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Episode: Lore 266: What's in the Box

Author: Aaron Mahnke
Duration: 00:32:27

Episode Shownotes

The end of the world has always been a big fear. And fear, as we all know, is a powerful fuel for driving folklore into the future. Let’s meet one individual who did just that, while also leaving us with a fascinating mystery to unravel. Narrated and produced by Aaron

Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Sam Alberty, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [email protected] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ———— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [email protected], or visit our listing here. ———— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Full Transcript

00:00:12 Speaker_00
The date was December 21st of 1954, and like any day in history, there was plenty going on. Jane Fonda turned 17. The song Home for the Holidays was number one in the US charts.

00:00:26 Speaker_00
The very first Godzilla movie was crashing its way through Japanese cinemas. But if there's one thing that absolutely did not occur on this particular Tuesday, it was the apocalypse, which to one group of Midwesterners was a huge bummer.

00:00:41 Speaker_00
They were called the Seekers, and they were a doomsday cult. Led by a Chicago woman named Dorothy Martin, the group believed that on December 21st of 1954, global catastrophe would arrive in the form of a massive earthquake and a tidal wave.

00:00:56 Speaker_00
But not to worry, Martin had a backup plan. Aliens were going to swoop down, gather the Seekers up in their flying saucers, and carry them off to a planet called Clarion. Sounds legit, right?

00:01:08 Speaker_00
However, little did the Seekers know, there was an imposter in their midst. And no, I don't mean Dorothy Martin.

00:01:14 Speaker_00
It was a social psychologist named Leon Festinger who had infiltrated the group to study what would happen to them, mentally speaking, when their beliefs did not come to pass. Which, of course, they didn't.

00:01:26 Speaker_00
December 21st came and went, and Festinger watched the seekers struggle to make sense of it all. He saw the group do wild mental gymnastics to keep justifying their faith, against all evidence.

00:01:38 Speaker_00
And it led Festinger to develop a new psychology theory about what happens when our beliefs conflict with reality. And you may have heard of it before. He called this phenomenon Cognitive Dissonance.

00:01:50 Speaker_00
It just goes to show, at the end of the day, or should I say, at the end of the world, there's nothing we can cling to more tightly than stories. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore.

00:02:18 Speaker_00
When we think of doomsday prophets, we probably imagine cyanide cults. Billboards warning that the end is nigh. Men shouting from street corners and carrying signs quoting the book of Revelation. You know, apocalypse stuff.

00:02:32 Speaker_00
What probably doesn't spring to mind is an 18th century peasant girl. But settle in, because that's about to change. Joanna was born in April of 1750, and her first few years were, honestly, pretty typical for the time.

00:02:47 Speaker_00
She was one of six children raised on a humble farm in Devonshire, England. Her family was devoutly religious, and Joanna spent her days as any farm kid would.

00:02:56 Speaker_00
Cooking, picking fruit, feeding the animals, churning butter, studying the Bible, you get the idea. And yet, little did the people of Devonshire know, Joanna's future would be anything but ordinary.

00:03:09 Speaker_00
You see, ever since she was a little girl, Joanna knew that she was destined for something great. She fantasized about a high-born lover coming to whisk her away, as if she were the heroine in a fairy tale.

00:03:20 Speaker_00
And so, as she continued to do the washing and sewing and tending of the crops, she waited and trusted that her prince would come. Except, well, he didn't.

00:03:31 Speaker_00
Plenty of men tried to marry her, for sure, but none of them fit that high-born lover picture she had painted in her mind, and so she turned them all away. Tragically, though, there was one fairytale trope that did find young Joanna.

00:03:44 Speaker_00
Like so many Snow Whites and Cinderella's before her, when Joanna was 20, her beloved mother passed away. Time went on. Joanna grew up, and when she was in her 40s, she moved to the nearby city of Exeter and opened an upholstery shop.

00:03:57 Speaker_00
And it was around this time, in 1792, that her normal life, well, it suddenly grew very abnormal. Because this, you see, is when the voices and the visions began.

00:04:09 Speaker_00
"'One morning,' she wrote, when I awoke, these words were sounded in my ears, "'Wake, ye ministers, mourn, ye priests, for the day of the Lord is at hand. "'The sins of the nations hath provoked the Lord to anger. "'He will go forth as a flaming fire.

00:04:25 Speaker_00
"'He will be wroth, as in the valley of Gibeon, "'until he hath brought forth judgment unto victory.' "'These words were so dreadful in my ears,' she continued, "'they made me tremble.'

