October 4, 2022 • 12 mins
Humans have been around on the planet long enough that one of the most eerie things to experience is the absence of other people. Today's tour puts two such moments on display.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, 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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. It's important to take pride in one's home,
from the lush green grass on the front lawn to
the crumb free carpet in the living room. Our houses
and apartments are reflections of ourselves. No one wants to
live in a place with holes in the roof and
(00:49):
dirt everywhere. The people of kit Salt no better than anyone.
Kit Salt is a remote town located on the north
coast of British Columbia, only a puddle jump away from
the shores of Alaska. Uh In nineteen seventy nine, the
town was officially established to provide homes for the miners
working in the nearby molybdenum mines. The area was no
stranger to the mining business. Since nineteen eighteen, mines opened
(01:12):
near kit Salt had produced a variety of metals such
as silver, lead, copper and zinc. This new one, though
molybdenum was an element used in producing steel alloys to
make them harder and more corrosion resistant. It was a
lucrative business, so much so that the town attracted twelve
hundred residents to live and work there. The town also
became a major opportunity for construction companies from all over
(01:35):
North America. They flocked to kit Salt to build everything
from single family homes to apartment buildings, even a hospital
and a shopping center. Locals lacked for nothing. They had
a library, several restaurants, a post office, banks, everything a
modern suburban enclave needed to keep its residents happy. Heck,
the sewage treatment plant was so advanced. Kit Salt had
(01:57):
the cleanest water in the province, and from the street level,
it looked like any other suburb, with well manicured lawns,
simple homes, and trees and greenery surrounding the town. This
little corner of Canada was a slice of heaven on
earth for just two years. Around After eighteen months or so,
the molybdenum market collapsed. The mines were forced to close,
(02:19):
and the town's folk had no choice but to uproot
their lives once again and find steady work elsewhere. The
company behind that mine, American Metal Company, evacuated everyone fairly quickly.
The people living there took almost all of their belongings,
save for the furniture and large appliances like television sets. Now,
when we think of ghost towns, we usually pictured dilapidated
(02:40):
homes and buildings covered in graffiti, with caved in roofs,
shattered windows, and ruins claimed by the elements. Kits Sold, however,
was different. American Metal Company didn't think the malebdenum crash
would last forever. It hired a caretaker to watch over
the town until it was able to welcome everyone back. Well,
that time never came, and Kits Salt sat vacant for
(03:01):
over twenty years. In two thousand five, the town was
purchased by an entrepreneur from India named Krishnan Sutan Theoren.
He spent seven million dollars to own what has become
something of a time capsule of a lost era the
early nineteen eighties. Since he bought it, Krishnan has spent
at least twenty five million dollars sprucing up the grounds
and maintaining each property he's hired a fleet of cleaners
(03:24):
and caretakers to make sure the grass stays mode and
the streets stay clean up. Until recently, the public could
tour Kit Salt and walk through the buildings. Old TV
sets in wooden frames still sit against living room walls.
The carpet and furniture are all original, as is the
wallpaper in rooms that still have it. The grocery store
shelves are empty, but the registers and the shopping carts
(03:46):
are still intact. Books even sit on the library shelves,
and the hospital's various medical equipment is right where it
was left forty years ago. A gymnasium stands empty, it's
hardwood flooring waiting for the scuffs and squeaks of sneakers
during a pickup game of basketball, and the red upholstered
seats in the abandoned theater patiently wait for viewers who
(04:07):
will never come back. The shopping center boasts would paneling
and signs for stores like Sears with painted window designs
still intact. And it may not seem like it given
how modern it is, but Kit Salt is a historic village.
It's a snapshot of a time period many people didn't
live through and don't remember. For others, it's an eerie
trip down memory lane. Will it's homes and businesses ever
(04:29):
be filled with new tenants. No one knows except for
the current owner. But I kind of hope it stays
just like it is. We already have ghost towns from
the Old West and the Turn of the century. But
a ghost town that looks like it was plucked from
the pages of a Stephen King novel. That's something you
don't see every day. Few television shows hold up as
(05:02):
well as the nineteen sixties anthology series The Twilight Zone.
