October 22, 2021 • 14 mins
Civil War creature story amidst the ruins of post-Civil War Charleston, where a mysterious apothecary builds a marine attraction like no other.
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"The Hall of Wonders" was written and told by Thomas E. Fuller
Audio Production: Henry Howard
The Moonlit Road Podcast is a production of The Moonlit Road, LLC.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) It was in March of 1867, after the
Civil War was truly lost, that Dr. Rembrandt
Kavanaugh arrived in Charleston.
He was what folks used to call a
carpetbagger, a Yankee who'd come down south after
the war looking for easy pickings.
Folks remember him as a slim, elegant man
(00:23):
with one blue eye and one green and
the sharpest, whitest teeth anyone ever saw.
Now, Dr. Kavanaugh was an apothecary, a provider
of prescriptions, potions, and pills.
He set up operations down near the docks,
(00:43):
figuring to provide services to the sailors off
the Union warships that still filled the harbor,
as well as selling overpriced drugs to the
town folks of what was left of Charleston.
But his plan didn't work.
The sailors and soldiers had their own apothecaries,
and most of the town folk were flat
(01:04):
broke.
Now, an ordinary man would have cut his
losses and headed out west.
But Dr. Kavanaugh wasn't an ordinary man.
He had a mind as bright and fractured
as the gears of a nickel-plated watch.
He set all those gears and wheels turning,
and they ticked and ticked and ticked, until
(01:26):
finally his blue eye flashed and his green
eye flashed and his white teeth shone like
a shark's.
To sell things, he had to give people
a good reason to come into his shop.
He needed a gimmick.
So the next day, Dr. Kavanaugh rode out
(01:47):
into the harbor and went from boat to
boat, talking to the captains and leaving his
business card.
Then he went back into the city and
placed the biggest sheet glass order anyone could
remember.
After that, he hired some men to move
his apothecary from the ground floor of his
building up to the second floor.
Folks thought he'd clearly lost his mind.
(02:11):
They didn't know how right they were.
Now, soon as the apothecary was moved, the
glass workers went in, and there were all
sorts of banging and knocking about.
And while that was going on, sailors started
sneaking into Dr. Kavanaugh's place, loaded with all
sorts of little jars and boxes stuffed under
(02:33):
their coats.
Well, all of this got the town folks'
curiosity up.
Folks who wouldn't normally go down to the
docks found all kinds of excuses to wander
by that apothecary.
But they found the windows covered up with
black curtains, and all anyone could see were
the sailors and glass workers going in, coming
(02:55):
out.
And Dr. Kavanaugh stood there grinning, with his
blue eye flashing and his green eye flashing,
his teeth white and sharp.
Then the sign appeared.
It was right there in the big front
window, smack in the middle of a brass
easel.
Ten days to the Hall of Wonders.
(03:16):
The next day it said nine days to
the Hall of Wonders.
Then eight days to the Hall of...
Well, you get the idea.
Finally, it was opening day, and most of
Charleston was crowded into narrow King Street in
front of Dr. Kavanaugh's shop.
It was late June, and the heat was
so fierce you could almost taste it.
(03:39):
Door finally opened, and Dr. Kavanaugh himself come
out and told folks they were going to
see something they'd never seen before or ever
would again, and all it was going to
cost them was a single copper penny.
He could have told them it was one
thin dime, or one Yankee dollar, or even
(04:00):
a gold double eagle, and they would have
forked it over.
Every one of them lined up, dug out
their pennies, and marched right into Dr. Kavanaugh's
Hall of Wonders.
Now every room in that ground floor had
been ripped out, and there was some kind
of magic lantern thing up on the ceiling
that made it look like it was underwater.
(04:22):
Slowly, the walls began to glow, and folks
gasped, and looked, and gasped some more.
What they saw was fish, hundreds of fish
in hundreds of colors, swimming around in little
glass tanks that covered the walls.
Now the folks had seen fish before on
(04:42):
a plate on the end of a hook,
but not swimming around freely inside a room.
All those glass tanks were marked with the
names of the fish and where they come
from, and the only sound was the water
splashing back and forth as if the audience
were swimming in the middle of the ocean.
Dr. Kavanaugh suddenly appeared without saying a word.
(05:05):
He pointed to the back of the Hall
of Wonders.
Slowly, heavy velvet drapes pulled back, and it
was gasping time again.
