New York subway construction (1908) (via New York Public Library)

At the end of the 19th century, two of the major cities of the United States were pushing their ambitious building underground. Both New York City and Boston had grown beyond their horse-drawn transportation, and had the engineering and vision for an ambitious new infrastructure. The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that Built America’s First Subway by Doug Most, a Boston Globe editor, was published this month, and the book chronicles the competing building projects through their characters and collaborations.

Most answered a few questions about The Race Underground: 

Your book focuses on the race between Boston and New York City to build the first subway in the United States, and the personalities behind each project. How did you come across this story?

My initial idea was to focus just on the Boston subway, knowing it was the first subway in America and that the great story behind its design and construction had never been told in full. But when I dug into the story, pardon the pun, I discovered that New York had been wrestling with the same big issues and fears and problems as Boston at the same time, in the 1880s and 1890s. I discovered characters who overlapped in both cities, most famously two brothers, Henry and William Whitney, one from each city, who played critical roles in their subways. That made the book a natural, the story of two cities, not one.

Why did both cities end up focusing on subway infrastructure at the same time, and how did it turn into a rivalry?

Both cities had been grappling with improving their transit systems for decades, but it was a storm that proved pivotal. The Blizzard of 1888 crippled the Northeast for weeks and left cities paralyzed with no way for people to move about and for goods to get in and out. That storm triggered officials to look for ways to improve their systems, and moving them underground was the natural solution.

It was a friendly rivalry. Both cities paid very close attention to each other, especially the brothers Whitney, but when Boston's opened in 1897, New Yorkers expressed genuine disappointment and a little surprise that Boston had beaten them to the punch.

With years of research behind the book, what was the most surprising discovery for you?

It would have to be the Whitney brothers. Henry Whitney's role in Boston I knew about, but William Whitney's role in New York was not at all widely known, because some of the revelations came out after his death, in a courtroom. Reading about his role, knowing that his brother in Boston played a role in Boston's subway, was a great find and fascinating moment for me. I knew as a writer it was a dream discovery.

Subway workers in New York (between 1910 and 1915) (via Library of Congress)

What were some of the challenges in constructing the two subway systems?

They used a cut and cover method mostly — cut a trench, lay the tracks and cover it. That was seen as the easiest, cleanest, safest method. But in New York, certain parts had to be dug deeper, and dynamite was needed. That was a new tool back then and workers were very inexperienced with the risks that came with explosions underground.

In Boston, simply digging a huge tunnel with picks, shovels, axes and horses and carts pulling out the dirt was a great challenge. They had none of great machines and devices we have today. It was so rudimentary and basic, and yet it was an incredibly efficient operation.

Have you spent much time exploring the underground yourself?

A little bit. I have been down in a few tunnels under Boston, but hope to go see more soon. I have an invitation I am eager to accept to go spelunking in Boston's tunnels.

Now that we're many decades from the start of both subways, can you say which you think was more successful in the end?

Well clearly New York really expanded much faster and farther with its subway. Boston was slow in doing that and did not go nearly as far. Boston eventually embraced more elevated rails before moving those underground. But New York kept expanding its subway, and is still expanding to this day, with the giant 2nd Avenue Subway Project. A great nugget is that the current day project is being designed and built by Parsons Brinckerhoff, the same firm founded by William Parsons that designed and built New York's original subway back in 1904. The past is present.

Photographs of subway construction in New York (1902) (via New York Public Library)

Subway construction in New York (1900) (via New York Public Library)

courtesy Doug Most

courtesy Doug Most

courtesy Doug Most

Construction of the Canal Street Incline in Boston (1908) (via Wikimedia)

Construction of the Public Garden Portal in Boston (1897) (via Wikimedia)

The construction of the Pleasant Street Portal in Boston (1896) (via Wikimedia)

Construction of the Boylston Street station in Boston (1896) (via Wikimedia)

Construction on the Boston Boylston station (1896) (via Wikimedia)

Construction of a New York subway station (between 1901 and 1905) (via New York Public Library)

New York subway station construction (between 1901 and 1905) (via New York Public Library)

Subway construction workers in New York (between 1901 and 1905) (via New York Public Library)

Construction of a subway tunnel wall in New York (between 1901 and 1905) (via New York Public Library)

The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry that Built America’s First Subway by Doug Most is available from St. Martin's Press.

Lokrum Island (photograph by Eric Hossinger)

From Hawaii to the Mediterranean, and from the lakes of Canada down to the tropics of Malaysia; these islands are some of the most beautiful destinations in the world. However, our focus here is not on beaches. Rather, we'll be investigating the tales of vengeance and murder that lurk behind the palm trees, the restless ghosts that haunt the golden sands.

Join us as we take a look at seven cursed islands from around the world.

GAIOLA ISLAND
Naples, Italy

Italy’s "Isola della Gaiola" lies just off the coast of Naples, and is formed from two small, scenic islets. The location was held in high regard by the ancient Romans, who built a temple to Venus on the smaller of the two islets — known then as “Euplea.”

The larger islet holds a villa, abandoned now, while the smaller is scattered with Roman-era ruins. There are stories that Virgil, the legendary poet and reputed magician, spent some years here teaching his students on Gaiola Island.

From the early 19th century, there are stories about a hermit who lived on Gaiola Island, or, as he was known then, the “Wizard.” It was not long after this that the present-day villa was constructed on the larger of the two islets, to be connected to its twin by way of a narrow bridge.

Gaiola Island, Naples, Italy (photograph by Baku)

The island’s curse doesn’t get mentioned until later, when a story emerged to explain the premature deaths suffered by so many of the island’s subsequent inhabitants.

In the 1920s, the villa on Gaiola Island was owned by the Swiss businessman Hans Braun. He was later found murdered on the island, his body wrapped up in a rug. Not long after, his wife drowned in the sea. The next owner was German Otto Grunback who was taken by a heart attack while living on the island. Maurice-Yves Sandoz, another owner, would later commit suicide in a Swiss mental hospital. The next, a German industrialist by the name of Baron Karl Paul Langheim, was plunged into economic ruin and disaster.

Years later, the head of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli, would buy the island villa. Not long after, his only son committed suicide, leaving him with no heir. When he began grooming his nephew Umberto Agnelli to take over the company, Umberto contracted a rare form of cancer and died at the age of 33. The multi-billionaire Paul Getty was the next to buy the island, just a little while before his grandson was kidnapped. The last investor to attempt to tame Gaiola was Gianpasquale Grappone... who ended up being incarcerated when his insurance company collapsed.

Nowadays, the villa on Gaiola Island remains uninhabited as it slowly falls into ruin.

The linked islands, with Gaiola on the right (via Google Maps)

PALMYRA ATOLL
Hawaii, United States

The Palmyra Atoll is located roughly 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, and it has no permanent human population. On August 30, 1974 however, it was the site of at least one grisly murder.

Palmyra North Beach, Hawaii (photograph by Clarkma5)

Eleanor “Muff” Graham and her husband Malcolm decided to camp on one of the islands as they were yachting around the Pacific. Here they encountered ex-convict Buck Duane Walker, who was sailing through the atoll that summer with his girlfriend Stephanie Stearns.

On August 30, the Grahams invited their neighbors aboard their own yacht, the “Sea Wind,” for dinner. The two guests arrived, and later claimed to have found the boat empty — the Graham couple seemed to be still out on a fishing trip. Waiting until the morning, Walker and Stearns eventually suspected that the Grahams had met with an accident, and they sailed the yacht back to Hawaii.

Eleanor Graham’s body was discovered in 1981 when a human skull washed up on a beach near the site of the supposed fishing accident. The rest of her bones were discovered inside an aluminum box along the coast, and forensic tests suggest that she was beaten over the head, dismembered, and had her face burnt using a welding torch.

In 1985, Buck Duane Walker was found guilty of the murder of Muff Graham. The body of Malcolm Graham III however, has never been found.

Palmyra Atoll from the air (photograph by Erik Oberg)

On this quiet, peaceful atoll, the gruesome events of that night were enough to add fresh fuel to myths of a curse that had long been attached to the island. It’s not uncommon to hear Pacific travelers speak of the “Palmyra curse,” and dating back to WWII there have been reports of boats and aircraft disappearing in the area around the Palmyra Atoll. Testifying at the trial of Buck Duane Walker, the geologist Norman Sanders commented:

“Palmyra is one of the last uninhabited islands in the Pacific. The island is a very threatening place. It is a hostile place.”

A shipwreck off the coast of Palmyra Atoll (via USFWS Pacific)

LANGKAWI ISLANDS
Malaysia

The Langkawi Islands off the coast of Malaysia are where verdant rain forests, scenic waterfalls, and white sand beaches belie a sordid tale of jealousy, murder, and supernatural vengeance.

Langkawi island hopping (photograph by Emran Kassim)

Despite lush, tropical forests that are believed to have existed for as long as 450 million years, Langkawi has only recently become a popular tourist destination with the construction of their first duty free port in the late 1980s.

Before that, these islands were largely avoided by locals who feared their curse. Legend has it that a beautiful island girl called Mahsuri, married to the warrior known as Wan Darus, had once lived on the island. During the time of the Burmese-Siamese War (towards the end of the 18th century), Wan Darus was called away — and some time later, Mahsuri offered shelter to a handsome traveller named Deraman.

Though her offer was made out of pure generosity, other women on the island grew jealous of Mahsuri’s handsome visitor — and stories soon spread about an alleged affair. When one day their jealousy grew to a peak, Mahsuri’s neighbors attacked her, stabbing the girl to death in a rice field.

Cenang Island, Langkawi, Malaysia (photograph by Loke Seng Hon)

According to the story, Mahsuri placed a curse on the island as she lay dying in that field; she vowed that the island would be destroyed, and see no prosperity for a full seven generations. Not long after that, more and more of the superstitious islanders began to leave and the Langkawi Islands were largely abandoned for decades. It is only now, more than seven generations after the supposed murder, that locals — and tourists — are returning to the islands once more. 

photograph by Marc van der Chijs

PECHE ISLAND
Ontario, Canada

Peche Island sits on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, and despite being located just alongside urban Detroit, Michigan, it remains uninhabited to this day. The reason? Well, one of the more popular local explanations for the lack of life on the island is a century-old curse.

A local myth tells of the formation of Peche Island: it was created from the drifting body of a Prophet, the Keeper of the Gates of the Lakes, who was cast into the waters of Lake Huron by the warring winds.

Peche Island, Canada (photograph by Angela Anderson-Cobb)

The story of the curse arrived much later. Around the turn of the 19th century, a French Canadian family by the name of Laforet established a homestead on the island. By 1883, they were involved in a property feud with a businessman, grocer, and whiskey distiller by the name of Hiram Walker.

According to the surviving Laforet descendants, in the fall of 1883 a group of Walker men forced their way into the home of the heiress Rosalie Laforet, forcing her to sign over the property deed to Hiram Walker. “They threw $300 on the table and told Rosalie to be out by spring of 1883,” wrote a Laforet family source.