It was acclaimed for its brilliant writing, moralistic plot lines,
and mind bending twists. Of its many timeless episodes, One
of my favorites tells the story of Flight thirty three,
a Boeing seven oh seven aircraft heading from London to
New York in nineteen sixty one. After the airplane inexplicably accelerates,
(05:25):
it appears over what should be New York City. Instead,
the pilots looked down only to see dinosaurs roaming the earth.
The plane has traveled back in time, hoping to make
it back to nineteen sixty one. The pilots catched the
same jet stream that brought them millions of years into
the past and make it back to New York City
of nineteen thirty nine. As far as the audience knows,
(05:48):
the plane never returns to nineteen sixty one. Its crew
and passengers are lost to time. Something similar happened in
San Francisco in nineteen forty two, but this aircraft didn't
go back in time, at least I don't think so.
The Goodyear Company is known for two things, tires and blimps.
Except before they were flying over football stadiums, the blimps,
(06:10):
or airships as they were known, made by the Goodyear
Aircraft Company, were being used by the United States military.
They've been built as commercial vehicles, literally vehicles to be commercials,
meant for advertising Goodyear's new range of tires. However, after
the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U. S. Navy commandeered
the fleets and designated them under the L class of
(06:31):
military airships. One in particular, the L eight, was instrumental
in the Doolittle raid of Tokyo in nineteen forty two.
It had delivered modification parts for the B twenty five
bomber to the USS Hornet aircraft carrier which was taking
the Doolittle Raiders to their destination. That was in April
of that year. Four months later, on August sixteen, the
(06:53):
L eight airship was ordered to perform a routine patrol
off the coast of San Francisco. It's two man crew,
Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Ellis Adams, were
tasked with searching for Japanese submarines, which had been taking
out Allied ships in the area for some time. The
L eight was outfitted with a thirty caliber machine gun,
three hundred rounds of ammunition, and a pair of three
(07:15):
D and twenty five pound depth charges to handle water
bound enemies. Cody was a twenty seven year old senior
aviator and Navy veteran. He didn't just know his way
around that aircraft, he also knew how to keep a
level head in tough situations. His commanding officer once referred
to him as one of the most capable pilots and
one of the most able officers that he had ever
(07:37):
worked with. In fact, Lieutenant Cody had been the one
flying the L A during the delivery mission to the U.
S s. Hornet four months prior ensign Adams was older
than Cody by eleven years and had survived the crash
of the USS make An airship off the coast of
California in nineteen thirty five. He'd just recently been commissioned
as an officer and had twenty years of airship experience
(07:59):
under his belt. The German government even decorated him after
he helped rescue passengers from the Hindenburg disaster in nineteen
thirty seven. On the morning of August sixteenth of nineteen
forty two, at six oh three a m. Cody and
Adams took off in the l A from Treasure Island
in San Francisco. They were to travel to the Farallon Islands,
(08:19):
followed by a fly by of the Golden gate Bridge,
all in all a round trip within a fifty mile radius.
Conditions were clear that morning for the Blimps one thousand
and ninety third trip, with the previous trips all having
been completed without incident. Roughly an hour and a half
after takeoff, Cody and Adams radioed back to Treasure Island
with reports of an oil slick. Not far from the
(08:41):
Farallon Islands. The airship dropped down to thirty feet above
the slick and circled it for a closer look before
heading back up into the sky. Around eight fifty a m.
A nearby Liberty cargo ship and fishing boat watched the
L A do its inspection before it disappeared. For hours,
no one knew what to make of it. The blimp's
crew wasn't responding to calls from Treasure Island, nor could
(09:04):
anyone see its bulbous frame hovering above. It had simply vanished.
