Original Airdate 01.14.2023 (On Podcast Audio Platforms)
In the late summer of 1901, two women journeyed to the renowned Palace of Versailles, a few miles west of Paris. This breathtaking royal home, once the epitome of the French Monarchy during the reigns of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, was an unfamiliar territory to them. Yet, the palace grounds seemed eager to impart a history lesson they had not anticipated. While exploring the vast estate, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain found themselves amidst various characters adorned in peculiar attire. They noticed buildings, structures, and anachronistic farm tools from a past era. It was as if they had inadvertently stepped through a portal into a bygone era. The highlight of their uncanny experience may have been an encounter with a spectral figure of what may have been Queen Marie Antoinette herself. The bewildering events of that summer day left Moberly and Jourdain perplexed. Over time, they gradually pieced together the puzzle of their extraordinary visit. Years were devoted to delving into Versailles’ rich history, with additional visits undertaken to comprehend the mysterious occurrences they had witnessed. Despite being mocked by many, they remained steadfast in their quest to understand what they had seen in 1901. Today, their astonishing experience, known as the Moberly-Jourdain Incident or The Ghosts of Versailles, continues to fascinate fans of timeslips, time travel and encounters with ghosts of events that happened long ago. Tonight, Scott is joined by special guest co-hosts Richard Hatem and Marie Mayhew to dive into this bizarre tale.
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The AI stuff that’s Rowan said that not me my math teacher like she doesn’t explain it that well well that’s the hallucination right that’s like AI hallucination we have lives too mother Shipton C rich hatam is coming Jim Harold is coming I’m doing a lot of laughing is it
Right astonishing Legends would like to thank mintmobile Wild Grain Squarespace our contributors at patreon.com and you our listeners for making tonight’s show possible in August of 1901 two women decided to visit the Palace of versailes just a few miles west of Paris a stunning Royal residence that was once
The ultimate symb symb of the French monarchy especially during the time of Louis the 14th the visiting women confessed that they were not very familiar with French history when they went but that didn’t stop the palace grounds from teaching them a history lesson of its own during their time
There they bore witness to a variety of characters in strange dress as well as buildings structures and even anachronistic farm tools that were long since gone it was as if they were suddenly transported back in time they may have even crossed paths with an apparition of the queen herself Marie
Antoinette Charlotte Anne Mobberly and Elanor Jordan could hardly understand what they were experiencing that summer of 1901 only over time did they realize things were not what they had seen during their visit they spent years researching the history of versai after that even returning for more visits in
An effort to understand The Uncanny events that had unfolded before their eyes in some cases they were ridiculed for it but to this day the Mobberly jordane incident is an enduring legend that apparently much like Marie Antoinette refuses to [Applause] Die welcome back to astonishing Legends I’m Scott Philbrook and this is Richard hatam Seated on the steps was a man with a heavy black cloak and wearing a slouch hat at that moment the Eerie feeling which had begun in the garden culminated in a definite impression of something uncanny and fear inspiring Elanor
Jordain from an adventure 1911 join us tonight for part one of our two-part series on the ghost of Versailles and we’re back are you sure Forest won’t be mad that I said that yeah yeah yes I’m I’m sure that he won’t be mad also I didn’t tell him so uh but but uh don’t ask for permission ask for forgiveness that’s right that’s right uh
It’s all set now well hey what if I wanted to say it well you can say it in part two Mar I want her to say it in part two that way he’s mad at both of us okay perfect and I’ve been working on my Forest that’s what you should do you
Should do a forest impression I’d like to hear that actually on my Forest impression of Owen Wilson oh right oh wow all right folks uh first things first welcome to 2024 I cannot believe we’re here especially consider ining forest and I started astonishing Legends 10 years ago in 2014 we’re not quite 10
Yet but we will be in October that is insane and you guys hit a recent Milestone did you guys really get a 100 million downloads yeah um we did we just hit that and that’s just since we’ve been with audioboom who we’ve been with a long time but we were actually with
Another company for a year or two before that so it’s probably a little bit more than that although I have to say being totally honest in the early days metrics for podcasts were horrible so I feel like it’s probably a little bit exaggerated but everyone’s using the
Same bar so who cares take the win Oh I thought you were going to say it was actually a lot more was like 200 million no no no it would it would not be more it’s it’s probably less yeah but it’s you know what we’ll take what we can get
Uh yeah we we actually had no idea if this was going to last like 6 months or even a year and here we are 10 years later I I I can’t believe it really it’s funny because when I think about um my son you know when we started I he was
Five and he uh now he’s getting his Learners permit so that’s crazy oh my God so a big thank you to all of our listeners both new and old some of you have been with us from the jump and that’s truly astonishing we heard from you on Twitter when we announced that we
Had gotten to 100 million and there were a lot of Twitter handles are like I’ve been listening since day one and I recognize I it’s crazy how many of the Twitter handles I recognize or the other uh people on the Facebook group and everything so I just want to say for
People who stuck with us that long that’s really great I mean I’m actually falling out of touch with with my own family so the fact that you guys are around is that’s good yeah I’m one of those people I haven’t been listening since day one but I I have been
Listening since the first time I was on and um that’s when the show got good so that’s kind of where I started I know there’s ones that you skip rich I know there there are you you said as much yeah no you know that I listen all the
Time in case you mention me yeah right there you go I’ve been listening for a while but I can’t believe it’s been 10 years that is TR phenomenal but where is Forest anyways well he’s taken a break to take care of some stuff he wanted me to assure everyone that everything is fine
Which I’ll personally confirm he says hello and he will be back on our next topic yeah no he’s doing good he’s doing good actually Forest that’s okay that we talk about you right okay okay yeah he’s right here he’s fine it’s cool even though it does sound fishy
Yeah yeah he’s on secret assignment somewhere you know digging up some ghosts or some bodies or something you just know it yeah well we’ll never know he’s a very secretive man yeah well whatever the case I do know that he and I both want to thank you Rich Amory for
Standing in right now we really appreciate you uh coming in to do the heavy lifting it’s much appreciated so thanks for making yourselves available oh absolutely although I didn’t know there’d be any lifting I thought I could just sit here well in other very quick news since we mentioned that we
Overhauled the store stuff has been moving out here’s some interesting market research the so-called face melting mugs that were in the seconds and mistakes section have sold out in all but one color now I find this fascinating cuz I think there was over a hundred of them in four colors three of
Them have sold out and we have 74 left in the one color that apparently no one wanted so um yeah what was the color nobody wanted we had green it was like a lime green orange navy blue and black and we still have 74 orange ones and
It’s the the old logo too by the way I’ll take an orange sure yeah I mean I’m not washing any of my dishes anyway so that’s good I need somewhere to store my spare change yeah there you go it’s a good thing for that well you can get the
Orange face melting mug still for $4 plus shipping and handling but caveat mtor read the description real good there are some other seconds of mistakes floating around pretty cheap in the store too and we’ve also discounted a bunch of other stuff so if you thinking of getting something now’s the time to
Visit astonishing legends.com and click on shop either at the top or the bottom of our homepage P you can find all that stuff under Al apparel and gear all right just quick before we dive in I do want to reintroduce you guys to our audience for people that haven’t met you
Or heard you before I know with you rich that might be a long shot Marie you have not been on the show since episode 100 this is 275 so that’s been a minute that was arap paloa years which had all our Arc researchers the astonishing research core researchers were on telling stories
You came on that show right I was on that show and it feels like it was just a couple weeks ago and you know yeah again thank you for making me come on this and making me feel old doesn’t love that in the New Year well that’s how we