They saw one great sheet of glass that
must have cost more than the rest of
the tanks combined.
Behind it was nothing but murky emerald water.
Dr. Kavanaugh then pointed to a sign on
(05:27):
a brass easel.
There was just one word there.
Mermaid.
Folks crowded forward and stared into the murky
depths for what seemed like hours, and just
when everyone was nearly cross-eyed, it seemed
like something flickered in all that opaque green,
(05:49):
a flash of silver like a salmon's tail,
a gleam of yellow like golden hair, a
hint of a body as pale and perfect
as ivory, and then it was gone.
And Isaac Sims, Dr. Kavanaugh's assistant, suddenly ushered
the folks out so the next group of
folks could come in.
Of course, Dr. Kavanaugh had them ushered through
(06:10):
the upstairs apothecary, just in case anyone needed
to buy some overpriced medicines on the way
out.
For the next two weeks, the Hall of
Wonders was all anyone in Charleston could talk
about.
Folks went back again and again, two, three,
four times, and the pennies filled the bucket
(06:31):
that Isaac Sims passed around.
And as Dr. Kavanaugh raised the ticket prices,
those pennies turned into nickels, dimes, and dollars.
But each time, before anyone could get a
good look at the supposed mermaid, Isaac Sims
would hustle everybody out again, and Dr. Kavanaugh
would just stand there with his green eye
(06:52):
flashing and his blue eye flashing, his teeth
white and sharp.
It could have gone on forever, well, if
it hadn't been for the rain.
It started at precisely half past ten on
the 3rd of July, 1867.
(07:13):
A heavy black squall rolled in from the
sea, followed by a drenching shower.
The rain pounded and roared as if the
very depths had been lifted up and dropped
onto Charleston.
And it stayed that way, never ceasing or
abating, for well nigh a month.
It rained until all the roofs leaked, all
(07:36):
the floors oozed, and every street and alley
and lane was a fast-moving stream.
All the city's cockroaches, flooded out from their
holes under the low-slung houses, swarmed into
the streets by the thousands and drowned, along
with all the rats trying to escape from
the waterlogged ships, and all the cats trying
to catch the drowning rats.
(07:58):
As the drenching rains continued, the town folks
started to get a little strange.
No one, not even the oldest elder, could
remember a storm like this, and when folks
get real miserable, they start looking for someone
to blame.
Something had to have set off all this
water and punishment.
(08:18):
Couldn't be the town folks, for no town
with as many churches as Charleston could send
that much.
Something must have caused it, something that had
happened lately.
And then Miss Aramta Tucker started to have
her visions.
Now, Miss Aramta was a local conjurer woman
(08:40):
who had had visions all her life.
She'd always be seen wandering the streets, chattering
away to listeners only she could see.
She was a constant source of amusement for
the locals, but this time folks was listening
to her.
Don't you idiots know nothing?
It's that mermaid that's causing all the rain.
(09:02):
Don't you know what a mermaid is?
Town folk just stood there and shook their
heads.
A mermaid's a person's been washed out to
sea.
If they don't drown, they get turned into
a mermaid by other mermaids.
But once somebody's a mermaid, they can't go
back to the human world.
They gotta stay in the ocean like other
fish.
(09:23):
And that's what that mermaid's trying to do.
She's calling on the water to wash her
back to sea.
Now the rumors and whispers really got started
up in Charleston.
Suddenly every tavern and saloon had its own
expert on mermaids and the powers they had
over water.
Summon it right up out of the air
(09:44):
they could.
Make it rain forever if they had a
mind.
Well, if whatever was in that big glass
tank wadded out, then out it was going
to come.
There was no signal, no plan of action
or called arms.
Folks just started pouring out into the rain
(10:05):
and heading towards the apothecary.
Out of Blackbird Alley they came.
Out of Philadelphia Street and Bottle Alley and
Danger Court.
All of them heading for King Street and
the apothecary.
They were about a thousand strong when they
reached the Hall of Wonders.
At the doorway stood Dr. Cavanaugh with his
(10:27):
green eye flashing and his blue eye flashing,
his teeth sharp and white.
It's just a trick, he cried, holding his
hands up.
Just wire and wax and pig's bladders full
of air and a tank full of green
dye.
There's no such thing as mermaids, you fools.
But the fools were having none of it.
(10:48):
Even Isaac Sims, Dr. Cavanaugh's trusted assistant, turned
against him.
