Deal with the Devil

Halloween icons are on display in the Cabinet today. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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 the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
Mythology is full of tricksters. The Norse have Loki, the
shape shifter god. In West African folklore, there is a Nansi,
the god of stories, knowledge and trickery. And let's not
forget the Greek Prometheus who stole fire from the Olympians
to give to humanity. But of all these trickster myths,
there's one that stands out the most during the Halloween season,
the Irish legend of Stingy Jack. As his name suggests,

(01:00):
Stingy Jack was a bit of a selfish guy. He
was known for lying, stealing, and drinking. Rumors about his
vile behavior made it all the way down to the underworld,
and the devil himself became fascinated by his most evil
of mortals. One night, Stingy Jack was taking a drunken
strolled on a dark cobblestone path, and he stumbled upon
what appeared to be a dead body. But Jack, a

(01:21):
born trickster, could not be tricked. He immediately realized that
the body was actually the Devil in disguise. Still, meeting
Satan on a deserted street was never a good thing.
Jack assumed the devil was there to collect his sinful
soul and take it down to hell. Desperate to make
it out alive, Jack decided to try one final trick.
He asked Lucifer for a little favor, just one last

(01:43):
pint of beer. Amused by Jack's insistance, Satan said sure,
and the pair took off toward the nearest pub. After
downing way more than a single pint, Jack revealed his secret.
He didn't have a cent on him. He needed the
devil to pay the tab. Now, being the ruler of
the under the world, Lucifer didn't find it necessary to
carry cash, but he agreed to transform himself into a

(02:05):
coin only so Jack could pay the bill and then leave.
As soon as Satan turned into a silver medallion, Jack
grabbed the coin and stuck it in his pocket, where
he also happened to be carrying a crucifix and that
crucifix kept Satan trapped. In order to escape, he had
to make a deal. In exchange for his freedom, Satan
promised to spare Jack's soul for ten years. It was

(02:27):
a good enough deal for Jack, so he pulled the
silver coin out of his pocket and he and Lucifer
went their separate ways. However, Jack had learned exactly zero
lessons from his near death experience. Ten years later, he
once again was out walking, drunk, stumbling down a cobblestone
path when he happened upon Satan. The devil was there
right on time, ready to cash in on their deal.

(02:48):
Of course, stingy Jack had something of a contingency plan.
He told Lucifer that he was just so hungry, couldn't
Satan climb an apple tree and grab him a snack
before carding him off to the under world, and the
devil made the mistake of saying yes. He climbed in
nearby tree, and as he plucked an apple from its branches,
Jack placed a circle of crucifixes around the bottom. Again

(03:11):
Satan was trapped, and this time Jack made an even
bigger demand. If the devil wanted to get down, he
had to promise he would never bring jack soul to Hell.
Lucifer really didn't have a choice, he said fine. Jack
moved the crucifixes and Satan he tailed it out of there,
not wanting to get caught in any more bad deals
with clever mortals. Some years later, Stingy Jack, who had

(03:33):
lived a full life of thievery, cons and a whole
lot of beer, finally died. When he knocked on the
door of heaven, God refused to let him in. This
must have been a shock to Jack, who thought that
he had this whole afterlife thing planned out. With nowhere
else to go, he trecked down to Hell and asked
his old friend Lucifer to let him in, but Satan
said no. They had a deal. After all, Stingy Jack's

(03:55):
soul could not enter the underworld. All the devil could
offer him was an ember, a tiny little piece of light.
So Jack had made his bed, and now he had
to lie in it. He took the ember and placed
it inside a hollowed out turnip, which he carried with
him as a lantern. It lit his way as his
soul aimlessly wandered the earth, and this was what got
him the new nickname Jack of the Lantern. Now, in

(04:19):
eighteen hundreds, Ireland people carved faces into hollowed out turnips,
Rudebega's beets and potatoes, and then they put candles inside.
Around All Hallows Eve, when the veil between the living
and the dead was thinnest, they placed the lanterns on
their porches, hoping to scare away Jack of the Lantern's
wayward soul. As people immigrated from Ireland to America, All

