January 29, 2019 • 11 mins
Not every story has a tidy ending. Often times, it's the journey that's more important than the destination, as both of our tales reveal today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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. All of us have
(00:28):
days we don't quite feel like ourselves. We wake up
on the wrong side of the bed, we miss that
early morning latte to get ourselves going, or we notice
something is just off. It doesn't take much for one
little thing to throw our whole world off balance. However,
in one man's case, something had been wrong for some time.
He didn't quite feel right on two worlds. Kirk Allen
(00:52):
first showed up on doctor Lindner's Baltimore doorstep in the
mid nineteen forties. Another physician in a governmental research facility
across the country had asked doctor Lindner to provide a
second opinion on his patient. Mister Allen didn't have a
deadly disease or anything like that, but his symptoms were unique.
The physician just wanted to make sure the man didn't
(01:14):
pose a threat to himself or to his colleagues. Kirk
Allen had had no outbursts or incidents while employed at
the research station, He got along just fine with his coworkers,
and no one questioned the quality of his work. However,
the people around him were worried. You see, Kirk Allen
believed he had two homes. I don't mean two houses
(01:36):
in different cities. He believed he spent half of his
time on Earth and the other half on another planet.
He spoke matter of factly about it, as though it
were perfectly normal. For him. In a way, the other
planet was a means of escape. He'd been born in
Hawaii to a wealthy diplomat father. His mother, a native Hawaiian,
(01:57):
spent most of her day's working and almost never with her.
With both parents absent, Kirk spent his formative years in
the care of nurses and governesses. The governesses were tasked
with educating him, which proved difficult as Kirk had an
unquenchable curiosity and a passion for learning. He'd loved to read,
and his teachers had trouble keeping up, and one governess
(02:20):
was so obsessed with cleanliness she instilled in the young
Kirk a debilitating fear of germs from the very environment
and people he'd grown up around. When she left, another
governess entered his life. By then, he'd already been living
within two worlds, that of a child with everything he
needed and that of a child who lacked parents in
(02:40):
a real and practical way. Because of that, crossing the
line into adulthood wasn't easy for him, but he still
had his books. When the world was weighing down on
him and he felt like he needed to get away,
he retreated into the pages of fantasy and science fiction stories.
The Wizard of Oz books had been his favorite until
one day when a crate of novels was delivered to
(03:03):
his house. There were religious texts, essay collections, and biographies,
but Kirk found himself drawn to a novel by an
English author. He recognized the main character immediately caught his attention,
as he and Kirk shared the same name. He finished
the book in a single day, and then read it
all over again. He reread it three times before moving
(03:26):
on to another book with a character who bore the
same name, Kirk Allen. The third time he discovered a
main character with the same name as his, he felt nothing,
almost like it had been fated to happen. It had
been These Latest Stories, a series of American science fiction
novels about an earth born man taken to another planet
(03:46):
that captivated him in a way no other books had.
He didn't just become engrossed in the tales. The fourteen
year old Allan truly believed they were about him, an older,
wiser him, biographies of a life he'd lived among the stars.
Every detail, every character the fictional Kirk encountered was instantly
recognizable to the real person. To Kirk, while his physical
(04:11):
body went to work, ate in diners and slept in
the same bed every night, another piece of him was
off having fantastic adventures, battling strange creatures and wooing galactic princesses.
It was as though the author had found out about
the real Kirk Allen and had transcribed his story. And
once he'd ran through all of the volumes of his
(04:31):
quote biography, Kirk began writing his own. Despite his fantastical
other life, reality never got away from him. Kirk earned
a degree and tried to build a normal life for
himself on Earth, but he never forgot about his obsession.
He started filling in the gaps and the stories and
building them out with what he thought were his own memories,
(04:54):
memories that eventually turned into hallucinations. Kirk was told to
seek help or find employment elsewhere, which brings us to
doctor Lindner's office. A good doctor saw only one way
of curing Kirk Allen of his delusions by entertaining them.
He went along with his patient, establishing that his memories
(05:14):
of intergalactic space travel were real. From there, the two
men worked back through his real biography, including all the
neglect and abuse that had brought him to this point.
It was only when Kirk understood why he'd believed the
stories were about him, that he was able to shake
the delusion. There was just one problem. Doctor Lindner had
(05:36):
now become obsessed with Kirk's stories. He found himself daydreaming
and fantasizing, not just about new adventures on distant planets,
but the very idea of allowing one's brain to exist
on another plane of existence while the body languished on Earth.