They stormed into the Hall of Wonders and
smashed open all the fish tanks.
And Isaac Sims strode up to that gleaming
glass mermaid tank with a sledgehammer, reared back,
and smashed it right in the center.
(11:12):
Now when folks talk about split seconds, they
mean the littlest amount of time possible.
But a lot can happen in a split
second and a lot did.
Some folks swear that right before Isaac Sims'
hammer shattered all that glass down into shards,
something swam up out of the muck.
(11:35):
And if it really was wire and wax
and pig's bladders, it was an amazing piece
of work.
It balanced on a sleek tail as silver
as a hoarded treasure.
Its body was pale and perfect as ivory
and blonde hair as brilliant as spun gold
glittered around its head.
(11:56):
And then the hammer hit the glass and
it exploded into a solid wall of water,
more water than could ever have been behind
it.
And folks swore that whatever was in that
tank flowed right into Dr. Cavanaugh's arms.
And the waters gushed and roared and swept
through the Hall of Wonders and up the
(12:17):
chimneys, out the windows and doors, driving folks
before it like pieces of driftwood.
When the water finally stopped, folks picked themselves
up from off the waterlogged street and stared
at the soggy ruin that had been the
Hall of Wonders.
It sagged and gaped like it was made
(12:38):
a wet pasteboard.
There was no sign of the apothecary or
the mysterious exhibit.
But the rain had stopped and the sun
was out.
That was good enough for most folks.
Then the townspeople looked around for Dr. Cavanaugh.
They had every intention of locking him up
(13:00):
in the deepest, darkest jail cell in Charleston.
But he was nowhere to be found.
Through all the streets and back alleys they
searched, but there is no sign of him.
Finally, the townfolks figured he must have been
swept out to sea with the fish.
And that was good enough for them.
(13:20):
Dr. Cavanaugh was never seen again, but his
Hall of Wonders never really went away.
In later years, other folks built similar places
in other cities, though they called them something
different, uh, aquariums.
And people still lined up and paid top
dollar to watch hundreds of fish in hundreds
of colors swimming around in glass tanks.
(13:41):
But should you visit an aquarium, look closely
behind the biggest tank in the place.
If you see a strange-looking fish with
one blue eye and one green and sharp
white teeth, watch out.
For you may have found Dr. Rembrandt Cavanaugh.
And what's worse, he may have found you.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) It was in March of 1867, after the
Civil War was truly lost, that Dr. Rembrandt
Kavanaugh arrived in Charleston.
He was what folks used to call a
carpetbagger, a Yankee who'd come down south after
the war looking for easy pickings.
Folks remember him as a slim, elegant man
(00:23):
with one blue eye and one green and
the sharpest, whitest teeth anyone ever saw.
Now, Dr. Kavanaugh was an apothecary, a provider
of prescriptions, potions, and pills.
He set up operations down near the docks,
(00:43):
figuring to provide services to the sailors off
the Union warships that still filled the harbor,
as well as selling overpriced drugs to the
town folks of what was left of Charleston.
But his plan didn't work.
The sailors and soldiers had their own apothecaries,
and most of the town folk were flat
(01:04):
broke.
Now, an ordinary man would have cut his
losses and headed out west.
But Dr. Kavanaugh wasn't an ordinary man.
He had a mind as bright and fractured
as the gears of a nickel-plated watch.
He set all those gears and wheels turning,
and they ticked and ticked and ticked, until
(01:26):
finally his blue eye flashed and his green
eye flashed and his white teeth shone like
a shark's.
To sell things, he had to give people
a good reason to come into his shop.
He needed a gimmick.
So the next day, Dr. Kavanaugh rode out
(01:47):
into the harbor and went from boat to
boat, talking to the captains and leaving his
business card.
Then he went back into the city and
placed the biggest sheet glass order anyone could
remember.
After that, he hired some men to move
his apothecary from the ground floor of his
building up to the second floor.
Folks thought he'd clearly lost his mind.
(02:11):
They didn't know how right they were.
Now, soon as the apothecary was moved, the
glass workers went in, and there were all
sorts of banging and knocking about.
And while that was going on, sailors started
sneaking into Dr. Kavanaugh's place, loaded with all
sorts of little jars and boxes stuffed under
(02:33):
their coats.
Well, all of this got the town folks'
curiosity up.
