THE DARK TRUTH ABOUT ELVES: Disease, Death, Demons, and Devil Worship

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Once upon a time there was a poor shoemaker who
lived with his wife. He made excellent shoes and worked
quite diligently, but even so he could not earn enough
money to support himself and his family. He became so
poor that he could not even afford to buy the
leather he needed to make shoes. Finally, he had only

(00:28):
enough to make one last pair. He cut them out
with great care and put the pieces on his workbench
so that he could sew them together. The following morning,
his wife asked, what will happen to us? The cupboards
are bare, and we have no firewood. Even our last
candle has almost burned away. She was very worried. Don't worry,

(00:53):
said the shoemaker. Things will work out for us. You'll see.
I will finish these shoes tomorrow when someone will buy them.
He cut out the leather and then went to bed.
The shoemaker would finish working first thing in the morning.
The next morning, he awoke early and went down to
his workshop. On his bench he found an exquisite pair

(01:17):
of shoes. They had small and even stitches, formed so
perfectly that he knew he couldn't have produced a better
pair himself. Upon close examination, the shoes proved to be
from the very pieces of leather he had sat out
the night before. The shoemaker called for his wife to

(01:37):
come and look at the wonderful shoes. She was just
as amazed as he was. Who could have made these shoes?
She asked. They immediately put the fine pair of shoes
in the window and drew back the blinds. Who in
the world could have done this great service for me,
he asked himself. Even before he could make up an answer,

(01:59):
a rich man strode into his shop and bought the shoes,
and for a fancy price. The shoemaker was ecstatic. He
immediately went out and purchased plenty of food for his
family and some more leather. That afternoon, he cut out
two pairs of shoes, and just as before, laid all

(02:20):
the pieces on the bench so that he could sew
them the next day. Then he went upstairs to enjoy
the good meal with his family. My goodness, he cried
the next morning when he found two pairs of beautifully
finished shoes on his workbench. Who could make such fine shoes?
And so quickly he put them in his shop window,

(02:41):
And before long some wealthy people came in and paid
a great deal of money for them. The happy shoemaker
went right out and bought even more leather. This continued
for many nights until the shoemaker's shelves were filled with
beautiful shoes like no one had ever seen before. Soon

(03:01):
his small shop was crowded with customers. He cut out
many types of shoes, stiff boots lined with fur, delicate
slippers for dancers, walking shoes for ladies, tiny shoes for children.
Soon his shoes had bows and laces and buckles of
fine silver. The little shop prospered as never before, and

(03:25):
its proprietor was soon a rich man himself. His family
wanted for nothing. As the shoemaker and his wife sat
by the fire one night, he said, what are these days?
I shall have to learn who has been helping us.
We could hide behind the cupboard in your workroom. His
wife said, that way we could find out just who

(03:46):
your helpers are. And that was just what they did
that evening. When the clock struck twelve, the shoemaker and
his wife heard a noise. Two tiny men, each with
a bag of tools, were squeezing beneath a crack under
the door. Their clothing was old and worn, which made
the shoemaker and his wife sad. The elves wore thin,

(04:10):
torn pants that were ripped and covered with patches. They
were making shoes, but they didn't have any for themselves.
The next day, the shoemaker's wife said, those little elves
have done so much good for us, we should make
some gifts for them. Yes, cried the shoemaker. All make
some shoes that will fit them, and you make them

(04:32):
some clothes. They worked until dawn. The presents were laid
out upon the workbench, two tiny jackets, two pairs of trousers,
and two pairs of shoes. They also left out some
plates of good things to eat and drink. Then they
hid once again behind the cupboard and waited to see

(04:53):
what would happen. Just as before, the elves appeared at
the stroke of midnight. They jumped onto the bench to
begin their work, but when they saw all the presents,
they began to laugh and shout with joy. They tried
on all the clothes, then helped themselves to the food
and drink. Then they jumped up and down and danced

(05:13):
excitedly around the workroom, and disappeared beneath the door. After that,
the shoemaker cut out his leather as he always had,
but the two elves never returned. I believe they've heard
us whispering, his wife said. Elves are so very shy
when it comes to people, you know. I know I'll
miss their help, the shoemaker said, but we'll manage. The

(05:37):
shop is always so busy now, But my stitches will
never be as tight and small as theirs. The shoemaker
did indeed continue to prosper, but he and his wife
always remembered the good elves who had helped them during
the hard times. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler, and this

(06:08):
is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness. Elves.

(06:29):
They're portrayed as helpful and joyous when helping a shoemaker
or a jolly old man with a white beard at
the north Pole, but they're portrayed as evil in some
other cultures, even claimed to be in league with the
devil himself. And what do they have to do with
Cain and Abel. We'll look at the history of elves.