Crossed paths in the first place right it was when you came on to be a researcher like how did you first reach out to us because I don’t even remember that well I believe I had just gotten fired from a job if memory serves and you know we’re just talking amongst us
Friends here yeah I had just gotten canned from a job you know while trying to find other work I was trying to find something to feel better and you know fill my time and I’d been listening to you guys and it was so early on that if
You went on patreon and gave you guys I think it was 25 bucks you would get all this access you know behind the curtain access and could become part of their research team if you wanted to and read their notes um and I was like that
Sounds good and you know I had been listening to the last episode I had heard you guys were talking about pis pus the the video game sorry yes PIV yes and you guys talked about rasterized images for 45 minutes or something and I was like here’s my people
That yeah that’s remember we were clearly having so much fun and um so I got on and then Tess hooked me up and then it just kind of went from there and it was like all of a sudden you know finding a love of research and and
Looking into all the weird stuff that you know i’ been so enjoyable and in the past I got to actually do something with so I know you might not want to say what your day job is but you’re like you technically you’re kind of a forensic investigator aren’t you I wouldn’t go
That far but yeah no I’m no I mean I the funny thing is ever since you know starting the research and and working with you guys on the podcast and doing this type of stuff I’ve become more employable you know not just because I’m I’m more pleasant to be around as my
Bosses would say but it’s you find all all these skills that you can kind of use on your day job and looking into stuff and understanding stuff and so it’s it’s it’s been kind of a win-win I wouldn’t say you know I’m 100% more employable but you know I’m working my
Way back but in the meanwhile you have started your own podcast whatever remains has had three seasons now right and each season is about a particular topic my first season was about the supposed Sonic attack in Cuba yes another season was Denver International Airport and the conspiracy theories and
Where they started from had a couple Standalone episodes one on the song The Irish Rover the origins and uh behind that and then we are halfway I keep saying we when it’s really me but if I say we it sounds like a more professional more professional show um
Halfway through the circle Ville letter writer stories and I’ve taken a pretty long Hiatus okay yeah a very long Hiatus however we still have the second part of that coming up which is the trial um and the subsequent incarceration of of the main subject and things really get
Interesting there so I’m getting ready to pick it back up yeah and you got Tapped Out by 48 hours to go on 48 hours and talk about Circle right yeah pretty cool that was my big 15 minutes that was um that was kind of a trip like right in
The middle of covid you know I went and kind of sat in this in this large ballroom and had stuff all set up around me and was interviewed about the about the subject and was one of their I’m air quoting this heavily experts yeah it was a lot of fun and and
Um I don’t know if it was something I’d want to do every day but it was it was fun and I had a good time with it awesome and and then uh lastly you are also the co-host of a show with our good friend and also a researcher for the
Research group Dr Chris cogwell right yes the Super Evil Genius that is Dr Chris Coxwell yeah MTH scientist podcast been on a long time yes we’ve actually taken a little bit of Hiatus there too within the last couple months just because his side hustle besides the podcast has actually started to take off
I can’t say anything about it because I even I’m probably under NDA but he’s doing some really interesting important stuff super proud of him and I’m gon to be excited to get back to the podcast whenever he’s ready and the world stops need saving all right and then our other
Esteemed standing co-host today Mr Richard hatam you’ve been on the show a lot if if folks have been listening regularly they’ve probably met you before but uh what are you up to these days after that long writer strike well you know what they say when Hollywood closes a door it closes it
Right in your face no no wait they say it opens a window um oh that what it is yeah know things have been going well well you know you know about my secret project so yes I do I yeah I might know something about that we we talked about
It a little bit on the Christmas show there uh there were you weren’t present but we did we did mention you towards the end of the show there you guys have been so great to allow me on your podcast and we’ve been talking for years about me doing a podcast and so finally
In 2023 kind of the idea sort of gelled so it’s going to Premiere in a couple of months in March and it’s a paranormal podcast but I’ve got to say and I think you would agree Scott this is not like any other paranormal podcast I’ve ever heard it’s unlike any podcast I’ve heard
Period frankly uh so having been privy to the scripts I uh greatly enjoyed it I it was a page Turner I couldn’t put it down so all right great uh yeah so it’s coming up um and there will be more information coming soon excellent well I
Just want to thank both you guys for coming in and helping us out right now while Forest is indisposed for a little bit he’s going to be back on our next topic but we both appreciate you uh standing in for him during this time as if anyone could ever but
Yes all right well so let’s dive down into this okay well I’m I’m really glad I feel like I got lucky on this topic which you guys chose before I knew about it but this is one of my favorite things this um can I just sort of like say kind
Of what the general phenomenon is yeah yeah totally this is a time slip case yeah Time Slips are so intriguing to me because they feel like they can happen to anyone and it doesn’t sound quite as scary as alien abduction right and really anything to do with time or
Anything that seems to imply that time doesn’t work the way we think it does which is just we travel forward and that’s it that stuff fascinates me and and to me that’s where the real mysteries of our existence come in because when time doesn’t line up either through precognition or through a time
Slip it really kind of just takes reality tosses it up into the air like a deck of cards and now you’re left sorting through the wreckage like what in the world is going on here do you want to uh tell what a time slip is yeah
I think people have heard about this I one of the cases that I remember and I do want to talk about if I can find it in part two is there’s a story about this that I think a specific story not just vague urban legend stuff about Gettysburg about someone going to
Gettysburg and hearing like the battle or cavalry that might also be another story that uh force and I’ve talked about too that I think took place overseas too in the UK where somebody was at a famous Battleground and they could hear horses running on the other side of the hedges where there wasn’t
Anything those are kind of Time Slips there’s another story that we’ve mentioned on the show before I know we mentioned on a junk door when we had um our friend gladon who lives across the pond about this tunnel that was being built under the Tims River and people
Had said that they would go through the tunnel during the construction and come out on the other side and it would be a different time period and then God yeah and then they would come back in so that’s another one and you some of those are like a little bit Urban legendy and
There’s not a lot of details around them but this one’s different there’s a lot of detail there’s a lot of research and the other thing that I can say about this is I’m pretty sure I don’t know if it was year one but maybe year two of
The show this was one that hit our list it hit our story folder the fabled story folder we’re like we have got to do this versai story and we just never got around to it so it’s nice that we’re finally getting a chance to take a look
At it ah the fabled story folder yeah there’s now three of them one of them has over 1100 leads in it the other one has like a 300 yeah we’re still doing it but like they’re not all winners obviously it’s more of a fable Tome yeah exactly one of the earliest Time Slips
I’d ever read about was in this book called the ghostly register and it talks about this guy who it takes place in New Mexico and he was way out in the back of Beyond and I love this detail he was cutting Christmas trees so he literally
Just with his truck driving out to a remote area filling his truck with cut trees and bringing them back into town this is in Northern New Mexico and he was out there late his plan was to camp out sleep over and then head back the next morning and during the night he
Heard in increasingly loud tones the sound of a wagon train approaching his campsite he could hear the horses he could hear the voices he could hear creaking wood of the wagons he could hear the wagon wheels he could hear the clanking of pots and pans it got closer and closer
It passed over him it passed through him and then it receded into the distance that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard yeah that’s pretty amazing but he never saw anything he just heard it right he never saw anything he only heard it and in fact that particular