Folks who wouldn't normally go down to the
docks found all kinds of excuses to wander
by that apothecary.
But they found the windows covered up with
black curtains, and all anyone could see were
the sailors and glass workers going in, coming
(02:55):
out.
And Dr. Kavanaugh stood there grinning, with his
blue eye flashing and his green eye flashing,
his teeth white and sharp.
Then the sign appeared.
It was right there in the big front
window, smack in the middle of a brass
easel.
Ten days to the Hall of Wonders.
(03:16):
The next day it said nine days to
the Hall of Wonders.
Then eight days to the Hall of...
Well, you get the idea.
Finally, it was opening day, and most of
Charleston was crowded into narrow King Street in
front of Dr. Kavanaugh's shop.
It was late June, and the heat was
so fierce you could almost taste it.
(03:39):
Door finally opened, and Dr. Kavanaugh himself come
out and told folks they were going to
see something they'd never seen before or ever
would again, and all it was going to
cost them was a single copper penny.
He could have told them it was one
thin dime, or one Yankee dollar, or even
(04:00):
a gold double eagle, and they would have
forked it over.
Every one of them lined up, dug out
their pennies, and marched right into Dr. Kavanaugh's
Hall of Wonders.
Now every room in that ground floor had
been ripped out, and there was some kind
of magic lantern thing up on the ceiling
that made it look like it was underwater.
(04:22):
Slowly, the walls began to glow, and folks
gasped, and looked, and gasped some more.
What they saw was fish, hundreds of fish
in hundreds of colors, swimming around in little
glass tanks that covered the walls.
Now the folks had seen fish before on
(04:42):
a plate on the end of a hook,
but not swimming around freely inside a room.
All those glass tanks were marked with the
names of the fish and where they come
from, and the only sound was the water
splashing back and forth as if the audience
were swimming in the middle of the ocean.
Dr. Kavanaugh suddenly appeared without saying a word.
(05:05):
He pointed to the back of the Hall
of Wonders.
Slowly, heavy velvet drapes pulled back, and it
was gasping time again.
They saw one great sheet of glass that
must have cost more than the rest of
the tanks combined.
Behind it was nothing but murky emerald water.
Dr. Kavanaugh then pointed to a sign on
(05:27):
a brass easel.
There was just one word there.
Mermaid.
Folks crowded forward and stared into the murky
depths for what seemed like hours, and just
when everyone was nearly cross-eyed, it seemed
like something flickered in all that opaque green,
(05:49):
a flash of silver like a salmon's tail,
a gleam of yellow like golden hair, a
hint of a body as pale and perfect
as ivory, and then it was gone.
And Isaac Sims, Dr. Kavanaugh's assistant, suddenly ushered
the folks out so the next group of
folks could come in.
Of course, Dr. Kavanaugh had them ushered through
(06:10):
the upstairs apothecary, just in case anyone needed
to buy some overpriced medicines on the way
out.
For the next two weeks, the Hall of
Wonders was all anyone in Charleston could talk
about.
Folks went back again and again, two, three,
four times, and the pennies filled the bucket
(06:31):
that Isaac Sims passed around.
And as Dr. Kavanaugh raised the ticket prices,
those pennies turned into nickels, dimes, and dollars.
But each time, before anyone could get a
good look at the supposed mermaid, Isaac Sims
would hustle everybody out again, and Dr. Kavanaugh
would just stand there with his green eye
(06:52):
flashing and his blue eye flashing, his teeth
white and sharp.
It could have gone on forever, well, if
it hadn't been for the rain.
It started at precisely half past ten on
the 3rd of July, 1867.
(07:13):
A heavy black squall rolled in from the
sea, followed by a drenching shower.
The rain pounded and roared as if the
very depths had been lifted up and dropped
onto Charleston.
And it stayed that way, never ceasing or
abating, for well nigh a month.
It rained until all the roofs leaked, all
(07:36):
the floors oozed, and every street and alley
and lane was a fast-moving stream.
All the city's cockroaches, flooded out from their
holes under the low-slung houses, swarmed into
the streets by the thousands and drowned, along
with all the rats trying to escape from
the waterlogged ships, and all the cats trying
to catch the drowning rats.
(07:58):
As the drenching rains continued, the town folks
started to get a little strange.
No one, not even the oldest elder, could
remember a storm like this, and when folks
get real miserable, they start looking for someone
to blame.
Something had to have set off all this
water and punishment.