Over the following months, there came attacks on the island, and the winter stores were ruined. Eventually the Laforet family was forced to depart their home in despair. As she left Peche Island, it is said that Rosalie Laforet, who was familiar with "the ways of the natives," placed a curse upon the land: “No one will ever do anything with the island!” she is said to have cried.

The Walkers moved in soon enough, building a vast mansion reported to have a total of 40 (or by some accounts, 54) rooms, an orchard, a carriage house, and a golf course.

The Walker triumph, however, was short lived.

West Peche Island beach (photograph by Jodelli)

The lawyer son Willis Walker died not long after he had handled the purchase, at the age of only 28. Hiram Walker himself suffered a stroke, before passing away in 1899. Another son, Edward Chandler Walker, died at a young age in 1915. By 1926, when prohibition saw an end to the family distillery business, the Walker dynasty had more or less faded from history.

In 1929, the Walker mansion burned to the ground, and today the island remains desolate and uninhabited save visiting boaters – in exactly the same state that it was when Rosalie Laforet uttered the words of her curse.

Foundation of the Walker mansion on Peche Island in 2012 (photograph by jodelli/Flickr user)

LOKRUM ISLAND
Dubrovnik, Croatia 

Lokrum is one of a series of beautiful islands off the coast of Croatia.  Just 2,000 feet from the port of Dubrovnik, it has long been inhabited, with recorded mentions dating back as early as the 11th century, when Lokrum was the site of a Benedictine abbey and monastery. The monks took advantage of the favorable climate by harvesting exotic fruits on the island. This gave birth to its name, "Lokrum," coming from the Latin "acrumen," meaning a sour fruit.

Lokrum Island, Dubrovnik, Croatia (photograph by Bracodbk)

Stories about the island’s history vary, though one popular telling has it that Lokrum was once struck by widespread fires. The locals prayed to Saint Benedict, vowing to build a monastery if their homes were saved. According to the legend, their prayers were answered by heavy rain, which extinguished the fires, and so the abbey and monastery were built.

When the French came in 1798, the monks were ordered off the island, and as the last Benedictines left in 1808, they supposedly held a mass during which the island was cursed. By 1859, the island was the property of the Habsburgs, and Archduke Maximilian Ferdinand had a regal mansion and botanical gardens constructed on Lokrum. When he later became Emperor of Mexico, and was executed not long after, locals were quick to blame it on the curse.

Lokrum Cove (photograph by Jennifer Boyer)

Even today, the people of Dubrovnik are delighted to share tales of fishing boats swallowed by the sea, or of pleasure seekers who visited Lokrum Island overnight... never to be seen again.

View of Lokrum Island from Dubrovnik (photograph by Col Ford and Natasha de Vere)

COOK ISLANDS
South Pacific

The South Pacific has long been home to stories of witch doctors and their spells, but few such stories have had such widespread effect as the "Curse of the Cook Islands."

In 1911, the New Zealander William John Wigmore leased a plot of land from the Cook Islander More Uriatua. More decided later that he wanted his land back, and refused to give his approval to the intended copra plantation. An argument ensued, and Wigmore shot More dead. Wigmore was deported, and in 1913 More's daughter, Metua A More, is said to have placed a curse on the island.

Rarotonga Beach, Cook Islands, New Zealand (photograph by Tristanb)

The exact terms of that curse stated that any business venture conducted at the plot of land known as Vaimaanga would be fated to ruin. It seemed to work, too. In the 1950s and 60s, plans to construct a commercial citrus orchard fell flat on their face, as did a proposed herb plantation and a later pineapple growing business.

In the late 1980s the Sheraton hotel chain bought the land, and invested more than $60 million into an intended holiday resort. The project was plagued by setbacks though, dogged by one failure after another, until a point where an estimated $120 million had been pumped into the doomed endeavor.

On May 25, 1990, a full 77 years after the initial curse was placed, Metua’s grandson More Rua returned to the spot in order to reinforce the curse. Dressed in the Kakau and Rakei Taunga, the ceremonial dress of a Cook Island high priest, Rua conducted the ritual armed with a war spear.

Avarua Rarotonga, Cook Islands (photograph by David Holt)

With the base of his spear, Rua struck a commemorative plaque that celebrated the commencement of the Sheraton hotel project. Supposedly the rock shattered, and the cracks spread deep down into the earth beneath the building site.

In 1993, with 80% of the Sheraton project finished, the construction ground to a final halt. Before long, squatters began occupying the concrete shell while a gradual process of irreversible decay set in. Now the Sheraton resort — designed to be a palatial 200-room holiday complex — lies trashed and abandoned in this island paradise.

Sunset on the Cook Islands (photograph by Rchard/Flickr user)

CHARLES ISLAND
Connecticut, United States

Located just off the coast of Connecticut, the Charles Island is a pleasant enough place, a scenic 14-acre plot which nevertheless finds itself home to no less than three separate curses.

The first of the three was placed in 1639 by a local Paugusset chief. The island had been considered spiritually significant by local tribes, and when disputes arose between the Paugusset and the new settlers of the land, the retreating chief placed a curse on the island. 

Charles Island at Silver Sands State Park (photograph by Andrew K.)

Another curse would be placed on the Charles Island soon after, by none other than the notorious pirate Captain Kidd. It was during his last great voyage that Kidd stepped foot on the island, and there are suggestions that the Scots sea dog may well have hidden some of his bounty here in Connecticut. In those stories, it’s reported that Kidd placed a curse on the island so that anyone who should disturb his buried treasure would be struck with certain death. 

A third curse on the Charles Island comes courtesy of a Mexican emperor, the 16th century Emperor Guatmozin, to be exact. The legend goes that Guatmozin was captured and tortured by Cortez’s soldiers, as they pressed him for the location of the hidden treasures of the Aztecs. He never gave it up, but in 1721, a group of Connecticut sailors supposedly stumbled across a treasure horde hidden in a Mexican cave.

photograph by Kenneth Casper

Naturally, the brave sailors brought their loot back home. However, as one and then another of their crew were stricken by a series of bizarre and fatal accidents, the last remaining sailor decided to ditch the treasure. He buried the cache of Aztec gold — along with its curse — on the Charles Island, where some say it remains to this day.

 For even more strange and wondrous tales of water-locked locales, view more islands on Atlas Obscura >

Eye Of the Emu (by Mugley, via Flickr)

After visiting Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, and St. Louis, Atlas Obscura's ongoing tour of Worlds' Fair relics now moves further south.

Royal Exhibition Building, 1880 (courtesy Royal Exhibition Building)

Melbourne’s 1880 International Exhibition was the first officially-recognized World’s Fair in the Southern Hemisphere, after a smaller agricultural fair one year earlier in Sydney.  The fair was housed in the Royal Exhibition Building, a huge exhibition hall in the style of the grand exhibition halls of Europe. Almost all of them at once, in fact — architect Joseph Reed used design elements from the German Rundbogenstil architecture style, French architecture and design, and modeled the hall’s central dome on a cathedral in Florence. 

Royal Exhibition Building today (courtesy Royal Exhibition Building)

After the fair, the hall was used as a catch-all for events — Australia’s first Parliament met in the building in 1900, Australia first unfurled its flag atop its dome in 1901, and a handful of events from the 1956 Olympics took place inside. 

Melbourne International Exhibition Building (via Wikimedia)

Foundation Stone (photograph by Brian Giesen)

The Big Picture - Opening Of The First Parliament (painting by Tom Roberts, via Wikimedia)

The hall was considered an old-fashioned eyesore in the 1940s, and narrowly escaped demolition in 1947. Melbourne’s City Council ultimately decided to save the hall, but one of its wings was still torn down in the 1970s.  Even so, the Royal Exhibition Building was named an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 — the first building in Australia to earn that distinction.

Inside the Royal Exhibition Building today (courtesy Royal Exhibition Building)

Today it is used as a commercial exhibition hall, and is the home of Melbourne's International Flower and Garden Show each year. The nearby Melbourne Museum also leads guided tours of the hall. 

2013 Melbourne International Flower Show (photograph by Chris Phutully)

The Royal Exhibition Building sits inside the Carlton Gardens, which have also earned UNESCO World Heritage distinction themselves. The gardens pre-date the 1880 fair by about 40 years, but were drastically re-vamped and redesigned to serve as the 1880 Fairgrounds. Now the gardens are a perfect example of Victorian-era landscape design, with wide lawns dotted with flowerbeds, and a network of tree-lined paths laid out to offer the best views of the Royal Exhibition Building.

Carlton Gardens (photograph by Brian Giesen)

Carlton Gardens (photograph by Aenneken, via Flickr)

But the Carlton Gardens are noted for their botanicals as well as their historic significance — the garden designers collected a huge array of European and Australian trees for the gardens, including groves of elm trees. Then, 30 years after the fair, elm trees throughout Europe and the Americas were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease, but the elms in Carlton Gardens were spared, making the Carlton Garden collection one of the few places to find elm trees in the world.

photograph by Jennifer Morrow

Here are more images from the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition:

The construction of the International Exhibition (via Museum Victoria)

Photograph of the International Exhibition (via State Library of Victoria)

Photograph of the International Exhibition (via State Library of Victoria)

The British Court (via State Library of Victoria)

The Exhibition Bill (via State Library of Victoria)

Westfalische Union display (via State Library of Victoria)

The Fiji Court (via State Library of Victoria)

View from the balcony, illustrated in the Australian News (via Museum Victoria)

A diorama of a bush scene in the South Australian Court (via Douglas Stewart Fine Books)

Aerial drawing of the International Exhibition (via Wikimedia)

The Victorian Court (via Museum Victoria)

Wood engraving of the Fine Arts Gallery (via National Gallery of Victoria)

Wood engraving of the opening ceremony (via National Gallery of Victoria)

William Powell Frith, "An Evening at the International Exhibition (1888) (via Museum Victoria)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and be sure to visit Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, and St. Louis.

Despite the fact that much of history was guided by explorers venturing out into the uncharted and bringing back evidence of a world beyond their own, there is no museum dedicated just to exploration. Now a stately castle in Ireland is being transformed in the first museum for the intrepid history of exploration, as well as a base for future expeditions.

Charleville Castle 

The Explorers Museum, announced last month, will be housed in Charleville Castle in Tullamore, Ireland, about an hour and a half outside of Dublin. The museum is the brainchild of co-founders Lorie Karnath, 37th president of the Explorers Club, and Tim Lavery, director of the World Explorers Bureau. Set up as a non-profit, the Explorers Museum is aimed at giving recognition to the history of expeditions, with exhibitions in a gallery space, as well as serving as a base from which new ventures could be launched. 

Appropriately, the 18th century castle was once the home of Everest expedition leader and Himalayan amateur botanist Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury, and the imposing structure is set amidst an ancient oak forest with trees as old as 900 years. The coat of arms for the Explorers Museum mixes this history with its own ambitions, with a dragon and boar flanking a shield where climbing axes cross in front of a mountain that peaks between the moon and a star. 

Explorers Museum co-founder Lorie Karnath answered some of our questions about the new exploration center:  

How did the Explorers Museum come about?