Story I was talking about it you and I have talked about that show that I did miracles about 20 years ago with ski all rich yeah we did one episode that was basically a time slip episode I was telling that story in the writer’s room and everyone got really excited and we
Were we just couldn’t get over the notion that you could be somewhere and suddenly sort of be overcome by the past in a wave that would that would rise up and consume you you and then recede there was something about that that just struck everyone as so eerie and yet kind
Of so magical so we we did a whole episode about you know it took place there was the Civil War storyline and the modern day storyline and they kept intertwining and people from each era were aware that something weird was happening and were interpreting it in totally different ways what’s so cool
About that and like about this story is it influence was very popular when it was released but its influence on future writers even time slip stories like the one that that you worked on like again it influenced my favorite book The Haunting of Hill House so Shirley
Jackson cites this as one of the major um sort of backstories that um gave her sort of the creative ideas around Hill House all right Rich are you ready to help me out here yep that’s what I’m here for for man okay excellent so uh
Let me ask you a question did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year you don’t really strike me as a resolution guy but I wanted to God no no no why why why set yourself up for failure well I did make a few for whatever reason I do find it easier to
Try and uh take a new Step At the beginning of the new year and sometimes it works out for me and sometimes it doesn’t like right now I’m doing a dry January but but that’s kind of a low bar because that’s only a couple of weeks
And then uh uh I’m also trying to spend less money cuz I got uh more going out than coming in I’ve I’ve realized he I’m going to do dried February because it’s a shorter month okay it’s a little bit more realistic and really I’m gonna try
A dry February 1 yeah I have friends who are doing damp which I guess means they’re drinking just on the weekends but so oh all right all right I like it I like it well apparently on average it takes about 30 days for a person to break their New Year’s resolution so if
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I’m impressed you’re doing pretty good all right Marie it’s your turn to jump in here all right okay seriously so what do you want me to do okay I just I want you to start with this first line right here start with that first line okay this episode of astonishing Legends
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American West history and lore podcast when I’m not rounding up your next Wild West tale I’m listening to astonishing Legends okay so the first thing we need to do is go over the actual event before we dive into and sort of deconstruct who the people were who the players were and and the things surrounding it because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of tentacles on this it reaches into
Different areas the French Revolution and uh these women going together and how well did they know each other which is something Mar knows about but let’s talk a little bit about what happened first because we don’t want to bury the leads we’re going to try to avoid that
Which is something we’ve been fighting for nine years now again uh we’re drawing on a book written by the original experiencers of this event it’s called an adventure was first published by McMillan and Co in 1911 9 years after the story took place uh there’s also a
More recent Edition called ghost of the trianal uh by Aquarian press that came out in 1988 there’s other reprints too there’s a lot of people I think I don’t know if it’s in public domain but it seems like a lot of people published it so it’s it’s not hard to find if you
Look it up the ghost of verai the ghost of the trione and that’s spelled TR r i a n o n like Trianon on August 10th 1901 one two British women Charlotte and Mobberly and Eleanor Jordan or jordane their British ladies took a self-guided tour around the Palace of versailes in
France now they readily admit that they were not really students of French history and although it’s somewhat of a sacr they found the Palace of Versa itself in a word boring so they were just like H I don’t know whatever so they they they had a little bit of guilt
Apparently because they were like well we should have read up on this a little more we should know more about this before I think every everybody’s done that everybody’s gone to some place or like I really should have looked into this a little more before I did this
Touristy thing because I don’t know what I’m looking at right but what’s cool about this is the fact that they didn’t know a lot about the history yes in retrospect makes the story much better that’s true that’s true so they decided after being bored with the palace that
They were going to explore the gardens which are expansive and amazing and they also wanted to go back and visit letit which is a small manor house or Chateau on the palace grounds built during the reign of Louis the 15th and later given to Marie Antoinette by Louis the 16th
When she was 19 now keep in mind the total amount of land here is vast this is 30,000 Acres makes it slightly larger than Disney World or about 70% of the size of Washington DC if you can believe that so a little more than half the size
Of DC this is a big chunk of land yeah walking around there is quite an undertak it takes a minute to get around to different places I I think one of the points they make is that it’s not impossible to get disoriented here so when things got a little weird it didn’t
Necessarily set off a ton of alarm Bells they were like you said trying to get to the petite triono they got lost I guess they became aware that they maybe weren’t on the right path they were three qus of a mile away from the gardens but I think they ended up going
The long way around boy yeah yeah to the place they were trying to find and then ultimately they found themselves going down an sort of a small alley lined with trees which again is something you would expect to see in a place like this now the interesting part
Is when they were walking down this alley they experienced a change in their surroundings I’m G to Jump Ahead just slightly and say that in the narrative that’s laid out in the book they make it very clear that while they were having this adventure as they call it they were
Chatting about their own lives they were it’s like you’re walking through a park talking to a friend right right and while they were doing that they were also having feelings and noticing things and having various observations but they weren’t in the moment talking about what they were seeing or even how they were
Feeling they were just continuing whatever conversation they were having right like they’re on like parallel Tracks Of Consciousness in a way which everybody’s done this you’re like you know you talking to your friends and crazy things might be happening but you’re sort of keeping that on a on a
Subconscious track a little bit it’s almost like they’re driving together in a car you know and you’re talking you’re looking at stuff but you’re having your own conversation so anyway so as they’re walking Mobberly woman number one she remembers seeing a woman shake a white
Cloth out of a window okay I guess like almost like getting crumbs off it or something and then Jordan woman number two the other person observed uh Farmhouse with an old plow in front of it so they’re just taking this in now later it’s going to turn out that each
Of them were seeing things that the other person was not seeing the one thing they did have in common though was this growing feeling of oppressive dread and sadness now they both were feeling this way neither knew why neither knew the other person was feeling it so this
Is stuff that comes out later when they start comparing no what’s interesting about it is they’re both feeling it but they see different things or one person sees something and the other person sees something else but as they start to walk further along they actually both see two
Men who they initially referred to as Palace gardeners because they had a wheelbarrow and some other gardening tools and were standing near them just off of the path mly later describes them as being very dignified officials dressed in Long grayish green coats with small three cornered hats which were
Somewhat of the time and a little bit a little bit almost overdressed for gardeners but it was Vera they asked these men for direction and the men told them that they could go straight to continue to find ptit Trianon which is where their destination was the one thing of interest in having these
Discussions with the gardeners is that they asked them a few different times or they tried to engage them and they always gave the same response back in the exact same tone or the exact same way so it was almost like they were non-player characters in this whole
Event and they didn’t they didn’t really yeah like it’s like it maybe it did strike them as straightly strange but they didn’t really realize that as at the time and so they just continued on Jordan spotted an Old Stone Cottage with a woman and a girl standing in the front
Door and as a quoted in the book they both wore white cchs tucked into the bodice and the girl’s dress though she looked 13 or 14 only was down to her ankles the woman was passing a jug to the girl who wore a close White Cap end