It seemed a bit of doctor Lindner's patient had rubbed
off on him, though not to the same degree. He
(05:57):
understood that none of it was real, but he wondered
if it could be. Could we be in two places
at once? Could we bear memories of lives unlived? We
may never know, just like we may never know the
real kirk Ellen. Kirk Allen, you see, was a pseudonym
used to protect his identity. The fictional character's name was
(06:17):
also not kirk Allen. Some have theorized the books that
kicked off the man's obsession was the Barsoom series by
Edgar Rice Burrows. To this day, though we still don't
know what his real identity was, which only adds to
the mystery behind the man. What isn't so mysterious is
how what happened to kirk Allen could have happened to anyone.
(06:38):
The books we read have a tendency to affect us
in ways we aren't even aware of at the time.
Perhaps the author George R. R. Martin says it best
a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The
man who never reads lives only one. The fishing boat
(07:10):
known as the High Aim six left a Taiwanese port
in the fall of two thousand and two. Aboard the
vessel where the captain and his first mate and engineer.
They stopped in Indonesia to pick up a crew of
eight other men to assist with their expedition, and then
the ten fishermen set out to sea, their ship filled
with fuel and provisions enough to last the whole trip.
(07:31):
There were no storms that had doomed them to a
watery grave, nor engine failure leaving them stranded in the
middle of the ocean. By all accounts, the voyage was
supposed to be a standard fishing outing, like many they
and other ships from the region had been known to make,
which is why it was so odd when Australian naval
officials spotted the High Aim six drifting eighty nautical miles
(07:53):
off their coast. They hailed the ship on the radio,
but only received silence. Something was clearly amiss. Officials boarded
the vessel and found the engine had been running at
full throttle, but the gas tank was empty and the
rudder was locked. The ship couldn't have moved if it
wanted to, so it drifted aimlessly until it was found.
(08:14):
They then searched for signs of distress or struggle, but
found nothing out of the sorts. In fact, it appears
as though nothing had gone wrong at all. A half
empty pack of cigarettes rested above the helm, seven toothbrushes
were found in the living quarters, and the refrigerator was
fully stocked, oh and over three tons of rotting tuna
(08:34):
and mackerel sap below stinking up the hold. The ship
was ultimately towed to Australia's western coast for an investigation
as to what had happened. There was just one problem.
Investigators couldn't interview a single crew member about what had happened.
The vessel had been empty when they found it. All
ten of them were assumed dead. It seemed Australia had
(08:56):
a real life ghost ship on its hands. There was
one survivor. One of the Indonesian crew members had made
it off the ship safely and was arrested shortly after
the High aimsix's discovery. According to his story, the captain
and the engineer had been murdered. Though he didn't know
what had caused the mutiny or where the rest of
(09:17):
his crew mates had gone, he assumed they'd hitched a
ride back to their homeland. That tall tale didn't sit
well with police, however, they'd noticed nothing of value had
been taken from the ship and not a single trace
of blood could be found, and all the other crew
members had disappeared. There was no sign of them back
in Indonesia. Australian police and naval authorities searched the water
(09:40):
for any signs of the captain, the engineer or the crew,
but came up empty. It was as if they'd disappeared
into thin air. When investigators checked the call logs on
mobile phones belonging to the captain and the engineer, they
noticed something even more bizarre, a series of calls made
from the engineer's phone to his daughter folloween his disappearance.
(10:01):
When she picked up, she said she heard sounds from
a karaoke bar in the background. The call had been
traced back to the Philippines. She feared that her father
had not been murdered, but kidnapped and held by the
Indonesian crew, though no ransom demand was ever made. Similar
calls were made from the captain's phone around the same time,
only his came from the island of Bali. Had the
(10:24):
crew really murdered the captain and his first mate, as
the survivor claimed, or had they taken the two men
hostage and let the ship float away. The Australian police
and Navy still don't have any answers, and the fate
of the men involved is still unknown. The idea of
pirates isn't entirely out of the question. Piracy and all
(10:45):
that comes with it, including murder and kidnapping, are still
a large problem for cargo ships and fishing vessels in
many parts of the world. We may never know what
happened to the nine other men aboard the High Aim
Six or where might be today. All we know is
at a certain point the authorities stopped looking and assumed
(11:06):
that they were dead. It seems that they bought the
survivor's story bookline and sinker. 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 Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
(11:29):
me Aaron Mank 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 Loore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
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. All of us have
(00:28):
days we don't quite feel like ourselves. We wake up
on the wrong side of the bed, we miss that
early morning latte to get ourselves going, or we notice
something is just off. It doesn't take much for one
little thing to throw our whole world off balance. However,
in one man's case, something had been wrong for some time.