(06:50):
There was a struggle. One of the men fell through
a window to the street below, breaking his neck, a
case that practically solved itself, according to police, that is
until they began questioning those involved. Then it began to
get very murky and a bit bizarre. Do you believe
in vampires? If you're thinking of the undead, immortal, bloodsucking

(07:14):
creatures of the night who speak with a Hungarian accent,
then probably not. Or if you're thinking of the kind
of vampires with pale skin and must hair that sparkle,
then definitely not. But that doesn't mean that vampires don't exist.
They in fact do roam the earth in human form,
and I'll tell you about them. It's the story of

(07:37):
two Georges, one with his father's name and one with
not quite his father's name, one legitimate, one illegitimate, with
the latter being very good with elephants. I'll tell you
the odd life story of George Nileive, be quiet and
give me the money in the cash drawer. This gun talks,

(07:58):
and with those words began a string of bank robberies
conducted not by a gang of outlaws or even a
couple of bad men, but by one little old lady,
now vulture doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. It is

(08:33):
a fairly common belief that the legend of elves was
created by J. R. R. Tolkien, amongst other now popular
mythical creatures that he created. However, Tolkien simply popularized the
creatures and legends of elves have existed for centuries as
a distinct legend from fairies, although the two legends often

(08:54):
get conflated. The English word elf comes from the Old
English wolf, of the word probably meant white or white person,
with whiteness being associated with beauty and luminosity. Surprisingly, almost
all surviving textural sources about elves were produced by Christians.

(09:16):
This comes in sharp contrast to Mermaids, where the Church
tried to destroy old pagan stories about the sea dwelling
humanoids as it did not fit the Christian worldview. As such,
elves were usually incorporated into Christian ideology, either neutrally or negatively.
Some aligned elves with the devil. For example, in early

(09:38):
modern Scottish witchcraft trials, people who confessed to encountering elves
were deemed by prosecutors who have been encountering the devil.
Others found a place for elves within Christian history that
neither made them good nor bad. Beowulf says that elves
were created amongst a host of other monstrous races as

(09:58):
a result of king murder of Abel, whilst some Icelandic
folk tales said that elves were angels who sided neither
with Lucifer nor God at the Fall, and so rather
than being sent to Hell, God banished them to Earth.
Elves appear to be largely a Germanic legend, although Japan

(10:19):
has legendary yokai which have some similar qualities. The earliest
significant evidence for the legend of elves originates in medieval
texts from Anglo Saxon, England and High medieval Iceland, meaning
they are a relatively recent legend when compared to other
mythical creatures. Generally, elves are considered to look like humans

(10:42):
or closely human like, and they are dangerous to encounter.
They were often sexualized beings, which is probably owing to
their beauty. Again, as with mermaids, the link between beauty
and sexual sin or temptation was a common Christian theme.
Their earliest appearances tended to come from medical texts which

(11:03):
blamed elves for illnesses in livestock or afflictions in humans.
Most commonly, they were blamed for sharp internal pains or
mental disorders. A tenth century old English text, the wid
fairstis surviving now in a collection known as Lacknunga translates
as against a sudden violent stabbing pain and as a

(11:25):
charm intended to cure the pain which has been caused
by being shot by witches, elves or other malicious spirits.
A sav is suggested, but the charm is the important part.
This is a good example how early medicine often combined
science and magic, although contemporaries would not view it in
this modern dichotomy. Whilst this suggests elves were thought to

(11:48):
cause diseases using weapons, they're generally more clearly associated with
using a type of magic. As the medieval period went on,
elves became associated more and more as being female rather
than male, which is probably due to the British cultural
values which emphasizes femininity as the beauty ideal. If elves

(12:09):
are beautiful and beauty is female, elves must be female.
The legend developed alongside medieval Romantic traditions of fairies. And
the fairy queen, and elves began to borrow qualities from
fairies or even be used interchangeably with fairies. Increasingly, elves
were viewed more as sexual beings full of sexual allure,

(12:32):
rather than being associated with disease. They also became associated
with the art of alchemy, the transmutation materials into better ones,
particularly gold, which was also associated with the creation of
an elixir of immortality. As the medieval period drew to
a close, references to elves in English culture tended to

(12:54):
die out, potentially due to their synonymy with fairies, but
the legend remained strong in early modern Scotland. This is
probably why references to elves become prominent in early modern
Scottish witchcraft trials. Here, the idea of elves as causing
disease remained strong, and many depositions show that people believed

(13:16):
that they knew of people or animals that had been
made sick by elves. Neolithic arrowheads which had been found
seemed to have been thought to have been made by elves,
and evidence from a few witchcraft trials show that these
arrowheads were used in healing rituals or used by alleged
witches to injure people. In medieval Icelandic culture, elves usually