Quote so the girl was looking up at the woman with her empty hands outstretched uh jordane couldn’t tell if the woman was handing The Jug to her or if the little girl had just given it back but it felt very odd like it was all of a
Sudden the um the motion had stopped and they were just like sculptures just sitting there um like a tableau Vivant and we’ll later on explain what that is for those of you out there who don’t know and why could be a clue depending on what you think is happening to these
Two women so like we said they’re seeing different things here Mobberly didn’t see the cottage or the two women but reported feeling a change in the atmosphere when they were in that area again describing everything as unnatural and lifeless now at this time they Came Upon a garden kiosk sitting in the woods
So dark they couldn’t see past those woods at all and again they’re still having these oppressive feelings but more than just dark mly described the woods as quote flat and lifeless like a wood worked in tapestry in quote meaning a forest worked in tapestry I’m clarifying because when you first hear
It you hear the phrase woodworking not what we’re saying here the wood is the term for Woods or a forest here so she’s saying the trees are flat and lifeless and she described it as intensely still now and this is something Marie you and I had talked about that goes back to
Skin Ranch not the Skinwalker Ranch series we did but when we had Linda Godfrey on God Rest her soul she passed away but she came on and talked about her book Monsters Among Us and there was a story in there about folks who saw a wolf come out of the Corn outside their
House and then it turned and it was onedimensional it was a line it was like a two-dimensional line and one of the things that Marie and I were talking about when we were researching this was like that’s what they’re saying here they’re kind of saying these trees are
Flat it like they’re in a tapestry mhm like it’s a set in a play or something yeah right right which is crazy these other characters that they’re meeting or that they’re seeing they’re not having any kind of full interaction with them right and so again that comes back to
The whole NPC the non-player character Vibe now so and then there’s the kiosk a kios to me that’s where you get a map of the mall or directions to a car park but that’s not what it means here it’s an older definition I went to look it up this the American Heritage dictionary
Talks about the origin of the word kiosk comes from the Turkish word kosk which originally referred to a kind of open Pavilion or summerhouse in turkey and Persia often built on a hexagonal or many-sided base the upper classes of the Ottoman Empire would enjoy entertainments and view their Gardens in
The comfort of such buildings so that’s the kind of building they’re talking about that they came up to here you know I wish that we had gotten the translated version or I wish the book had been written in a way I guess back then people you could use French phrases and
People in England would know what those phrases meant because they’d all been in and out of France enough time times to know at least some of the vocabulary I don’t know any french at all and when they would quote what people were saying or yes when they would use phrases they
Didn’t translate it so I was just sort of like well okay so somebody said something in French and then well I I want to tell you rich and I I can do this here because I have the book in front of me but also there’s an app on
The iPhone called translate that you never use no but it’s so cool it will look through your camera and identify text and change the language of the text so you just hold your camera up to the text and then you say from French to English and you can and that’s how I
Decoded now I took French I shouldn’t have to do this but that’s how I decoded some of the French that was in the adventure or an adventure it would have involved your phone it would have involved slightly more work and of course that was too much for me so yeah
Right right well but they didn’t even with the French that they were hearing and I think it was from the gardeners and I think later on too they didn’t recognize it right away like they had trouble translating it right so I have a feeling even though you didn’t translate
It it might not have been maybe there was something about it that wasn’t translatable or readily translatable they said that it was accented so it was almost and I think they thought it was like an Austrian accent or something so it was right there were two levels of
Translation that had to go on even in their minds so anyway so thank you Scott for explaining what the kiosk was that’s the Turkish origin of the word kiosk a pavilion of some kind so more a more not a gazebo but a more substantial structure that I guess you can’t see
Through so anyway so they see this kiosk and next to it or near it they see a guy wearing a cloak and a large Shady hat and they describe him as having a dark complexion with scars from small poox and a horrid expression on his face so
Clearly he is memorable okay now later on when they were comparing notes they both saw this guy and they both experienced him the same way they both were like this guy is scary okay but one of the scary things about him was that he didn’t look at them he was sort of
Looking through them so I think there was something strange about this encounter clearly he was not someone they wanted to go up and talk to and they didn’t but I think they also registered that he was perceiving them in a way that gave them a feeling of The
Uncanny let’s put it that way yes and that’s something that actually has come up before um it reminded me a little bit of the eighth episode of our show of astonishing Legends but which was literally the first one we ever recorded uh the devil in the diner which is paa
Pel story about being with a friend of hers and seeing a strange man in a diner in uptown Manhattan in the small hours of the morning but both her and her friend although they weren’t saying it to each other had a super visceral experience that they didn’t know they
Were having until they kind of panicky left the restaurant and were outside talking about it there’s a lot of parallels there between that experience they had and what these women talk about not just with the guy in the cloak by the kiosk but some of the other stuff
That’s happening here that I thought was kind of interesting yeah and I think this makes perfect sense because when you’re hearing the story secondhand you’re like well if you felt weird why didn’t you say something but I don’t think people do that I think people especially when it’s more of a visceral
Almost sensory reaction it’s not like hey that guy was raving in the street and he walked up to us and he was like I thought he was going to take our money it’s not that it’s just I’ve got a bad feeling and people aren’t really comfortable articulating that people
Usually don’t go you know what I’m sorry I’ve got a really weird unexplainable feeling that I can’t articulate but I feel bad can we leave because you’re afraid people are GNA go what’s your problem we’re having a nice time I’m waiting for a coffee refill so the the
The fact that you don’t immediately speak your feelings I think that’s pretty normal yeah I agree I agree around this time moly then heard someone running towards them but when she looked around she couldn’t see anyone so she could just hear the running but there wasn’t anyone there suddenly as she
Turned back there was someone there as if appearing out of nowhere this figure struck her as a gentleman and he said to them breathlessly and here I’m going to go with the French something like that wow which means you must not go through there and then he
Said which means or this way look for the house so he starts to wave frantic for them to go towards the house and then they turn to look at the house and he’s gone he’s invisible but they could hear footsteps running away again they both remember this man and Jordan
Remembers that he wore buckled shoes this is a pretty important clue later on for trying to understand the decade or the time period that he was dressed for this is decidedly weird yeah right yeah I mean this is this is the Wagon Train this is the noise without the people or
The thing but in this case then the thing does show up then it vanishes and then the sound remains so this is a moment where you’re sort of like wait a second isn’t this maybe when you turn to the person next to you and go hey where
Did that dude go but I assume my feeling was when I read this that the weird sort of feeling of Oppression and unre reality was still kind of rushing over them and maybe even though this was happening they themselves were thinking okay I must have been distracted for a moment
And when I turned back they were already gone this is clearly my problem well yeah and I think that they maybe were still thrown trying to understand what he was saying because again he comes running up they perceive him he says this you know don’t go this way go this
Way towards the house and then is gone again and I I’m thinking that you know it’s like you said that they’re just thrown they still have this weird feeling around them and so they’re just sort of trying to get to the next save point to keep the game metaphor going
But it’s just it feels like they’re almost on automatic in some ways well and I just love like sh laone is like look for the house look for the house talk about uncanny there’s something uncanny about that instruction it’s like we know why you’re here all this other
