Ghosted

Our trip through the Cabinet today will explore ghostly houses and dusty libraries, two places were curious stories are born. Enjoy the tour!

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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 are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. William Kent was a

(00:28):
humble innkeeper in mid seventeen hundreds, England. During the many
months when he and his wife Elizabeth were expecting the
birth of their first child, the woman's sister Fanny came
to stay with them and help around the house. Sadly,
Elizabeth died giving birth to their son, and the frail
little infant passed away a short while later. William was
in turmoil, having lost both his beloved wife and his

(00:51):
newborn son just days apart. Fanny decided to stay and
help him, and eventually the two fell in love. He
wanted to marry her, so he set out for London
to seek counsel on how to proceed, but there was
a problem. The Church wouldn't let William mary Fanny, as
canon law forbade it. William was again heartbroken and decided

(01:11):
to get away from his job, from his old house,
from every bad memory he had. He and Fanny parted ways,
and then he moved to London, where he started a
new life for himself. Fanny, however, couldn't forget William. She
wrote him letter as professing her love for him, and
he wrote back each and every time. Eventually, William could
no longer hide his feelings and he invited her to

(01:33):
come stay with him. The two lived secretly as husband
and wife. They moved to a property on Cock Lane,
just outside of London, which was owned by a man
named Richard Parsons. Parsons was a parish clerk who owed
William a debt for a loan given to him some
time earlier. But there was something about the couple that
didn't sit well with Parsons. Some believe that Fanny's family

(01:56):
had reached out to him and let him in on
their little secret because they were upset about their daughter's behavior.
Whatever the source of information that led him to the truth,
he used canon law as justification to simply not repay William.
One day, William was called away to a wedding out
of town, leaving an now pregnant Fanny alone. To make
sure she was watched over while he was gone, he

(02:18):
asked Parson's daughter Elizabeth to stay with her, sleeping in
the same bed, just in case something went wrong with
the baby. Mr Parsons agreed to the arrangement too, and
then William left and that was when the scratching started.
It occurred at different parts of the day and night
around the home, often paired with a knocking sound. Parsons

(02:38):
daughter Elizabeth said that a cobbler worked by and that
was probably what they'd heard. But when the sounds resurfaced
the following Sunday, a day of rest for many tradesmen,
they knew something was wrong. Another local landlord came to
inspect the house and claimed to witness a glowing white
spirit climbing the stairs. Richard Parsons confirmed that he had

(02:59):
also seen this same thing. When William returned home, he
moved Fanny out, not just because of the ghost, but
also because of her pregnancy. She was only a few
weeks away from giving birth and he had a comfortable
place ready for her to deliver in. Unfortunately, tragedy would
strike once again. Fanny contracted smallpox, and after several days
of fever, she passed away. William inherited her small estate

(03:24):
and used the money to pay for her burial costs,
leaving him with very little leftover. Still, he didn't stay
down for long. He eventually remarried and became a successful stockbroker.
With his new status and happy family, he returned to
cock Lane, taking over for the previous tenant, who had
left after the scratching and knocking noises became too much

(03:44):
to bear. Richard Parsons eventually discovered the cause. His daughter
Elizabeth claimed the ghost had returned, but now there were two,
not one. The first ghost, which had bothered Fanny prior
to her death, was thought to be her deceased sister,
also confusingly named Elizabeth, and this new ghost why it
was Fanny herself? Of course, Parsons believed they had important

(04:07):
messages to share, and that's why they refused to move on.
Fanny's sister. Elizabeth's presence was meant to be a warning
to her sister about her coming death. Fanny, however, bore
more shocking news. Her spirit, communicating yes and no through
a series of knocks, let the Parsons know the secret
about her widow or husband, William, that he had murdered her,

(04:29):
possibly both of them. William had allegedly poisoned Fanny with
arsenic before she could have the baby and then had
her buried quickly to hide the evidence. The church believed
the ghosts were telling the truth, after all, how could
you argue with the spirit. As a result, William soon
became a prime suspect in the murder of Fanny. Desperate

(04:49):
to clear his name, he asked for a seance to
be held in the home so that he could ask
her himself. Upstairs, Richard Parson's daughter and her sister were
sleeping while William, Richard, several others in the community gathered
around the table. They asked the spirit questions about her
marriage to William and whether he'd poisoned her. One knock
meant yes, Two knocks meant no. Had they been married?