(13:40):
had an association with the gods. Here a similar relationship
evolved as in England between elves and fairies. In Iceland,
elves were associated with Assur, who were the gods and
the principal pantheon of Norse religion, and at times elves
seemed to be indistinguishable from the Asur. Elves were still

(14:01):
thought to be human or human like, as were the gods,
and a text composed around ten twenty mentions an alpha
blot or elven sacrifice, that occurred in what is now
southern Sweden, and alpha blot was a pagan sacrifice to
the elves toward the end of autumn, after crops had
been harvested, and they were usually performed by the lady

(14:23):
of the household. The god Freyer seems to have been
most heavily associated with elves, and in Grimnismal, a mythological poem,
it is said that Alfemeir, the elf world where light
elves resided, was given to Freyer. As elves were viewed
far more positively in Icelandic mythology. There are many legends,

(14:44):
particularly in Sagas, of human elf relations. The offspring of
such relations were far more beautiful than most people, and
sometimes they had magic powers, as in England. At the
end of the medieval period, references to elves largely disappear.
As with other mythical creatures, elves entered popular culture in

(15:05):
a variety of ways. In German heroic poetry, dwarfs seem
to usually relate to elves, particularly if the dwarf is
called Alberic, which means elf powerful. Alberic was translated into
French as Auberon, and the name entered English literature when
Lord Berner translated the Chausson de Gueste around fifteen forty.

(15:28):
Auberon then became Uberon, the King of Elves and Fairies
in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Numerous early modern ballads,
which must have originated in the medieval period survive where
elves have a prominent place. They circulated widely in Scandinavia
and Northern Britain, where legends of elves were strongest. The

(15:49):
ballads usually focus on the sexual side of the legend
of the elves, and usually describe sexual encounters between humans
and elves, usually a beautiful woman from the ler health
world tries to tempt a young knight to join her
in dancing, or to come and live amongst the elves.
This always ends badly for the young man, and whether

(16:09):
he agrees or refuses the ELF's offer, he always dies.
This idea was found in Scandinavia too. It was said
that elves could be seen dancing over meadows, particularly at
night or on misty mornings. They would leave behind a
circle where they had danced, which was usually considered to
be the more familiar fairy ring of a ring of

(16:31):
small mushrooms. If a human watched the elves dance, they
would become warped by time. Whilst it would seem to
the person that only a few hours had passed in
the real world, many years had gone by, as in
the English ballads, Scandinavian ballads spoke of humans being invited
or lured to dance with the elves. Whilst the idea

(16:54):
of elves diminished or became synonymous for fairies in the
early modern period, the idea continued in one form or
another across the centuries, but became warped by the Victorian period.
The British imagined elves as tiny men and women with
pointed ears and stocking caps. Here, elves once again begin

(17:16):
to separate from fairies, as although both creatures were tiny people,
fairies had butterfly wings, whilst elves did not. Throughout nineteenth
and twenty century children's literature, the two creatures diverge further,
but emerged in a very different form from their original legend.
A brother's grim fairy tale which I won't even try

(17:37):
to pronounce, featured two tiny men who help a shoemaker.
This was translated in eighteen eighty four by Margaret Hunt
into The Elves and the Shoemaker. This idea of elves
being linked with work is echoed in some modern work,
such as J. K. Rowling's House Elves and Harry Potter.
It is perhaps this more modern idea of small elves

(18:00):
that led to the creation of the Christmas Elf. In
the eighteen twenty three poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas,
known more popularly as Twas the Night Before Christmas, Saint
Nicholas is called a right jolly old elf who had
little helpers, and it is perhaps this idea of small
creatures who help with work, as seen in the Elves

(18:21):
and the Shoemaker, that caused them to be thought of
as elves themselves. It is only through fantasy literature such
as that Tolkien popularized, that saw elves return somewhat to
their former legend. Here, elves tend to return to human
size or even larger, and are beautiful, magical creatures. They

(18:41):
tend to still keep the long pointed ears of Victorian imagination,
but deem wisdom, a love of nature, and sharper senses
than humans. They're often associated with archery, a fitting reminder
of the elf shot of medieval lore. The legend of
elves is certainly centered around Germanic language cultures, particularly Britain

(19:03):
and Scandinavia. Whilst a comparatively recent legend, ideas of elves
have transformed through time, yet come somewhat full circle, so
that today ideas of elves are not too dissimilar to
the original legend. Elves have often inhabited the same legendary
space as fairies, often borrowing from fairy mythology or becoming

(19:24):
absorbed by it altogether. Thanks to the popularity and prevalence
of fantasy culture in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, however,
elves are once again inhabiting their own mythical space. Up next,