Stuff that’s happening you got to watch out for these this is you know it’s Alice and Wonderland situation you’re going the wrong way you’re going the wrong way sh laon and I think about that I did think about aliceon Wonderland which the funny thing is that McMillan and company that published this book
Also published Lewis Carroll that’s one of the things that put them on the map along with rard Kipling and yeah because I looked up the publisher so I thought that was pretty interesting and this has that Vibe a little bit of of them being in Wonderland which I did have to wonder
About once I put all that together because you know these different characters coming and going and all of that stuff there is a lwis Carol vibe to it in a way yeah I agree and I I think it’s carried throughout so after they are told you know again by this this
Running figure to look for the house they start on their way and they cross a bridge where they it’s like a little foot bridge and they can hear running water but when they look down they don’t see where the water is coming from so they don’t see any little creek or
Anything like that so they’re just crossing this bridge and again it’s sort of this uncanny thing where you’re hearing something you’re looking down for it and it’s it’s just not there I’ve had this experience there’s a bike path that um I ride up in Ventura it goes
From the Ventura Beach all the way up to ohigh about 15 miles north and comes back and yeah okay I I do a lot of biking it’s cool hey it’s no big deal a 30 mile bik right you guys quit looking at me like I’m a Big R up to yeah but
When you’re going up there’s a couple of different Bridges and there’s a couple of different areas on this bike trail where you can hear water but when you look down the water is is not going under the bridge at that moment and I only bring it up because after the rains
That happened earlier in the year about a year ago for the first time I saw the water going under the bridge and that’s when I realized oh this is for when there’s like a flood practically that’s when it finally makes its way so that this bridge becomes useful but up until
Now I could only hear the water and now I can hear and see the water so again okay this is not the kind of thing where you necessar stop everything and go wait a second something crazy is happening yeah I think you’re right like I think that there’s like a a natural Assumption
Of like that this is a normal event some of this has got to be a normal event because if it’s not a normal event what else could it be and the other thing is that the landscape here is not real extreme and it’s also super manipulated they’re regularly moving the ponds
Around moving the trees changing things I mean not regularly every couple of decades but when something’s hundreds of years old that’s regularly but like they’re they are manipulating the landscape here here but you know we’re not looking at like a deep ravine necessarily or anything like that and
What happens is you know the king comes along is like I don’t like that Hill move it over there you know there so there’s some things happening but uh true I we into the house we um there was a swimming pool and uh we had it moved five feet over
Yeah yeah there you go but now it’s but I’m thinking of actually having it move back finally the two women they reached the LEP trol where mly sees a woman sketching on the grass in front of the Chateau and we say Chateau but it is actually a pretty I mean I would call
That more of a chatau that’s like a very it looks like a mansion yeah for usion it’s a mansion yeah exactly so they see some of this woman she set up they’ve thought that she was sketching because she was sitting on a camp stool and holding a piece of paper out in
Front of her as if she was looking and evaluating at her own drawing mly later on will give a detailed description of the woman and would later claim that this woman that they saw was Maran twnet jordane however claims that she never saw the sketching woman at all so again
It’s this weird Jos of somebody seeing something somebody hearing something and the other person not experiencing that that is one of the biggest creepy things to me about this and kind of again you can see where later on authors will pick that up like a specialized haunting and
I know that’s something that you and Forest have gone into quite a bit is like you can experience something and no one else is hearing or seeing it that’s an important thing because a lot of people especially at that time were saying well the reason that their stories don’t Jive is because they’re
Making it up or they’re changing their details later down the road but what we know from Modern hauntings is that a lot of times people are seeing and and we even have electronic evidence of this where people are hearing V VPS that other people in the room did not hear
But one person heard it and it’s on one of the devices but another person who was right there didn’t hear it so we actually have proof that this can happen that explanation never holds water for me if you were making the story up they would both be experiencing the same
Thing the fact that some of them saw one thing or one of them saw something and the other one didn’t but the other one saw something else actually works against our our natural credibility listening to a story because it makes it even more impossible it’s like well wait
A second you were seeing this you were seeing that and then it doesn’t make any sense if you wanted to convince someone you would go okay we both walked in we both experienced this we back each other up I’m her witness she’s my witness yeah that that one doesn’t fly for me yeah
It’s what makes it even more uncanny and unsettling that something could pick you to hear or to see it and no one else could see it to me that’s like that is that’s definitely uncanny and unsettling this podcast is brought to you by squares space uh thank you Rich
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Exactly right please use a special URL so they’ll know that we sent you nice hello legenders this is Chris Williamson and when I’m not chasing aart I’m listening to my buddies Scott Philbrook and Forest burgest on astonishing Legends now back to the show so they eventually walked around
The house looking for an entrance and then they encountered another person this was a young man who saw them they interacted with this guy and he told them the entrance to the house was around by the oh my God Scott what is it how do you pronounce it uh Cordon which
Is would be the heart of Honor literally translated but it basically I think means Courtyard okay oh thank God you’re here all right thank God for those five years man for the first time okay so uh jordane says that she thinks that he appeared to be mocking them about how to
Get into the chatau which is a little weird like I don’t know if the assumption is they should already know how to get in yeah or they were they were peasants or yeah maybe they didn’t belong there know yeah but again just looking at the fact of it it’s almost
Like well if somehow they went back in time wouldn’t this person be surprised to see them but this person was not he sort of made fun of them okay right right they get directed to go around the front they go around the front they both said when they got around the front they
Had to wait for a wedding party that was arriving so now now there’s an entire wedding party yes the wedding party goes in they go in after and they had a brief look around the rooms before leaving and then getting into a carriage that was available to begin their journey home
Now the carriage was a real thing yeah that was a normal present day Carriage yeah that took them out of there because they needed to get the train yeah well I don’t I mean it’s like it’s like the episodes you guys do about you know the the the hit tracker getting
Into the Ghost Car yes yeah yeah exactly so but this wasn’t that they got into a real thing yeah so during the last moments of their time at letit they continued to both have an oppressive feeling of dread but they kept this experience to themselves for a week
Until later Mobberly asked jordane if she thought the petite triome was haunted and both agreed at that time that their experience was paranormal and the interesting thing about this about them not talking to each other for a week about it is this comes back to something that force and I’ve talked
About a million times in paranormal apathy and just sort of not really being aware of the weirdness or maybe almost like it’s almost like part of your mind is in shock about it and it doesn’t accept it until later I don’t think it’s that unusual that they didn’t talk about
It till later because I don’t think they knew what was happening was it a week or was it longer I thought it was three months that was the first time they spoke of it was a week I looked this up too Marie because the same thing I
Thought the same thing the first time that they spoke about it about whether it was haunted or not was a week but they didn’t didn’t really start to drill down on it until several months later until what happened yeah so wasn’t one of them writing a letter yes yes and
Thinking about it so this is great also because it speaks to the time yeah a few days later one of them is sitting down to write to someone about going there and they’re thinking back and they’re trying to relate what it was like and this is how people communicated when