Navy planes went out looking for it to no avail. Then,
at fifteen am, just over two hours after its last sighting,
the L eight popped up again off the coast of
Ocean Beach. Now it was floating low enough for two
local fishermen to grab ahold of its tie lines and
(09:26):
pull it down. They managed to hold it long enough
to check the control car, and what they found shocked them.
There was no one inside. Cody and Adams, we're gone. Eventually,
the fishermen could no longer hold onto the blimp and
let it go, at which point it hit a hill
and damaged one of its propellers. One of the two
depth charges even came loose as well, and wound up
(09:48):
on a golf course nearby. Now even lighter, the ship
ascended again until an automatic valve started releasing helium from
the envelope, that giant bag of air that gives the
blimp it's distinction shape. It drifted over parts of San
Francisco for a while until it finally crashed in front
of someone's house in the suburbs. Well, crashed isn't exactly
(10:09):
the right word. Suffered. A bumpy landing is more like it.
It had caused some scraped roofs and downed electrical wires
by the time that police arrived on scene, but it
was the kind of landing that wouldn't have killed or
even seriously injured Cody or Adams had they been inside.
Investigators noted that the control card doors were open, all
(10:29):
three parachutes were still on board, as was an emergency
life raft. Radios and engines were fully functional, and no
one had sent out any distress calls. Whatever had happened
to cause the two men to disappear, it had been sudden.
The prevailing theory was that one of the men had
opened the rear hatch and deployed a smoke marker over
(10:49):
the oil slick, but had slipped the other crew member
in an effort to help him back on board. Also
must have fallen in the water, making the blimp light
enough to rise back up on its own. Other of
suggestions have come up over the years as well, that
the men had deserted the Navy and defected to Japan,
or that they had been captured, but nothing definitive could
be proved. The truth was that nobody had any answers.
(11:12):
Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams were declared legally dead in nineteen,
one year after their disappearance. But who knows. Maybe they
took a trip to the Twilight Zone and ended up
in an ancient version of San Francisco. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(11:36):
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
(11:57):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Oh
Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, 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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. It's important to take pride in one's home,
from the lush green grass on the front lawn to
the crumb free carpet in the living room. Our houses
and apartments are reflections of ourselves. No one wants to
live in a place with holes in the roof and
(00:49):
dirt everywhere. The people of kit Salt no better than anyone.
Kit Salt is a remote town located on the north
coast of British Columbia, only a puddle jump away from
the shores of Alaska. Uh In nineteen seventy nine, the
town was officially established to provide homes for the miners
working in the nearby molybdenum mines. The area was no
stranger to the mining business. Since nineteen eighteen, mines opened
(01:12):
near kit Salt had produced a variety of metals such
as silver, lead, copper and zinc. This new one, though
molybdenum was an element used in producing steel alloys to
make them harder and more corrosion resistant. It was a
lucrative business, so much so that the town attracted twelve
hundred residents to live and work there. The town also
became a major opportunity for construction companies from all over
(01:35):
North America. They flocked to kit Salt to build everything
from single family homes to apartment buildings, even a hospital
and a shopping center. Locals lacked for nothing. They had
a library, several restaurants, a post office, banks, everything a
modern suburban enclave needed to keep its residents happy. Heck,
the sewage treatment plant was so advanced. Kit Salt had
(01:57):
the cleanest water in the province, and from the street level,
it looked like any other suburb, with well manicured lawns,
simple homes, and trees and greenery surrounding the town. This
little corner of Canada was a slice of heaven on
earth for just two years. Around After eighteen months or so,
the molybdenum market collapsed. The mines were forced to close,
(02:19):
and the town's folk had no choice but to uproot
their lives once again and find steady work elsewhere. The
company behind that mine, American Metal Company, evacuated everyone fairly quickly.
