On a Short Lease

Today's visit to the Cabinet includes a a haunted house and a con-woman, perfect tales for a winter night.

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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. There are some pretty

(00:28):
surprising superstitions people have about their houses. Victorian era homeowners
used to cover all the mirrors after someone died to
keep the spirit from getting trapped inside. The Irish believe
that if you rocked an empty rocking chair, you were
inviting something evil to come and sit in it, and
a new home should always come stocked with a new broom,
lest you want to risk accidentally sweeping out any good

(00:50):
luck that may have been inside. Happy On Hall in
Leicestershire came with its own superstition, one more sinister than
simply rocking and empty chair. Whoever owned the home was
not supposed to remove a pair of green shoes from
the premises or else. The house was designed and built
by David Pepion in sixteen twenty four. David was a

(01:12):
French architect and military engineer. It was a strange building
for its time, octagonal in shaped and raised above the landscape.
Its roof formed across from overhead, and there was a moat,
something meant more for middle aged castles than for seventeenth
century manor houses. Over the years, the house was remodeled
and there isn't a single photograph of it in its

(01:34):
original state, but we know a lot about who owned it.
It passed through the hands of numerous owners, included David
Pepillon's great great grandson, who also happened to be named
David Pepion. This younger David, also known as Pamp, wasn't
well liked in his community. It was rumored that he
had an evil eye that, when pointed at someone who

(01:54):
had wronged him, would fix them for a small period
of time. For example, he once fixed a few men
who were plowing a field the reason he didn't like
the way that they were doing it. For the remainder
of the day, the men were frozen in place until
Pamp chose to let them go. His evil nature was
so reviled in the town that people would avoid him
entirely or sign a cross over their chest at the

(02:17):
mention of his name. Still, even a man has hated
his Pamp needed companionship. He was known to have kept
a mistress in the home very Little is known about
the woman he was seeing, except that she was Spanish
and she was not allowed to leave Pepillon Hall. His
mistress was eccentric, sometimes spotted by neighbors as she strolled
along the roof for exercise. In seventeen fifteen, two years

(02:41):
before pamp would marry another woman, the mistress disappeared. She
was presumed dead, but no grave had been erected near
the hall. It wasn't until nineteen o three when her
final resting place was finally found during a massive renovation.
When workers tore down a brick wall in the attic,
they discovered the woman's remain But the mistress might have

(03:02):
known what was coming, considering the declaration she had been
given before her death. She had cursed the home, claiming
that if a pair of her green shoes ever left
the property, serious misfortune would befall the new owners. During
each sale, buyers were forced to sign contracts stating that
the woman's shoes would remain in the hall. Of course,

(03:22):
green shoes weren't everyone's taste, and despite the signed paperwork,
they were quickly done away with the first owner. After
the Papillons suddenly died one day, he left the shoes
to his daughter in his will. The next owner, Lord Hopeton,
purchased the house after the previous owner's death, but couldn't
bear to stay in the house as each night he
was disturbed by loud noises, crashes, and other strange sounds,

(03:45):
signs that a spirit had been disturbed and would not
rest until the shoes were returned. Hope in contact of
the daughter of the previous owner and purchased the shoes
back from her. Once he had placed them back in
the home, the sounds never came back. Another owner had
a similar experience years later when he loaned the shoes
to a museum in Paris. His name was Thomas Halford,

(04:07):
and because he had signed a contract promising the shoes
to the museum for a whole year, the violent sounds
continued to ring throughout the home until they were returned.
Frank Belville, the owner who had commissioned the renovations in
nineteen o three, didn't listen to his predecessor and had
the shoes sent away During construction, the spirit wasn't content

(04:28):
simply making sounds throughout the hall. This time, workers started
collecting injuries. One even died on the job. Bellville had
the shoes brought back and stored on site until construction
could be completed. Several years later, Bellville apparently hadn't learned
his lesson and donated the shoes to another museum. This
angered the woman's spirit so badly that she made his

(04:50):
life a living hell. How so well, First Bellville was
seriously injured in a hunting accident, then two servants died,
the hall caught fire, and lightning strikes killed three polo
horses on the grounds. Belleville had gotten the message. He
took the shoes back and locked them away, literally throwing
away the key so they couldn't be removed again. Then,

(05:13):
during World War Two, while American soldiers were staying in
the home, two soldiers broke into the cabinet where the
shoes were being kept and took one each. Not long after,
the men died, presumably in battle. Finally, in nineteen fifty,
the shoes became the property of one of David Papillon's descendants,
who successfully removed them from the home and had them

(05:33):
put on display in a local museum. But that's not
where the story ends. The shoes were only one cursed
object in the entire house. The other came in the
form of a portrait of Pamp himself. It had been
painted in seventeen fifteen and was left behind after the
house was sold in eighteen forty. Visitors to the hall
would complain about the unsettling feelings they'd get from its presence.

