Overboard

Published Jul 12, 2018, 9:00 AM

Today's tour of the Cabinet reveals the story of one man who can't seem to escape his destiny, while another tale is full of nothing but escapes.

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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Charlie grew up with an eye for the other world. As a child, his favorite nanny would entertain him for hours with eerie, dramatic tales of ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night. And these stories left their mark on him, a mark that would be visible for the rest of his life. Later on, as an adult, he would profess no interest in the supernatural world, and yet those ghosts seemed to follow him around and haunt him. Once, on New Year's Eve in eighteen sixty three, he came face to face with those forces during a game with his children. They had built an elaborate set of wooden rods in black fabric, but something about it troubled Charlie. A few days before, he had been at the funeral of a dear friend, and maybe it was all that black cloth or the shape of the shadows on the wall, but something about that game reminded him of that somber gathering. Then again, perhaps Charlie was ignoring the spirit world he had grown up so aware of, because the following month, terrible news reached his home. Charlie's son, Walter, it seems, had passed away while serving with the British military and India. It had taken a long while for the news to reach him. Though the date of his son's death was New Year's Eve eighteen sixty three, there were other moments that brought the world beyond the veil a little closer to Charlie's life. Once, in eighteen fifty one, he stood nearby as his father was operated on to remove kidney stones. The procedure failed, and Charlie's father died soon after. A short while later, Charlie awoke in the middle of the night and swore he saw the figure of his father sitting at the foot of his bed. He once claimed that the spirit of his wife's sister, a woman he had loved deeply before she died at a young age, actually followed him around for a while. Charlie claimed that she would be fully visible to him, but no one else could see or hear her. The spirit world, it seems, was a tricky realm. Few had the experiences that Charlie claimed, and while he might not have sought it out, he seems to have had an open mind about it all. It's true Charlie did grow out of his passion for the other world, but the spirits never really gave up on him. His adulthood was filled with great success and punctuated from time to time with these ghostly moments. From what I can tell, they did much to influence everything he went on to create. Charlie was a writer, you see, and a writer who frequently allowed ghost story used to slip into his creations. While he's mostly known for the tales without them, he wrote at least twenty ghostly tales during his six decades behind the desk, and we're grateful for all of them because Charlie's ability to see through the veil and into the world beyond our own has brought us wonderful moments of entertainment that are still with us over a century and a half later. Just who was this writer born with a knack for seeing the things that most of us are completely blind to. He was a literary giant, a champion of serial publication, and the creator of some of the most beloved characters in English literature. Without him, we wouldn't have one of the most famous ghosts of all, the Ghost of Christmas Past. Let's all be thankful that Charles Dickens had an open mind. There's a narrow strip of sea off the coast of Wales called the Manet Straight. It cuts through the land there, separating the mainland from the island of Anglesey. Thanks to the way the tides flow through the straight, shipwrecks are much more common there than other areas along the coast, and shipwrecks have a way of leaving debris for us to find, like wood and cloth and stories. In December of sixteen sixty four, a large boat containing eight one passengers was crossing the Straight when the tide rushed in and capsized them. Out of the entire list of passengers, only one person managed to survive and swim to shore, a man named Hugh Williams. Over twenty years later, another boat was crossing the straight, this time with sixty people on board. It was December, again, a season known for its bad weather, so it shouldn't surprise us that a storm blew in and capsized this boat as well. Everyone on the ship perished in that accident, everyone that is, except one man. His name was Hugh Williams. Thirty five years later, in eighteen twenty, a third boat capsized while crossing the Strait. According to the reports, there were twenty five people on board, and all but one of them died. I'm wondering if you can guess his name at this point. That's right, Hugh Williams. It's one of those stories that makes you scratch your head. How can three shipwrecks happen over the span of a century and a half in the very same location, and each of them have a single survivor who share the same name. It's too good to be true in a sense, poetic and coincidental, and seemingly scripted by fate herself. But there are good reasons why we shouldn't be surprised. For one, the Strait is infamous for the number of shipwrecks that occur there, and that means between sixteen sixty four and eighteen twenty there were a lot more accidents than just the three involving Hugh Williams. Dozens of ships went down in those waters, perhaps hundreds, making the coincidence a bit less odd. Yes, it's odd that there was only one survivor in each of these tales, but that's not uncommon either. In fact, another boat sank in the same place in eighteen forty two, taking fourteen souls with it and leaving one man alive. His name, though, was Richard Thomas, not Hugh Williams. It might also be helpful to know that the name Hugh Williams was incredibly common in Wales. Is it extraordinary so many of the soul survivors shared the same name, Sure, but it's not the work of something supernatural, just the laws of probability working in their favor. Sometimes people survive, and given enough instances, common names are going to appear on the list more often. The story changed a century or so later. Time has a way of doing that, of course. On light tenth of nineteen forty, while cruising through the Straight, a fishing boat struck a German mind the detonation toward the ship apart, taking the lives of everyone on board. Everyone that is, except for two men, not one, but two. The older of the pair was named Hugh Williams, as you were probably guessing. But it's the other name, the man's nephew. In fact, that should surprise you, his name was also Hugh Williams. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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