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In the Black Hills region of South Dakota stands a massive American monument, the faces of four US presidents blasted into the side of a mountain. George Washington represents the birth of the nation. Thomas Jefferson represents its growth. Theodore Roosevelt development and Abraham Lincoln preservation. Mount Rushmore National Memorial hosts more than 2 million visitors each year who gaze upon the stoic stone faces of our forefathers and feel… proud. Proud of what we’ve accomplished as a country. Proud of our freedom, our liberty which these four men fought hard to help us achieve. But not everyone looks upon those faces with pride and patriotism. For some Americans, it’s more like a deeply seeded festering resentment, anger, outrage, and sadness. Because what most of those 2 million visitors do not know, what they do not learn during their visit to the park, is that the mountain upon which those faces were carved is sacred land, stolen from native people during the Black Hills gold rush of the 1870s. But not only was it stolen, it was desecrated, destroyed, defaced. Because, you see, the mountain was already a memorial, the Six Grandfathers, who stood side by side, stoically watching over Lakota lands until they were erased by the faces of their enemies. Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• National Park Service "Mount Rushmore National Memorial"
• Native Hope "The Six Grandfathers Before It Was Known As Mount Rushmore"
• Ted Ed "The dark history of Mount Rushmore"
• Readers Digest "The Racist History of Mount Rushmore"
• National Geographic "The Strange and Controversial History of Mount Rushmore"
• PBS American Experience "Native Americans and Mount Rushmore"
• Iowa State University "Report seeks to recognize meaning of Mount Rushmore for Native people"
• National Park Service "Charles E. Rushmore"

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This week, I'll explore the peculiar true story that inspired William Peter Blatty to write the book and screenplay for the 1973 hit film "The Exorcist." This is the story of a boy around 14 years old who experienced something truly bizarre back in 1949. And unlike Regan in the exorcist, whose story is completely fabricated, this one is well documented, with lots of credible witnesses. And while we’ve known his story for quite some time, we only just learned his identity a few years ago. And he’s not at all what you’d expect. Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• Father Raymond Bishop's Case Files
• The Washington Post "Priest Frees Mount Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip"
• Skeptical Inquirer "Who is Roland Doe, the Boy Who Inspired the Exorcist?"
• Saint Louis University "SLU Legends and Lore: the 1949 St. Louis Exorcism"
• The Guardian "Boy whose case inspired The Exorcist is named by US magazine"
• Wikipedia "The Exorcist"
• Collider "What is the Highest Grossing Horror Movie of All Time?"
• The American Society of Cinematographers "Owen Roizman on Filming The Exorcist"
• The New York Post "Deaths, injuries, and a fire: How the original "Exorcist" set was its own horror movie"
• The New York Post "What really happened to Ronald Hunkeler, who inspired 'The Exorcist?'"

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It’s January of 1692 and there’s something very wrong with 9 year old Betty Parris. Her father, the minister Samuel Parris, rushes to her bedside. Betty screams. Her body writhes under the blankets, twisting and contorting into grotesque shapes. She grunts, she moans, she snorts, and shrieks. She grabs a candle from the bedside table and hurls it across the room uttering a shrill scream as if defending herself from some invisible apparition. Soon, Betty’s 11 year old cousin Abigail Williams is similarly afflicted. The girls are tormented, tortured, terrified, but by what? Parris calls in a doctor who takes one look at their bizarre behavior and quickly makes up his mind. This is the devil’s work. When accusations and confessions of witchcraft follow soon after, the snowball begins its descent, growing and growing as it rolls into one of the most haunting events in American history. But what caused the madness of the Salem Witch Trials? There were no witches in Salem. How did the peculiar outbursts of a 9 year old girl lead to the deaths of 25 innocent people and 2 dogs? Was it conspiracy? Insanity? Unchecked patriarchy? Religion gone wrong? Was it food poisoning? And most importantly, could it happen again? Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• Smithsonian Magazine "A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials"
• History.com "Salem Witch Trials"
• Peabody Essex Museum "The Salem Witch Trials of 1692"
• Penn Today "Possessed: the Salem witch trials"
• History.com "Salem Witch Trials: Who Were the Main Accusers?"
• Wikipedia "Salem witch trials"

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This week, I'll examine several cases of historical hauntings. These are ghost stories where you actually get to find out the single most important question... who was that? We'll go all the way back to ancient Babylon, cruise through ancient Greece and Rome and then spend some time in London and, later, Washington DC. Several of the "ghosts" we'll hear about have even been subjects of past History Fix episodes! There will be queens, there will be presidents, there will be weird old guys rattling chains, and you'll even get to here my very own personal ghost story! Happy Spooktober y'all!