The people living there took almost all of their belongings,
save for the furniture and large appliances like television sets. Now,
when we think of ghost towns, we usually pictured dilapidated
(02:40):
homes and buildings covered in graffiti, with caved in roofs,
shattered windows, and ruins claimed by the elements. Kits Sold, however,
was different. American Metal Company didn't think the malebdenum crash
would last forever. It hired a caretaker to watch over
the town until it was able to welcome everyone back. Well,
that time never came, and Kits Salt sat vacant for
(03:01):
over twenty years. In two thousand five, the town was
purchased by an entrepreneur from India named Krishnan Sutan Theoren.
He spent seven million dollars to own what has become
something of a time capsule of a lost era the
early nineteen eighties. Since he bought it, Krishnan has spent
at least twenty five million dollars sprucing up the grounds
and maintaining each property he's hired a fleet of cleaners
(03:24):
and caretakers to make sure the grass stays mode and
the streets stay clean up. Until recently, the public could
tour Kit Salt and walk through the buildings. Old TV
sets in wooden frames still sit against living room walls.
The carpet and furniture are all original, as is the
wallpaper in rooms that still have it. The grocery store
shelves are empty, but the registers and the shopping carts
(03:46):
are still intact. Books even sit on the library shelves,
and the hospital's various medical equipment is right where it
was left forty years ago. A gymnasium stands empty, it's
hardwood flooring waiting for the scuffs and squeaks of sneakers
during a pickup game of basketball, and the red upholstered
seats in the abandoned theater patiently wait for viewers who
(04:07):
will never come back. The shopping center boasts would paneling
and signs for stores like Sears with painted window designs
still intact. And it may not seem like it given
how modern it is, but Kit Salt is a historic village.
It's a snapshot of a time period many people didn't
live through and don't remember. For others, it's an eerie
trip down memory lane. Will it's homes and businesses ever
(04:29):
be filled with new tenants. No one knows except for
the current owner. But I kind of hope it stays
just like it is. We already have ghost towns from
the Old West and the Turn of the century. But
a ghost town that looks like it was plucked from
the pages of a Stephen King novel. That's something you
don't see every day. Few television shows hold up as
(05:02):
well as the nineteen sixties anthology series The Twilight Zone.
It was acclaimed for its brilliant writing, moralistic plot lines,
and mind bending twists. Of its many timeless episodes, One
of my favorites tells the story of Flight thirty three,
a Boeing seven oh seven aircraft heading from London to
New York in nineteen sixty one. After the airplane inexplicably accelerates,
(05:25):
it appears over what should be New York City. Instead,
the pilots looked down only to see dinosaurs roaming the earth.
The plane has traveled back in time, hoping to make
it back to nineteen sixty one. The pilots catched the
same jet stream that brought them millions of years into
the past and make it back to New York City
of nineteen thirty nine. As far as the audience knows,
(05:48):
the plane never returns to nineteen sixty one. Its crew
and passengers are lost to time. Something similar happened in
San Francisco in nineteen forty two, but this aircraft didn't
go back in time, at least I don't think so.
The Goodyear Company is known for two things, tires and blimps.
Except before they were flying over football stadiums, the blimps,
(06:10):
or airships as they were known, made by the Goodyear
Aircraft Company, were being used by the United States military.
They've been built as commercial vehicles, literally vehicles to be commercials,
meant for advertising Goodyear's new range of tires. However, after
the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U. S. Navy commandeered
the fleets and designated them under the L class of
(06:31):
military airships. One in particular, the L eight, was instrumental
in the Doolittle raid of Tokyo in nineteen forty two.