00:04:36 Speaker_00
At first, Joanna was pretty darn skeptical of the whole thing, which seems like a reasonable reaction, right?

00:04:42 Speaker_00
She worried that the voice may be Satan trying to trick her, but still, when it told her to buy some paper and pens and go to her sister Susanna's house for a little supernatural writing residency, she obliged.

00:04:54 Speaker_00
And it was there that she had another startling vision, but not from the original speaker. No, on her first night at her sister's house, she sensed a human spirit near her.

00:05:04 Speaker_00
And when she asked who it was, the spirit replied, Thy mother, if thou hast the courage to see me, I will appear. Joanna was too frightened, though, and covered her head. Still, her eyes shut tight, she whispered a question to her mother's ghost.

00:05:19 Speaker_00
What spirit, she asked, had been sending her those visions? And her mother answered, From the Lord. And that was all Joanna needed. She was in. From that moment on, she recorded the voice's dictations with a fanatic frenzy.

00:05:33 Speaker_00
When she put pen to paper, her hand moved all on its own, as if the voice itself were pushing it across the page. And sometimes it would force her to sit down and write, even when she didn't want to herself.

00:05:44 Speaker_00
All of a sudden, she wrote, the Spirit entered in me with such power and fury that my senses seemed lost. I felt as though I had power to shake the house down, but as soon as the Spirit had left me, I grew weak as before.

00:05:58 Speaker_00
The voice warned her of the end times and assured her that she had been chosen as the Lord's personal mouthpiece. Oh, and it also told her that when Jesus arrived for the second coming, she would become His bride.

00:06:11 Speaker_00
That's right, that high-born lover that she had always dreamt of would be none other than Jesus Christ himself. When the voice finally quieted a few months later, she went home to Exeter, only for it to come back even fiercer than before.

00:06:25 Speaker_00
And yet, through it all, she kept the experience a secret. At least she did until something happened that convinced her to speak out. In November of 1793, while staying with a friend, she dreamt the house was on fire.

00:06:38 Speaker_00
At first, she ignored the dream, but when she eventually went down to investigate, she found the staircase consumed by flames. With sudden horror, she saw the price of silence. She had not acted on her dream. They were all going to die in their beds.

00:06:52 Speaker_00
These visions were meant to be warnings, she realized, shared with the world. And if she didn't speak about the second coming she knew was at hand, well, the consequences would be a whole lot more dire than a house fire.

00:07:05 Speaker_00
It was time to get the word out, but she couldn't do it alone. And so Joanna steeled herself and contacted three major Christian groups in England. The Methodists, the Church of England, and a group called the Dissenters.

00:07:18 Speaker_00
Now, suffice to say, the clergy were not too stoked to hear this peasant girl declare herself both a prophet and Jesus' future wife. But Joanna wasn't about to let a little rejection get her down.

00:07:28 Speaker_00
And so she aimed her energy at an eloquent Anglican priest named Joseph Pomeroy, who Joanna was convinced she could win over. And when I say aimed her energy, she basically started harassing the guy.

00:07:41 Speaker_00
For the next several years, Joanna relentlessly barraged poor Pomeroy with countless letters and prophecies, despite him accusing her of downright blasphemy. Except, well, there was one thing that even Pomeroy couldn't ignore.

00:07:54 Speaker_00
Many of these prophecies that she said to him ended up coming true. She predicted the Bishop of Exeter's death, right down to the month.

00:08:02 Speaker_00
She foresaw the fall of Italy to Napoleon's forces, the continuing war between Great Britain and France, several local crop failures, and many more. But even through all of this, the Church still didn't take her seriously. Finally, she had enough.

00:08:18 Speaker_00
This was an emergency, after all. The people of England had a right to know the danger that they were in.

00:08:23 Speaker_00
And so she marched into a printer in Exeter, her arms filled with handwritten prophecies, and printed a thousand copies of her first book, a 48-page pamphlet called The Strange Effects of Faith. One woman, one booklet, one spark of an idea.

00:08:41 Speaker_00
And from there, even the church couldn't stop that spark from spreading into a bright, flaming message. The second coming was at hand. And unless England accepted Joanna Southcott as God's own prophet, all of them would be doomed.

00:09:06 Speaker_00
There were over a thousand people there. They were packed into the London loft with hymns echoing through the air. But these weren't the sort of hymns that you've heard before. They were originals, written by the prophetess herself.