(19:50):
there was a struggle. A man fell through a window
to the street below, breaking his neck, a case that
practically solved itself according to police, until they began and investigating.
We'll look at the strange death of Thomas Ferrant, and
do you believe in vampires. You should, because they do exist,

(20:10):
just not in a way you've been led to believe
these stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Giles Clift

(20:40):
was blind. The fifty three year old lived in lodgings
that he shared with his spouse at one Little Street,
Saint James, Bristol. The debate regarding how long Clift was
married varies between four and twelve years, depending on what
account is accurate. However long his marriage was, it was
a less than successful one. Despite the birth of their

(21:02):
three year old daughter, the couple was routinely and invariably
at one another's throats. All of this bickering eventually led
to a local magistrate getting involved. Several sessions with a
magistrate led them to separate. Clift retained his lodgings while
his estranged partner went to live with Clift's great nephew,
Thomas Farrant. Farrant earned his living selling fruit and at

(21:26):
the time was in the prime of his life at
twenty five years of age. Farrant also lived in lodgings
in Bristol, but his address was the Coast and arms
hot Wells Road. According to local gossip, Clift was less
than thrilled at his ex's new address, and was even
less impressed with her apparent kleptomania. He was of the

(21:48):
opinion that she had improperly acquired some of his personal possessions,
and on Boxing Day eighteen sixty seven, Clift persuaded one
of his current lodgers, a man known only as mister Lions,
to escort him to the home of Frant. It was
about six pm when the pair arrived. While Lions remained downstairs,

(22:08):
Clift went upstairs to see his former wife. Only a
few minutes after Clift went upstairs, Lions heard a loud
commotion coming from the room directly above him. Assuming that
the shouting and hollering were just the latest in a
long line of arguments the couple had, Lions made his
way up. When he got access to the room itself,
he was horrified by what he saw. Cliff had somehow

(22:31):
removed one of the legs of the bedstead that was
in the room and was using it to assault the
unfortunate woman. Lions didn't think twice about wading in to
save the poor woman. The doting mother was more concerned,
naturally about her young child and repeatedly tried to head
back upstairs. While all of this was taking place inside
the lodging house, a couple of passers by outside saw

(22:54):
someone fall from the window of Fern's room and land
head first on the ledge the basement before tumbling onto
the pavement. The victim was bleeding from wounds to his nose, mouth,
and ears, taking a minute or two to congeal around
his body. It was Farrant himself. Nobody could tell whether
or not the fall was solely responsible for his death,

(23:17):
but it was clear that Farrant would not have survived
for very long afterward. Anyway. A boy was sent to
the local police station with news of the deceased. Inspector Atwood,
on duty at the time, sent a pair of constables
to the scene. When the deceased was brought back to
the station via stretcher, the police surgeon was called for.

(23:38):
Doctor Bernard examined Farrant and determined the cause of death
to be a dislocated neck. The investigation switched to Farran's room,
PC one seventy nine. Fletcher took a closer look at
the room. There were obvious signs of a struggle, and
with only one real witness, it appeared to be an
open and shutcase. Not wishing to take things that fail

(24:00):
value at would, insisted that Clift be brought in for questioning.
During the first sessions, however, very little information came to light.
According to their eyewitness, Farrant did nothing to prevent the
domestic abuse between spouses and even attempted to leave them alone.
It was this motion that ended up with Farrant, by
Cliff's own admission, stumbling with a wooden chair and somehow

(24:24):
tumbling through a two foot square window that most would
have problems circumnavigating if they gave it their all. That
was just one problem that greeted the investigations team. Another
was equally as bizarre. How could it be possible for
a diminutive and spindly man such as Clift to overcome
and subdue a strapping young man less than half of

(24:47):
his age and twice his size in a matter of seconds,
then tossing him through a tiny window, barely adequate for
the job, and more to the point, why Clift's quarrel
was clearly with him former partner, who was out of
the room at the time. Missus Clift was also questioned
about the events leading up to the death of her roommate.

