Zapped

Today's trip through the Cabinet will introduce us to a castle with a dark past and a pair of people with a special spark.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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. Fairies as we know them

(00:29):
today are a composite of centuries of influence from all
over the world. The Scandinavian fairies were portrayed as elves.
In Irish folklore, they were described as little folk. Some
regions painted them as demons or fallen angels. Although there
isn't one definitive origin of fairy folklore, certain characteristics are
shared among several cultures. For example, fairies are often depicted

(00:52):
as magical beings, curious of their surroundings and wary of humans.
They can be mischievous, too, often tangling people's hair as
they sleep or stealing small items. More serious conditions used
to be blamed on fairies as well, such as tuberculosis.
It was once thought that the impish creatures had forced
young people to party the night away until they were

(01:13):
weak from exhaustion, causing the disease, and they were protective too,
of their homes, of the environment, and of themselves. Interloping
humans who threatened their way of life, tended to find
themselves the victims of a fairi's ill will. In the
mountain town of Slavonia, Croatia, there is a castle, well

(01:35):
what's left of it, anyway. First mentions of a date
back to the mid thirteenth century, more of a walled
city than a pure castle. The ruins today spread out
across eighties six thousand square feet. When viewed from above,
the surrounding forest looks to be swallowing the stone structure,
perhaps retribution for what occurred here centuries earlier. According to

(01:57):
the stories, a nobleman from the area had chosen this
on Papook Mountain as a place to construct his castle.
High up and far from the town below, he would
be able to see invaders approaching in the distance and
protect himself. However, the nobleman ran into a problem. A
site on which he had chosen to build his fortress

(02:17):
didn't belong to him, at least not in the eyes
of the fairies who had already been living there. They've
been using the spot as a gathering place to make
potions and hated the idea of seeing destroyed by such
a massive intrusion, so they did what fairies do best,
they started to mess things up. As construction got underway.

(02:37):
Builders noticed that their handiwork that they had completed the
day before would be completely destroyed by the following morning.
No matter how far they got, the fairies managed to
undo all of it, setting construction back for weeks. The nobleman, however,
refused to budge. He would not find another spot for
his castle, nor would he cease construction. Instead, he put

(02:59):
up a net. It surrounded the perimeter of the build
site and protected the workers from the fairies meddling. One fairy, however,
trying to break through the net. Her name was Ruzka,
and she had gotten her long beautiful hair tangled up
in it, trapping her there. The nobleman caught Ruzka the
next day, but rather than letting her go, he decided

(03:19):
to make an example of her. He buried the faery
deep in the ground as part of the castle's foundation.
From that point on, there was no going back. The
nobleman and the fairies were at war. They cursed him
and his construction site, which the nobleman didn't think too
much about. After all, he'd caught and killed one of
them already, and he'd taken their homeland. There wasn't much

(03:41):
else they could do. The builders continued uninterrupted, returning each
morning to see their work exactly as they'd left it
the day before. The castle was eventually completed and it
was clear that the nobleman had won. He called his
new home Ruzicka Grad, a lasting testament to his brilliant
scheme to outsmart the fairies that had tormented him early

(04:02):
on during construction. As far as he was concerned, their
curse had been nothing but hot air, the desperate attempts
of wild creatures to hold onto what never belonged to
them in the first place. But the Nobleman's joy was
short lived. Trumpets blared, celebrating the completion of the fortress
to all of Slavonia. Then a stone came loose from above.

(04:23):
It fell and struck the nobleman dead. He'd had no children,
and the royal bloodline had ended with him. Perhaps the
fairies curse had been present all along. Since then, Razka
Grad has slowly rotted away to a hollow stone husk,
almost entirely consumed by trees. Eventually it will be reclaimed

(04:44):
by the mountain, and the land will one day return
to its former Glory, just like the fairies had wanted
all along. Read any comic book or watch any superhero movie,

(05:08):
and you're likely to see a familiar story play out
each time a regular person like you or me is
suddenly endowed with special powers after experiencing some kind of trauma.
Perhaps they've been bitten by a radioactive spider or injected
with the super serum, and suddenly they're able to climb
walls and lift hundreds of pounds without a struggle. But

(05:30):
those are just make believe stories meant to entertain, and
on more than one occasion, inspire. After all, it's not
the powers that make these characters heroic, but what's inside them.
In Orthopedic surgeon Anthony Sikoria was an average family man
from upstate New York when he was struck by lightning.

(05:51):
He just walked away from a public phone booth after
hanging up a call. A woman who had been waiting
to use the phone happened to be an intensive care
unit nurse and helped him as they waited for paramedics
to arrive. The bolt of lightning had struck him in
the face and exited through his left foot, both of
which were burned badly for Tony. The incident was an

(06:12):
out of body experience. According to the statement he gave
the press, he watched himself from above and saw his
body surrounded by bluish white light. A wave of peace
came over him before he was brought back to the
world of the living. As he recovered, he could tell
his memory wasn't what it used to be. He consulted
a neurologist who performed a series of scans on his brain,

(06:34):
but they didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Several
weeks passed by, and the memory problems seemed to resolve
itself on its own. But something else had awakened inside him.
When he was younger, his musical tastes had extended to
rocket roll and not much else. Now, however, he found
himself addicted to classical piano music, though listening wasn't enough

(06:57):
for him. Secoria, who had never touched an instrument before
in his life, was suddenly compelled to play the piano.
He ordered sheet music for pieces by Chopin, his favorite composer,
and brought a piano into the house to teach himself
how to play. The lessons started out difficult, and his
fingers didn't move the way he wanted them to. But

(07:17):
as he played, he discovered his obsession went even deeper
than he'd thought. He'd wake up in the middle of
the night with melodies he just had to get down
on paper, even though he really didn't know how to
write them down yet. He'd play for hours before he
had to leave for work, then come home and plunk
out his songs until bedtime. His progress moved at an
incredible pace. The term that the doctors had for Tony

(07:41):
was acquired savant, and his skills earned him performances in
theaters all over the United States, on television, and interviews
in countless books and magazines. He even released a CD
in two thousand eight entitled Notes from an Accidental Pianist.
But Tony's accomplishments were only the tip of the iceberg.
Sudden jolts of electricity have affected people all over the

(08:03):
world in different ways. A great example is Julia Vorobieva,
who was working in a Ukrainian mine in June of
nine seven when she was zapped by three volts from
her mining equipment. She was pronounced dead and brought to
the mortuary, where her body remained on the table for
two days awaiting a medical examiner. When the emmy finally
arrived to perform her autopsy, he made a single incision.

(08:26):
Blood poured from the wound, and that shouldn't have happened
with a dead person, And then the body started to shake.
Julia wasn't dead after all. It took her six months
to fully recover, but she found that she was unable
to sleep at night. No matter what she tried, her
body could not calm itself. Then one night, she finally
slept for hours without interruption. She woke up the next

(08:48):
day a new woman, as though the electricity that had
been bouncing around inside her had finally settled down. What
Julia didn't realize, however, was that the electric shock she
had endured had changed her her way to buy bread.
That day, she looked over at a woman waiting for
the bus and witnessed a horrifying site. Her intestines were
completely visible. There was still inside her body, but Julia

(09:11):
could see them clearly, even though no one else could.
A reporter followed her for the local paper, and she
was able to see what he'd eaten for lunch, working
its way through his stomach. Her new talent earned her
a position at the Ukrainian hospital where she could look
into a person's body and see what was ailing them.
According to one doctor, Julia never made a single mistake

(09:33):
when using her X ray vision, which might be the
most shocking thing of all. I hope you've 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

(09:55):
me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
make another award when show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show and you can learn all
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,