Hunters’ Duel

Some men push through countless obstacles to rise to greatness, while others waste their lives getting into magical duels. Both options, however, have left us with some thrilling stories.

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Robert refused to give in to fear born into slavery
in the American South. He always found small ways to rebel.
His proudest moment was when he married his wife, Hannah,
who was also enslaved. Their marriage wasn't even legally recognized
by the state of South Carolina, but they did it anyway.
He had also proven himself smart and capable enough at
various jobs until he was stationed on a steamship called

(00:59):
the Planter. The crew was mostly fellow and slave people,
with only three white officers to oversee all of them.
It was better than being on a plantation, and then
they got to be out on the water and move around,
but their overseers were just as hateful and condescending as
any white slave owners on land. They hadn't done much
sailing over the past year since the war broke out

(01:20):
and the Union blockaded Charleston, trapping the Planter and other
ships in Charleston Harbor. They could still run supplies back
and forth between the peers, but that was about it.
As such, Robert started to notice the captain and the
other two officers grow lax when it came to military regulations.
They weren't supposed to ever leave the enslaved people alone
on the ship, but that started to happen more and

(01:42):
more regularly, more shocking than that. One night, the captain
told Robert that he and the other officers were going
to town to be with their families for the night,
and he left the ship in Robert's care while the
war raged on. Every time Robert got word of a
Confederate victory, his heart sank. He and his wife now
had two small children to care for, but those children

(02:02):
were the property of his wife's enslaver. There was nothing
keeping that slaver from selling her and the children and
sending them off to god knows where. If the Confederates
were successful in becoming their own nation, then Robert and
his family would continue to be enslaved for the rest
of their lives. It wouldn't be a matter of if
their family was torn apart, but when and thinking about

(02:23):
this led Robert to desperation. He would rather die than
lose his family. He continued to be left in charge
of the planter. The captain probably thought that Robert would
appreciate the trust, and he did, but not because he
cared at all what the man thought of him. In fact,
he was going to show the captain that he had
made a huge mistake. And so Robert gathered the other

(02:44):
enslaved people on board and told them that he wanted
to take advantage of the situation. They didn't know how
the war would turn out, but they would be fools
to just sit back and let it play out without
taking advantage of the chaos. He proposed that they steal
the ship, pick up their love ones, and escaped to
the Union blockade, where they would turn over the ship
and earn their freedom. They put their plan in motion

(03:06):
in June of eighteen sixty two. The crew had no
problems sailing from the military peer to a nearby wharf
where their friends and family were waiting. Once picked up,
there were now sixteen escaping in slave people on board,
with the women and children hiding below decks Robert then
put on a straw hat that hid his face and
had the men raise the Confederate flag above the ship.

(03:27):
He then sailed them out into the harbor, past the
Confederate fort guarding the city. The men on guard yelled
down to the ship, give the Yankees hell, to which
Robert coolly replied, I I. And from there several tense
moments passed as they grew closer and closer to the
Union ships. They waited as long as they dared to
switch the Confederate flag out for a white flag of surrender.

(03:49):
But when they finally did, the nearest Union ship called
out to them, asking for their names and their intent.
Robert gave them his and told them that they wanted
their freedom. This was just the beginning of Robert's incredible story.
He went on to captain the Planter and use it
to help fight the Confederacy for the remainder of the war,
and after the war was over, he took the reward

(04:10):
money for the ship's capture and used it to buy
a mansion in South Carolina, and not just any mansion,
but the mansion of his original enslaver, who had since
fled the state. We can only imagine how incredible he
must have felt raising his family in the main house
where he was born into slavery in a shack in
the backyard. In the years that followed, Robert continued to

(04:32):
do amazing things, becoming a state senator and doing his
best to make South Carolina a safe place for freed
and slave folks. Unfortunately, with the rise of the Jim
Crow South, a lot of amazing stories like Roberts were
deliberately downplayed in the history books. But curious minds have
since reclaimed that legacy, bringing his story back to national

(04:53):
attention with a monument outside of South Carolina's state House.
When he piloted that ship out of Charleston Harbor, rob
Bbert Smalls was just trying to create a future for
his family, but in doing so, he contributed to the
future of all black Americans. It began on a frozen

(05:23):
evening in early nineteen sixty nine. A middle aged accountant
by the name of Thornton was walking home when he
decided to cut through the graveyard, a shortcut that quickly
became a detour into the uncanny. Once a grand Victorian graveyard,
Highgate had long ago fallen into disrepair. Its crumbling mausoleums
and tombstones were now covered in ivy and graffiti, and