(25:08):
In her version, Thomas Ferrant took a much more active
or prominent part in proceedings. When Farrant tried to step in,
Cliff's sense of outrage intensified, he was quoted as insisting
that I will break your neck out of the window.
If Lyons was to be believed, then Clift clearly had
anger management issues, and perhaps, when riled, was more than

(25:31):
capable of holding his own. Missus Cliff's involvement did little
to clarify precisely what took place. Being the only other
real witness and not in the good books of the
other main witness, it seemed to be a classic case
of he said, She said. Given the diversity of the
two accounts and the apparent ulterior motives of both sides,

(25:52):
he was angry and prone to lash out, while she
perhaps saw this as a chance to finally rid herself
of a brutal thug, even if he was blind and aging.
When the inquest opened on Saturday, the twenty eighth of December,
the key consideration was to examine the window that Farrant
had fallen out of. While the frame was two feet square,

(26:13):
the actual window itself only measured seventeen inches across. Such
a tiny opening made any accident almost impossible the fall
was a deliberate act on the part of someone. Perhaps
Clift was correct, after all, Farrant may have eased himself
through the tiny window, hoping to lower himself on to

(26:33):
a lower ledge, but slipping and falling to his death
in the process. Outside the window, a heel mark was
reported to have been discovered. As well as that mark,
others were reportedly found which may or may not have
been finger printed. When Clift was examined by a medical
expert Clift and Union medical officer doctor Steele, no marks

(26:55):
were found on his person, which would indicate that he
was not involved in a physical altercation. What did happen
to Thomas Ferrant the day after Christmas eighteen sixty seven?
Did he jump? Or was he pushed? Only three people
knew the answer. To that one was the victim, another
was the widow. The third was blind. The enormous interest

(27:41):
in the creatures prompts the question are vampires real? Interest
in the vampire mythos is at an all time high.
The recent enthusiasm for this blood sucking immortal began perhaps
with the highly popular Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire,
published in nineteen seventy six, and which she followed up

(28:03):
with several more books about the vampire world she created.
Movies and television capitalized on this popularity with such offerings
as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lost Boys, Francis Ford
Coppola's film version of Dracula Underworld, and the Tom Cruise
Brad Pitt film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. The

(28:24):
genre is more popular than ever thanks to TV's True
Blood and Vampire Diaries, and especially the enormous success of
Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series of novels, which also received the
Hollywood treatment. When a phenomenon like this creeps into our
mass consciousness, you can barely turn around without bumping into
vampire related media. Some people begin to think it's real,

(28:48):
or they want it to be real because they so
enjoy the fantasy. So what about it? Are there real vampires?
The question of whether vampires are real or not depends
on the definition. If by vampire we mean the supernatural
creature who is practically immortal, has fangs through which he

(29:11):
or she can suck blood, has an aversion to sunlight,
can shape shift into other creatures, fears garlic and crosses,
and can even fly, then we have to say no,
such a creature does not exist. At least there's no
good evidence that it exists. Such a creature is a
fabrication of novels, TV shows, and movies. If we dispense

(29:33):
with these supernatural attributes. However, there are people who call
themselves vampires of one kind or another. Largely due to
the influence of vampires in the media, there is now
a subculture of vampirism, the members of which seek to
mimic the lifestyle of their fictional heroes or anti heroes.

(29:53):
There is some overlap with the goth community, both of
which seem to seek empowerment in the dark, serious side
of things. The lifestyle vampires typically dress in black and
other accouterments of the vampire esthetic, and favor a goth
music genre. According to one website, these lifestylers take this

(30:14):
on not just as something to do with clubs, but
as part of their total lifestyle, and who form alternative
extended families modeled on the covens, clans, etc. Found in
some vampire fiction and role playing games. Lifestyle vampires make
no claims of supernatural powers, and it would be unfair

(30:34):
to dismiss them as people who just like to play
at Halloween year round. They take their lifestyle quite seriously,
as it fulfills for them some inner, even spiritual need.
The sanguine, meaning bloody or blood red vampires may belong
to the lifestyle groups mentioned previous, but take the fantasy

(30:55):
one step further by actually drinking human blood. They typically
will not drink a glass of the stuff as one
would a glass of wine, for example, but usually will
add a few drops to some other liquid for drinking.
On occasion, a sanguine vampire will feed directly from a
volunteer or donor by making a small cut and sucking

(31:16):
up a small trickle of blood. Some of these sanguine
vampires claim an actual need to ingest human blood. The
human body does not digest blood very well, and there
seems to be no physiological condition that would account for
such a need. If the craving is present, then it
is almost certainly psychological in nature or simply a choice.

(31:41):
Psychic vampires, some of whom might also adopt the vampire's
lifestyle described previously, claim that they have a need to
feed off the energy of other people. According to the
Psychic Vampire resource and support pages, pranic vampires, as they
are sometimes called, are people who, by reason of a
condition of their spirit, need to obtain vital energy from

(32:04):
outside sources. They are unable to generate their own energy,
and oftentimes don't have the best capacity to store the
energy they do have. The website even has a section
of psychic feeding techniques. Again, in the spirit of keeping
it real, we have to question whether this is a
genuine phenomenon. By the same token, we've all been around

