start your day off with something historic when you listen to the This Day in History podcast.
Every day there's a new episode for you to listen and learn about what happened that day, way back when.
So listen and subscribe to This Day in History wherever you get your podcasts.
That's This Day in History wherever you get your podcasts.
We've all been there.
You're standing in a museum, staring at a painting, and all you can think is, I don't get it.
To me, knowing the story behind an artwork is a huge part of knowing how to look at it.
I'm Amanda, the host of the Art of History podcast, where we view history through the lens of some really great works of art.
Each episode we dive deep into the bigger picture behind some familiar and maybe not so familiar pieces.
Check out Art of History now wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.
Oh my gosh, as you can tell, this is a very special episode of The Past and the Curious.
In fact, we have our friends from Unspookable, which means this is actually The Past and the Unspookable or The Unspookable and the curious.
How about the past and the unspookable and the curious?
Yes, thank you, Nate.
Well, that was Nate DeFort from unspookable, friend of mine.
I'm Mick Sullivan and welcome to this very special episode.
It's a Halloween ish episode that involves messages from the great beyond, Mark Twain, a novel Ouija board, some enduring mystery.
It's a really fun story.
It's not spooky.
Glad you're here.
I hope you enjoy the show.
Thanks to my friend Nate DeFort.
You'll hear his voice throughout the episode.
Let's go.
Perihelion is a very cool word.
It is also a very specific word used to name the moment in time when a planet or a comet or any other orbiting body is at its closest point to the Sun.
For our planet, perihelion happens each year in early January.
Other things orbiting around the Sun move in much larger paths through space.
For example, just take Halley's Comet.
Halley's Comet reaches its perihelion every 75 years, give or take a few months.
At those special times it is visible to the human eye, but then it's gone again for most of the century, making its journey through the far reaches of the solar system.
One rare time that Halley's came by Earth, was visible, and reached perihelion, was in 1835.
Around that same time, a baby was born.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Little baby Sammy was not born with a mustache, nor a pen in his hand, for that matter, but when he grew up he would be identified by the batch of bushy hair over his lip and his writing.
Oh, and he would be known by a different name, Mark Twain.
Mark Twain is remembered as one of the most famous, important and most successful authors in America.
He is still read today, and his influence on storytelling, humor, and more is all over the place.
A lifetime after entering the world alongside the comet, the famously mustachioed white-haired Twain mused about Halley's Comet and his own personal connection with the celestial body.
I came in with Halley's Comet.
It is coming again next year.
The Almighty has said no doubt.
Now, there are these two unaccountable freaks.
They came in together.
They must go out together.
Okay, Mark.
Well, sure enough.
Samuel Mark Twain Langhorne, Clemens died as Halley's Comet returned to the sky once again.
The first time Halley's had returned since he was born.
But some people believe this otherworldly connection isn't the only otherworldly connection that Mark Twain had.
Some people believe the famous author wrote a novel after he died.
We'll start with spiritualism.
It was popular in the 1800s, where people believed they could communicate with the spirits of the dead or die.
At least they convinced others to believe they could.
It might seem like a strange claim, but think about it.
There's a lot of disease, a lot of sickness, some wars and not a lot of medical options at the time.
So, a lot of people died.
And it's easy to understand why the living people around them wanted to connect with these loved ones who had passed on.
People called mediums, who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead, started gaining fame and lots of money.
Many claimed to have all sorts of ways to channel the spirits of the dead.
Most of them were proven to be hoaxes.
People secretly popped loud double-jointed bones to send messages, used tricky teamwork or produced misleading double-exposed photographs, to name a few.
During the American Civil War, spiritualism got popular again.
No surprise, considering all of the lives lost during that time period, which left mourning family members longing for closure.
We're not here to judge the living and their reasons for trying, why they might have believed.
But it's important to remember that many who chose to try spiritualism believed We're missing loved ones and the chance of contact or closure or reassurance from that loved one through a medium was clearly powerful and appealing, if unscientific.
Which brings us to the star of our episode, the Ouija board.
Look, I get it.
Some people might get turned off by us talking about a Ouija board.
But hang with me.
I assure you, it's an important part of this story.
And this episode is not a pathway to evil.
It's just a fun story.
But for those who don't know, let's clear it up.
What is a Ouija board?
Alright, so a Ouija board is a board.
Much like a board game.
Made of either wood or cardboard and covered in markings.
These markings are a mix of letters, numbers and words, such as yes, no and goodbye, which are used to spell and communicate messages.
Each board comes with a pointer called a planchette that is often triangle in shape and used to point to the individual markings to spell these words out slowly messages from whom you might ask.