00:09:18 Speaker_00
Wine as thick and dark as blood was poured into a goblet. First the prophetess drank, then the women, then the men. The worshipers were Italian, Swiss, French, and English. They were Roman Catholics and dissenters alike.

00:09:33 Speaker_00
Even a lone Quaker and a Native American were tucked into the crowd. But despite their differences, everyone in the room shared one thing in common, an unshakable belief in the prophecies of Joanna Selfcott.

00:09:46 Speaker_00
The year was 1804, and much had happened since Joanna published her first pamphlet three years earlier. Yes, that's right, her first pamphlet.

00:09:54 Speaker_00
She would go on to self-publish upwards of 65 texts over the next decade, not to mention deliver countless in-person speeches all across England. And it was working, too.

00:10:05 Speaker_00
Colonies of what were known as South Cadians had begun to pop up, first across Devonshire and then rippling outward. And okay, I know what you're wondering. What exactly was she preaching?

00:10:16 Speaker_00
What did South Cadians believe made them so different from others? Well, the truth is, Joanna wasn't really saying anything new. Sure, she was warning of a second coming, but that wasn't exactly unique.

00:10:28 Speaker_00
What made Joanna's followers special is right there in the name. Above all else, they believed in Joanna Selfcott. Specifically, they believed that Joanna, as she herself claimed, was a character right out of the book of Revelation.

00:10:41 Speaker_00
They believed that the Age of Ascension was at hand, and that Joanna would be the one to lead them there, and when it was all done, she would indeed become the Bride of Christ. You know, casual stuff.

00:10:53 Speaker_00
Oh, and then there was the magic South Cadian seals. It was a simple slip of paper, sealed with wax. At the top would be a follower's name, at the bottom, Joanna's own signature.

00:11:04 Speaker_00
And she handed them out in person to anyone she deemed to be a true believer. A sort of cult member party favor, if you will. And trust me, these things were worth getting your hands on. Why?

00:11:15 Speaker_00
Well, according to Joanna, anyone with one of her seals was protected from the machinations of Satan in all its forms. In other words, if you had one of these bad boys, nothing could harm you. And this was important too, because harm was brewing.

00:11:29 Speaker_00
You see, as Joanna traveled throughout England preaching to the masses, someone else was also on the move. Napoleon. Country by country, Napoleon was toppling governments, leaving rivers of blood in his wake.

00:11:41 Speaker_00
Back in England, the people were terrified that an invasion might arrive at their door any minute. And what could be better for a cult leader than a terrified public, desperate for a sense of safety?

00:11:52 Speaker_00
Joanna asserted that Napoleon was none other than the Antichrist himself, and should he indeed decide to invade, only one thing would keep them safe. That's right, one of her sacred seals.

00:12:03 Speaker_00
Now, in Joanna's defense, it wasn't like she was selling these things. She handed them out for free, and she did seem to genuinely believe in her own claims. But still, this was a woman whose fame and power hinged on despair.

00:12:17 Speaker_00
And when, eventually, the threat of invasion dwindled and life seemed more secure, belief in Joanna began to dwindle as well. Optimism was on the rise, which was bad news for a doomsday preacher.

00:12:29 Speaker_00
If she was going to keep her disciples, she was going to need a heck of a Hail Mary pass. And by Hail Mary, I mean that literally, because Joanna Southcott was about to claim immaculate conception. By now, the year was 1814.

00:12:43 Speaker_00
Joanna was 65 years old and allegedly a virgin, but despite it all, she announced to her followers and the public alike that she was pregnant. The voice, she said, had come to her and told her that she would give birth to a messiah.

00:12:57 Speaker_00
His name would be Shiloh, and he would assist Joanna in preparing for the second coming by serving on earth as king. And just like that, Joanna was back in the spotlight. Newspapers published constant updates on the pregnancy.

00:13:10 Speaker_00
Southcott became a household name. Thousands of believers flooded into London, where Joanna was now based, all in anticipation of the birth, all clamoring for her special seal.

00:13:21 Speaker_00
Some people quit their jobs, certain that after Shiloh's birth, they wouldn't need them anymore. And then there were the gifts.

00:13:29 Speaker_00
Lace caps for the baby, embroidered bibs, silver cups, gold coins, fine linens, golden spoons, and so much more, all lavished on Joanna by her loyal followers.