(32:26):
people who seem to drain the energy from a room
when they enter. Have you met my mother in law? Sorry,
just skidding. It could be argued that the effect is
strictly psychological, but then that's why they call it psychic vampirism.
If drinking human blood qualifies one as being a vampire,
then several serial killers deserve the label. In the late

(32:49):
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Peter Curtin, known as the
Vampire of Dusseldorf, committed as many as nine murders and
seven attempted murders. He achieved sexual arousal with the sight
of his victim's blood, and was said to have even
ingested it. Richard Trenton Chase was dubbed the Vampire of
Sacramento after he murdered six people and drank their blood. Obviously,

(33:14):
these vampires are criminally insane. Ironically, however, their murderous compulsions
and ghoulish practices make them more like the demonic vampires
of literary tradition than the other vampires described here. So
are vampires real for supernatural beings like Nosferatu, Dracula Lestatin,

(33:38):
Twilight's Edward Cullen, We'd have to say no, But the
lifestyle sanguine, psychic, and psychopathic vampires certainly are out there.

(34:02):
Coming up, I'll tell you the odd life story of
George d. Leave, which involves another George, a father named Evelyn,
and a love of elephants. Plus, be quiet and give
me the money in the cash drawer. This gun talks,
and with those words began a string of bank robberies,
conducted not by a gang of outlaws, or even a

(34:25):
couple of bad men, but by one little old lady.
These stories when we are darkness returns. On the twelfth

(34:59):
of July eighteen twenty one, at the Church of Saint
mary Lebone, just south of Regent's Park, a George Evelyn
married a Mary Jane Massey Dawson. Evelyn was a remarkable man.
He had fought at Waterloo, receiving a severe wound during
the defense of Chateauda Hugemont, with a shot fired through

(35:19):
a hole in an old gate hit his left arm.
He'd been born in Ireland, educated in England, and was
now marrying the daughter of another Irish family. The groom
and his bride were cousins. He was twenty nine years
old and still suffered pain from his shattered arm. She
was twenty years old and was small and pretty, with

(35:40):
dark hair and blue eyes. However, we're concerned not with
the veteran of eighteen fifteen, but with another George, who
at the time was living barely four miles from mary
le Bone in the city of London, and who was
his half brother, and was a son of the same father.
Even though his name was not Evelyn but by Nileive

(36:02):
George ni Leive, he was cut from a very different cloth,
and his story, which now follows, is certainly a strange one.
The father of the two Georges was John Evelyn, a
namesake and cousin several times removed of the seventeenth century Diarist.
Starting in seventeen seventy at the age of twenty seven,

(36:23):
he worked for twenty years for the Honorable East India Company,
holding various offices in what were then Calcutta and Daka.
At first glance, Evelyn's life in India was conventional enough.
He was introduced to a young Irish girl by the
name of Anne, She who had been sent out to
Daca to find a suitable husband, and he married her,

(36:45):
aged sixteen, in seventeen eighty seven. Three years later, the
Evelyns sold their horses and carriages and left Bengal for England.
By this time they had two children, and another two
were born after their return, of whom the elder was
the George who would one day distinguish himself fighting in
Wellington's army. But whereas Ann Evelyn Nische was a mother

(37:08):
of four. John Evelyn was a father of five, for
he also had an illegitimate child, a son whose arrival
in the world requires a word or two of explanation.
In a way, the fact that Evelyn had an illegitimate
son should not surprise us, given that company men in
Calcutta freely consorted with Bengali women. Thomas Williamson's East India Vadamechem,

(37:33):
published in eighteen ten as a complete guide to gentlemen
heading out from Europe, openly discusses the business of concubinage
in the East. Williamson reckoned that keeping a mistress drawn
from the local population would set his reader back only
about forty rupees a month, equivalent to sixty pounds sterling
a year, an outlay that must certainly be considered no

(37:55):
great price for a bosom friend when compared with the
sums laid out upon some British damsels. However, the identity
of Evelyn's mistress remains a mystery. Family tradition has it
that she was the daughter of a similar European Bengali partnership,
but beyond that nothing of her survives, no name, no age.

(38:15):
She has been written out of history. The boy was
born in about seventeen eighty five, that is to say,
two years before Evelyn's marriage to Ann She. He was
called George, which was the name that the Evelyns would
give their third son when he was born in seventeen
ninety one in Galway. However, there was never any confusion
between the two Georges, because in spite of having the

(38:38):
same father, they had different surnames. The legitimate George was
naturally an Evelyn, but his illegitimate half brother was the
Nileive referred to earlier. We do not know with any
degree of certainty why Evelyn gave his firstborn son this
odd pseudonym, which is incidentally nothing more than Evelyn written backwards.

