Outlasted

Today in the Cabinet, we'll examine the life of two different individuals who both managed to escape the laws of probability, and their stories are all the more entertaining because of it.

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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. Sometime around nineteen fourteen, Walter

(00:29):
traveled across the Atlantic with thousands of other brave Canadians
to join the fight at the start of World War One.
For many, it would be a one way trip, but
Walter managed to stay alive for four straight years. In fact,
no bullet or landmine would send him home. In nineteen eighteen, No,
that would be blamed on something far more strange. He
was on patrol in the area of Belgium known as

(00:52):
Flanders Fields when a bolt of lightning flashed out of
the sky and struck him off his horse. When his
fellow soldiers found him, he was laying in the mud
beside his dead horse, and half his body had been paralyzed.
As a result. He was put on the next ship
back to Canada to begin his recovery process. It would
take Major Walter Somerford many years to become self sufficient,

(01:15):
eventually learning to walk with the help of a cane.
But he was still young, still drawn to adventure and
still full of life. So when a group of his
friends decided in nineteen twenty four to hike into the
mountains to fish in a nearby lake, Walter happily joined them.
I imagine the steep hike was grueling for him, but

(01:35):
he kept up. Walter was a fighter, after all, But
when they arrived at the lake, he decided to take
a seat while his friends unloaded their gear and set
up camp. Right near the water's edge was a tall tree,
so he sat himself down against it under the shade
of the branches, But the sun quickly faded away as
a storm rolled in. When Walter his friends found him,

(01:57):
he was laying on his side at the base of
the tree, trembling and in pain. The tree itself told
them everything they needed to know. A dark, smoldering streak
ran down the bark from high above all the way
to the ground. It had been a lightning strike, and Walter,
against all odds, had been struck again, just like the

(02:18):
first time. Walter seemed to have been paralyzed by it,
and as a result spent a long while in the
hospital doing his best to recover. It took him two
years before he could walk again. But he did it.
Like I said, he was a fighter and giving up
wasn't an option, so he pressed onward in life. As
the story goes, Walter took a trip to a park

(02:41):
in Vancouver in the summer of nineteen thirty. He was
probably there with family or maybe those same fishing buddies.
We don't really know, but I have a feeling you
could guess what happened next. Right against all the laws
of probability, Walter Somerford was struck by lightning for the
third time in his life. They say this one was

(03:01):
the worst, or perhaps it was just so devastating because
it was the third time in twelve years that it
had happened. Whatever the reason, Walter never walked again and
spent the last two years of his life in a wheelchair.
When he passed away in nineteen thirty two, still very
much a young man, he went to the grave as
a member of a very special club. Lightning rarely strikes twice,

(03:25):
but for Walter Somerford, it did that and more. You
would expect the story to end there, wouldn't you No more? Walter?
No more lightning? Right? Well, not exactly, because in nineteen
thirty four, Just two years after he passed away, lightning
did strike again in his hometown. Now, I know what

(03:47):
you're thinking, without Walter, where could it possibly strike? The answer, though,
might be more obvious than you were expecting. It struck
his gravestone naturally. When the trap door of the gallows

(04:14):
was opened, the entire crowd held their breath. They were
about to watch an innocent man die, and there was
nothing they could do to stop it. It was February
of The person on the platform was a young man
named will Purvis, who had been sentenced to death by
hanging for the murder of a local farmer named William Buckley.
The trouble was Purvos claimed he was innocent. He swore

(04:37):
to it thanks to a bit of circumstantial evidence, though
the jury ruled unanimously against him. Purvis was stunned. He
hadn't committed the crime, and yet no one believed him.
Angry and bitter, he lashed out in the courtroom. I'll
live longer than a lot of you, he shouted, regardless.

(04:57):
On a cold February day in mississip Be, Will Purvis
was escorted to the gallows for his execution. He was
led up the stairs where a noose was lowered over
his neck and then tightened, and then a black sack
was slipped over his face. Finally, the trap door was
triggered and will Purvis dropped to his death. Well sort of.

(05:18):
He actually fell a few feet and landed on the
soft grass below the platform. The crowd glanced back up
at the rope and immediately spotted the reason why the
noose had come untied. Sure, Purvis had a bit of
rope burn around his throat, but he was alive and breathing,
so the crowd went wild. The executioners tried to rebound

(05:39):
from their failed attempt. They rushed down and scooped Purvis up,
and then hauled him back up to the platform, where
they reset the trap door. After a moment, though, they
gave up. Maybe it was the nervousness of retying a
noose in front of thousands of angry onlookers. Perhaps it
was a desire to do things on their own terms,
at their own pace. Maybe they could hear his words

(06:01):
to the jury echoing in the back of their minds. Somehow,
despite the odds, he had survived. So they tossed Will
Purvis back in jail. He had already spent two years
in prison waiting for his trial, and now he was back.
He made an appeal for a new trial, but they
denied him. He made another appeal and received yet another denial.

(06:25):
This went on for two long years. All Walpurvis had
to endure hard labor alongside the other prisoners. But finally,
in January of eight something changed. Actually it was someone.
Mississippi had elected a new governor, and when the new
man and slum McLaurin took office, he changed Purvis's sentence.

(06:46):
The executioner's noose no longer loomed in his future. Two
years after that, enough evidence and public outcry had flowed
in that he was actually pardoned. Roughly six years after
his life fell apart, Will pervos Us was a freeman.
Two decades later, the true killer of William Buckley came
forward and confessed, closing the case for good. Purvis went

(07:10):
on to live in another four decades. He never found
himself back inside the courthouse or at the center of
another murder trial. He eventually received a large payment from
the state as restitution for his time in prison, and
lived a full normal life. Will Purvis passed away in
nineteen forty four years after his failed execution and just

(07:32):
three days after the death of the final member of
his jury, Will Purvis It turns out was a man
of his word. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

(07:53):
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 the World of Lore dot com. And until

(08:14):
next time, stay curious.