(05:58):
One woman even claimed to have woken up to find
David Papillon at the foot of her bed, wearing the
same outfit as he did in the painting. It was
as if he'd stepped out of the frame just to
meet her. Very superstitious. Indeed, some people think the whole

(06:27):
world revolves around them, that they are the center of
a very small universe where everyone else exists to serve
only them. These individuals aren't very popular, after all, Who
wants to be around someone with such delusions of grandeur.
If you were Joanna Southcott in the early eight hundreds,
you might be surprised. Joanna was born in Telford, England,

(06:48):
in seventeen fifty. Her upbringing was modest. She often helped
her father on his farm doing dairy work. After her
mother died, she got a job working in a local
shop before becoming a domestic servant and Exeter, one of
the other employees at the home where she worked. Footman
became interested in Joanna, but she rebuffed him. In retaliation,

(07:09):
he spread a rumor about a non existent mental illness,
which got her fired. It was a time of change
for Joanna, as not only did she need to seek
new employment, but she also left the Church of England,
which she had belonged to since birth. Instead, she became
a Wesleyan, a Christian denomination named for English priest John Wesley.
Not long after that, though, Joanna came to a realization

(07:30):
she was much more than a domestic servant or the
daughter of a farmer. She was gifted she she thought,
was a prophet. Joanna referred to herself as the woman
clothed with the Sun and the Moon under her feet
and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, as
had been described in the Book of Revelation. From eighteen

(07:51):
o two to eighteen fourteen, she published thousands of pages
of her prophecies, many dictated in rhyme. Her teachings garnered
the attention of others in the church who started following
her instead. It was estimated that the South Kadian movement
had collected as many as twenty thousand sealed. Members to
be sealed meant official membership within her organization, which included

(08:14):
a card Joanna created herself. It consisted of a hand
drawn circle on a small slip of paper, which was
signed by both Joanna and the follower before being folded
in half and sealed in wax. Membership cost roughly fifteen shillings.
Up until this time, Joanna had never married. By all accounts,
she was still a virgin, so when she announced her

(08:35):
pregnancy at the age of sixty four, it came as
a shock to everyone. Not only that, but the baby
she was carrying was none other than the messiah named Shiloh,
whose birth would bring about an age of peace and love.
Her followers hung on her every word, but the rest
of the public didn't buy it. It ridiculed her in
the press, writing satirical articles and drawing cartoons depicting her

(08:59):
as a large, unstable woman. The child's birthday was prophesied
to be October nineteenth, of eighteen fourteen. It's came and went.
Shilo never appeared, but Joanna had an explanation. She always
had an explanation. The reason Shilo was not born was
because his mother had failed to find him a father.

(09:20):
A month later, she married a believer named John Smith,
who was only happy to play dad to the new Messiah. Still,
Shilo was nowhere to be found. Another month passed and
the unthinkable happen. Joanna Southcott died. Her followers thought that
she had slipped into a coma or a trance, something
she could be awakened from in order to deliver Shiloh

(09:43):
as promised, but it was too late. An autopsy was
performed and the results were published in the Stanford Mercury
local paper. Joanna had never been pregnant. Her distended belly
was the result of numerous gall stones in her gallbladder,
as well as an ample accumulation of gas in her intestines.
Her followers were heartbroken, but the rest of the public

(10:04):
was angry at the woman's deception. They attack suspected believers,
including one woman who had come to Joanna's home to
ask about the baby. She had mud and other detritus
thrown at her and was nearly killed. Joanna Southcott's body
was buried in secret several days later, but her movement
lived on. At the height of its popularity, a boasted

(10:24):
as many as one hundred thousand followers, though the number
had dwindled by the turn of the century. But Joanna
had made plans for after her death, which added to
the intrigue surrounding her prophecies. She had sealed them in
a wooden box, only to be opened in the event
of an emergency. All twenty four bishops of the Church
of England were required to attend the opening. It seemed

(10:46):
that there was no crisis large enough to warrant opening
the box, though, as both the Crimean War and World
War One couldn't get the bishops to break the seal.
One man in said he'd come into possession of the
box and was prepared to open it. Inside he found
a few papers, a lottery tickets, and a pistol. South
Cattian followers were not convinced. They said the box was

(11:09):
a fake and that the real one was still out
there somewhere. For decades, remaining believers took out ads and
petitioned for the real box to be presented and opened,
especially since the end of the world was quickly approaching.
You see, Joanna had prophesied that the year two thousand
four was when the day of Judgment would arrive. Of course,
it's been fifteen years and we're all clearly still here.

(11:33):
Maybe Joanna Southcott was wrong, or perhaps she truly was
interested in the profits, just not the kind she led
her followers to believe. 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

(11:54):
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 dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,