00:13:41 Speaker_00
One group of disciples even purchased land near Regent's Park, where they planned to build a palace for King Shiloh. Which, I know, makes all of this sound like a heck of a money-making scam.

00:13:51 Speaker_00
But to her credit, Joanna actually started refusing gifts after a while. and swore to return those that she had received if she didn't end up having a child. There was a darker side to this miracle pregnancy, too.

00:14:03 Speaker_00
Countless imposters descended upon London, all claiming to be Joanna Southcott in hopes of capitalizing on her name. Plus, Joanna still had plenty of naysayers, people who saw her as a dangerous blasphemer that needed to be stopped.

00:14:17 Speaker_00
Mobs began attacking her house, throwing rocks and insults at the aging woman and her secretaries. By September of 1814, the voice told Joanna that she was no longer safe there, and so she went into hiding.

00:14:30 Speaker_00
The spirit also told Joanna that she'd give birth at the end of September. But September came and went, and still no child. Then October, November, December. Her followers, and even Joanna herself, tried to trust in the voice, but fear crept in.

00:14:46 Speaker_00
She had been pregnant for a full year now, but even so, Joanna refused to lose faith. Finally, Christmas arrived. But unlike another immaculate conception, this Christmas would not end with a miracle birth.

00:14:58 Speaker_00
You see, all this time, Joanna had been growing sicker and sicker. And on Christmas, her health took a final turn for the worse. Two days later, on December 27th of 1814, she passed away. And an autopsy soon confirmed her followers' greatest fear.

00:15:15 Speaker_00
Joanna Southcott had never been pregnant. If there's one thing the human brain loves, it's order, turning chaos into harmony. Me, I can't write unless my desk is clean and tidy. That's where all of our folklore comes from, too, after all.

00:15:46 Speaker_00
Monsters and magic and legends helping provide sensible explanations in a senseless world. But what happens when the stories we rely on fail?

00:15:56 Speaker_00
The answer, just as Leon Festinger discovered when he studied the Seekers, is cognitive dissonance, a refusal to accept the facts even when they're right in front of us, which is exactly what happened to the South Kadians.

00:16:09 Speaker_00
Joanna was dead, there was no child, and still her true believers held fast, warping their story to match. Some claim that Shiloh had indeed been born, but in a spiritual form rather than physical.

00:16:22 Speaker_00
Others thought that the Messiah had simply been delayed. And others still, and this one's a real callback, insisted that Reverend Joseph Pomeroy, the guy that Joanna had basically stalked for years, would come forward as Shiloh.

00:16:35 Speaker_00
Now, it may seem foolish, but put yourself in their position. Imagine that you had abandoned your job, your home, the entire life you knew, all to follow Joanna Southcott.

00:16:46 Speaker_00
And then imagine that after giving a decade of your life to this woman, you discovered that it was all fake. So, for the Selfkadians, it was just easier to keep on believing, no matter how far-fetched that belief might seem.

00:16:59 Speaker_00
And lucky for them, there was one very real, very solid object that allowed their belief to continue, not just in Joanna's lifetime, but for hundreds of years to come.

00:17:08 Speaker_00
Because, you see, when Joanna died, she left behind one of the most mysterious objects in human history, a little treasure known as Joanna's Box. Here, close your eyes for a moment and envision it.

00:17:21 Speaker_00
The box is large and at 156 pounds, looks almost like a trunk or a chest. It's made of dark stained wood with metal brackets at the joints, and the whole thing is tied up in thick brown twine. And there, locked inside the box is...

00:17:37 Speaker_00
Well, that's the thing. No one knows. Way back in 1804, a full 10 years before her death, Joanna had allegedly filled this box with unread prophecies. And then the voice instructed her to seal it shut.

00:17:51 Speaker_00
The box, the voice insisted, must only be opened at a time of great national danger, and only if all 24 bishops of the Church of England were present.

00:18:01 Speaker_00
When Joanna died, the box went to her followers, who kept it safe, first for one decade, then another. Eventually, a century had passed, and still, the box of prophecies remained unopened.

00:18:13 Speaker_00
By the early 1900s, most people had forgotten about Joanna Southcott, And I say most people, because there was one lady who certainly had not. Her name was Alice Seymour, and like Joanna before her, she too had a calling.

00:18:26 Speaker_00
She dedicated her entire life to republishing Joanna's pamphlets and spreading her story. A story that included, of course, this mysterious box of unread prophecies. Word of the box began to spread.