Although many of the artifacts, dioramas and art in museums today are the direct result of exploration, the explorers themselves who have been responsible for these are rarely heralded, if even acknowledged. Exploration over and over has expanded humankind’s boundaries, and yet many of the daring men and woman who are the impetus for these great shifts in knowledge and thinking are largely forgotten.

To better understand our planet and beyond it is important to appreciate the individual contributions and challenges faced by those who have dared to contemplate the unknown and have served to make this familiar. Many explorers, even those who achieve recognition as household names in their time, are often too soon unsung. The intent of the establishment of the Explorers Museum is to distinguish the achievements of earlier heroes as well as identify current and up and coming feats of exploration that change the world as we know it.

Lorie Karnath in the castle entranceway

Why is this the time to open an Explorers Museum? Some might say that the age of exploration has passed.

It is certain that the landscape of exploration has changed dramatically since the development of widespread technologies. In an era dominated by satellites, air travel, and worldwide connectivity, the shifting frontiers of exploration are ever-expanding. While it is true that the exploration realm today is replete with a wide technological roster, it is precisely such capabilities that are enabling new forms of discovery and even new definitions of what the scope of exploration entails. That some today might believe that the age of exploration has passed, serves to further emphasize the need to found a museum dedicated to the recognition of explorers and exploration and the discoveries that result from this.

At present we have entered a new “golden” age of exploration, or perhaps better described as the “lanthanides” era of exploration, due to the advent of the numerous constantly evolving technological tools that exist. Such technological advancements are helping us not only learn new things about places and species that at one point or another were believed to be fully discovered, such new means of evaluation are even helping to overturn previous known “facts.” 

It is clear that technology has and will continue to play an increasingly important role in exploration and discovery, and as explorers we must continue to adapt and keep up-to-date as new gear, tools, and methods are developed. As we continue to grow and expand our worldwide associations and exchanges without the burdens of borders and protocol that hamper most organizations, it appears increasingly clear that technology will provide exploration the ability to continue to play an ever greater role going forward, one that will help to determine how best to balance resources and sustain environments. Undoubtedly exploration will remain central in fostering these discoveries.

Even with this plethora of new devices, exploration remains a challenging endeavor. Although technical advances have facilitated access to many previously unattainable regions, the extremely volatile natural environments of some of the Earth’s (and beyond), more remote spots pose substantial logistical problems for some areas and these remain capricious and elusive. There is still much to explore.

Co-founders Lorie Karnath and Tim Lavery in the William Morris room  of the castle, the intended primary exhibition space.

The Charleville Castle seems like a stunning place for the museum, but also very ambitious. Why go for a castle rather than, say, a shiny new building more designed for your needs?

The idea of a museum is to share an experience with the viewer. I have often wondered about organizations dedicated towards inciting enthusiasm for exploration and field research that ensconce themselves in “shiny” or not buildings, located in urban centers. The Charleville Castle is the perfect venue for the Museum of Exploration, the visit to the site in itself inspires the spirit of adventure, exploration, and discovery.

This castle located in the midst of a primordial woods, which were once the hunting grounds of druids, is the former home of explorer/naturalist Charles Howard-Bury — it served as the base for many of his expeditions. At the same time the terms and definitions of a museum are changing. It is perhaps particularly apt that the Explorers Museum is exploring new ways of conducting museum work, new forms of research, collections, exhibitions, and public service for curation. Our program will have both actual and virtual components. We are working on a virtual collection including some 3D objects, which tell inspiring stories that can be shared with many more than any walk-in museum could accommodate.

However, it is real objects that draw people because of their inspirational value. No virtual representation is ever as powerful as the real thing. In the choice of Charleville Castle as the exhibition space, one traverses the courtyard where tents were set up in preparation for the first Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, walks the halls where maps were spread to plan itineraries, so the visitor is able to experience the real thing before even viewing the exhibit underway. It is not just the objects themselves that are the focus of attention, but the everlasting life of the person or people associated with these that stimulate and provoke. It is these stories that we intend to tell.

I know that it's in its initial stages, but what could you tell us about upcoming exhibitions/projects of the museum?

In its first year the museum projects will tie in closely to Charles Howard-Bury, the former resident of the castle. As Howard-Bury was a noted naturalist and adept alpinist, there will be significant focus on mountain exploration in particular. Near term we will be recognizing some young explorers and their recent expeditions that in fact retraced one of the Howard-Bury expeditions. An exhibit is planned for late summer that will highlight much Howard-Bury’s contributions to the realm of exploration, as well as other historical mountain achievements. The event will also celebrate a number of present day explorers who through exploration have been particularly instrumental in expanding our knowledge and understanding of mountains.

More on the Explorers Museum and updates on their activities can be found on their site and their Facebook.

On Halloween night of 1936, Jack Parson and his "Suicide Squad"completed the first successful rocket test in Arroyo Seco, California. That was the day the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena was officially founded. Now 78 years later, JPL is NASA's largest space robotics facility, and has played host to some of NASA's most famous missions, including Voyager 1 & 2 in 1977, and recently the Mars Rover Curiosity.

"Rover Xing" at JPL (all photographs by the author)

While discovery and exploration have always been part of JPL's mission, it is not a coincidence that Jack Parsons, one of JPL's founding fathers, was also known for his own personal spiritual discovery. While he was shooting off rockets, Parsons was also engaging in religious rituals that, even by today's standards, were rather odd.

Parsons eventually rose up the ranks of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO, for short) where he practiced his own form of "sexual magick" (different than the traditional "magic"). He befriended L. Ron Hubbard — the founder of Scientology — and together they are said to have performed ceremonies to summon the goddess Bablon, who would help them conceive the Anti-Christ. Many of these ceremonies took place at Devil's Gate, an old flood control dam less than a mile from the current JPL campus. Its name "Devil's Gate" comes from the supposed resemblance to the devil in its rock formations. Parsons and Hubbard believed it was a portal to hell. 

On February 4, 2014, the Los Angeles Obscura Society paid a visit to both of these historic and fascinating sites. We spent the first part of the day learning about the JPL-produced robotics that had been sent up to space over the years, plus the plans for the future. During the second part of the day, we paid a visit to the Devil's Gate, chasing our exploration of the heavens with the gate to hell, 

Here are some photographs from our adventure:

Mission Control Room at JPL, where every mission has been directed from Mariner 2's flight to Venus in 1962 to Mars Curiosity in 2012

A to-scale model of Curiosity. Looks a tad like Wall-E, no?   

Viewing the JPL "clean room." This is where most everything is built, from spacecrafts to computer systems. It's called the "clean room" because in order to protect the machinery, the room is regulated by how many particles per cubic foot is allowed. It can be adjusted depending what is being worked on. This day, it was at 100 particles per cubic foot. 

The JPL deer frolicking and munching.  According to our guides, they're out here nearly every day.  

Dr. Carl Sagan and his team assembled the contents of the Golden Record, to be affixed to the side of Voyager 1 & 2 in 1977. In case these spacecrafts every encountered extraterrestrial life, NASA wanted audio and images that would depict life here on Earth. The instructions, engraved into the gold, explain how to play the record.

Behind that gate is where Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard are said to have performed religious rituals to summon the goddess Bablon.

 
Our handsome group after a long day of space exploration and hiking to the depths of hell. 

Special Thanks to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, and Roy Butler! 

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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via Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 128, f.74r 

Why are these animals in a 16th century manuscript wearing jet packs? That's the mystery Mitch Fraas, Scholar in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, set out to decipher. It turns out the truth is a bit macabre, but the illustrators obviously took some whimsical joy in depicting these rocket cats and birds. Fraas told Atlas Obscura more about these fire-fueled cats:

Just about a year ago, a friend sent me a link with a picture from one of our manuscripts here at Penn. I gaped… was that really a picture of a cat and a bird propelled by rocket packs!? This seemed pretty unlikely for a 16th century manuscript, but within a week I had turned up another half dozen examples of similar illustrations. So, what’s the deal with these rocket creatures?

All of the illustrations here come from early explosives and warfare manuals copied and re-copied with alterations between the 16th and 17th centuries. The immediate originator of the idea behind these cat and bird bombs was Franz Helm of Cologne, an artillery master in the service of various German princes who likely served in campaigns against Turkish forces during the mid-16th century. He wrote a treatise on siege warfare (Buch von den probierten Künsten) and artillery that circulated widely in manuscript, but was not published in print until 1625.

Detail from Folger Shakespeare Library, V.b.311, f. 129r

So what does Helm actually say about these explosive animals? Are there rockets involved at all? In the text accompanying the images is a section entitled: “To set fire to a castle or city which you can’t get at otherwise,” in which he details how to use doves and cats loaded with flammable devices to set fire to enemy positions. For cats, the text paints a grisly picture of attaching lit sacks of incendiaries onto the animals to have them return to their homes within a besieged city and set fire to them. In my awkward translation:

“Create a small sack like a fire-arrow … bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it…and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited.” 

There’s no way to know if Helm himself or any early modern armies ever employed this method of pyrotechnic warfare, but strangely enough the idea of using cats and birds in just this way appears in historical texts (not to mention the bible) from many disparate regions of the world including Russia, Scandinavia, and ancient South Asia, and as recently as World War II armies plotted to use similar animals as explosive devices.

For more on these 16th century rocket animals, 
check out this article by Mitch Fraas on the Penn Libraries' Unique at Penn blog, which explores some of the fascinating objects in the Penn Libraries. 

via UPenn Ms. Codex 109, f137r.

via LJS 442:Book of instruction for a cannon master, f.60r 

Objects of Intrigue is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

On Sunday January 26, 2014, during a pre-New Year's festival, Atlas Obscura gathered a group of 15 at Red’s Place, the oldest bar in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

all photographs by the author

For the next 90 minutes, local crime expert Paul Drexler led us through the enveloping dusk on a fascinating walking tour down Chinatown’s most notorious alleys, where he wove tales of its sordid criminal history. "The seeker after thrills or depravity found in Chinatown an abundance of opium-smoking resorts, houses of prostitution, and gambling hells," Drexler explained of the area's past. 

We stopped briefly at Eastern Bakery, the oldest bakery in Chinatown, to sample their delicious moon cakes and other pastries before continuing on.

With stories of opium dens and enslaved prostitutes, tong wars and the lawmen who sought order, Drexler brought to life Chinatown’s brutal and bloody past, the remnants of which linger to this day.

We concluded back where we began and enjoyed cocktails at Red's while Drexler concluded his talk and distributed crime maps and photos of some of the characters we'd heard about during the walk. We said our farewells to new friends and left behind the spirits of those we'd learned about that once haunted the alleys of San Francisco's Chinatown.

Thank you to Paul Drexler for guiding us on this exploration. Click here for more information on his Crooks Tour of San Francisco.

DO IT YOURSELF:

SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN: Roughly bordered by Bay Street to the north, Columbus Avenue on the west, and Washington Street on the south, Chinatown's many alleys and shops are easily explored on foot. 