They went on vacation you would write a postcard or a letter and you want to say hey it was great we had the greatest time it was so beautiful but when they were really trying to recall how they felt it was not beautiful and it was not
Great it was fraking weird yeah it was weird exactly yeah which is what led to the conversation Bai was dull and then just and I felt horrible wait did you feel horrible wait did did it seem eerie and scary and oppressive yeah and then they have this original conversation now
You wonder about reports of Time Slips now again it’s that thing people talk about you’ve got a phone with you if you see Bigfoot if you see a ghost if you see a UFO you take a picture of it now when people travel if they went to Versa
They’d be doing selfies with that weird guy who came out of the house right right you know there’d be an Instagram spot you know yeah and who knows what you’d get so there is something that makes me wonder if an immersive time slip and this is one of the most
Immersive I’ve ever heard about yeah that not only went on for a long time but then a few months later it happened again yeah but yeah it’s the kind of experience that could only be experienced then now I’m not so sure they did later write separate accounts of their adventure and they researched
The history of the petite Trion and they discovered that on August 10th 1792 109 years to the day prior to their outing the twillery palace in Paris was surrounded and the King’s Guard was killed that was the beginning of well not the actual but the one of the
Beginnings of the French Revolution 6 weeks later the monarchy ceased to exist Mobberly and jordane concluded that one of the men they had seen the sarthy man with the pockmarked face and the dark cloak was com VRE a scopan Marie antoinet who trusted him but apparently with disdain because he was a social
Climber and part of a cabal trying to worm their way into prominent positions in the Royal House household however at some point the count persuaded Antoinette to convince King Louis the 16th her husband to allow the satirical comedy satirical political comedy the marriage of figuro to be performed in
Public now the catch here being this play mocks French society the monarchy and the government so Louis the 16th was so freaked out by it that he had it censored with the text Rewritten to have a bunch of it like all the action Parts take place in Spain and the censors
Would not approve a public performance of it but the king relented possibly at the behest of Marie Antoinette probably being prodded to let it run by the C of rodere it had 68 consecutive performances was the highest grossing play in the 18th century George Danton one of the leaders of the French
Revolution said that the play quote killed off the nobility end quote it is politically divisive and there are those who would say that the performance of it was a major instigating movement in the French Revolution so in a way the count he was was born on one of the island
Colonies and he was just generally kind of distrusted but also close to Marie antoinet and what I read about him in the research was that he was part of like what they said literally the word was cabal of people who were all just trying to part of the Entourage right
Just trying to climb up into yeah the court the court and enjoy all the spoils therein and he was one of the ones that when the revolution started he fled the country on Horseback he booked it out it’s interesting that they saw him and he is sort of the precursor to what
Would bring down the monarchy he was one of the reasons that if it’s true like she listened to him and changed the king’s mind even though they tried to make it about Spain which is kind of funny as well they tried to shift the narrative and that is the instigator one
Of the instigators for the Revolution and he’s who they see first or predominantly in the kiosk in the dark hat and the dark coat that’s interesting I did not know that that was I knew that it was a political hot button but I did not uh read further to hear it it was
The um what lit the powder cake for it you know in the big picture looking back at this first chain of events you have these two ladies who had gone there they experienced all of these strange happenings people are coming and going they’re they’re hearing sounds but not seeing things they’re seeing things
And not hearing hearing stuff they they’re seeing different stuff it’s a varied experience for both of them all right so that that’s the Crux of the primary event the instigating event the one that everyone talks about in one of the most famous time slip stories in modern human history but that’s not the
End of it though right right no because and this is what to me makes it unprecedented is that a few months later after they’ve sort of discussed this and realized oh wait a second we were seeing different things we both felt weird something was strange now one of them I
Believe it was I think it was Mobberly has now gone back to England and jordane is a teacher young woman who’s teaching and she has some time off over the winter break so she decides to go back so on January 2nd the first day it’s open to the public she goes back to
Versailles and it happens again she has really weird experiences that Geographic don’t match up to what the place actually is and it’s only on a third visit that happens I think in 1904 I mean it’s way down the line they both go back and realize oh okay the first time
We went things were up the second time the one lady went back equally and then the third time they go back and realize okay we were saying things that simply didn’t exist here and should not never have existed why why do you have a look
Of Glee on your face every time you drop a bomb I know the more the more disconcerted you became the funnier I was I know the first was you could just tell the face he was like thank God I don’t have to worry about the FCC so
Again a couple years later they both go back and they discovered that their first two visits first together and then uh the second lady separately they were seeing things that should not have been there and that were not there that could not physically have been there but now is when they begin an
Investigation to see how what they saw lines up with the reality of what the place looked like at the time they were visiting and then what it had looked like at different points in the past trying to find moments where wait was there ever a house there were there ever Woods in
That other place how did the gardeners dress a hundred years ago and because it is the Palace of Vera there was tons of documentation tons of maps tons of journals and ledgers that indicated exactly how the gardeners dressed when performances were held because one of the things people have
Said is well it sounds like they wandered onto a stage set and people were in costume and they were there just to sort of lend authenticity to your Versa experience like like what is it William willburg or something in Virginia have you guys been there yeah exactly that’s exactly what I thought
About because you go and you tour and then all the people come out in the period Garb and they’re churning butter and whatever and yes this way to ye up yes exactly right they’re making candles and blowing glass and you know your cell phone rings and they’re like what bird is
That oh Zounds Zounds in those situations the performer have a way of interacting and usually it involves providing information because that’s why you’re there so they’ll just start talking about well you know here’s what I do in the village my job is this and it’s active during these months and they
Start they go into their Spiel right right so people have suggested that that’s what they they stumbled into something along those lines well guess what it’s the freaking Palace of versailes they have a very detailed schedule of when they do performance when they do concerts when they have
Parties when they host social activities or reenactments and none of it lines up so they spend the next pretty much 10 years you know or from 1904 to 1910 doing research trying to line up what they saw with different moments in history to see if they can Converge on a
Single date I think what’s interesting is that you bring up like they spend the next 10 years so this whole thing since it first started it’s been going on like closing in on 16 years but what I think is also really relevant for this story is when they took this trip to
Versailles they didn’t really know one another yeah what is the what so what’s the background on these two Marie because I know you know more about it than I do with so Mobberly was the head mistress principal for believe it’s St Hughes College college at Oxford and so
Her job was to oversee the College of young women and this was again early 1900s it wasn’t a Scholastic or a academic posting it was more like she came from a good family she had a good reputation and she basically was like a housemother to what started off I think
It was just like four women when it started but it grew from there so really when you’re again Victorian Victorian England you’re sending your daughter away to college which is almost an unforeseen thing at that time unmarried unchaperoned a young lady would be under a dormatory or living in a house or
College and this woman mly had all this responsibility and sort of all of this Authority but like she had to be from a good family and she had to have a lot of trust and very reputable right like like you can’t go around telling ghost stories or having people doubt your word