(39:01):
Probably he was anxious to keep his liaison secret, in
which he was certainly successful, as no record of a
baptism has come to light. At the same time, he
did not simply abandon the boy who came back with him,
or at least was sent back by him from Calcutta,
and years later, in eighteen twenty seven, he would make
provision in his will for his natural illegitimate son, George Nileive,

(39:26):
leaving him the freehold on a property in Sidmouth and
Devon called Canister House, a brick built pile complete with
a stable, a coach house and a cottage. When Nileiave died,
the property was auctioned off as the Marine Hotel, an
enterprise that had been managed for many years by a
man called Daniel Percy. There's no evidence that he ever

(39:47):
actually lived there himself. Nileive first appears in the records
living and working in Wood Street, which runs north from
Cheapside in the City of London, in seventeen ninety seven,
when he was still a boy. He had been apprenticed
to a joiner by the name of Thomas Smith, and
the indenture which survives surprisingly identifies him as the son

(40:09):
not of John Evelyn, but of John Nileief. Even more surprisingly,
this John Nileieve was a gentleman deceased. We must assume
that Evelyn, who was very much alive, wanted to distance
himself from his Calcutta family to avoid complications in his
new life in Ireland and England. Nileive entered into a

(40:30):
partnership with Smith as Japaner's and although the joint enterprise
eventually folded in eighteen oh six, he continued in this
line of work for some time. In eighteen eleven, he
was listed in the London and Country Directory as an ornamental,
transparent and decorative painter. A Sunfire Office policy dating from
eighteen fifteen shows that he entered into a second partnership,

(40:52):
this time with A William Roberts. He would remain in
his Wood Street premises until at least eighteen twenty five,
and during this time time he married twice. His first wife, Keziah,
died in eighteen twenty three and fathered five daughters. By
the year eighteen twenty nine, he had moved from the
city to Charing Cross, and it was there that his

(41:13):
second wife, Elizabeth, bore him his sixth daughter. However, at
the time of the eighteen forty one census he was
living not with Elizabeth, but with a woman by the
name of Matilda Gatrill. His married life was evidently no
more straightforward than his father's had been. Matilda must have
meant a great deal to him, for in his will,
which he drew up in eighteen forty, he left her

(41:35):
a third of his freehold and leasehold property and half
of his goods and chattels to Elizabeth. On the other hand,
he left five shillings. But all that we know about
Matilda is that she was the daughter of a carpenter
from Hampshire and more than twenty years her senior, and
had once served in the sixty sixth Regiment of Foot.

(41:57):
She was a spinster according to the marriage certificate. A
relationship with George had never been formalized. Another name of
great significance in Nileive's will is that of Edward Cross,
the owner of the menagerie at Exeter Change in the Strand.
Nilive left no money to Cross, but there must have
been a close connection, as he appointed him executor alongside

(42:19):
his executrix, who was almost inevitably Matilda Gatrill. Quite how
Nilive and Cross were connected is a bit of a mystery.
In Cross's ledger of expenses, there is a reference to
a shawl that Nileive, for some unspecified reason, had cleaned
and repaired for him. Beyond this we can only guess.

(42:40):
A delightful possibility is that Nileive had painted the exuberant scenery,
a distant memory of the Bengal of his early childhood,
that gave Cross's caged animals a suitably exotic backdrop. What
we do know, though, is that when in January eighteen
twenty six, the Asian elephant residing on an upper floor
of Exeter Change went berserk, Cross turned to Nileive for advice.

(43:05):
Nileive died of chronic bowel disease at the age of
fifty eight. At the time of his death, he was
living in Amelia Street in Walworth, only doors away from
Edward Cross, who had long ago left the Strand to
found the Surrey Zoological Gardens. There may be nothing in it,
of course, but it is at least possible that Nileive
worked for Cross at the Gardens in some capacity, maybe

(43:27):
again as an artist, painting the backdrops to the entertainments
that were so popular with the public. So many unanswered questions,
but in a way these only add to the aura
of mystery that already surrounds George Nileive. He was indeed
something of an enigma. He had one foot in the east,
the other in the west. His name was almost, but

(43:47):
not quite that of his father. He had an Anglo
Indian mother, of whom no record survives. He lived most
of his life in London, and yet he never entirely
forgot his native Bengal. After all, he knew or thought
he knew how to deal with elephants when they got
out of hand. The Wiltshire Boulevard branch at the California

(44:20):
Bank in Los Angeles was crowded on that Friday morning
in nineteen fifty two. Behind the counter, Marguerite Everett politely
greeted each customer. Next in line was a little old
lady who wore a black jacket and green scarf. The
woman quietly pulled a wrinkled up brown paper sack from
a shabby leather purse, shoved it towards Everett. She said,