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

Animal bones can be some of the most unsettling objects around and while most museums have the courtesy of displaying them in peaceful, innocuous scenes and poses, Paris' Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy (Galerie de paléontologie et d'anatomie comparée) has decided to arrange their collection as though the animals are trying to run visitors down. This skeletal stampede was captured by Atlas Obscura user philoursmars, who found the whole experience made him a bit introspective:

"It was in winter, but the day was shiny, so the place was full of light. What strikes me when I take a look at this picture is the contrast. Contrast between death and life, the walk from the dark to the light. 'Where are they going to?' one might ask. Contrast between the threat of the skeletons and the calm of their pace. In other words, contrast between their movement and their stillness." 

THE GALLERY OF PALEONTOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, Paris, France

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week. 

The rolling Pedal Bear at Art Shanty Projects (all photographs by the author)

Atlas Obscura’s recent article on the historic Thames Frost Fair, where a festival was held on London's frozen Thames River, brought a smile to this Minnesotan’s face. Up on the North Coast, we take winter seriously — and we bring our celebrations outdoors. We have the St. Paul Winter Carnival, created in 1886 as an indignant response to a New York journalist who reported that St. Paul was “another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter.” International Falls, where you really can see Canada from your house, has hosted Ice Box Days every winter for nearly 35 years. Pranksters in the small North Shore town of Finland came up with St. Urho Day, in honor of a made-up saint to counter that Irish legend, St. Patrick.

In recent years, a new tradition has gained traction: the Art Shanty Projects. The art shanties got their start in 2004, when local artist Peter Haakon Thompson put up a shack similar to an ice fishing house on Medicine Lake in the Twin Cities and used it as an art installation with film screenings, ice skating, and sleepovers. The lone shack was enough of a success that the following year, Thompson partnered with arts group the Soap Factory and put out a call for artists. From one shack came several, and now a shanty town that’s part sculpture park, part art residency, and part social experiment.

Within two years, the group honed its jury selection process, secured an additional partnership with MN Artists, received funding from the McKnight Foundation, and became a full-fledged winter art installation and festival, popular both within the arts community and with families (and people in general who suffered from cabin fever in February).

Noah's Art Shanty

The Dance Shanty

The simplicity of the projects rests partly in it being on a frozen lake — and away from forbidding building codes. The artists all choose their own theme, build their shacks to loose standards, and create activities and events. Some of the themes change every year, while others (like the Dance Shanty) return. In past years, there have been shanties were you could write your confession on a chalkboard, only to have your sin wiped away at the end of the day; an overturned rowboat was once used to recreate Ernest Shackleton’s South Pole expedition. There's also been a tea shop shanty and a karaoke shanty.

This year (through February 23), the shanties moved to White Bear Lake, a suburb of St. Paul. Participants include a curling shanty (a tip of the hat to the Winter Olympics); Noah’s Art Shanty, where visitors can dig into sculpting clay; an elevator shanty, complete with a lobby and appropriate elevator music; a retail shanty, with items for sale that are frozen in ice, where the price to purchase doesn’t involve cash, but a series of questions from the proprietor; and, among many more, the Cook Yourself Kitchen, a sauna shanty.

The Elevator Shanty

Curling on the lake

Jigsaw Shanty

Beyond the shanties themselves are the activities. A Pedal Bear, similar to a Pedal Pub, gives visitors the chance to work up a sweat while pedaling around the shanties while sheltered by a giant polar bear. Visitors can also have a Tarot reading, try Reiki, watch the Art Car Parade, or practice Snowga (winter yoga).

Unlike the Thames Frost Fair, the Art Shanty Project doesn’t tend to lead to wild drunken debauchery, but maybe that’s because the project’s slogan is: “Art Shanty Supporters Walk on Water.”

A vintage magician poster (via abbasj812/Flickr user)

Welcome to Magic Week, a world of wonder and illusions! This week we're exploring magic in all its manifestations, from magnificent magicians to magical creatures to the history of witchcraft. 

Have any stories or places you'd like to share for Magic Week? Send us an email or drop us a line on Twitter with the hashtag #MagicWeek. You can also join the discussion on Facebook and Tumblr. To get us started, check out some of our favorite magic places and stories from around the world below, and keep an eye out all week for more tales of magic. We've also collected together some vintage magic posters to set the mood for the wonders to come. 

WAITING FOR HOUDINI TO ESCAPE FROM DEATH 
Will the greatest escape artist ever escape the grave?

VAMPIRES, MAGIC DUELS, AND HEADLESS BODIES  
In the 1970s, two magicians met for a duel in London's most eerie cemetery

ROBERTSON'S FANTASTIC PHANTASMAGORIA
The story of an 18th century magician who conjured up ghosts in Paris

FOUR JOBS FOR AN ANCIENT WITCH
Magical employment for witches in ancient Greece and Rome

NECROPANTS
Icelandic magic for wearing your friend's skin as a way to wealth

HOUDINI'S MILK CAN ESCAPE, WHERE FAILURE MEANT DEATH BY DROWNING
The American Museum of Magic holds the harrowing centerpiece of one of Houdini's most famous tricks

THE SPIRIT PAINTERS OF OLD NEW YORK
When 19th century New York City was caught in the spell of ghost painting

THE TABLE THAT COULD TALK TO THE DEAD
The Fox Sisters, America's leading mediums in the mid-19th century, possessed a table they used to reach the dead

via Wikimedia

via Library of Congress

via Wikimedia

via Wikimedia

via Library of Congress

via Library of Congress

via Wikimedia

via apophysis_rocks/Flickr user

via abbasj812/Flickr user

via abbasj812/Flickr user

via Library of Congress

via Library of Congress

via abbasj812/Flickr user

Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

An illustration from Ellis Stanyon's "Magic: in which are given clear and concise explanations of all the well-known illusions, as well as many new ones" (1910) (via Wikimedia)

Everyone has a lizard brain.

Your lizard brain is that primitive part of you that’s frightened by the unknown and comforted by familiar patterns. It seeks those patterns and attempts to neatly categorize all your experiences so you can streamline your thought process. In almost every situation, this is extremely helpful. It allows you to attend to more pressing matters. If our caveman ancestors had to question the concept of reflection every time they saw their image in a puddle, many more of them would have been eaten by wolves or stomped to death by mammoths. But the lizard brain, while helpful, is a bit like a high-strung friend — trustworthy, dependable, and a lifesaver, but really fun to play a trick on now and then.

Magic tricks, particularly tricks of light, are designed to exploit our lizard brains by exposing us to scenarios that fly in the face of known patterns and purposefully defy easy categorization. The dissonance between what we’re seeing and what we expect based on similar situations produces a heady combination of delight, awe, and just a tinge of fear.

It’s worth noting that many of these types of tricks were popular with turn-of-the-century magicians. Unlike the Victorian spiritualist, these magicians denied having supernatural powers. It was the beginning of what Teller (of Penn and Teller fame) calls“the unwilling suspension of disbelief.” If a magician presented a ghost to the audience, the audience wasn’t expected to alter their belief system to start including ghosts. They were only expected to be confounded by what they were seeing. But if you examine how these tricks are done, you’ll see it’s not your eyes that lead you astray — it’s your lizard brain. Let's explore a few of these lizard brain illusions. 

The first illusion is incredibly straightforward. It plays off the expectations that we can only see objects when light is reflecting off of them and that objects continue to exist even when there’s no light and we can’t see them anymore.

A skeleton in a magic lantern show (via Magic Lantern Shows)

Imagine we’re walking through a haunted house. A projected image of a skeleton pops up on a blank screen in front of us. The effect might happen fast enough to startle us and the sight of the skeleton might unnerve us. But the experience doesn’t awe us. We aren’t deeply shaken by it. Why is that?

First of all, what we call “projection” is actually just reflected light that contains enough visual information to allow us to interpret it symbolically. I might be frightened by the symbol of the skeleton, but that speaks to a higher-functioning part of my brain. The lizard brain has no use for something as complex and ambiguous as symbols. What the lizard brain sees in this scenario is the light in the form of the projection and the blank screen, which is a familiar object that’s being illuminated. We’re not confounded by the experience because at its core, it conforms to a pattern we see every day: light reflects off the surface of an object and thus we’re able to see the object. In this case, we’re seeing a decidedly pedestrian screen. So to disrupt that pattern and confuse the lizard brain, we need to keep the ephemeral image of the skeleton, but ditch the screen.

One trick we can use is to swap the screen for smoke. Since smoke is actually just tiny particles suspended in the air, each particle is capable of reflection the same way that the screen is; it’s just not a physical object that we can reach out and grab. The skeleton projection now becomes much more confusing, and therefore awe-inspiring to the lizard brain. We’re a baffled by how we can see light reflecting off a thing that isn’t a physical object. When the light is gone, it seems that the projection surface vanishes as well. This effect is called phantasmagoria.

The problem with projecting on smoke, though, is that it’s hard to localize the particles you’re reflecting off of. In most cases, the stray particles allow you to see the beam of light leading straight to the source (in this case, the projector). Anyone who’s seen the sun come out on a foggy day can understand it. The awe vanishes once we understand the source of the light so the next trick is to obscure the source as well as the projection surface. That’s what the effect known as Pepper’s Ghost does.

The Conjurer's Ghost, showing a Pepper's Ghost performance (via the Richard Balzer Collection) 

Take a look at the above image. The woman in yellow is performing her part from the basement, but the audience is seeing her glowing, translucent image onstage where it’s juxtaposed with scenery and actors who are obviously real.

What the audience is seeing is actually her reflection on the front of a transparent piece of glass. Since the light that’s focused on the woman in the basement is very bright, she becomes the reflective light source that’s in turn reflected in the angled piece of glass that’s used as a projection surface. Since the audience can see through the projection surface, they can also see through her glowing image. If the light on her fades out, her reflection fades away, and she disappears from stage.

Pepper's Ghost illustration from the 19th century (via Museum Victoria)

It’s a tricky little setup, but it takes a usual experience (seeing a reflection) and removes the usual signifiers of reflection that allow the lizard brain to find the pattern and categorize it as such. In this case there’s no obvious light source and no visible projection surface. What’s more is we’ve concealed the thing being reflected by angling the glass. This breaks the pattern of most reflective surfaces we come in contact with, which are typically horizontal (puddles) or vertical (mirrors). With these signals missing, the image of the woman defies easy categorization. She doesn’t appear to be fully human or fully reflection, and the dissonance causes wonder and amazement.

The next trick takes the ghostly image one step further. If you were to try to interact with a Pepper’s Ghost, you would reach out and touch an angled sheet of glass. It would immediately click that this was just a tricky reflection and the effect would be ruined just like revealing the light source ruined phantasmagoria. But the final way to conjure ghostly images doesn’t require a special light source like phantasmagoria or even a discoverable projection surface like Pepper’s Ghost. It’s so convincing that it confuses your sense of touch as well as your sense of sight. (To be fair, it was only created decades ago, not centuries like the previous two examples).