He didn't quite feel right on two worlds. Kirk Allen
(00:52):
first showed up on doctor Lindner's Baltimore doorstep in the
mid nineteen forties. Another physician in a governmental research facility
across the country had asked doctor Lindner to provide a
second opinion on his patient. Mister Allen didn't have a
deadly disease or anything like that, but his symptoms were unique.
The physician just wanted to make sure the man didn't
(01:14):
pose a threat to himself or to his colleagues. Kirk
Allen had had no outbursts or incidents while employed at
the research station, He got along just fine with his coworkers,
and no one questioned the quality of his work. However,
the people around him were worried. You see, Kirk Allen
believed he had two homes. I don't mean two houses
(01:36):
in different cities. He believed he spent half of his
time on Earth and the other half on another planet.
He spoke matter of factly about it, as though it
were perfectly normal. For him. In a way, the other
planet was a means of escape. He'd been born in
Hawaii to a wealthy diplomat father. His mother, a native Hawaiian,
(01:57):
spent most of her day's working and almost never with her.
With both parents absent, Kirk spent his formative years in
the care of nurses and governesses. The governesses were tasked
with educating him, which proved difficult as Kirk had an
unquenchable curiosity and a passion for learning. He'd loved to read,
and his teachers had trouble keeping up, and one governess
(02:20):
was so obsessed with cleanliness she instilled in the young
Kirk a debilitating fear of germs from the very environment
and people he'd grown up around. When she left, another
governess entered his life. By then, he'd already been living
within two worlds, that of a child with everything he
needed and that of a child who lacked parents in
(02:40):
a real and practical way. Because of that, crossing the
line into adulthood wasn't easy for him, but he still
had his books. When the world was weighing down on
him and he felt like he needed to get away,
he retreated into the pages of fantasy and science fiction stories.
The Wizard of Oz books had been his favorite until
one day when a crate of novels was delivered to
(03:03):
his house. There were religious texts, essay collections, and biographies,
but Kirk found himself drawn to a novel by an
English author. He recognized the main character immediately caught his attention,
as he and Kirk shared the same name. He finished
the book in a single day, and then read it
all over again. He reread it three times before moving
(03:26):
on to another book with a character who bore the
same name, Kirk Allen. The third time he discovered a
main character with the same name as his, he felt nothing,
almost like it had been fated to happen. It had
been These Latest Stories, a series of American science fiction
novels about an earth born man taken to another planet
(03:46):
that captivated him in a way no other books had.
He didn't just become engrossed in the tales. The fourteen
year old Allan truly believed they were about him, an older,
wiser him, biographies of a life he'd lived among the stars.
Every detail, every character the fictional Kirk encountered was instantly
recognizable to the real person. To Kirk, while his physical
(04:11):
body went to work, ate in diners and slept in
the same bed every night, another piece of him was
off having fantastic adventures, battling strange creatures and wooing galactic princesses.
It was as though the author had found out about
the real Kirk Allen and had transcribed his story. And
once he'd ran through all of the volumes of his
(04:31):
quote biography, Kirk began writing his own. Despite his fantastical
other life, reality never got away from him. Kirk earned
a degree and tried to build a normal life for
himself on Earth, but he never forgot about his obsession.
He started filling in the gaps and the stories and
building them out with what he thought were his own memories,
(04:54):
memories that eventually turned into hallucinations. Kirk was told to
seek help or find employment elsewhere, which brings us to
doctor Lindner's office. A good doctor saw only one way
of curing Kirk Allen of his delusions by entertaining them.
He went along with his patient, establishing that his memories
(05:14):
of intergalactic space travel were real. From there, the two
men worked back through his real biography, including all the
neglect and abuse that had brought him to this point.
It was only when Kirk understood why he'd believed the
stories were about him, that he was able to shake
the delusion. There was just one problem. Doctor Lindner had
(05:36):
now become obsessed with Kirk's stories. He found himself daydreaming
and fantasizing, not just about new adventures on distant planets,
but the very idea of allowing one's brain to exist
on another plane of existence while the body languished on Earth.
