Boneheads

Some things in life are too important to let go of. Here are two stories about seizing the day.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to

(00:27):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Everybody likes a deal. From Black
Friday to Cyber Monday to Labor Day weekend, people love
to line up and log on for big savings. The
deals aren't always worth the effort, though. The percentage might

(00:48):
be too low, or the brand might not be top tier.
But sometimes an opportunity comes along that's just too good
to pass up. Along the southern edge of Nebraska is
a city, though you wouldn't know it by looking at it. Harvard, Kansas,
spans less than one square mile and boasts a whopping
population of about a thousand people. It was founded when

(01:09):
the Burlington and Missouri Railroad laid down tracks there in
eighteen seventy one. Two years later, Harvard was incorporated as
a village. It took its name from the prestigious university
in Massachusetts, and just like its namesake, it's not without
its own list of famous former residents. Ida Bengston was
born there in eighteen eighty one and went on to

(01:30):
become a groundbreaking bacteriologist. She was also the first woman
to work at the U S Public Health Services Hygienic
Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. And who could
forget Paul Revere, No, not that Paul Revere. Paul Revere
Dick was the leader of the hit nineteen sixties rock
band Paul Revere and the Raiders. He was born in
Harvard in nineteen thirty eight. But the city wasn't just

(01:53):
home to scientists and rock stars. Families of all kinds
raised their children there, business owners open shops, and of course,
a place even as small as Harvard needed a police department,
although given the size of the town a large prison
was deemed unnecessary. Yet there needed to be a place
to hold people in case they broke the law, as

(02:14):
rare as that was, and so a small brick jailhouse
was built and had a single door on the front
and a few small windows on the side to let
the light in, but otherwise it was barely bigger than
an average sized dorm room. In n three, the town
decided to put some of its land up for sale
to raise money. A sixteen year old boy named Robert Pinckney,

(02:34):
who happened to be the son of a local physician,
was interested in buying a plot for himself. He planned
on using it to grow a victory garden to support
the war effort. As he was reading through the list,
he noticed something strange though someone had included the town
jail as one of the properties for sale. Pinckney, ever
the good samaritan, tried to warn the city about its mistake.

(02:56):
Instead of listening, though the city council laughed him out
of the room. Pinckney figured that if they weren't going
to remove it from the listing, then he would buy
it for himself, and he did for one dollar and
fifty cents. Officials refused to admit their screw up, and
Pickney signed the papers. He officially became the owner of
the Harvard City jailhouse, and all it had cost him

(03:17):
was a buck and a half. The police still went
down with business as usual, though, tossing criminals and drunks
into the jail when they had to. But Pinckney wasn't
thrilled with his property being used without his permission. Now
he was the landlord after all, so with the help
of a lawyer, he sued the town for back rent.
Harvard agreed, but on the condition that Robert tended the
jail as though it was his own home. He was

(03:40):
required to pull the weeds, trim the trees on the property,
and get rid of the sidewalks or face heavy fines.
Pinckney thought it might be easier to just tear the
whole thing down altogether. Harvard couldn't have that happen, though,
so they made a deal to buy the jail back
from him. There was just one problem. He wasn't old
enough to sell it. He'd have to wait until he

(04:00):
turned twenty one. So the city did its best to
hide its squabble with the budding real estate mogul, but
word of Pickney's pettiness got out to the press that
even made national news. Suddenly people came crawling out of
the woodwork to buy the jail from him. One person
offered him one and fifty dollars for it, while someone
else asked to rent it for thirty five dollars a month.