(05:12):
Two knocks? Had he poisoned her? One knock? Things weren't
looking good for poor Mr Kent, But there was something
about the ghosts that struck everyone as odd. She seemed
to go wherever Elizabeth Parsons went. While Elizabeth was staying
in another person's home, knocking sounds were reportedly heard throughout
the night there. When she returned to her home just

(05:33):
in time for another seance, though so did the noise.
An investigation was conducted, as were several more seances, and
present for all of them in some part of the
house was Elizabeth Parsons. One night, the investigators asked her
to sleep with her arms outstretched, her hands outside the bed.
No scratching or knocking were heard that night, not a

(05:54):
single sound. The experiment was repeated the next night and
the same results happened, absolutely nothing. The truth was finally
exposed when Elizabeth's maids noticed the small plank of wood
she kept tucked into her clothes. They alerted investigators right away. Elizabeth,
it seems, had been the ghost the entire time, knocking
and scratching with the block of wood. But why well,

(06:19):
because her father had put her up to it. He
still owed William Kent money for the loan he'd taken,
and he didn't want to pay it back. After Fanny died,
William had sued him for the remaining money, so Parsons
exacted his revenge the only way he knew how, by
pretending to be a ghost and framing the man for murder.
His Scooby Doo style plan didn't work, though, After a

(06:41):
quick trial, Richard and his wife were ordered to pay
hundreds of pounds in damages to William and Richard was
also sentenced to prison. In the end, the lesson is
obvious and simple. If you plan to skip out on
your debts, you better have a really good plan, a
lot of luck, and just in case things go south,

(07:02):
you better knock on wood. Everyone has their vices. Some
enjoy playing the lottery, others love a good chocolate bar.

(07:23):
For Antonio Magliavecki, his vice was knowledge. Born in Florence, Italy,
in three Antonio apprenticed for a local goldsmith until he
was forty years old. It was then when he met
Michel Ermini, the librarian for Cardinal de Vedici. Michelle saw
something in Antonio, a passion for learning, a desire to

(07:46):
rise above his status as an apprentice and do more
with the mind he was given. With Michelle's help, Antonio
learned several languages, including Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Years later,
after decades of study, Antonio found himself in the same
position as his one time tutor, becoming the librarian to
the Grand Duke of Tuscany. From there, his reputation stretched

(08:10):
far beyond the confines of his bookshelves. He became an
academic celebrity of sorts, engaging with scholars from all over
the world who wanted to learn more about the self
taught genius from Florence. However, genius often breeds other problems
for all his intelligence, and Tonio was quite negligent about
his state of dress. He tended to wear his clothes

(08:31):
until they were literally falling off of him in tatters.
He typically only ate three hard boiled eggs for dinner
with the glass of water, and as someone came to
his door who he didn't care to entertain, he simply
wouldn't let them in. He was an incredibly private man,
devoid of pride or extravagance. He once worked for an
entire year without taking a salary. In fact, the concept

(08:53):
of money or bills just didn't occur to him, allowing
him to amass quite a fortune, But he didn't really
ended on anything, well almost Antonio enjoyed spending what money
he had on his greatest obsession, books. He was known
as a literary glutton, filling his work library with over
forty thousand titles and more than ten thousand manuscripts. His

(09:16):
home also held thousands of volumes, many of which lined
the staircases and extended outside the house onto his porch.
Even more impressive was the fact that he had read
every single one of them. As someone whose side table
practically groans under the weight of all the new books
that I want to read, I can't help but be
a little jealous. Clearly, Antonio dedicated his life to expanding

(09:38):
his mind with a written word. Perhaps all of that
reading had a profound effect on him, or maybe his
brain had always been wired a certain way. But aside
from his extensive library, Antonio was also known for his
extensive memory. Today, he might be called a human search engine,
capable of citing the exact book, author, and even pay

(10:00):
age number when asked of him. According to the stories,
he was once asked by his employer, the Duke, where
he might find a specific title without hesitation, Antonio told
him there was only one copy of it in existence.
Arrested in the Grand Seignior's library in Constantinople, on the
second bookcase from the right, eleven volumes in it said

(10:20):
that a priest asking for a eulogy on a certain
saint would often get a list of over a hundred
authors who had ever written about that saint and where
their books could be found amongst the many thousands of
books in his possession. But all that book knowledge came
at a price. Antonio almost never traveled outside of Florence
to see the world. He slept in his clothes, rarely

(10:41):
ate anything other than those hard boiled eggs, and spent
hours each day reading in the palace library. And yet
he lived to be eighty one years old and was
revered for his sharp mind and endless memory. For him,
a work life balance just didn't exist, because his work
was his life. When he died, Antonio left his entire

(11:02):
fortune to the poor. His library, though tens of thousands
of books, all went to the Grand Duke, but with
one condition that they'd be used to found a public library.
It was called the Magliabechiana, and through various mergers with
other private libraries around Italy, it went on to become
the National Central Library of Florence, the largest public library

(11:24):
in all of Italy. Antonio didn't just believe in learning.
He believed that knowledge was meant to be shared with everyone.
If he were alive today, he'd be amazed at how
easy the Internet has made that dream come true. Either
that or he'd spend his entire life online reading everything
he could get his hands on. I'd expect nothing less

(11:46):
from the world's most ravenous bookworm. 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 me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.

(12:09):
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 next time, stay curious.