Well, that's the curious thing about these boards people gather around them, place their fingers on the planchette, ask the board questions And as the planchette begins to move, they supposedly receive a response from the deceased.
Now critics and scientists believe it's actually the unconscious movements of the people touching it that makes the planchette seem to spell words.
It's called the idiomotor phenomenon, and one way it's been tested is by having people use the Ouija board while blindfolded, so they can't see the letters.
The results?
The Ouija board didn't spell anything unless the participants have their eyes open.
Do what you will with that information.
Plenty of people still believe it is real and many find it to be a scary thing.
But it seems like the power is actually in the heads of the people, whether they believe it or not.
But, as you might guess, people started doing other things with the Ouija board once they became easily available.
In St.
Louis in 1912, a real-life, living woman named Pearl Curran claimed that she was in contact with a not-so-real-life, non-living woman, a spirit named Patience Worth.
And this Patience Worth who, as far as the evidence would indicate, had never been an actual real-life, living and breathing person.
Nevertheless, Pearl said that Patience was from somewhere in England a few centuries earlier.
Whether or not Pearl truly believed this, we cannot say.
But Pearl told people that this spirit had stories to tell.
Not just a few short stories either, but several novels worth of stories.
So Pearl and some friends spent painstaking hours upon hours recording Patience Worth's writings.
Maybe that's why she was called Patience.
Sometimes Pearl would just put pen to paper and write without a break, channeling the long-gone but probably never real Patience and dictating the novels from the great beyond.
Other times the Ouija board was how she connected with the otherworldly author.
Then, a real-life friend struck on something new.
Emily Grant Hutchings, Pearl and some friends were using a Ouija board when the planchette started spelling out a new message.
They claimed it was from an author looking for someone to record a novel he wanted to share with the living world.
This author is said to have told them that his name was Samuel Clemens, as in Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
As in, you know, Mark Twain.
Salutations, everyone.
I'm dead Mark Twain.
So much genius in my buried brain.
I just can't stop all the stories in my mind.
I'll send them on over from the other side.
So grab your Ouija Ouija.
I hope you will believe me.
Ouija Ouija Ouija, I'm not in Indonesia.
Ouija Ouija Ouija, You're not under anesthesia.
Ouija Ouija Ouija, I would have never teased.
Ya, I'm Mark Twain and I'm calling with a book for you.
Twain, of course, had died in 1910, when Halley's Comet was in the sky.
The Ouija Party was sometime in 1916.
So we are led to believe that he stood on this novel for six years in the spirit realm until he was finally able to find the right person to record it with a Ouija board and publish it for him.
The lucky recipient was Emily Grant Hutchings, born in Hannibal Missouri, the same town where Mark Twain was raised.
And she had met him.
They had even written a few letters back and forth while they were both very much alive.
So it made sense in many people's minds that spirit Mark Twain would send his final novel back to Earth through her.
How fortunate for Emily.
So with the help of friends and family, Emily used the Ouija board to get the new Twain novel.
But Ouija boards only show a single letter.
So try to imagine translating an entire novel one letter at a time.
It would be tedious and time consuming to say the least.
Chapters paragraphs sentences words, all letter by letter, were recorded until the novel was complete and ready to be published.
Okay, let's get started here.
T-H-E-R-E-F-O-R-E.
Therefore.
Okay, okay, next word.
Okay.
Okay.
After a year of transcribing, the book made its debut in 1917, titled Jap Heron, a novel written from the Ouija board.
So she and her publisher put it right there on the cover for everyone to see.
I mean, how else are you going to explain a Mark Twain novel years after his death?
Also, this was probably a business decision.
Ouija boards were much discussed at the time, so this was enticing.
The novel tells the story of Jasper Heron, known by his nickname Jap, as he finds his way working at a small newspaper in Missouri after the Civil War.
So, did people believe it?
Did people buy the claim that Mark Twain dictated it from beyond the grave?
Well, some did.
Enough that Mark Twain's daughter sued Emily Grant Hutchings.
Clara Clemens was the keeper of her father, Mark Twain's, estate.
And she was not thrilled about this.
First, yeah, someone was making money off of her father's name.
But second, it could cast a really bad shadow on his work.
If it wasn't good, but people believed it was truly his, that might tarnish his legacy.
So a legal battle was waged and people expected that the New York Supreme Court would hear the case.
Of course, such an unusual circumstance was perplexing.
Clara and her lawyer were not exactly able to prove that Mark Twain's ghost didn't dictate the novel, but they were able to make the case that Twain's publisher owned the rights to any books published under his name.