(04:23):
But Pickney had a better idea. He put the jailhouse
up for auction to raise money for war bonds. One
person came forward and bid ten thousand dollars. Well, person
isn't quite the right word for him, is he. Charlie McCarthy,
who won the jail in the auction, was a dummy,
and that's not an insult either. He was a literal dummy,

(04:43):
belonging to the world famous fren triloquist Edgar Bergen. Charlie
gave the jail back to Harvard soon after. It's still
there too, with a plaque outside that explains its tumultuous history,
and no dummy, real or Wooden, ever put it up
for sale again. Everyone has something to hide. It might

(05:16):
be an illicit relationship, or reckless spending habits, or even
something as harmless as a cupcake when they think no
one is looking. Regardless of what it is, it seems
like no one is without a skeleton or two in
their closets. And just be careful if you start digging,
you might not like what you find. Jenny Minton certainly
did not. It was August of two eleven and these

(05:37):
sixteen year old Oregon native had been clearing out a
closet in a local lodge. You see her mother was
a member of a social group known as the Daughters
of Rebecca, who used the space for their gatherings. Minton
stumbled upon a strange site during her cleaning. It was
a coffin. Now. Her first thought was that it had
been a prop maybe from an old theatrical performance held

(05:58):
at the lodge. But she and her mother, Linda, opened
the lid they realized that there was nothing fake about it.
Inside the five foot long casket were bones, lots of
them too, and they had yellowed and molded. Among the
desecrated remains were teeth, a jaw, and even a skull.
Jenny and her mom thought they had found something sinister,

(06:19):
so they called the police. I have a skeleton in
the closet, Linda told the dispatcher, we all do. The
person on the other end of the line said, little
did they know that Linda and her daughter actually had
found a skeleton in the closet of the watch. A
detective arrived to collect the bones for analysis. The police
then conducted an investigation of the scene, but no foul

(06:40):
play was detected. A similar experience happened to Paul Wallace
in Warrington, Virginia in two thousand one. He'd been fixing
the electrical wiring in a brick building when he noticed
a small door in one of the walls. Wallace opened
it up and pulled out a black box similar to
the one Jenny Minton would find ten years later. Inside

(07:01):
it was a skeleton and several white candles. Not wanting
to disturb a possible crime scene any further, Wallace pushed
the box and its contents back behind the door and
alerted the authorities. They executed a search warrant immediately and
took custody of the skeleton. Though Warrenton had never experienced
such a grizzly discovery before, similar incidents had unfolded in

(07:24):
attics and crawl spaces all over the country, and they
would continue to do so for years to come. Jim
Lushka from Missouri thought that he had snagged a great
deal on a couple of prop caskets for his local
theater group. Little did he know that one of them
contained real bones that had once belonged to a living
human being. But these coffins weren't a serial killers trophy,

(07:46):
nor were they the work of a murderous cult. The
buildings that the bones have been found in belonged to
the fraternal organization known as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
It was formed in eighteen nineteen by English philanthropist Thomas
He had started the order as an offshoot of the
original Odd Fellows fraternity, which had gotten it starts in
England back in the seventeenth century. Soon after its incorporation,

(08:10):
wildly began traveling all over the US to open up
lodges and established new chapters. Throughout its history, the Odd
Fellows have been linked to secret societies like Freemasons and
the Illuminati. In reality, they were nothing like them at all.
Their mission statement claimed that the Odd Fellows visited the sick,
relieved the distressed, buried the dead, and educated the orphan.

(08:32):
In other words, they helped people wherever they could. However,
like those other organizations, Initiation had its own set of
rituals and customs. One such ritual involved a new member
interacting with the skeleton, literally coming face to face with death,
as a reminder to make the most of the life
they were given. To do that they had to dedicate

(08:54):
that life to helping others. In recent years, the skeletons
have been replaced with plaster fact similes. However, there was
a time when an odd Fellow could purchase a real
one from a company specializing in their procurement. It's typically
those remains that wind up kicking off police searches and investigations.

(09:14):
As lodge as close, the people cleaning them out don't
realize the meaning behind the boxes of bones that they
find today, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows boasts six
hundred thousand members and ten thousand lodges across twenty six countries.
There is also a female focused branch known as the
Daughters of Rebecca, the organization Jenny and Linda Minton belonged

(09:35):
to back in two thousand eleven. Given the number of
lodges remaining, it's only a matter of time before someone
unwittingly stumbles upon another skeleton. Everyone meets death eventually, but
most people don't expect to meet it inside their closet.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

(09:57):
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 Mankey 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 learn all about it over at

(10:18):
the world of Lore dot com. And until next time,
stay curious, Yeah,