YouTube video of "ghost" footage from Hampton Court Palace

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Sources:

• history.co.uk "8 Famous Ghosts From History"
• history.com "History of Ghost Stories"
• Washington Post "Is the White House Haunted?"
• Historic Royal Palaces "Historic Hauntings at Hampton Court Palace"
• Smithsonian Magazine "3,500 Year Old Babylonian Tablet May Contain Earliest Known Depiction of a Ghost"
• VRoma "Pliny Book Seven Letter 27 to Sura"
• Live Science "Poltergeists: Noisy Spirits"

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Mary Shelley was just 18 years old when the idea for Frankenstein struck her on a rainy night in Geneva, Switzerland. Cooped up on vacation with nonstop rain, famous poet Lord Byron had challenged the group of literary geniuses to come up with a ghost story. Mary struggled. She could think of nothing. Then one night, as she struggled to sleep, she was hit with what she referred to as a "waking dream." What followed would come to define the science fiction genre, both inspiring and horrifying readers for centuries to come. But who was Mary Shelley, the creator? Who was she to bear such a creature? How did she manage to embody all that horror, that pain, that grotesque abnormality, gothic morbidity? Well, the more you know about the life of Mary Shelley, the more it all makes sense. Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• The New Yorker "The Strange and Twisted Life of 'Frankenstein'"
• New York State Library "Mary Shelley's Monster Turns 200"
• Wikipedia "Mary Shelley"
• Biography.com "Mary Shelley"
• Snopes "Did Mary Shelley Lose Her Virginity on Her Mother's Grave?"
• JSTOR "Mary Shelley's Obsession With the Cemetery"
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "William Godwin"

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This is part 2 of last week's episode on Christopher Columbus. This week, you'll learn about Columbus' disastrous third voyage to the Americas when he finally pays the price for governing like a power hungry tyrant. And yet consequences, of course, will be few, and he'll return once again for his fourth and final voyage. We'll also delve into the shockwaves sent out by Columbus' actions, how his decisions have negatively affected us to this day, and why it's time to shift our view of him once and for all.

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Sources:

• NPR "Think You Know the Real Christopher Columbus?"
• Grist "Here's the real story of Columbus that people prefer to ignore"
• History.com "Christopher Columbus"
• BBC "Christopher Columbus"
• Wikipedia "Voyages of Christopher Columbus"
• University of Baltimore "Historical Clinicopathological Conference 2005 : Christopher Columbus"

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Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Few humans in history have sent out more shockwaves than Christopher Columbus. His four voyages to the Americas changed our whole existence, culturally, spiritually, ethnically, economically, politically, geographically, morally possibly more than any single person ever has. When Columbus' ships first dropped anchor off the islands of the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, as the anchor struck the sandy bottom of the crystal blue Caribbean waters, it issued in a new era, the modern era. Columbus has gone down in history as a hero, the forefather of our forefathers. But in reality, he was far more villain than hero. Let's fix that.

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Sources:

• NPR "Think You Know the Real Christopher Columbus?"
• Grist "Here's the real story of Columbus that people prefer to ignore"
• History.com "Christopher Columbus"
• BBC "Christopher Columbus"
• Wikipedia "Voyages of Christopher Columbus"

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Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Before Henry VIII, before Louis XVI, there was a dynasty in Italy so corrupt, so scandalous, gluttonous, hedonistic, that the others don’t even compare. But this was not a royal family. These were not kings, they were popes, cardinals, bishops. These were holy men, men of the church. Men whose unholy actions may very well have helped spark the dissatisfaction that led to the protestant reformation. These men were part of the house of Borgia, one of the most infamous families in Italy by the turn of the 16th century. They lied, they cheated, they murdered, they did whatever they had to do to get what they wanted - power. But they weren’t all men. One well known daughter of the House of Borgia, Lucrezia Borgia, has had her name drug through the mud right along with her disreputable male relatives. She’s been called a murderer, a whore, accused of incest and even witchcraft. History has cast Lucrezia as an evil seductress deserving of the Borgia reputation that her father and brother gained. But was she really? Or was she, like so many women of her time, simply a pawn in the hands of men behaving very badly? Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• Brooklyn Museum "Lucrezia Borgia"
• Hektoen International "Lucrezia Borgia - victim of her times"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Lucrezia Borgia"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Borgia Family"
• ThoughtCo "The Rise and Fall of the Borgia Family"
• Daily Mail "An orgy loving Pope, his..."
• Marca "Pope Francis net worth 2023"
• The Week "The dress that ignited the slave trade"

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