Fright Night

Bats and spooks feature heavily on today's midnight tour. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed. 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 right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
Some of the best legendary figures from history are the
ones shrouded in mystery. Where they came from and what
their upbringing was like always seems to make them more
human than myth, which makes us unable to fill in
the gaps with our own embellished details. But little is
known about Vincent de Groof. Some say that he was Dutch,
others Belgian. He was born around eighteen thirty eight and

(00:59):
once we're as a shoemaker, but his ambitions took him
much higher. Literally. Vincent fancied himself something of an aeronaut
at the time when many were exploring the skies. In
the mid to late eighteen hundreds, aeronauts like Henry Coxwell
and James Glacier were setting records and making advances in
the field of flight, specifically with hot air balloons. In

(01:21):
eighteen sixty two. For example, Glacier and Coxwell reached an
altitude between twenty nine thousand and thirty five thousand feet
in a balloon with a ninety three thousand cubic foot capacity,
the largest such vessel built up to that point. Vincent
wanted to make a name for himself like Coxwell and Glacier,
but hot air balloon was only part of the plan.

(01:42):
He'd also built a contraption like something out of one
of those Leonardo da Vinci notebooks. It was an ornithopter
comprised of a pair of silk wings and a silk
covered tail, all of which was operated by a series
of levers that he pulled while strapped into the device.
Vincent had given all the details of his ornithopter and
his historic flight to The Morning Post, an English newspaper,

(02:03):
which published everything with the following disclaimer, the attempt will
not be more dangerous than the descent of a parachute,
if only they had known. On Sunday, June eighteen seventy three,
over one thousand people gathered in Brussels to watch Vincent
take his creation on its maiden voyage. He had organized
the events on the grounds of a local military Academy,

(02:24):
which had only been allowed because the lieutenant at the
school had insisted on inspecting the flying machine beforehand. Vincent
wasn't worried, though. In fact, he was so sure his
ornithopter would fly that he had a program printed and
handed out to the crowd that described how the whole
spectacle would go down. First, he would flap the wings
to propel himself upward and fly over the spectator's heads. Then,

(02:46):
once they were properly amazed, he would be lifted by
a hot air balloon high into the sky. Once he
was at the proper altitude, he would cut himself loose
and soar through the skies in his homemade rig. Vincent's
was nothing if not ambitious, even when reality did its
best to keep him grounded. When the event finally started
two hours after its scheduled start time, by the way,

(03:09):
he was only able to elevate himself a few feet
off the ground, after which he faced planted into the
dirt and damaged part of the ornithopter. Still, the minor
setback didn't dampen his stubbornness to succeed. He simply carried
on with the show, tying himself to the hot air
balloon with a rope and allowing it to hoist him
barely a few inches into the air. The rope you

(03:30):
see snapped and Vincent once again came crashing back to earth.
The crowds were more than a little upset. They shredded
his balloon in protest, and many an attendance were arrested
for rioting. It took a full year before Vincent made
another earnest attempt at flight. He chose London as the
venue and brought a brand new flying machine with him,
one that bore a striking resemblance to a giant bat.

(03:54):
Its wings measured around thirty five ft long and were
made of silk, just like the last one. He tried
it total of three times to achieve the kind of
flight that he dreamed of. His first attempt, on June
twenty nine, eighteen seventy four, saw him going up about
four feet with the help of the hot air balloon.
He was supposed to cut himself loose, but was still
attached to the balloon when the whole apparatus caught in

(04:15):
a tree. The second launch, on July seven was scrubbed
due to high winds. Two days later, Vincent made his
third and final attempt. Taking off from Cromorne Gardens and Chelsea,
he hooked himself into his bat like horne thopter while
the balloon it was tied to, rose above the city. Unfortunately,
there was an error in communication due to Vincent and
the hot air balloon operators speaking different languages. Vincent tried

(04:39):
to warn him that he was headed straight for St.
Luke's Church and its soaring tower. Someone on the ground
shouted at the men, who prompted Vincent to cut the
ornathopter free and coast to safety. The balloon operator, however,
realized that he was about to crash into the church
and tossed out three bags of ballast to gain altitude.
Those bags landed directly on since contraption, The wings collapsed,

(05:02):
and its pilot plummeted to the street below. Thirty five
year old Vincent de Groff died on July nine, eight
seventy four. Very little was known about who he was
or where he had come from, but he became something
of a legend, dying while doing what he loved, even
if his efforts did sort of fall flat. During the

(05:36):
Great Depression, Americans converged on movie theaters to get out
of their heads. For a while, Hollywood hit its golden
age and people wanted to be amused, so for the
price of a quarter per show, they could have a
special treat and be delighted or scared by the films
that we considered classics today, like Frankenstein, Dracula, or The Mummy.