So that was pretty clear-cut.
Even before the trial took place, Emily Grant Hutchings and her publishers agreed to stop sales and furthermore, destroy as many of the books as they still had.
It is for this reason that physical copies of Mark Twain's novel written from the Ouija board are exceedingly rare.
That's not to say it wasn't read and reviewed.
A review from Oakland California said, Without Mark Twain's name, would find Ready Sail as an interesting story in which humor and pathos are mingled.
So the book wasn't bad.
It could have been published on its own merit and done fine.
However, the review continues.
Had Mark Twain written it while he was alive, it is probable that his publishers would have advised against its appearance, for in no way could it do anything but detract from his reputation.
The style is not Mark Twain's.
The choice of words is not his.
And to the lover of the humorist, this book is in no other way his.
As for Emily Grant Hutchings, it would seem that she didn't see this as a pathway into writing for herself.
She was already a writer, having contributed to Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic...
And she already had a regular column in a St.
Louis newspaper.
She published another novel under her own name.
So it's hard to know what the real story was.
Did she do it because she believed it?
Did she perpetrate a hoax?
Did she just get caught up in something?
We'll never know.
So we'll just have to consider the evidence and make up our own minds.
Or...
Just let it be and enjoy the story, which is what I'm inclined to do.
Of course, if anyone wants to ask Mark Twain himself, I don't think you'll have much luck.
But perhaps the year 2061 will be a better time to ask.
That's the next time Halley's Comet is coming back by Earth and will make its perihelion.
Well, thank you, everybody.
This has been The Past and the Curious.
As always, thank you for pressing play.
Thanks for listening.
So glad you're out there.
Hey everyone who came out in Pittsburgh.
It was great to spend time with you, to see you, to talk with many of you.
Thank you so much for coming.
And thanks to the Mount Lebanon Historical Society for putting that together.
Hope to get elsewhere in the future. a big thanks to Nate Defort from unspookable.
What a great, great guy.
I've really enjoyed working with him and getting to know him as a fellow kids podcaster.
If you haven't listened to unspookable and you think that might be the sort of thing that you would enjoy, I recommend it.
We listened to it in our house.
It's got some spooky stuff, but it's also a lot of the house and the wise and the explanations behind things.
You can hear my son.
He's actually on the Godzilla episode, which was out at the beginning of this, this season.
So, Early September.
As always, I want to thank our Patreon supporters, who are going to get this and every other episode ad-free.
And with that, I have a special song for Samwise.
Samwise in Montana.
Stay tuned.
Everyone else, I hope you enjoyed.
Thank you.
And I hope you enjoy Samwise's song, too.
Thanks, everybody.
Happy Halloween!
Oh, and I'll be back with a new episode at the normally scheduled time, so at the end of this month.
It won't have anything to do with Halloween, but it will have to do with a 200th anniversary.
Any guesses what?
Well, we'll see if you're right.
Anyway, here you go, Samwise!
Samwise, Samwise, Samwise He's in the circus Samwise, Samwise Samwise, he's in the circle.
Unicycle ain't no trouble.
He does it while he juggles.
I can't even juggle with both feet on the ground.
Samwise can do it with one wheel spinning around.
There he is up there on those silks.
High up over the ground doing the upside down splits.
Man, that thing would tear me to bits.
But Samwise has no problem with any of it.
Samwise, Samwise, Samwise He's in the circus Samwise, Samwise, Samwise He's in the circus Samwise, Samwise, Samwise, Samwise Calling all trivia nerds.
Brittany here, and I host the Family Road Trip Trivia Podcast with my best friend, Meredith.
Is your next car ride looking like a snooze fest?
We've got the cure.
Three rounds of awesome trivia every week.
Harry Potter, Disney, science, sports, you name it.
No more silent car troubles.
The Family Road Trip Trivia Podcast.
Connect, laugh, and learn with your kids, big and small.
Yeah, new episodes every week.
Wherever you get your podcasts, search for the family road trip trivia podcast.
Hello, everyone stuck.
Who you hear and i'm gabby, and we are the hosts of history of everything, a podcast which you can probably guess by the name is well, i mean, it's about everything.
Do you want to know why people thought potatoes were evil and would give you syphilis?
Are you curious about all the stories of the terrible and stupid ways that people have kicked the bucket over the years?
Do you want to hear tales about all of the different badasses of history and the lives that they had brought to life?
Well, if so, then look no further.
History of Everything is just the right podcast for you.
It's available on Spotify, Pandora, and anywhere else that you get your podcasts from.
Join us for some fun and just see how weird and wacky history can be.