In this version of the trick, you think you see an item sitting on a table, in this case, a pig. When you reach for it, the pig slips through your fingers and you find that the center of the table, which seemed like a solid mirrored surface, is actually a hole. Fortunately, you don’t have to start believing in ghost pigs. The image is a mirage (note the Latin root "mir-," as in mirror or miracle, which incidentally means "wonder and amazement"). The pig is actually sitting safely inside the table. Its image is projected with parabolic mirrors concealed within the table that reflect the ambient light coming through the hole at the top. Once you take one of these tables apart it’s easy to understand exactly how the reflections work, but the illusion still won’t stop fooling your brain.

 Diagram of a mirage (via exploratorium.edu)

That’s because the trick is working on two levels. Pepper’s Ghost showed you an image that didn’t seem possible to the rational mind (a glowing translucent ghost) by concealing the mechanics that would make such an image possible. But because the image was immediately flagged as impossible, your rational brain was easily able to step in and let you know that your eyes were deceiving you, even if your lizard brain prevented you from figuring out how. You didn’t really need to touch it to know it’s not real. The mirage, on the other hand, shows you an image that is immediately flagged as possible and is easily categorized by your lizard brain. It fits the familiar “objects sitting on surfaces” pattern that you encounter every day. Until you chose to interact with it, you didn’t even know you were being fooled. The sum of the effect fits so neatly into a simple category, you can’t stop putting it there even after you know you’re wrong.

That’s actually the beauty of these tricks (and why I can write this piece without being a spoilsport who’s ruining illusions for you). You lizard brain is so reliably persistent that knowing how the trick is done doesn’t stop the effect from working. With other tricks I could guide you away from the misdirection and point you toward the sleights of hand and little trap doors so you could feel smarter than everyone who’s fooled by it, but not here. These ghosts are all in your head.

A projection of a ghost (via Early Visual Media)

Elizabeth Harper is a lighting designer based in Los Angeles. Her past credits include Play Dead at the Geffen Playhouse directed and co-written by Teller.  When not designing lights she enjoys researching and documenting Catholic saints’ relics for her blog All the Saints You Should Know. She’s written and lectured on the subject for Atlas Obscura, Death Salon, and the Morbid Anatomy Library. 

Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

New York City hosts a number of magic shops, but only one can be the oldest. It is also perhaps the city's most hidden magic shop, as well as perhaps its most subdued magic shop.

Tannen's has been around since 1924, and has moved four times since then — its current space is a small room on the sixth floor of an unremarkable office building on busy 34th Street in Manhattan.

Tannen's, a room at the end of a hall in an unexciting office building

Because the space is so unassuming, Tannen's has a feel of being for serious magicians, though while I was there, the clientele was mostly young boys and their fathers. 

The shop may not a have lot of bells and whistles, but it does have some nice Houdini artifacts.

Keys used by Houdini, complete with certificates of authenticity

"Rankin Leg Irons" used by Houdini

A somewhat mundane letter from Houdini, in which he promises to send a book he has written, and discusses how he is sort of busy, but also not really.

Tannen's antique magic books, individually wrapped, so that budding magicians are not tempted to learn the secrets within without paying the price.

Trick Coins

Mysterious drawers, full of wonders

Wonders like, "Thumb Tips: Classic, Junior, Soft."

A drawer of wands; I was told by the clerk that these are the "cheap" ones...the nice ones are under a glass case and look remarkably like Harry Potter's.

In its heyday, Tannen's produced its own line of magic tricks, and held a yearly "Magic Jubilee" in which magicians were awarded Louis, named after Louis Tannen, the original owner. The current owner is on a mission to collect as much Tannen's memorabilia and products as he can find, and many years of Tannen's history is on display in the shop.

Tannen's Magic Jubilee Cards

Tannen's Magic Jubilee Medals and ribbons throughout the years

For more about Tannen's, there is a great piece over at Narratively on its history, and the aplomb with which the clerks there will demonstrate any trick the shop carries.

Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

Houdini in his crate escape trick, first performed in New York's East River (via New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Collection)

Harry Houdini arrived in New York City in 1886, an anonymous Budapest-born newcomer in the frenetic cityscape. By the time he died in 1926, however, he was the city's most thrilling performer, and the shadow of the great escape artist still remains.

It was while performing in Coney Island that he met his future wife Bess, in Flatbush where he recorded his voice on wax cylinders with Thomas Edison, and in 1917 he performed his straightjacket escape above a Times Square crowd while hanging upside down from a crane being employed to work on the subway. In the East River he survived his first crate escape, tossed in the currents between Manhattan and Brooklyn, and in 1926 he escaped from a coffin at the bottom of a pool in the Shelton Hotel on Lexington (now a Marriott Hotel). In 1918, he even made an elephant vanish at the New York Hippodrome. 

Yet more than a stage, New York was Houdini's home. Here are four places in New York City where you can still find the great magician manifested:

Home in Harlem
278 West 113th Street, Manhattan

Houdini's home in Harlem (in the center with the small balcony) (via Google Maps)

When Houdini hit it big in 1904, he bought a stately brownstone up in Harlem on 113th Street, where he would live until his 1926 death. The neighborhood at the time was mostly Jewish and German, and Houdini settled in by making his house into a place of respite and practice. An oversized bathtub was installed so that he could perfect his underwater escape tricks, and he kept a vast library of books on magic. 

While with the little balcony and unchanged façade you can still almost imagine Houdini stepping out from its doorway (on which a historic red plaque rests in honor of his residency), it is still a private home and its current owner reportedly isn't fond of the flood of visiting fans who arrive on Halloween, the anniversary of Houdini's death. However, you can appreciate the home from the street and imagine the escape artist within developing some new impossible escape. 

Houdini Museum
421 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan

Houdini Museum (via Houdini Museum & Fantasma Magic)

One place that is happy to welcome fans is the small Houdini Museum inside Roger Dreyer’s Fantasma magic shop across from Penn Station on Seventh Avenue. The museum opened in 2012 and is formed from Dreyer's private collection of Houdini memorabilia, with hundreds of items from vintage posters to straightjackets to handcuffs, and even the trunk in which he performed his "Metamorphosis" trick. The collection continues to expand, with recent acquisitions including Houdini's Escape Coffin from 1907, which he managed to free himself from in 66 minutes after it was banged shut with six inch nails. 

Machpelah Cemetery
Glendale, Queens

Houdini's headstone (photograph by the author)

Over in the quiet Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, you can find the final resting place of Houdini. The Jewish cemetery is part of the broad band of burial grounds that cuts across the borough, but you can easily spot Houdini's grave out at the front of the cemetery where a bust of the illusionist rests above a crest of the Society of American Magicians. A statue of a mourning woman presses herself to the monument. The headstone of Houdini at the front left of the family plot is usually covered with trinkets from visitors, including playing cards and other magic relics.

It's here that some still gather to await a return from the grave, believing that someday the greatest escape artist will break through the chains of death and communicate with the living. This has yet to happen, but it is true that he was buried in a coffin used in his performances where he did just that. 

Houdini's family plot (photograph by the author)

McSorley's Old Ale House
15 E 7th Street, Manhattan

Handcuffs in McSorley's - not Houdini's (photograph by Bee Collins)

Finally, while Houdini has yet to rise again in Queens, some believe he visits McSorley's Old Ale House in the East Village. Where this belief got started is not quite clear, although the legend long held that if you saw a cat in the window it meant Houdini was revisiting the bar in the afterlife (sadly, resident cat Minnie McSorley is no longer welcome in the bar due to the health department).

Specters aside, if you are drinking in the ale house, one of New York's oldest dating back to 1854, you may notice among the sawdust and cluttered curios some handcuffs attached to the bottom bar rail. Many sources cite these as Houdini's, although they are in fact at type made after his death. It's the older handcuffs hanging higher in the bar that are more likely to be from Houdini. Sure, it might seem a little wild for a drinking establishment to have such museum-worthy memorabilia, but this is McSorley's which has everything from a John Wilkes booth wanted poster to wishbones on a gas lamp said to have been left by young men departing for the Great War. Whether or not the ghost of Houdini has jangled his chains amid the din of drinking, you can likely find someone sitting near those bar rail handcuffs who would be happy to add some story to the legend.  

McSorley's (photograph by Jeff Rosen)

Minnie McSorley haunting the window in her glory days (photograph by Cayuga Outrigger)

 Houdini being lowered into the East River in 1912 (via Library of Congress)

Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

Joseph Wright, "The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the ancient chymical astrologers" (18th century), oil on canvas (via Derby Museums)

Alchemy is a discipline with ancient roots stretching back into some of the earliest chapters of history, with objectives in both the philosophical and physical worlds. Philosophically, alchemy looked toward the transformation of the self in pursuit of spiritual refinement, a crucial counterpart to the more practical endeavors of alchemy, with the belief that one could not perform the earthly transformations without first mastering the spiritual one.

The physical aspect of alchemy was focused on the transformation of elements, namely the conversion of one set of materials into higher materials of great power. One example was the transmutation of base metals into gold. However, in order to accomplish this feat, the alchemist needed to first discover the secret of creating the most sacred and sought after object in their field — the Philosopher's Stone.

The Philosopher's Stone, first described in Alexandrian and Arabian texts, was said to not only hold the power to create gold, but also granted the power of health and immortality. One anonymous early text stated: 

“all infirmities might be cured, human life prolonged to its utmost limits, and mankind preserved in health and strength of body and mind, clearness and vigour. All wounds are healed by it without difficulty, and it is the best and surest remedy against poisons”

Despite its name, the Philosopher's Stone may not have been a stone at all, with descriptions from alchemists varying wildly. Another early work states:

“It is called a stone not because it is like a stone, but only because by virtue of its fixed nature and that it resists the actions of fire as successfully as any stone.”

Sometimes referred to as a powder, its color descriptions include red, blue, white, yellow, or black with some reports even noting its taste and smell. 16th century Femish alchemist, chemist, and physician Jan Baptiste van Helmont described it as “yellow, the color of saffron, in the form of a heavy powder, with a brilliancy like glass,” while Renaissance alchemist, physician, and occultist Paracelsus favored the more common description of a solid, dark red, ruby-like object.

Remains of the Saint-Jacques church, viewed from the Rue Nicolas Flamel (via Wikimedia)

Among the few claims of success in creating the Philosopher's Stone is the story of Nicolas Flamel, a bookseller and scribe. Flamel was said to have been born in the Pontoise region of France in 1340 before moving to Paris, where he would sell books and manuscripts in a small shop behind the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. Flamel was already well versed in the Hermetic arts and filled his shelves with a variety of alchemical texts. One day a man came into his shop offering to sell him an ancient and unfamiliar book on alchemy. Flamel described the book as:

“a gilded book, very old and large, which cost me only two florins. It was not made of paper or parchment as other books are, but of admirable rinds, as it seemed to me, of young trees; the cover of it was brass, well bound, and graven all over with a strange sort of letters.”

The author was listed as “Abraham the Jew-Prince, Priest, Philosopher, Levite, Astrologer, and Philosopher,” and its pages were filled with unfamiliar language and symbols.