It seemed a bit of doctor Lindner's patient had rubbed
off on him, though not to the same degree. He
(05:57):
understood that none of it was real, but he wondered
if it could be. Could we be in two places
at once? Could we bear memories of lives unlived? We
may never know, just like we may never know the
real kirk Ellen. Kirk Allen, you see, was a pseudonym
used to protect his identity. The fictional character's name was
(06:17):
also not kirk Allen. Some have theorized the books that
kicked off the man's obsession was the Barsoom series by
Edgar Rice Burrows. To this day, though we still don't
know what his real identity was, which only adds to
the mystery behind the man. What isn't so mysterious is
how what happened to kirk Allen could have happened to anyone.
(06:38):
The books we read have a tendency to affect us
in ways we aren't even aware of at the time.
Perhaps the author George R. R. Martin says it best
a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The
man who never reads lives only one. The fishing boat
(07:10):
known as the High Aim six left a Taiwanese port
in the fall of two thousand and two. Aboard the
vessel where the captain and his first mate and engineer.
They stopped in Indonesia to pick up a crew of
eight other men to assist with their expedition, and then
the ten fishermen set out to sea, their ship filled
with fuel and provisions enough to last the whole trip.
(07:31):
There were no storms that had doomed them to a
watery grave, nor engine failure leaving them stranded in the
middle of the ocean. By all accounts, the voyage was
supposed to be a standard fishing outing, like many they
and other ships from the region had been known to make,
which is why it was so odd when Australian naval
officials spotted the High Aim six drifting eighty nautical miles
(07:53):
off their coast. They hailed the ship on the radio,
but only received silence. Something was clearly amiss. Officials boarded
the vessel and found the engine had been running at
full throttle, but the gas tank was empty and the
rudder was locked. The ship couldn't have moved if it
wanted to, so it drifted aimlessly until it was found.
(08:14):
They then searched for signs of distress or struggle, but
found nothing out of the sorts. In fact, it appears
as though nothing had gone wrong at all. A half
empty pack of cigarettes rested above the helm, seven toothbrushes
were found in the living quarters, and the refrigerator was
fully stocked, oh and over three tons of rotting tuna
(08:34):
and mackerel sap below stinking up the hold. The ship
was ultimately towed to Australia's western coast for an investigation
as to what had happened. There was just one problem.
Investigators couldn't interview a single crew member about what had happened.
The vessel had been empty when they found it. All
ten of them were assumed dead. It seemed Australia had
(08:56):
a real life ghost ship on its hands. There was
one survivor. One of the Indonesian crew members had made
it off the ship safely and was arrested shortly after
the High aimsix's discovery. According to his story, the captain
and the engineer had been murdered. Though he didn't know
what had caused the mutiny or where the rest of
(09:17):
his crew mates had gone, he assumed they'd hitched a
ride back to their homeland. That tall tale didn't sit
well with police, however, they'd noticed nothing of value had
been taken from the ship and not a single trace
of blood could be found, and all the other crew
members had disappeared. There was no sign of them back
in Indonesia. Australian police and naval authorities searched the water
(09:40):
for any signs of the captain, the engineer or the crew,
but came up empty. It was as if they'd disappeared
into thin air. When investigators checked the call logs on
mobile phones belonging to the captain and the engineer, they
noticed something even more bizarre, a series of calls made
from the engineer's phone to his daughter folloween his disappearance.
(10:01):
When she picked up, she said she heard sounds from
a karaoke bar in the background. The call had been
traced back to the Philippines. She feared that her father
had not been murdered, but kidnapped and held by the
Indonesian crew, though no ransom demand was ever made. Similar
calls were made from the captain's phone around the same time,
only his came from the island of Bali. Had the
(10:24):
crew really murdered the captain and his first mate, as
the survivor claimed, or had they taken the two men
hostage and let the ship float away. The Australian police
and Navy still don't have any answers, and the fate
of the men involved is still unknown. The idea of
pirates isn't entirely out of the question. Piracy and all
(10:45):
that comes with it, including murder and kidnapping, are still
a large problem for cargo ships and fishing vessels in
many parts of the world. We may never know what
happened to the nine other men aboard the High Aim
Six or where might be today. All we know is
at a certain point the authorities stopped looking and assumed
(11:06):
that they were dead. It seems that they bought the
survivor's story bookline and sinker. 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 Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
(11:29):
me Aaron Mank 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 Loore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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