And still be the head of this college so at this time they were looking for a I guess it was like a vice principal and they recommended Jordan who was in France so she goes out to visit her and as a way of getting to know one another
They do kind of France’s Greatest Hits right so they’ll go to all the different locations in France and they both said that this is kind of where I would start to kind of maybe question a little bit is they didn’t have much education or much knowledge about right France or
These these monuments or History Jordan had relocated to France was running sort of a finishing school in France and was a Franco File so she was very much into French culture but the details of vers side probably maybe were not as well known to her she goes to visit her and
This is one of the trips they take so they don’t really know one another so combined with like all the weirdness that’s happening to them and why didn’t they say something to one another at the time they don’t really know one another right so it’s sort of like somebody that
You’ve met that you work with that you may work with it’s sort of like a job interview and you’re trying to you just trying to feel one another out say hey is this is this gonna be is a good culture fit Etc and you have something weird happen it may not be something
That you just kind of decide to disclose right away so these women were were saying they were in their 20s jordane was 16 years older than Mobberly Mobberly was I want to say in her 30s maybe I we’ll have to look it up um Jordan had actually gone and had a
College education and graduated with a history major mly was born in 1846 and Jordan was born in 1863 so at the time this first event happened mly was 55 and um uh Jordan was 38 55 and 38 when it happened important to point out that they were also considered
Spencers right they are now too old to get married and to have children and this was a reputable Avenue was to be a teacher or to run a finishing school in France or to be sort of the head mistress or the principal of a women’s college for our listeners who might not
Be familiar with that term like what what exactly does a SP Mr mean back then it’s a great word so basically you are too old to be married and you’re too old to Bear children they don’t really there’s not a lot to do with you at that
Point like you don’t have a lot of options you can’t just crawl under the house and die like the dog or the cat you know you they have to do something with you and you’re not a widow right you’re not a widow so you’re just sort
Of you know the the classic tropes are they’re just a burden they’re just very finicky and kind of for sniky but mly like I said did not even though she was the principal of this college she did not have an education even at that time women who were enrolled in that school
In Oxford couldn’t attend classes or may not be able to attend classes because the professors it was up to their discretion if they wanted them to come in and join the class if they did join the class they had to sit way far back sort of in the nose bed seats and they
Could be basically overruled or booed by the male students so I think it’s sort of again like the spinster comes in as almost a social cliche for what do you call someone who didn’t fit a stereotype at that time or who didn’t fit a normal
What is a normal wife a normal mother a normal Victorian woman at that time and it’s unmarried could be educated but was somebody who didn’t have a lot of a lot of I would say agency or autonomy and someone who really you know surprisingly normally would not be listened to in
Relink this type of story which is something we’ll we’ll get into you know probably in part two well I was going to say what you’re talking about is maybe what you know how Society felt but that had no reflection on who they actually were as people or what their individual
Experience was it sound like they they were both working and they were respected in their fields and they were you know went on vacations and later when they were doing their investigation people were happy to speak with them so you know spinster always brings up like unfortunate associations in our mind
Because of you know books and you know fairy tales and things like that but it sounds like these two women were part of society they were flourishing in their given careers and they were they had enough money to go on vacation and they were they were having a good time again
I do find it interesting that they did not have they were not showing up at Versailles you know having read tons of books yeah it’s like I want to see this and I want to see this they were kind of like look we’re in France like you said
We we’re sort of Crossing things off our list we don’t even know if we want to go to Versa it’s kind of far-flung couldn’t we just hang around and go to a cafe and eat croissants and they end up going to this place I mean I know this feeling I
Think anyone who’s been on vacation knows this feeling you’re like well we’re here so we’re supposed to go see the thing and into the pre-recorded it’s like when I go to San Francisco there’s always someone who wants to go to Alcatraz and I’m like we’ve been to
Alcatraz a million times no gotta go to Alcatraz take the boat to Alcatraz get off take the tour on I went to London with my family and every everybody’s like did y’all go on the eye it’s like no we we didn’t go on the eye all the things you’re supposed to do
And the joke of course is if you live in New York you have never gone to the Statue of Liberty right would you you live there it’s just a thing you’re going to work yeah so they were in tourist mode they’re trying to have a
Good time yeah but at the same time it’s like well all right we’re here let’s go look at this place oh it’s a little bit cloudy today you know the atmosphere is a little close they were just trying to get through their vacation yeah and that’s the background mentally and
Emotionally when this stuff occurs that for them it takes them a while to even realize wait were we the stuff we saw was that part of Vera like I don’t know maybe I don’t know and then when they looked into it they discovered no what they were seeing was not part of 1901
Versailes did you just mansplain uh spinster to me yeah just checking just checking and what’s the old but the unmarried guy is the eligible old Bachelor yeah right isn’t that it it’s a bachelor a bachelor no I agree and I I I also think that again there was the kind
Of the idea of the job interview and that they didn’t know one another right so they’re getting to know one another there must have been some kind of pressure in that as well because this is going to maybe be her future employer um and she wants I I feel like she wanted
Mobberly to be impressed by France as well and was maybe playing that down a little bit but yeah they were just sort of checking off the boxes and going to the greatest hits and I do love the fact that they said we didn’t think it was that great yeah yeah they’re kind of
Bored in other words these were not friends from way back which makes what happens next even more amazing hello everyone I’m Dan and this is astonishing Legends let’s get back to the show I can’t remember what the status is what year what thing happened but I do
Know from from learning a little bit about the French Revolution for these two episodes that after the French Revolution all of the furniture everything was auctioned over the course of a year that was in there so uh in 1901 it I don’t know it might have been
A lot of empty rooms there’s museums in different parts of it now but at the time the palace might have been sort of empty I don’t know napole Napo one they rebot a lot of the stuff oh that’s right Napoleon fixed he he fixed it back up
Right but but they didn’t get it all back did they I mean they been a year scattering it I’m sure that like there’s a lot of real estate there to there’s a lot of I mean they had a whole room just for silverware yeah yeah right well that
Was in the petite triome but I mean the palace yeah it’s like you have an entire room for silverware so it might be hard to you know rebuild that from scratch you know how I’m always bringing in the other books so I’ve got this one here the Encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits
By John and and Spencer yes it’s a paperback I’ve had for 25 years okay but I recall that there was a a chapter About Time Slips so preparing for the episode I’m like oh let me go check out the book and they’ve got a chapter where there’s you know paragraph long there’s
Maybe 20 of them famous Time Slips from different uh places but listen to this so this is the very first one that is mentioned an artist at Versailles and I’m like wait a second is this the story Well turns out it’s not this is a time
Slip at Versa after World War II oh wow so now we’re almost you know 40 45 years after what they’re talking about yeah okay so the palace had been damaged in the war and according to this story there was renovation and repairs going on trying to get it back to sort of a
Way where people could come and visit it and it would look pretty nice okay so there was an artist there the assignment was to go to the undamaged rooms and make sketches so that they could then use those as a basis for redecorating and restoring the places and rooms that
Had been damaged so according to this book The Artist entered a state room which he described as most beautifully furnished and hung with tapestry the windows were draped with silks and one of the chairs in the room was described as gilded it was not until he left the