(08:18):
Couldn't be the town folks, for no town
with as many churches as Charleston could send
that much.
Something must have caused it, something that had
happened lately.
And then Miss Aramta Tucker started to have
her visions.
Now, Miss Aramta was a local conjurer woman
(08:40):
who had had visions all her life.
She'd always be seen wandering the streets, chattering
away to listeners only she could see.
She was a constant source of amusement for
the locals, but this time folks was listening
to her.
Don't you idiots know nothing?
It's that mermaid that's causing all the rain.
(09:02):
Don't you know what a mermaid is?
Town folk just stood there and shook their
heads.
A mermaid's a person's been washed out to
sea.
If they don't drown, they get turned into
a mermaid by other mermaids.
But once somebody's a mermaid, they can't go
back to the human world.
They gotta stay in the ocean like other
fish.
(09:23):
And that's what that mermaid's trying to do.
She's calling on the water to wash her
back to sea.
Now the rumors and whispers really got started
up in Charleston.
Suddenly every tavern and saloon had its own
expert on mermaids and the powers they had
over water.
Summon it right up out of the air
(09:44):
they could.
Make it rain forever if they had a
mind.
Well, if whatever was in that big glass
tank wadded out, then out it was going
to come.
There was no signal, no plan of action
or called arms.
Folks just started pouring out into the rain
(10:05):
and heading towards the apothecary.
Out of Blackbird Alley they came.
Out of Philadelphia Street and Bottle Alley and
Danger Court.
All of them heading for King Street and
the apothecary.
They were about a thousand strong when they
reached the Hall of Wonders.
At the doorway stood Dr. Cavanaugh with his
(10:27):
green eye flashing and his blue eye flashing,
his teeth sharp and white.
It's just a trick, he cried, holding his
hands up.
Just wire and wax and pig's bladders full
of air and a tank full of green
dye.
There's no such thing as mermaids, you fools.
But the fools were having none of it.
(10:48):
Even Isaac Sims, Dr. Cavanaugh's trusted assistant, turned
against him.
They stormed into the Hall of Wonders and
smashed open all the fish tanks.
And Isaac Sims strode up to that gleaming
glass mermaid tank with a sledgehammer, reared back,
and smashed it right in the center.
(11:12):
Now when folks talk about split seconds, they
mean the littlest amount of time possible.
But a lot can happen in a split
second and a lot did.
Some folks swear that right before Isaac Sims'
hammer shattered all that glass down into shards,
something swam up out of the muck.
(11:35):
And if it really was wire and wax
and pig's bladders, it was an amazing piece
of work.
It balanced on a sleek tail as silver
as a hoarded treasure.
Its body was pale and perfect as ivory
and blonde hair as brilliant as spun gold
glittered around its head.
(11:56):
And then the hammer hit the glass and
it exploded into a solid wall of water,
more water than could ever have been behind
it.
And folks swore that whatever was in that
tank flowed right into Dr. Cavanaugh's arms.
And the waters gushed and roared and swept
through the Hall of Wonders and up the
(12:17):
chimneys, out the windows and doors, driving folks
before it like pieces of driftwood.
When the water finally stopped, folks picked themselves
up from off the waterlogged street and stared
at the soggy ruin that had been the
Hall of Wonders.
It sagged and gaped like it was made
(12:38):
a wet pasteboard.
There was no sign of the apothecary or
the mysterious exhibit.
But the rain had stopped and the sun
was out.
That was good enough for most folks.
Then the townspeople looked around for Dr. Cavanaugh.
They had every intention of locking him up
(13:00):
in the deepest, darkest jail cell in Charleston.
But he was nowhere to be found.
Through all the streets and back alleys they
searched, but there is no sign of him.
Finally, the townfolks figured he must have been
swept out to sea with the fish.
And that was good enough for them.
(13:20):
Dr. Cavanaugh was never seen again, but his
Hall of Wonders never really went away.
In later years, other folks built similar places
in other cities, though they called them something
different, uh, aquariums.
And people still lined up and paid top
dollar to watch hundreds of fish in hundreds
of colors swimming around in glass tanks.
(13:41):
But should you visit an aquarium, look closely
behind the biggest tank in the place.
If you see a strange-looking fish with
one blue eye and one green and sharp
white teeth, watch out.
For you may have found Dr. Rembrandt Cavanaugh.
And what's worse, he may have found you.
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