The Rumor Mill

Published Oct 2, 2018, 9:00 AM

Pay attention during your tour of the Cabinet today, because things aren't always what they appear to be.

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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. Cities are proof that the sky is the limit. Soaring towers, crowded streets, people shuffling from one thing to the next, and those miraculous feats of engineering and artistry. Cities are organic and constantly changing, and yet they're anchored in our minds and hearts by their landmarks. Imagine New York without the Empire State Building, or Paris without the Eiffel Tower. They wouldn't just look different, it would look like they didn't exist at all. Now, imagine a city rich in history and culture, home to author politicians and titans of industry. This one, in particular, is located in northwest Germany, a little over one hundred miles from Dusseldorf. It was founded in the early twelve hundreds and for a very long time was known as the city of Linden. In fact, it once produced so much of the fabric that in the nineteen twenties it started issuing Linen currency as well as notes made of velvet and silk. This, my friends, is Bilafeld. It's a city much like any other. It boasts a university and serves as headquarters for a number of companies, including food, plastics, textiles, and home appliance manufacturers. Bethel Institution, a hospital for the mentally ill, was built in eighteen sixty seven and protected patients from Nazi forces during World War Two, a time when Hitler had ordered the executions of all mentally ill people across Europe. There's a local theater, several Gothic churches, an art museum, a concert hall, of a anicle garden, and even a football team. And if you've made it this far, you'll notice something interesting about bi Lafeld. Nothing, even though its citizens might think differently. There's nothing particularly special about Bilafeld, at least when compared to other cities just like it around the world, which is what makes one particular claim so bizarre. You see in the dial up days of the Internet, the mid nineties, online forums where where people gathered to gossip, joke, and talk politics before social media took over our lives. In one such forum, German computer science student named Akim Held posited that Bila Feld Gibt s Nickt. As with many languages, such a sentiment has multiple meanings. It could mean Bila Feld is empty, as in there's nothing to do or see. But it's the other meaning that went viral. Long before the idea of going viral was even a thing, Bila Felt they say doesn't exist. According to Akam Held, the city's existence was a hoax carried out by a clandestine organization known as Them, and anyone who said otherwise was part of the conspiracy. Of course, he knew his claim wasn't real. It was an experiment, but as we've learned from stories of undead monsters and multiple personalities, experiments can take on a life of their own. From there, the joke spiraled into full blown conspiracy theory, including references to the Illuminati. One good example would be the focus on the number twenty three. Bila Feld's city hall sits at twenty three meter wall and its area code zero five seven zero zero zero adds up to the number twenty three. As the concepts of memes and online folk tales take off in the mid two thousands, so two did this bizarre theory. In two thousand and fourteen, Bila Feld Mayor Pitt Clausen used the conspiracy as a way to increase tourism for the city's eight versary. German Chancellor Angela Merkel once attended a town hall meeting there, later adding as a joke if it even exists. Bilafeld certainly does exist, but some people still resist the idea. If you claim to have been there or know someone who has, you might get labeled as one of them. And while some may see this tale as a harmless prank, it's also slightly disturbing. One offhanded comment can wipe a city off the map in our minds at least. It's crazy to think that a joke like this could ever be taken seriously, but it raced around the web for years. Finally, fed up with all the lies and rumors, the city decided to issue an official press release. In it, they assured everyone that yes, the city does in fact exist. There was just one small problem with their efforts to dispel the rumors. The date they chose to publish their announcement just happened to be the first April, otherwise known as April Fool's Day. A lifeless body beside bloody knife, A woman in her living room, dangling by her neck from a clothesline. A man slumped over the door of his convertible in his garage. At first glance, some of these deaths might seem like suicides or accidents. Not so. There are three of twenty unsolved murders, each with a different motive but connected by one common thread. A woman named Fanny born in Chicago in seventy eight. Fanny led a traditional, sheltered nineteenth century life. Her father was a successful farm equipment manufacturer who expected his family to adhere to the strict gender norms of the time. Men, he said, should go to college and then get jobs to support their wives, who were meant to stay at home with the children. Fanny and her brother were homeschooled and both dreamed of attending Harvard. However, only her brother was allowed to go, which was disappointing because Fanny had dreams of her own, the kinds of dreams she couldn't share with anyone else, and no way of fulfilling them while she still lived in her father's home. Respecting his wishes, she instead got married at the age of nineteen. The marriage was perfectly fine for a while. They had three children and Fanny seemed satisfied, but deep down she never forgot about her dreams. Eventually, they proved too powerful to hold back, driving her to divorce her husband in order to make them all come true, something that was unheard of at the time. Fanny, now in her forties, used the inheritance from her late father and her recently deceased brother to pursue a passion that she'd repressed for far too long murder, specifically the homicide cases described to her by one of her brother's college classmates. With his help and her new found wealth, she created a new department at Harvard, the Department of Legal Medicine. She also helped set up a library named in his honor, as well as a curriculum known today as the Harvard Seminars in Homicide Investigation. Of course, Fanny did all of this in the nineteen forties, so it should come as no surprise that she was often discouraged from visiting crime scenes. Instead, she decided to create her own. It was the perfect cover, really inserting herself into the growing world of murder investigation to better understand how to study and teach it. Throughout the second half of her life, Fanny went from housewife to homicidal architect. She carried out elaborate murders, mostly of women who had strayed from the safety of their domestic lives. She then used her crimes to educate others on best practices in analyzing crime scenes. Her technique required the students to employ a geometric search pattern, such as a clockwise spiral when examining the crime scene. Scanning from one side of the room to the next, in a three hundred sixty degree fashion, students would get an idea of how her murders had been committed. Despite her grisly actions, Fanny's work earned her numerous accolades, and she was even made an honorary captain in the New Hampshire State Police, making her the first female police captain in the United States. As I said at the beginning, her crimes remain unsolved. You might be asking yourself, if we know who Fanny was and what she did, why would her murders still be unsolved today. The answer is a lot more simple than you'd imagine. They never happened. You see, while her crimes were based on real cases, they were actually completed as highly detailed dioramas. Today they're known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Each scene is like a room from a grotesque dollhouse, articulously researched and recreated in order to teach detectives how to look for clues. And Fanny, known throughout law enforcement as Francis Glesner Lee, is the pioneer who made it all possible. In fact, eighteen of the twenty that she created are still in use today by Maryland's Medical Examiner's Office, who also keep their solutions hidden from the public. The old cliche reminds us that the best way to learn is to do. Let's all be grateful that Fanny didn't take that piece of advice too far. 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 and show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. H

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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