Room and was outside in the grounds that he realized that he had been in that room every night for the past week and that had always been totally bare no tapestries curtains or Furniture so as he was wandering around he wandered into this room and it was only when he left
That he was like wait I’d been in that exact room except it was very different so what did he experience was he seeing a vision of the room’s past how far in the past just before it was destroyed in the war or going back even further so Versailles has many many ghost stories
We’re covering one but apparently it’s kind of like you said Scott it’s like Gettysburg you go there and you’ve got you’ve got an okay Chance of experiencing something right and I want to go there now it sounded like they they started casually talking about the event to some people then they decided
You know what let’s stop talking about it let’s go step by step through what we saw and see if we can figure it out and then they did what was an impressive investigation like it was not casual and it took a long time and and yes they
Went through libraries and and you know museums like they had to do some real archival research to figure out what they had seen and when it could have been represented in reality at Versa and then I do like later in the book how they say that they would meet people who
Would then tell back to them part of their own story right what we heard that someone saw this this and this and they’re like yeah that was us yeah yeah it’s almost like you know the the snake eating its own tail right so they get they get the people laying their
Experience back to them but then also it’s like well how much of that investigation was real investigation and then how much of it started to get more fanciful because they end there’s certain things in there where they’re finding stuff up chimneys they’re finding Maps up Chim like it gets like
And even sort of their adamance toward it is so imaginative and impressive that it’s hard to tell the difference between or to draw the distinction between the plausible and like where maybe they just got I hate to say carried away where they just got where it became more of a
Fiction yeah it feels like it was one thing and then it just sort of almost became something else are you’re saying there there’s parts of their investigation that to you felt like they’re just making this up they didn’t really find that information that backs that up it feels like they started it
And there there’s rigor around it and they’re like they’re finding stuff and then at a certain point they start to find more specific stuff and almost becomes confirmation bias like they start to look they maybe are starting to influence what they’re what they’re reading or what is coming back to them
And then at the end there is this one episode where they find a map and then map is hidden in a chimney and that I was like H that’s far out there but it’s not that I don’t think that a portion of their research wasn’t accurate I think it was I think
That there was something else going on with it at a certain point as well the reason they started the research was because whatever the paranormal group was said we can’t publish this we can’t hold you to this because or talk about this because there’s none of facts so I
Love the fact that they went and did the research but I don’t know I feel like there’s a certain point that they started to become kind of an echo chamber for some of the stuff as well right the book itself was a hit it was well read and they wanted and they
Definitely had a good seller on their hands and it would have done oh so much better I think if they were men so they were met with a lot of skepticism they used pen names in writing the book so they didn’t disclose who they were but
They definitely were met with a lot of skepticism there was no way that these two women could have had this experience they must have imagined it it must have been there was a lot of different reasons that they felt that could explain it away each time U moil and
Jordan went back and kind of refortified themselves with more research and answered those questions and in later additions even would come out and say well okay our critics are Skeptics have asked all these questions we are now going to have an entire appendix of our answers to them so they were very
Thorough on that but there was still a huge amount of skepticism towards them and the question is when they were doing this research were they trying to disprove what they saw or bolster their case for what they saw and and there have been arguments going in both directions because you’re doing the same
Research so it’s a little bit hard to I mean outside of the rhetoric that they use when they describe their findings to know you know to parse exactly the motivation that they had as they went about it for me reading the book it felt very straightforward they were saying
Okay here’s what we saw here’s our research here’s what the research says it doesn’t feel like they ever triangulated a single day a single event like it never as far as I could tell from the book they never landed on okay here’s our Theory it was this day all
The things match up and it was because this was a big day and so that’s why everything was this one day right they were sort of like well look some of the things we saw correspond to these few years other things match other time periods so we can’t say we literally
Stepped into a memory of a single afternoon in the life of someone who lived there the same holds true for the skeptic their Skeptics can’t disprove all of the research or all the findings either so they’re sort of left with a lot of questions the Skeptics say
What they always say which is this is anecdotal you’re hearing a story told by two people about what they saw now their research anyone can do the research and follow in their footsteps and look at those same maps and books but none of it proves that on the day they visited
There they actually had that experience and if they had that experience was it a legitimate Supernatural experience or were they tired had they had too much wine at lunch things like that that’s when I normally have those experiences when you’ve had too much wine at lunch or
Breakfast well there is a lot more to this story and a lot more to dig into I actually enjoyed I think really for the first time and I have a college degree but it was the first time I was learning about the French Revolution in detail for this particular series understanding
How the how it actually unfolded and the disposition of uh of Louis the 16th and how they got moved around and taken off the property and then just this idea that the women were seeing shades of that unfolding and the other thing that I thought was interesting too was that
In their research some of the theories they had were very sophisticated theories when it comes to trying to figure out the Paranormal they were putting forth ideas that people are only just now talking about that are almost Quantum in nature these ideas of of memories and and time and space kind of
Folding in on itself and being part of that even though as you just said rich is this the right day this exact day and that doesn’t necessarily really matter it’s it’s something that forest and I had brought up when we were talking about the real house where The Conjuring
Took place of folks saying well this ghost couldn’t have been on this at this house because it lived up the street and it’s like oh that’s the rule the rule is lived up the street so then then there’s no ghost and those are those kinds of suggestions that are broader and wider
That they’re making about could this have been this could this have been that that’s what what I think is one of the most fascinating things about this case yeah and it also speaks to the nature of memory yes if I talk about a memory that you and I shared Scott some place we
Went or something we did we may have slightly different stories and remember them different ways and those memories change over time so to say that they step stepped in to someone’s memory of an event which is why they felt it emotionally even that doesn’t get you as
Far as you’d like right I agree well folks that’s going to wrap up our initial discussion here on the ghost of verai or the ghost of the trione or letit trione there’s all fun words to say that’s the most French I’ve gotten to use since I took it a long time ago
What we’re going to do when we come back for part two is talk a little bit more about who these non-player characters might have been and what the save points might have represented in this encounter that these ladies had and all all the research that they did and how it was
Received rich and Marie I want to thank you so much for stepping in this week and uh filling in for Mr Burgess while he’s away and um I hope you guys will come back next week so we can uh dive deeper into this absolutely my pleasure this was [Applause] Fun That’s going to wrap up part one of our special two-part series on the ghosts of versailes a very special thanks to Our Guest hosts Richard hatam and Marie Mayhew we’ll be back in two weeks with part two with Forest out of town at the moment Tess and I have free rain over
The junk drawer so patreon members keep an eye out for a new one of those in the meantime and if you haven’t already find And subscribe to the other two shows from the astonishing Legends Network scared all the time in the Midnight Library wherever you get your podcasts
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