was gone, turning her into just
another horse, however intelligent she might have been. That said,
there were plenty of times when Lady Wonder really did
live up to her name, when she was able to
(05:13):
predict the outcomes of elections, sporting events, and the locations
of missing people. She might have been getting help on
the basic questions, but even Claudia didn't know the answer
to everything, and yet somehow Lady Wonder did. Clearly something
was going on. What that something was, well, we'll never know,
but we do know one thing. That's something. It was special.
(05:49):
Emily had someone following her, but she never saw who.
She was a teacher in the mid eighteen hundreds, and
a good one. She was loved by her students, but
had trouble holding onto job. She allegedly held nineteen separate
teaching positions over the course of sixteen years, but It
wasn't due to a lack of skill or boredom. It
was something more difficult to explain. Emily Sage was French
(06:14):
born but taught at a private girls school in Russia.
The kids seemed to like her well enough. She was
patient and sweet and inviting, but there was something about
her that confused some of the students, mainly that she
seemed to be everywhere at once. If one student went
looking for her earn her classroom, she'd often be there
at the same time another student would have eyes on
(06:36):
her in another room in the school. At first, other
students and teachers said the occasional coincidences were just tricks
on the eyes, children seeing one thing and thinking it
was something else. But the sightings kept happening. As the
school year wore on, the incidents of Emily being in
two places at once grew more frequent. Then during class
(06:57):
one day, her students saw the reason why Madam Zell
Saggi was often seen in two rooms at the same time.
She turned to write on the board when someone else
suddenly appeared in the classroom. They stood next to Emily,
wearing the same clothes as her. Their hair was tied
up exactly the same way, and as the teacher moved
her arm up and down the board, the other person
(07:18):
did the same. Although they weren't holding chalk or writing
anything on the board, they were simply pantomiming the same movements.
By all accounts, it was another Emily. Afterwards, school administrators
talked to each member of the class, who all told
the same story that an exact duplicate of their teacher
appeared out of nowhere and started mimicking her actions. After
(07:43):
the incident, another sighting happened when Emily was helping a
student into her dress for a garden party. The girl
looked in the mirror to admire her dress, and standing
beside her teacher was the doppelganger, again performing the same
movements as Emily, with nothing in her hands. It seemed
that once they'd seen her in the open, the second
Emily had no qualms about showing herself as often as possible.
(08:06):
She'd stand behind the real Emily at a meal and
act like she was feeding herself, even though she wasn't
holding a fork or a plate. Other times, when the
teacher would get up, the ghostly clone would stay behind
in the chair. Perhaps the most bizarre sighting happened while
students were gathered together to practice embroidery. Emily was outside
picking flowers in the garden while another teacher watched the girls.
(08:29):
Everyone could see her happily going about one of her
favorite pastimes from the window. At some point, however, the
teacher needed to attend to another matter and the students
were left alone. The empty seat where the teacher had
been sitting didn't remain empty for long, though Emily appeared
in the chair. The children looked out the window and
saw the real Emily sa Ghee still picking flowers outside
(08:51):
in clear view of the students. She looked tired now,
like she'd just run a race. The doppelganger didn't move,
though it sat looking straight ahead. Two students who had
gone through this before decided to conduct an experiment with
the apparition. They both got out of their seats and
approached her. One went to touch her and was able
to pass her hand through her body, although with a
(09:12):
slight effort, it felt like something was in the way,
a dense fog or a thin fabric keeping the hand
from moving smoothly through the other student managed to walk
right through part of this other Emily before she faded away.
The students caught up with the real Emily Sage afterward
and asked what had happened. She told them she had
been upset at the other teacher leaving them alone and
(09:34):
felt they needed someone to watch them while she was gone. Unfortunately,
these strange occurrences add a negative effect on the school.
Children who had gone home during Christmas or summer break
periods often didn't come back. Eventually, the school had gone
from forty two active students to only a dozen, and
the reason for the drop was Emily Sage. The school
(09:55):
had no choice but to let her go. Her whereabouts
after that went largely known, though one student did keep
in touch with her. The student visited Emily at her
sister in law's home while she was in between jobs,
and the children of this sister in law like to
tell their guests how they had to aunt. Emily's Emily
Sage story sort of ends there. Despite the numerous witnesses
(10:18):
to her bizarre phenomena, the tale of two teachers has
changed considerably as it has been passed down through the years.
It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that many of
her former students might have wanted to forget what they'd seen.
After all, two teachers in one place is bad enough. Hopefully,
though it didn't mean double the homework. I hope you've
(10:42):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(11:04):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. H
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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