It had delivered modification parts for the B twenty five
bomber to the USS Hornet aircraft carrier which was taking
the Doolittle Raiders to their destination. That was in April
of that year. Four months later, on August sixteen, the
(06:53):
L eight airship was ordered to perform a routine patrol
off the coast of San Francisco. It's two man crew,
Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Ellis Adams, were
tasked with searching for Japanese submarines, which had been taking
out Allied ships in the area for some time. The
L eight was outfitted with a thirty caliber machine gun,
three hundred rounds of ammunition, and a pair of three
(07:15):
D and twenty five pound depth charges to handle water
bound enemies. Cody was a twenty seven year old senior
aviator and Navy veteran. He didn't just know his way
around that aircraft, he also knew how to keep a
level head in tough situations. His commanding officer once referred
to him as one of the most capable pilots and
one of the most able officers that he had ever
(07:37):
worked with. In fact, Lieutenant Cody had been the one
flying the L A during the delivery mission to the U.
S s. Hornet four months prior ensign Adams was older
than Cody by eleven years and had survived the crash
of the USS make An airship off the coast of
California in nineteen thirty five. He'd just recently been commissioned
as an officer and had twenty years of airship experience
(07:59):
under his belt. The German government even decorated him after
he helped rescue passengers from the Hindenburg disaster in nineteen
thirty seven. On the morning of August sixteenth of nineteen
forty two, at six oh three a m. Cody and
Adams took off in the l A from Treasure Island
in San Francisco. They were to travel to the Farallon Islands,
(08:19):
followed by a fly by of the Golden gate Bridge,
all in all a round trip within a fifty mile radius.
Conditions were clear that morning for the Blimps one thousand
and ninety third trip, with the previous trips all having
been completed without incident. Roughly an hour and a half
after takeoff, Cody and Adams radioed back to Treasure Island
with reports of an oil slick. Not far from the
(08:41):
Farallon Islands. The airship dropped down to thirty feet above
the slick and circled it for a closer look before
heading back up into the sky. Around eight fifty a m.
A nearby Liberty cargo ship and fishing boat watched the
L A do its inspection before it disappeared. For hours,
no one knew what to make of it. The blimp's
crew wasn't responding to calls from Treasure Island, nor could
(09:04):
anyone see its bulbous frame hovering above. It had simply vanished.
Navy planes went out looking for it to no avail. Then,
at fifteen am, just over two hours after its last sighting,
the L eight popped up again off the coast of
Ocean Beach. Now it was floating low enough for two
local fishermen to grab ahold of its tie lines and
(09:26):
pull it down. They managed to hold it long enough
to check the control car, and what they found shocked them.
There was no one inside. Cody and Adams, we're gone. Eventually,
the fishermen could no longer hold onto the blimp and
let it go, at which point it hit a hill
and damaged one of its propellers. One of the two
depth charges even came loose as well, and wound up
(09:48):
on a golf course nearby. Now even lighter, the ship
ascended again until an automatic valve started releasing helium from
the envelope, that giant bag of air that gives the
blimp it's distinction shape. It drifted over parts of San
Francisco for a while until it finally crashed in front
of someone's house in the suburbs. Well, crashed isn't exactly
(10:09):
the right word. Suffered. A bumpy landing is more like it.
It had caused some scraped roofs and downed electrical wires
by the time that police arrived on scene, but it
was the kind of landing that wouldn't have killed or
even seriously injured Cody or Adams had they been inside.
Investigators noted that the control card doors were open, all
(10:29):
three parachutes were still on board, as was an emergency
life raft. Radios and engines were fully functional, and no
one had sent out any distress calls. Whatever had happened
to cause the two men to disappear, it had been sudden.
The prevailing theory was that one of the men had
opened the rear hatch and deployed a smoke marker over
(10:49):
the oil slick, but had slipped the other crew member
in an effort to help him back on board. Also
must have fallen in the water, making the blimp light
enough to rise back up on its own. Other of
suggestions have come up over the years as well, that
the men had deserted the Navy and defected to Japan,
or that they had been captured, but nothing definitive could
be proved. The truth was that nobody had any answers.
(11:12):
Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams were declared legally dead in nineteen,
one year after their disappearance. But who knows. Maybe they
took a trip to the Twilight Zone and ended up
in an ancient version of San Francisco. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(11:36):
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
(11:57):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Oh
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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