(05:57):
No one can resist a good scare. America already had
a deep fascination with the great beyond thanks to the
influence of spiritualism in the late nineteenth and early twenty centuries. Clairvoyance, mystics, mediums,
and psychics all promised to fill americans deep seated need
to contact their loved ones. On the other side, some
were true believers, others were quacks, and many were downright criminal,

(06:21):
but they all fan the flames of America's enthusiasm for
the supernatural and with being scared out of their wits
as well. But as people moved from the seance table
to the theater seats, theater owners discovered that it wasn't
just horror films that were packing in the crowds. It
was the midnight ghost shows that had become a sensation.
Ghost shows, also called spook shows or monster shows, were

(06:45):
a combination of something very old and very new. At
these performances, audiences could expect a night of creepy stunts
and special effects that seemed supernatural, in addition to psychic
readings and other magical acts. One of the earliest examples
dates back to France in seventeen ninety eight, when a
Belgian named Etienne Gaspard Robertson used a magic lantern to

(07:09):
project images that seemed to move right before viewers eyes,
nearly one hundred years before the motion picture camera was invented.
But it was someone else, a guy named Elwyn Charles Peck,
who was considered the father of the midnight ghost show.
Sometime around nineteen nine, he created an act that he
called Elwyn's Midnight Spook Party and drew on the tricks

(07:30):
and illusions of his spiritualist predecessors. Teenagers loved the ghost shows,
and whenever they saw advertisements for the performance pop up
in town, they cheerfully trooped off to the movie theater
to hopefully get their pants scared off of them. Onlookers
were lured in with the promise of a good scare
and shamed if they didn't take the bait. Girls were
encouraged to bring their new boyfriends to see if they

(07:52):
were courageous or cowardly. Most went together in groups called
a spook party to better protect themselves. When the ghosts
swept into the audience or people were pulled onto the stage,
patrons shuffled into theaters, talking and laughing nervously as they
found their seats. When the show would start, the house
lights with dim The host emerged, usually dressed in a

(08:13):
costume that wouldn't look out of place in a psychic's
gothic parlor. He would talk for a few minutes, priming
the audience for the performance, and then he would step
aside and introduce the rest of the act. The entire
performance consisted of magic tricks, illusions, conjuring, and audience participation,
and lasted about forty five minutes, followed by the inevitable

(08:33):
yet sudden blackout at the end. By the end of
the nineteen thirties, these blackouts heralded the start of a
horror film that would become a staple of the whole escapade.
If you went to a ghost show at a drive
in theater, you might look out your car window to
see masked and costumed ghosts monsters and demons scuttling between
the cars, popping up randomly to make unsuspecting audience members

(08:55):
jump in their seats. Unfortunately, World War Two put a
halt to Elwyn and the other ghost shows that had
begun touring during the depression. Though people still frequently went
to the movies, many teenagers and young men who participated
in these acts went overseas to fight. Some assumed the
horrors of war would drive people away from the horror
genre altogether once they returned from Europe and the Pacific,

(09:19):
but a funny thing happened instead. Horror film popularity exploded.
Films like Frankenstein and Dracula were re released and sequels
were produced as audiences embraced the terror with new Augusto.
Ghost shows found new life in the post World War two.
Raymond Really Raymond Corbin operated the Zombie Jamboree, which toured

(09:41):
from nineteen forty three to nineteen fifty three. In his shows,
Blood and Guts flew as a mad doctor operated on
a kicking and screaming patient. The terrifying scene ended spectacularly
when a cast member waving a bone saw, ran into
the crowd to chop off an audience member's head all
magic tricks. Of course, ghost shows made decent money too.

(10:03):
Some troops pulled in almost four thousand dollars per night
in larger theaters, more than sixty dollars today. Through the
late nineteen forties and fifties, it seemed like the ghost
shows were writing the high that would never end. I mean,
everyone loves a good scare right well, just like video
killed the radio star, it almost killed the ghost show too.
As television became more popular, and as the gimmicks ghost

(10:26):
shows relied on became less believable, people stopped going. A
mysterious rapping sound and glow in the dark paint weren't
enough anymore. Slowly, troops disbanded and ghost shows disappeared, giving
way to a new horror experience. Still, the spectacle and
costumes became hugely influential on other stage shows, like the
rock and Roll Acts of Alice Cooper and Kiss. We

(10:49):
probably won't see the return of the Ghost show, but
who knows. Trends are cyclical after all, and there's always
the chance we'll see people flocked to the theater once
again for a good old fashion phantomime. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe

(11:10):
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
learn all about it over at the World of Lore

(11:31):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.