After twenty-one years of trying to crack the code and consulting scholars without success, Flamel decided to travel to Spain with several copied pages in hopes of finding someone who could understand the messages. Upon arriving in Leon, he found an elderly scholar who recognized the text as ancient Chaldean and asked to travel back with him to see the book himself. The scholar would die on the return trip, but not before translating several of the pages Flamel had brought on the journey.

Nicolas Flamel (via Skara kommun)

Three years later, Flamel claimed that he and his wife Pernelle were able to translate the remaining text and had accomplished transmutation, turning a half-pound of mercury first into silver and then into gold:

“Still following word for word the directions of my book, about five o'clock in the evening of the twenty-fifth day of the following April I made projection of the Red stone on the same amount of Mercury, still at my own house, Peronelle and no other with me, and it was duly transmuted into the same quantity of pure gold, much better than that of the ordinary metal, softer and more pliable. I speak in all truth. I have made it three times.”

Rather than keep the riches, Flamel donated it to charity and funded the construction of several schools, seven churches, and fourteen hospitals, with each location receiving plaques containing alchemical messages. Flamel would continue his study of alchemy and write many books on the subject. However, believing access to such easy wealth could ruin people, he hid the book and stopped creating gold, choosing to carry out his life as a scholar and philanthropist. Flamel died peacefully with records indicating his age at the time of death was between 80 to 114. He was buried at the end of the nave of the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie which was mostly demolished in 1793, with only the Saint-Jacques Tower remaining today. 

Auberge Nicolas Flamel (via Wikimedia)

It's fitting that a man who dedicated his life to transmutation should leave behind pieces of that life to be adapted, changed, and reimagined. The house where Flamel reportedly achieved the greatest success of practical alchemy is still standing in Paris at 51, rue de Montmorency. The structure was severely damaged after his death due to ransacking by the public hoping to find his alchemical secrets, but the surviving section has been converted to a restaurant called the Auberge Nicolas Flamel. Also surviving is his tombstone, which is preserved at the Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris. The tombstone was designed by Flamel himself before his death, and bears images of Saint Peter, Saint Paul, alchemical symbols, and an inscription detailing his charity work. A street was even named after Flamel, and other that intersects with it was named for his wife Pernelle. 

Along with lead being turned to gold, houses into restaurants, and tombstones into museum exhibits, the name of Nicolas Flamel has achieved a kind of immortality he could only dream of through the pages of the same items he once sold. 

Plaque on the home of Nicolas Flamel (via Wikimedia)

Tombstone of Nicolas Flamel (via Wikimedia)

Nicolas Flamel's "His Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures - His Secret Booke of the Blessed Stone called the Philosopher's" (via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)  

Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

Some practicing witches purport to be able to cure and transform people, or create favorable, or unfavorable, conditions. And these witches require supplies for their conjuring, and for this there are witchcraft markets. However, it’s not just people who claim a connection to witchcraft who have a need for candles, incense, herbs, oils, soaps, potions, and supplies for assisting the balance of a situation. Tourists, curiosity seekers, and the desperate also seek out these spiritual supply supercenters. At these four witchcraft markets from around the world, you can find almost anything for any purpose. 

BOLIVIA WITCH MARKET
Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Bolivia

photograph by Revolution_ferg/Flickr user

La Paz in Bolivia sits as one of the world’s highest capitals at 11,200 feet. On a cobblestone street, near the intricately designed church of Iglesia de San Francisco which melds indigenous and baroque art, indigenous culture flourishes at the witches market.

Anyone can come here to the Mercado de Brujas, seeking a potion for an ailment, a reading with a Kallawaya (a traditional healer from the Andes), or stroll through the stalls and pick out an item that will help you find a job or a lover. Colorful statues of Incan gods line the shops, as well as packets of incense, amulets, candles, and bottles filled with liquid for use in rituals which include dried herbs, alcohol, and sometimes the remains of animals. At the market, you can also find spell kits, small animal figurines, and even bags of dried coca leaves. When processed coca is formed into the psychoactive drug cocaine. In its unprocessed form, when chewed, coca leaves help alleviate headaches, stomach aches, and nausea.  

The market has been here for generations. Many of those who run these stalls are indigenous Ayamaras who believe that everything is alive and everything has a spirit. They believe that presenting offerings to the gods is essential to maintain balance and increase prosperity. For as low as $2, you can purchase a desiccated llama fetus, which then you’re instructed to bury on your property. This offering to the god Pachamama is said to bring good luck. For those who are wealthier, a witch can be hired who will sacrifice a llama in an elaborate ceremony on your soon-to-be property. 

photograph by psyberartist/Flickr user

photograph by Jimmy Harris

photograph by Mark Rowland

photograph by Josh Newman 

photograph by Revolution_Ferg/Flickr user

photograph by Revolution_Ferg/Flickr user

photograph by Revolution_Ferg/Flickr user

AKODESSEWA FETISH MARKET
Lomé, Togo

photograph by Dominik Schwarz

The Marché des Féticheurs, or Akodessewa Fetish Market, is located in Lomé, the capital of Togo. The market specializes in fetishes — objects imbued with divine power for purposes of healing and protection.

The outdoor, dusty market is lined with wooden tables where dried snake skins hang, and where hundreds of animal skulls, bones, horns, and various other remains are stacked. This place is where the desperate and the poor come for treatment. Where traditional medicine has failed, this place claims to offer another solution at healing, restoration, prosperity, and transformation. The practices here are ingrained in the system of Vodun, or Voodoo.

In Togo and neighboring Benin, a large portion of the population practices Voodoo. This is the region where the religion originated before spreading to parts of the Caribbean and South America during the slave trade. Tourists are welcome to look at the piles of heads and skulls that include dogs, gorillas, and chimpanzees. Other remains, such as elephant feet, gazelle horns, monkey paws, and turtle shells, can also be found here. Many of the heads still have their skin attached. Larger objects are used in rituals for house blessings. Proprietors claim that the animals were not killed for ritual, but come to them already deceased from other parts of Africa.

For personal treatments, a healer will consult with the gods onsite through a system of tossing cowry shells and reading them. Once a remedy has been determined, appropriate animal remains are burned and then ground together with herbs before being crushed into a fine black powder. Three cuts are traditionally made into the person’s chest or back, and the powder is then rubbed into the wound. For the squeamish, the powder can be applied to unbroken skin, or a statue can be purchased. 

photograph by jrwebbe/Flickr user

photograph by jrwebbe/Flickr user

photograph by jrwebbe/Flickr user

photograph by Julius Cruickshank

photograph by jrwebbe/Flickr user

MERCADO DE SONORA
Mexico City, Mexico

photograph by Robert Hemedes

In the 1950s, several public markets were established by the government of Mexico in order to help regulate retail. One of these markets included the Mercado de Sonora. The Mexico City market’s crowded building and its parking lot have been taken over by street vendors, as well the surrounding streets, adding to the intensity of the area that also draws loud music and large crowds.

The building, which hasn't been updated since it opened, is a collection of cramped stalls organized by product type, from housewares, toys, clothing, electronics, to even live animals, some of which are endangered, such as owls, peacocks, and black iguanas. What draws thousands here each year, including tourists, are the occult items that are sold in the back.

Articles such as statues, candles, and prayer cards, dedicated to Santa Muerte, the skeleton saint, can be found here. Talismans, amulets to ward off the evil eye, medicinal herbs, and various plants said to treat anything from the flu to cancer are also in stock. Incense, candles, soaps, and oils dedicated to finding love and keeping love tend to be top selling items. Merchants who specialize in both white and black magic do not discriminate, and will as easily help give you a ritual cleansing to drive away a curse as send a curse to someone on your behalf.

photograph by Laetitia Barbier

photograph by Laetitia Barbier

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

photograph by Robert Hemedes

MERCADO DE BRUJAS
Lima, Peru‎

photograph by Gwen Roolf 

Snake fat as an arthritic cure. Frog blended in a smoothie for anemia. A black figure candle of a man and woman with a stake driven between them meant to cause a break-up. Coca leaves for divination. These are just a few of the items that you can find at the Mercado de Brujas in Lima, Peru.

Many people who are familiar with Lima have never heard of the market. It’s hidden underneath the Gamarra Station. Once you have spotted vendors outside selling python skins, you have found the place. The focus here is on the traditional folk medicine that is widely practiced among not only indigenous groups, but also the greater society of Peru. Many of the mixtures sold here are part of indigenous family traditions that have been passed down for generations.

Most of the wares, including snake skins, sea shells, cactus leaves, and hatun hampi (a mixture of local dirt, rocks, seeds, and spices) are used in rituals. Also available are Huayruro hembra and el macho, which are black and red seeds found in the Amazon, said to bring good luck to their owner. Witch doctors and healers are also on hand to guide customers through appropriate treatments, or to offer a reading or healing ritual. 

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

photograph by Gwen Roolf

BOLIVIA WITCH MARKET, Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Bolivia

AKODESSEWA FETISH MARKET, Lomé, Togo

MERCADO DE SONORA, Mexico City, Mexico

MERCADO DE BRUJAS, Lima, Peru‎

 Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

A reproduction Kuman Thong sold as a souvenir at the Buddhist temple at Ayutthaya, Thailand (photograph by Greg Field)

We often grumble about security procedures at airports, whether it's the long lines or the random searches of our luggage. Occasionally though, I feel bad for airport security folks, simply because of the ridiculous contraband they unearth on a regular basis: armored anteaters disguised as fruit, drugs stashed inside breast implants, and the list goes on.

However, nothing compares to what some Thai police officers found stashed in a man's travel bag in May 2012 (warning: graphic pictures): six human fetuses that had been roasted and then carefully covered in gold leaf. 

28-year-old Chow Hok Kuen soon admitted to buying the small bodies for a touch more than $6,000, intending to resell them in Taiwan as good luck charms for at least six times the purchase price. There was only a brief media buzz about this grisly find, but these kuman thong (กุมารทอง, Thai for "golden boy") have a strange and persistent history in Thailand.  

Mural of Khun Phaen and his wife (photograph by Chris Baker)

The Thai occult tradition of kuman thong originated in 19th century poet Sunthon Phu's novel Khun Chang, Khun Phaen. In the story, Khun Phaen, a high-ranking soldier close to the king, earns the favor of a powerful sorcerer. The sorcerer takes such a liking to Khun Phaen that he offers his daughter in marriage. Unfortunately, some time after Khun Phaen learns of his wife's pregnancy, Khun Phaen and his father-in-law begin arguing so much that the sorcerer plots to have Khun Phaen killed. Khun Phaen discovers that his wife has been commanded by her father to poison him, and in a vengeful rage, Khun Phaen cuts his own child out of his wife. With the bloody fetus in hand, Khun Phaen builds a fire at a temple, placing the body on a grill after wrapping it in pieces of sacred cloth covered in prayers. While Khun Phaen chants prayers, the roasting soon reduces the fetus to a dried-out husk, with only paper-thin skin stretched over a skeleton. At the end of the ritual, the violently aborted child had become a ghost with whom Khun Phaen can speak and communicate, a sort of guardian spirit for his father.