(44:41):
be quiet and give me the money in the cash drawer.
Everett was astounded. She hesitated, and the robber poked the
barrel of a pistol through the bottom of the bag.
This gun talks, she said, and I know how to
use it. With that, she pushed a red envelope toward Everett.
The teller took twelve one hundred dollars out of her
drawer and handed it to the woman, placing in her

(45:04):
envelope and putting the brown bag back in her purse.
The robber casually walked away. No one noticed as she
ambled to the door, strolled down the street and flagged
down a cab. Ever, it was so flustered it took
her more than a minute to ring for the bank manager.
Soon the place was swarming with cops, but they had

(45:24):
missed their prey. The old woman was nowhere to be seen.
In the next few weeks as she robbed bank after bank.
California Newshounds gave her an appropriate nickname, the Grandma Bandit.
Both local police and FBI agents joined the hunt, but
it was a local bank manager who finally caught her.

(45:47):
It was nearing Christmas in the United States National Bank
in Arcadia, fifteen miles east of Los Angeles, when a
woman walked up to tell her Lauren mckihey, give me
all your money. Grandma said, I'm desperate mcgeehee and credulous.
Turned to William H. Lloyd, her manager, and said this
woman wants to rob me. Grandma didn't hesitate. She turned

(46:09):
and sprinted to the door, but Lloyd was quicker. He
grabbed her and jerked the paper bag from her hands.
A toy pistol fell to the floor as Grandma begged
Lloyd to let her go. Bank employees triggered an alarm,
and soon the robber was in handcuffs. Checking her purse,
cops found sixty three cents. Fifty three year old Ethel

(46:31):
Arata was no normal bank robber. She had once been
an heiress, the daughter of Robert Katz, who lost twenty
million dollars in the stock market crash of nineteen twenty nine.
A syndicated news article written by Sam Cohen and Ruth
Reynolds stated that she once studied voice abroad and sang
with the Duncan sisters in their topsy and Eva company.

(46:53):
Rata informed detectives that she was a robin hood robber,
stealing from banks to give to the poor. She claimed
aimed to have given some of her proceeds from the
robberies to a destitute couple who wanted to return home
to Minnesota for Christmas. Cops learned that Arata had been
born to privilege in Philadelphia in nineteen hundred and spent
her childhood in private grooming schools. In nineteen oh three,

(47:17):
Robert Katz divorced his wife and married an actress, Dorothy Tenant.
In eighteen thirteen, Oja mcward Katz, Ethel's mother, overdosed on
prescription drugs and died in nineteen twenty nine, the stock
market crash bankrupted her father. He died in nineteen forty two,
leaving Ethel nothing. Ethel had married four times. She'd had

(47:39):
one child, a boy who died as an infant. In
nineteen forty eight, Ethel was committed to a mental institution
for alcoholism. According to Cohen and Reynolds, after leaving the institution,
she resumed her drinking, became hysterical, and tried to kill
herself by jumping from a fourth story hotel window. Two
weeks after this suicide attempt, she was found sprawled in

(48:01):
a stupor amid a litter of wine bottles in a
Hollywood rooming house. She spent five days in jail for
disorderly conduct. When arrested for the bank robberies, Ethel was
living in a dive hotel in Minrovia, California. Detectives learned
that she gambled her money away and not given it
to the poor people, as she'd claimed. A federal grand

(48:22):
jury found her guilty of bank robbery, and she was
sentenced to ten years in federal prison. Ethel Lorado was
paroled in nineteen fifty seven, two years after her conviction,
and disappeared into the Mists of History. Thanks for listening.

(48:49):
If you liked the podcast, please share a link to
this episode and recommend Weird Darkness to your friends, family,
and coworkers who loved the paranormal horror stories or true
crime like you do. All stories in Weird Darkness are
purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can
find source links or links to the authors in the
show notes. The fictional story The Elves and the Shoemaker

(49:12):
was adapted from The Brothers Grim by Margaret Hunt and
posted at Kids Pages. A History of Elves is by
Jemma Holman for Just History Posts. The Strange Death of
Thomas Farrant is by less Hewett. For Historic Mysteries, Our
Vampires Reel is by Stephen Wagner for Live About. The

(49:33):
Strange Story of George Nnelieve is by William and Karen
Ellis Reese for London Overlooked and The Grandma Bandit is
by Robert A. Waters for Kidnapping, Murder and Mayhem. We
Are Darkness theme by Alibi Music. We're Darkness as a
registered trademark. And now that we're coming out of the dark,
I'll leave you with the Little Light. Philippians four verse thirteen.

(49:57):
I can do everything through Him who gives me strength
and a final thought, look for something positive in each day,
even if some days you have to look a little harder.
I'm Daryn Marler. Thanks for joining me in the weird darkness.

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