00:18:39 Speaker_00
And meanwhile, World War I was on the horizon, and once again, uncertainty ruled the lives of ordinary people. If this wasn't a time of national danger, then what was?

00:18:49 Speaker_00
And before long, people had begun barraging the Church of England with letters and petitions, begging them to assemble the bishops and open the box.

00:18:57 Speaker_00
Just like in Joanna's day, the church tried really, really hard to ignore all the hubbub, but it turns out ignoring it only made things worse.

00:19:05 Speaker_00
One woman, later known as Octavia, even became so distraught by the clergy's lack of interest in the box that she had to recover in a mental institution. But if we've learned anything about Safkadians, it's that they don't take no for an answer.

00:19:20 Speaker_00
When Octavia got out of the institution, she dedicated the next 20 years of her life to gathering followers of her own, and hounding the church to get over themselves, to get the bishops together, and to open that dang box.

00:19:33 Speaker_00
And she wasn't the only one. To quote a 1956 book on the topic, sandwich men paraded London proclaiming, the bishop must open Joanna's box to save England from ruin. In the underground stations, travelers were confronted by enormous placards.

00:19:49 Speaker_00
London is doomed unless the bishops open Joanna's box. A petition bearing 10,000 signatures was left at Lambeth Palace. A press agent was employed to keep the box perpetually in the papers. In short, this was a big deal.

00:20:04 Speaker_00
So big that the church was starting to get incredibly annoyed. In 1918, a group of 24 bishops did in fact agree to be present for the opening of the box, if only everyone would just shut up about it. But to the South Kattians, that wasn't good enough.

00:20:19 Speaker_00
They didn't just want the bishops to stand around and placate them. They wanted to be taken seriously, and for the bishops to dedicate real time to interpreting the prophecies inside. And so, the box remained sealed.

00:20:32 Speaker_00
Oh, and there was one other teeny tiny issue. You see, more than one person claimed to actually have the box. Octavia and her followers insisted that they had it, yes, but so did a number of others. Which box was the real one?

00:20:45 Speaker_00
And without actually opening it, how would anyone know? Finally, in 1927, paranormal investigator Harry Price decided that enough was enough. He had the box, he insisted, and it was time to put an end to the mystery.

00:20:59 Speaker_00
And so, in the presence of just a single bishop, he cracked it open. What he found inside was nothing short of perplexing. For one, there were no prophecies. Instead, the box was filled with oddly ordinary objects.

00:21:12 Speaker_00
Some books and papers, dice, a lottery ticket, a nightcap, earrings, a purse, and an old horse pistol. Had England thrown itself into a frenzy over this? Except, here's the thing.

00:21:25 Speaker_00
The box that Harry Price opened was only 12 inches long, which was a heck of a lot smaller than the trunk that Joanna Southcott originally filled.

00:21:33 Speaker_00
That's right, despite all the pomp and circumstance, it seems like Harry Price's box was just another fake. Which leaves us with a very important question. Today, in the year 2024, where on earth is that box? The world is a tumultuous place.

00:22:07 Speaker_00
It is now, and it was in Joanna Southcott's day. As she came of age, she saw her world become a battlefield. The American Revolution devoured her twenties, with the French Revolution not far behind.

00:22:19 Speaker_00
Then, Napoleon's rampage, disease and death were everywhere, war and pestilence thrived. In short, it must have felt like the end of the world.

00:22:29 Speaker_00
One important thing to note about Joanna's followers is that they were mostly women and members of the working class, those people most affected by social and political instability.

00:22:39 Speaker_00
They were vulnerable, disenfranchised, and there was Joanna Southcott, someone just like them, who seemed to have all the answers. Today, it's easy to imagine dismissing Joanna as a fraud.

00:22:52 Speaker_00
But the truth is we're vulnerable to the same kind of propaganda here in the 21st century. How tempting it is to let a charismatic leader take the reins and promise that everything will be alright.

00:23:03 Speaker_00
And in a time of so many unknowns, what can be more comforting than the thought that maybe, just maybe, there's a hidden box out there somewhere that can tell us how it will all turn out.

00:23:14 Speaker_00
Oh, and amazingly, there are still South Kadian sects that exist today. One of them, called the Panacea Charitable Trust, insists that they have the real box, hidden safely away until the time to open it arrives.