(05:46):
the paths were severely overgrown. As Thornton wandered between the
crips and weeping angel statues, he realized that he had
gotten lost. A bell clanged in the distance, and he
started toward the sound, hoping that it might lead him
to the gate, but he had barely made it a
few steps before the temperature suddenly dropped. A towering figure

(06:06):
loomed ahead, human shaped but draped in shadows, and watching
him with unblinking intensity. Thornton tried to run, but he
was rooted in place and growing rapidly weaker, as if
the specter was sapping the life from him. And then,
as suddenly as it appeared, the figure vanished. When Thornton
realized that he could move again, he ran, and he

(06:28):
didn't stop until he stumbled out through the cemetery gates.
A few weeks later, an elderly woman reported a near
identical experience. Both accounts were reported to the British Psychic
and Occult Society, a little known organization run almost entirely
by a twenty four year old psychic investigator named David Farrant,
intrigued but skeptical, he visited Highgate himself one night and

(06:50):
allegedly glimpsed the same phantom, which he described as a tall,
gray figure with pinpricks of red light for eyes. Convinced
that something supernatural was a foot, Farrant wrote to the
local newspaper asking if anyone else had seen anything strange
in Highgates. The responses poured in, detailing one account after
another of bizarre paranormal phenomena. The local press picked up

(07:13):
the story and then the BBC. Pretty soon Highgate was
the hottest destination in London for ghost hunters, goth teens
and aspiring occultists. One of the newcomers was a guy
named Sean Manchester, a self proclaimed bishop and exorcist. He
claimed the figure in Highgate was not just a ghost,
but a vampire, possibly a medieval Romanian nobleman, who had

(07:35):
been brought to London in a coffin full of native soil.
According to Manchester, recent satanic rituals had reawakened this ancient bloodsucker,
and only he had the skills and the stakes to
deal with it. David Farrant went on records saying that
he thought this theory was ridiculous. He was a firm
believer in ghosts, but he drew the line at vampires.

(07:57):
Manchester took the criticism personally and pretty so soon their
difference of paranormal opinion spiraled into a bitter feud. Farrant
accused Manchester of fabricating his credentials and sensationalizing the story.
Manchester accused Farrant of consorting with black magic and desecrating graves.
Both gave increasingly bombastic interviews, each casting himself as the

(08:20):
real hero of the Highgate tale and the other as
the diluted or dangerous fraud and, as you'd imagine, their
rivalry only fueled the media frenzy, which reached the fever
pitch on March thirteenth of nineteen seventy, Friday, the thirteenth,
of course, Manchester went on TV to announce that he
would track and destroy the vampire that night. As the

(08:40):
sun set, hundreds of thrill seekers stormed into the cemetery,
climbing over locked gates and wandering the tombs in search
of the undead. Unfortunately, Sean Manchester failed to kill the
vampire that night, so the cemetery remained haunted, and over
the next few months, the story grew even stranger. In Adust,
a headless, charred corpse was found near the graveyard. Police

(09:04):
suspected the body belong to someone already buried there exhumed
for some kind of occult ritual. Just a few weeks later,
David Farrant was caught climbing over the cemetery walls with
a crucifix and a wooden stake and arrested for trespassing.
The charges were eventually dropped, but Manchester used the arrest
to connect Ferrant with the burnt body, accusing him of

(09:24):
black magic and grave robbery. By nineteen seventy three, their
feud had grown so absurd that the two men agreed
to a public duel on Parliament Hill, complete with magical weapons.
Fans eagerly awaited a showdown between their two favorite occult celebrities,
but the duel was called off at the last minute.
No real explanation was given, leaving everyone feeling disappointed. After that,

(09:48):
the vampire began to recede into urban legend, but Farrant
and Manchester kept themselves in the spotlight, prolonging the story
through their personal war for decades. They have denounced one
another in interviews, rival books, and blog posts, and kept
the Highgate saga alive long after the cemetery had emptied out.
David Farrant passed away in twenty nineteen, and when he did,

(10:11):
Sean Manchester posted a surprisingly respectful tribute, and then returned
to his blog to reaffirm that Farrant had always been
dangerously wrong. Like the creature they had once hunted, their
feud refused to stay buried. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free

(10:34):
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 the Worldolore dot com. And until

(10:56):
next time, stay curious.