Despite the fictional origins, belief in kuman thong took root in southern Thailand, with widespread belief that these protective ghost children could warn against any dangers that threatened a household. Ancient manuscripts detailed additional steps on how to make kuman thong, such as requiring the ritual to be completed before dawn in a cemetery and painting the dry-roasted baby with lacquer before applying gold leaf. 

Leonardo da Vinci's embryo illustrations (via Wikimedia)

While there are Thai laws against using human-derived products for consecrating kuman thong, occasional stories of more "authentic" charms (like the 2012 discovery) still arise, giving glimpses into the extent of the underground markets for these disturbing artifacts. In another high-profile case in 1995, a Buddhist novice named Samanen Han Raksachit was arrested after a video surfaced of him piercing, bleeding, roasting, chanting, and collecting the meaty drippings of a baby at Wat Nong Rakam in Saraburi province. He had been selling the fatty liquid as ya sane ("lust medicine") to monastery visitors. Raksachit was forced out of the monastery and arrested, but he did not serve any jail time.

Other reported cases of kuman thong involve people buying fetal corpses from illegal abortion clinics. In June 2010, 14 dead babies were uncovered in an abandoned rural home in Ubon Ratchathani province, and a former nurse was charged with illicitly selling the corpses for $30. Later that year in November, 348 aborted fetuses were found wrapped in putrid plastic bags at a Buddhist monastery at Wat Phai Ngoen, in the heart of Bangkok. They had been bought from five different illegal abortion clinics with the goal of sale to magicians and amulet dealers. Once the news broke, hundreds of people swarmed the monastery to chant for the deceased fetuses, and some even asked whether the corpses would be made available for ritual use. 

Khun Phaen & Khun Krai shrine in Kanchanaburi (photograph by Chris Baker)

Even today, one can find for sale at various temples small wooden statutes of a boy with his hair in a topknot, sitting with his hands in prayer. As the most innocuous form of kuman thong, some of the most valued effigies are carved from the wood of demolished Buddhist temples because it is believed that the building itself soaked up the sacredness from the monks who used to sit inside and chant prayers. Unfortunately, black magic still may be involved because it is believed that the most powerful charms are bathed in the extracted fat of a dead child or adult who died under violent circumstances. 

Caring for these statues has its own set of guidelines, requiring the owner to place it on a shelf and to offer it cups of milk and sweet drinks. Kuman thong are allegedly able to see and hear for a distance of 20,000 kilometers, giving ample protection to any household. Occasionally, however, the kuman thong are believed to be tricksters, with a particular fondness for teasing small children. When this happens, the owner is supposed to chastise the spirit by striking it lightly with a wooden rod while speaking to it in a stern tone. When someone is no longer able to care for a kuman thong in the proper fashion, he or she can dispose of it at a temple.

 Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

all photographs by the author unless indicated

There is a place in Siberia, cradled in the spurs of the rolling Khamar-Daban Mountains, that holds tenuously to the Tibetan calendar. It is Ivolginsky Datsan, a monastery that is the epicenter of Buddhism in Russia. The day I visit is the drukpa tse shi, the fourth day of the sixth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar, and thousands throng this place because it marks the Choekhor Duechen holiday. Few are here strictly to honor the Buddha Shakyamuni and the occasion of his first teachings, however. Most of the crowd, a mix of Buryats and ethnic Russians, are here to see the 12th Pandido Khambo Lama, a man who announced his passing in 1927, mediated into death, and has not decomposed since. His successor, the 24th Pandido Khambo Lama, decreed that his body would be displayed on major holidays, adding to a modern revival of religious interest.

The Ivolginsky Datsan sprawls out in a walled assemblage of rough huts, cabins, and yurts, all low and presided over by a constellation of ornate, multi-story Tibetan-style temples ringed with whitewashed stupas and banks of multifarious prayer wheels emitting a constant rattle and squeak. This curious mix of the vernacular and the high is staked on a wide plain of grassland and low scrub 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) west of Ulan Ude, the regional capital. We are here because of an invitation from Olga, clothes smuggler extraordinaire. She and her husband helped us cross the Mongolian/Russian border, and insisted we postpone our travel plans and visit the Khambo Lama on this one holy day.

The story of the undead Lama and his home at Ivolginsky begins, as with many stories in Asia, with a decree of Genghis Khan. The Mongolian empire under the Great Khan was highly tolerant of various religions, and relays of Muslims, Tengrist shamans, Buddhists, Nestorian and Catholic Christians, and Manichaeists, all sought to convert the royal family to their particular brand. The royal court in the early 13th century was thus a remarkable scene of religious debate, likely unheard of until the modern era. Catholic monks were given safe passage to cross the domains of the Khan, and sat in Karakorum with Islamic scholars and Buddhist lamas as they argued for the merits of their beliefs. Genghis remained an animist until his death, but his sons, family, and followers each gravitated to different religions. Indeed, when the Mongol hordes, heralded as the otherworldly spawn of Hell, eventually reached Europe and came into contact with Christendom, some part of the army was already Christian.

Genghis Khan's grandson, Prince Godan, had invaded Tibet in 1240 and learned of the particular brand of Buddhism practiced there. He invited the lamas to court, and eventually converted himself. The Yuan Dynasty that followed under Kublai continued a focus on Tibetan Buddhism, and long after the expulsion of the Mongols from China, the Yuan remnants to the north maintained a connection to Tibet. Altan Khan, one of the last Yuan-associated tribal chiefs, invited Tibetan Buddhists of the Gelup (“Yellow-Hat”) branch to Mongolia, eventually naming one of the envoys "Dalai Lama" and securing the connection between the two lands. By the end of the 17th century, nearly all Mongolians had converted, and the steppe and mountains were dotted with active monasteries, or datsans, filled with lamas teaching, preaching, and studying.

Hence, Mongolia today is largely Tibetan Buddhist. But, we were not in Mongolia; we were in Russia, land of Orthodoxy. In the West, our view of Russia is often of an ethnic and religious monolith, but in reality, the land of Rus has been multiethnic and multicultural from its beginning, when Viking traders began to rule the Slavic tribes north and west of the Black Sea. Today, a mosaic dominates in some regions, and in southern Siberia, a string of semi-autonomous federal subjects lines the Central and East Asian borders. Ivolginsky and the mummy are in Buryatia, the remote republic that encompasses the land between Lake Baikal and the Mongolia frontier, and in the 16th century, Buryatia was under the control of Altan Khan and the northern Yuan Dynasty. Tibetan Buddhism spread here just as it did farther south. The Buryats were originally conquered by Genghis Khan's son Jochi in 1206, but are close ethnic kin to the Mongolians south of the border. Olga, our erstwhile transporter, is Buryat, but lives in Mongolia with her Mongolian husband.

The Mongols were a steppe people, but the Mongol Buryats lived on the frontier of two of our planet’s great eco-regions — the steppe grasslands of Central Asia and the taiga forest of Siberia. These continent-sized biotic bands find their border here in the Khamar-Daban Mountains, just behind the Datsan, where open land gives way to larch-clad slopes. We stop in a yurt near the gate to make the expected small donation, buy imitation silk scarves, and convert some roubles into kopecks, the nearly worthless coins with which we will leave offerings. Inside the gate, paving stones lead to hammered paths and duckboards, and we join the procession in circumambulating the compound. Stands of prayer wheels are interspersed with grand temples, but as we move away from the gate, rough-cut new cabins and brightly painted huts abound. Yurts dot the melange, and saffron-robed khuvaraks — novices — walk together in faint amusement at the besieging pilgrims.

Firewood shrouds the lesser buildings. This is still Siberia, and with rich forests and Arctic winters, fuel is stockpiled for months in anticipation. We round one pile and slink along the side of the library, often the center of attention for the accredited onsite Buddhist university, but today staffed by two young boys and statues of protective demons. Printed on silk in the uchen Tibetan script, the rolls tell of pharmacology, theology, medicine, iconography, tantric devotion, and a hundred other topics. Red-trimmed glass cabinets cloud the eight-sided building. Another temple, grander than the last, holds monks in careful application of colored sand, building a tabletop mandala while people wash in one door and out the other. Outside, an oddity presents itself: a stucco and glass cube filled with vegetation. We are told, in proud declaration, that this northern outlier was grown from a cutting of the Bodhi Tree in India, and is housed in this stolid greenhouse to protect it during winter’s nine month hold.

A clash of cymbals and horn blows announce the beginning of the procession. Outside the low stick walls, monks and visitors gather and begin streaming around the compound amid bushes tied with strips of fabric and wandering animals. Brilliant sun lights the colors of the palanquin in which the 12th Pandido Khambo Lama is carried, on his way from his home in the palace temple Itigel Khambyn ordon, to the central Dzogchen Dugan.

This man was born in 1852 as Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, and began his studies at Annisky Datsan, eventually becoming a noted scholar and author. The Dalai Lama is chosen, but in Buryatia, the Khambo Lama is voted into his position, and in 1911, Itigilov was selected by the monks as the 12th Pandido Khambo Lama. He was suspected of being the reincarnation of the Lama Damba Dorja Zayayev, in part because Zayayev was born in 1702, lived for seventy-five years, and seventy-five years after that, Itigilov was born, also living to for seventy-five years.

Pandido Khambo Lama in life (via Wikimedia)

The 12th Pandido Khambo Lama lived in tumultuous times. Czar Nicholas II invited him to the 300-year anniversary celebration of the Romanov Dynasty, and allowed him to build the first Buddhist temple in Europe. Empress Elizabeth had recognized the "lamaists" of her realm in the 18th century, but under Itigilov, the Buryat religion gained stature as one of the faiths of the empire. At home, as leader of Russia’s Buddhists, he presided over a revival in interest and participation among Buryats before retiring at the close of Russia’s involvement in World War I in 1917. In 1927, he warned his fellow monks that the "Red Teaching" was coming and urged them to escape to Tibet while they still could. Few listened. Itigilov then asked them to chant the Prayer of Death over him as he meditated, but they refused. He left instructions that he should be buried immediately and in position, and then began chanting the prayer himself. He died shortly thereafter.

The monks buried him in a larch box in an unmarked grave, and he was nearly forgotten. His successors tried to head off the coming the destruction of the Bolsheviks by voluntarily converting some monasteries to collective farms, but it was no use. By the late 1930s, the Communist government had razed all 48 datsans in Buryatia, and disempowered the lamas before imprisoning or executing hundreds of them. Stalin, oddly, was a benefactor of Tibetan Buddhism in Buryatia in addition to being one of its great persecutors. During World War II, Buryat soldiers in the Red Army won more Hero of the Soviet Union medals than any other minority ethnic group, and in return, some say, Stalin allowed them to build a new datsan at Ivolginsky in 1946. The 14th Dalai Lama is quoted as saying:

“It was built when Stalin was at the height of his powers. I do not understand how this could happen, but this fact has helped me to realize that spirituality is so deeply rooted in the human mind, that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to uproot it.”