(04:39):
Hallows Eve became Halloween, and they found a plant that
was larger, easier to carve, and made a much better
lantern pumpkins, And just like that, the Jack O' lantern
as we know it was born. So if you're carving
pumpkins this year, take a moment to remember the curious
tale of Stingy Jack and keep your candles lit just

(05:00):
in case his spirit comes knocking. If someone asked you
to draw a ghost right now, you would probably sketch

(05:20):
what's known as a bedsheet ghost, You know, the one,
the round top, squiggly bottom, couple of dots for eyes.
The image is frightfully ubiquitous. It appears in everything from
movies to art. In the Halloween decor isle at targets.
That's even a bedsheet ghost emoji, which got me wondering
where did the idea that ghosts wear sheets even come from. Well,

(05:41):
it turns out the image can be traced back at
least seven centuries. In the thirteen hundreds, ghosts were often
depicted in art as skeletons wrapped in burial shrouds. For
most of human history, people weren't buried in caskets or coffins.
They were simply wrapped in sheets. If the dearly departed
came from an upper class family, they might be buried
in in that was made and decorated specifically for the funeral,

(06:03):
and if they were from a lower class background, they'd
likely be buried in sheets pulled right off their deathbed. Still,
it took a while for the shrouded skeleton to evolve
into the bedsheet ghost we know and love today, and
there were other versions in between. For example, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ghosts were frequently featured as characters
in plays. In the original production of Hamlet, the ghost

(06:24):
of Hamlet's father wore metal armor. This created a trend
in armor clad specters in the theater, but a few
centuries later a haunting in London seemed to cement the
bedsheet ghost as the most accurate portrayal. In November of
eighteen oh three, people in the western London neighborhood of
Hammersmith reported seeing a ghostly figure prowling around town. The

(06:45):
figure was tall, slender, and clad in a white sheet.
It was ostensibly the spirit of a man who had
died in Hammersmith the previous year, and locals kept seeing
him around town for months and it was starting to
freak them out. So they did what seemed most logical.
They organized a ghost hunting team. In January of eighteen
oh four. The group set off into the night, intending

(07:06):
to take care of the haunting once and for all.
One of these ghost hunters was a twenty nine year
old man named Francis Smith. As he and the rest
of the group searched for the spirit, Francis saw someone
round the street corner in front of them. It was
a tall, thin man dressed all in white. Certain he
had found the phantom, Francis raised his gun and fired,

(07:27):
and the specter crumpled to the ground. Because it wasn't
a ghost at all. It was Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer
who had been walking home from his work in his
all white uniform, and sadly he died from that gunshot.
It later came out that the entire Hammersmith hunting had
just been a hoax, but since Thomas Millwood really had
lost his life, a new legend emerged. It was said

(07:50):
that Thomas's spirit then stalked Hammersmith, and soon after this,
an image of Thomas's ghost clad in billowing white sheets
was installed in a local museum. This helped popularize the
image of the bedsheet ghost in the English speaking world.
A few decades later, over in the United States, a
Missouri newspaper conducted a poll asking readers if they believed

(08:11):
in ghosts. One respondent wrote in, and I quote, ghosts
are nearly always white, although some of the authorities admit
there are dark ones. I should say, however, that the
genuine ghost is always white, that always makes its first
appearance at the haunted spot at precisely twelve o'clock midnight.
Based on this quote, it seems that there were still
some dissenting opinions on what spirits looked like, but white

(08:33):
was a safe bet, and maybe that's why. In nineteen
thirty nine, animators chosen all white designed for one of
the most famous phantoms in history, Casper, the friendly Ghost.
It was really Hollywood and the budding film industry that
turned the once terrifying image of the bedsheet ghost into
something we now consider cute and fun. Throughout the fifties
and sixties, animated bedsheet ghosts appeared in cartoons like Popeye

(08:57):
and Scooby Doo. Thus it became the go to design
for goules than pop culture, but some people thought it
was just a fad. In nineteen sixty four, a North
Carolina newspaper reported, and I quote styles in ghosting are changing,
dwindling in obscurity are the old fashioned groaning, flapping bedsheets
and the simple white objects which jump out of dark

(09:18):
places and say boo. And to that, I have one
thing to say, the ghost emoji begs to differ. 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

(09:41):
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 the worldoflore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.