00:23:26 Speaker_00
Others believe that the box was moved to the British Museum, where it was opened, the content split between the British Library and a remote museum basement. But in truth, we simply don't know. And honestly, maybe that's all for the best.

00:23:40 Speaker_00
It's like Schrodinger's cat. As long as the container remains unopened, anything could be inside. We can continue to believe. And isn't that the whole point? A reason to believe in something, anything, when a sensible world falls away?

00:23:54 Speaker_00
But then again, it's hard not to wonder, what's in the box? Plenty of false prophets throughout history have predicted the end of the world. But I have one final story of a certain apocalypse that no one saw coming.

00:24:23 Speaker_00
Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

00:24:30 Speaker_00
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00:24:38 Speaker_00
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00:24:50 Speaker_00
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00:27:02 Speaker_00
It was a typical spring day, and the Connecticut legislature was deep in deliberation. I imagine the conversation was lively and heated, the men caught up in passionate debate. After all, they took their duties seriously.

00:27:15 Speaker_00
And what could be more serious than that day's topic of regulating? Local fisheries. And look, this was rural New England in 1780. There wasn't a lot going on. But as the Connecticut Council continued its work, something rather strange began to happen.

00:27:31 Speaker_00
A thick, ominous darkness began to fall, which was odd, because, you see, it was only nine in the morning. First there was only a dim haze, a reddening of the sky above, tinged with fog and rain. Then the sun was blotted out altogether.

00:27:47 Speaker_00
Smoke gathered, ashes fell into the rivers, and the air smelt burnt and bitter. And it wasn't just Connecticut either. All of New England, it seemed, had been plunged into an inexplicable night.

00:27:59 Speaker_00
Birds returned to their nests as if bedding down to sleep. Nocturnal frogs began to chirp. In Westboro, Massachusetts, a reverend looked to the sky and saw only black. At Harvard College, students had to light candles to see by.

00:28:13 Speaker_00
In New Hampshire, cinders began to fall like snow until the earth was buried in six inches of ash. And all across the Northeast, one word was on everyone's lips. Armageddon. And let's stop and think about that for a moment.

00:28:28 Speaker_00
Have you ever thought about what you would do if the world were coming to an end? Would you go home to spend those final hours with your family? Would you try to escape, or desperately attempt to check a few final items off your bucket list?

00:28:41 Speaker_00
Maybe you would go someplace that you felt safe, a favorite meadow or a childhood home. Or perhaps you would try to continue as always, pretending it was simply another normal day.

00:28:52 Speaker_00
For the people of New England on May 19th of 1780, this question was far from hypothetical. The world, it seemed, was ending at that moment, and it was time to decide how they would spend it. Back in Connecticut, the legislature was in a panic.

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They scrambled to adjourn. After all, who cares about fishing regulations at a time like this? Well, someone did, it turns out. And that would be a councilman named Abraham Davenport. I am against adjournment, Davenport declared to his colleagues.

00:29:21 Speaker_00
The day of judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought in.

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And Davenport must have been convincing because the candles were indeed lit and the meeting continued right through the end of the world. Of course, the world didn't really end that day.

00:29:44 Speaker_00
Through modern science, we now know that New England's Dark Day, as it's come to be called, was no act of God, but rather the result of massive forest fires up north in Ontario.

00:29:53 Speaker_00
As the Canadian trees burned, smoke and soot took to the skies, floating all the way down to the United States. But back in 1780, while they had no way of knowing about the fires further north, the apocalypse was as good an explanation as any.

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And as we've seen time and time again, when people become frightened, there will always be demigods waiting in the wings, ready to weaponize that fear for their own gain.

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Which, yes, is exactly what one religious leader did in the wake of New England's dark day. Her name was Anne Lee, and she was the head of a new Christian sect called the Shakers.

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And if there was one thing that Anne Lee knew how to recognize, it was an opportunity.

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After the dark day, she and her fellow Shakers embarked on a 26-month mission throughout New England, preaching about the biblical implications of those blackened skies, and imploring people to join her sect, as well as practice total celibacy.

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With the help of those Ontario fires, the Shakers brought in hundreds of new converts, cementing them as one of the major influences in the American religious landscape.

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As it turns out, there's nothing like a little darkness to help people see the light. This episode of Lore was narrated and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Sam Alberti, and music by Chad Lawson.

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00:31:39 Speaker_00
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00:31:47 Speaker_00
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00:31:58 Speaker_00
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