Despite the official sanction, life for Buddhists in the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was exceedingly difficult. Religion was all but banned, and the government in Moscow worked tirelessly to Russify the minorities on the periphery. Twice during the Communist era, Itigilov was exhumed as per his instructions, and in both cases the lamas were astonished to find him still in the lotus position and untouched by the corruption of death. He was reburied each time, and the few monks who knew where he was kept it a secret for fear that the undead lama would be destroyed like so many other symbols of the Buryat culture and religion.

Now at Ivolginsky Datsan, beyond the miniature Bodhi tree, the path winds back to the central plaza. The palaquin has entered the Dzogchen Dugan, or temple, and the masses are gathering for the viewing. Police in starched uniforms wander through the crowd, posing for a photo here and there, and rotating through the line that stands at attention on the carved and painted veranda of the temple, regulating the now-released flow. The crushing mass of supplicants wait patiently in their finest clothes, but the crowd is too numerous, and the barriers buckle from time to time. The fervor incites frustration, but in the moments after a tussle, all is smiles and compassion.

It is a religion in noticeable layers. The Paleosiberian and Mongolian belief structure in Buryatia was animist and based on a world of good and bad shamans serving as intermediaries with the spirit world. Buddhism came to Tibet and built a syncretic culture with the pre-existing Bon religion, and then came north to mix again with the nomadic beliefs of Buryatia. Finally, Russians arrived and exerted its own influence. On the bases of prayer wheels and the crimson sills below statues of the Buddha, gifts are scatters and piled in offering. Rice, Russian coins, tetrapacks of milk and yogurt, cardboard cartons of chocolate pastries from Ukraine, small knotted bits of wool or silk, and a handful of candies populate the shrines, telling of the people, Buryat and ethnic Russian, coming here today.

In 2002, on the 11th of September, Itigilov was exhumed for the last time. He had told his followers he would return seventy-five years after his death, and so he did. Amgalan Dabayev, an 88-year old Buddhist, still remembered the way to the gravesite. The 12th Pandido Khambo Lama’s body was, supposedly, still in the lotus position and still warm. His joints were flexible, and ski soft and supple. The monks from Ivolginsky dressed him in robes, and brought him back to the datsan, where he is today. Despite careful examination, he shows no trace of embalming. Victor Zvyagin, a Professor at the Federal Center of Forensic Medicine, claims he is like someone who died 36 hours ago.

The current Pandido Khambo Lama, Damba Ayusheyev, declared that his predecessor be displayed to help revitalize Buddhism among Buryats, and so, a few days a year on major holidays, he is carried to the main temple and receives the faithful. Itigilov’s grand-niece Vasilyeva told reporters: “There is a great moral crisis in Russia today. Itigilov’s return presents a great opportunity to help people believe.”

He wears a scarf around his neck that trails down over his saffron robes and out under the glass so the people streaming past can touch the fabric and seek his blessing. The columns around him are carved two stories up to the ceiling, dragons and demons dancing in bright colors. All around, silent Buddhas look out in ranks of different incarnations. We are told outside that the Dalai Lama claims he is still alive, meditating and waiting for the right moment to return. When Putin visited the datsan, he viewed the 12th Khambo Lama with the monks, but at the end of his visit, ducked in alone to have a few more words with him, skipping a photo event in the plaza.

Outside on the day of my visit, the wavering Siberian sun is glinting on the gold statues arranged on the roofline. Bright roe deer sit listening to the Buddha, statuary imitating the story of Buddha’s first students. The painted eaves and reflecting embellishment scatter vivid color into the muted mixed steppe forest of Buryatia. Thousands gather and stream clockwise, while outside the gates cotton candy is spun, Buryat wrestlers march round a rough milled wooden stadium, and the Soviet anthem, rendered now for the Federation, crackles on bleached loudspeakers. The archers have had their turn, and bare-chested men and boys with Chinese track pants line up to compete. A brooding thunderstorm on distant mountains mixes with chanted mantras and cymbals, adding to the atmosphere.

click to view full size

What animal has a horn that can reverse the deadly properties of poison, whose greatest weakness is a beautiful maiden? A unicorn, of course! But there's much more to the magical, mythical beast than that. From the real source of unicorn horns to their medieval symbolism, our infographic of Unicorn Facts collects some of the most fascinating truths and fictions about the one-horned legend. 

For even more on unicorns, check out the unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters in New York, as well as the tapestries at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, the Throne of Denmark supposedly made from unicorn horns, and a Unicorn Cave in Germany. 

View the high resolution of the Unicorn Facts infographic here. 

 Magic Week is February 24-28, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #MagicWeek), Facebook, & Tumblr.

The Parker Brothers version of the Ouija board (via Dave Winer) 

These days, the word “Ouija” conjures up shades of mysticism, Satanic panics, and teenage bedrooms. The origin of the term is supposedly lost in the sands of time, or created out of a compound of the German and French terms for “yes.” But ask Ouija board collector and historian Robert Murch for the real story of the board’s name, and he’ll tell you a different tale — one that connects the board to two intriguing women.

As one of the world’s most active Ouija board collectors and historians, Murch has been researching the history of the object since the early 1990s. Its origins are cloudy, he explains, rife with he-said-she-said squabbles and family feuds. But at least one part of the story seems clear. Two years ago, Murch discovered a 1919 article in the Baltimore American in which one of the board’s originators, Baltimore businessman Charles Kennard, states how the Ouija got its name.

In 1890, Kennard gathered a group of investors to capitalize on the “talking board,” which was born out of the Spiritualist movement and introduced to the wider world four years earlier. But the Kennard Novelty Company, as the fledgling business dubbed itself, had no name for its wooden board inscribed with letters, numbers, and the words “yes” and “no.” On April 25, 1890, Kennard was hanging out at a Baltimore boarding house with investor Elijah Bond and Bond’s sister-in-law, Helen Peters, when the group decided to ask the board what it wanted to be called.

Sketch of Helen Peters by her then-fiancé Ernest Nosworth (1890-91), & photo of her and Ernest (courtesy Bob Murch)

According to Murch, Helen Peters was a cultured, affluent woman who came from a society background. She was also, according to Bond’s letters, “a strong medium.” That night at the boarding house, the group waited with their fingers resting on the paddle-shaped planchette and watched as the board spelled out “o-u-i-j-a” in response to their query. When the group asked what “Ouija” meant, the board answered “good luck.” 

But there was something Peters wanted to share. According to Kennard, she drew a chain from her neck and showed the men a locket with an image of a woman and the word “Ouija” written below. Kennard asked Peters if she had been thinking of the locket during their session, and Peters said no. That was good enough for Kennard — the board had found its name.

Ouida, aka Maria Louise Ramée (via NYPL)

So who was the woman in the locket? Murch believes it may have been Maria Louise Ramée, who went by the pen name “Ouida,” and that Kennard simply misread the signature. Ramée was a British-born writer who penned dozens of overheated romance and adventure novels set in exotic locales, plus critical essays, animal stories, and books for children. Her books were best-sellers on both sides of the Atlantic; even Queen Victoria was a fan. According to The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature, in her later life she lived mostly in Italy, indulging in “an expensive and affected life with dogs and frequent hopeless infatuations.”  

Eccentric and ostentatious (she loved purple writing paper and Lord Byron), scorned by many male writers, but beloved by female readers, Ramée and her signature apparently became something of a talisman for forward-thinking women like Peters. As Murch put it: “In 1890, Ouida’s books were very important. It makes sense that Helen [Peters] would wear a locket with her name on it, because she was so educated and articulate.” 

And like Ouida herself, Peters was unconventional: she married late, and to a man significantly younger than herself. Murch says her important role has been written out of Ouija history. When Elijah Bond described his all-important meeting with the patent office in Washington in his letters, he refers to Peters simply as “a lady friend.” But it was this “lady friend” who demonstrated the board’s efficacy for the chief patent officer, supposedly leaving him white-faced and shaken. Were it not for Peters, the board wouldn’t have either its name or its patent. 

“For 20 years I researched the fathers of the Ouija board,” Murch said. “Turns out, it had a mother.” 

Elijah Bond's patent for the Ouija Board (via US Patents)

For more on the Ouija Board, visit the Maryland grave of its patent holder Elija Bond.

Robert Murch recently founded the Talking Board Historical Society, which is working on putting a headstone on Helen Peters’ unmarked grave in Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery, as well as marking the location where the Ouija Board was named. For more information, visit Murch’s website or Facebook page.

The Hollywood Sign has come to signify all that is glamorous in the movie-making business, but over nine decades ago, those hillside letters — made of telephone poles, corrugated sheet metal, and chicken wire — were merely an advertisement for the real estate development below: HOLLYWOODLAND.

The Hollywood Sign (photograph by Todd Eric Andrews)

To explore this unusual monument — a landmark that became permanent after several restoration efforts and fundraising campaigns — the Los Angeles Obscura Society first gathered down in the area that was once known as Hollywoodland, now Beachwood Canyon, where you can pass through the Old Hollywoodland Gate (built from granite that was mined locally) on your way to the sign. The area still contains prime real estate and architectural styles worth admiring, though now this neighborhood has all the advertising it could ever want (and more).

Meeting at the Old Hollywoodland Gate (photograph by Todd Eric Andrews)

Hollywoodland Realty Co. (photograph by Todd Eric Andrews)

We were accompanied on our journey up Mount Lee via the Hollyridge Trail by LA's resident Hollywoodland expert, Mary Mallory — author of Hollywoodland, frequent docent, and board member of Hollywood Heritage — who added lots of tidbits about various points of interest along the way. From the movies that have featured the Hollywood Sign, to the lore that surrounds it, to the sprawling estate that was planned but never built atop Mount Lee, our climb to this Griffith Park peak was not merely a hike, but a ramble through time and history and a version of Hollywood many of us had never seen before.

Group photo at the Hollyridge trailhead, our first photo opp with the Hollywood Sign (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Hiking Mt. Lee (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Hollywoodland expert Mary Mallory shares historic photos of the Hollywood Sign and surrounding area from her book (photograph by Todd Eric Andrews)

Taking in one of the many vista points along the way that provide a scenic view of the Los Angeles Basin (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Mallory shares more facts about the preservation of the Hollywood Sign and surrounding open space, including the recently-saved Cahuenga Peak (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Our destination: right behind the Hollywood Sign letters, high above Hollywood, with the downtown LA skyline in the distance (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Thanks to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, both the sign and the land next to it have been saved from demolition and private development (photograph Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Two happy hikers, peering down at the sign from the overlook above (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein/Avoiding Regret)

Despite it being clearly visible from many Los Angeles neighborhoods (though no longer at night, since it isn't lit by incandescent bulbs screwed into each letter anymore), the public path to it — to the closest spot you can legally get to it — isn't well-known, and is hidden in plain sight.

Perhaps more importantly, those that do know the way, and make the trek up Mount Lee to the sign, often have no idea about its controversial past, like that time the H was so damaged it read "OLLYWOOD," or that time a young budding actress named Peg Entwistle jumped to her death off the H, and how her spirit may still haunt it.

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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