Double Trouble

might sit in the Oval office. They relied on Lady Wonder. She was born in Richmond, Virginia, into and raised by Claudia Fonda, who took her in like a mother. Claudia fed her by bottle every day, using their time together to teach her new things. Lady Wonder Or spent most of her time working with Claudia, learning the letters of the alphabet with the help of children's blocks. But Lady

also loved children. She often played with them, letting them hide objects in the nearby pastures so that she could go over later and find them. And she did so every single time without fail. Except there was something strange about Lady For one, she was a horse, but that wasn't what set her apart from others. She stood out because she seemed to always know what someone was going to do right before they did it. For example, she would run toward Claudia just before getting the command to

do so. Eventually, Ladies started answering questions, things like basic math and general knowledge questions, except she didn't reply by stomping her hoofs like other horses. She spelled out her answers using the twenty six wooden letter blocks in her stable. News of the brilliant Horse got around, of course, and reporters started pouring in from all over the country to see her in action. Whenever Lady performed, she closed her

eyes and into a kind of trance. She'd solve an equation or spell answers to questions asked by the crowd. Then there were the more peculiar questions. She started answering things that no one horse or human should have been able to answer. For example, she once was able to spell out the date on a coin pulled from someone's

pocket without ever having laid eyes upon it. Another person moved the hands of a clock to six ten PM and held the clock face against Lady's side, they asked what time the clock was on, and the horse responded in her own way, six one zero. But as Lady grew larger, so did her ways of communicating. Soon the blocks were too small for her to manipulate with her snout, so her trainer had a special kind of horse sized typewriter made with keys big enough for Lady to push

with her nose. Whenever she pressed a letter down, the corresponding facsimile would pop up for the audience to see. When it seemed like Lady might just be a well trained horse, her trainer moved the letters around to confuse her,

but it never worked. The horse could answer basic questions and also predict outcomes of major events, and it wasn't long before the stories about Lady Wonder had reached Washington, d C. One senator in the nineteen fifties was notorious for ignoring his constituents until he asked Lady Wonder what he should do. She also successfully predicted the outcomes of several elections. Even the police had come to depend on her for answers. In Massachusetts, in ninety one, a young

boy went missing. Despite the police's best efforts, nothing turned up no evidence, no suspects, nothing, So the police asked Lady for help, and right away she plunked out the words Pittsfield water wheel. The police took that to me in a nearby place called pit Field wild Water pure enough. A search of that quarry led them to the boy's body. Lady Wonder even managed to convince a psychologist from New York, a man named Thomas Garrett, who was known for debunking

supposed clairvoyance and fortune tellers. His dog had gone missing, and kennel in Long Island claimed that the dog had died. Lady told him it was untrue and that his dog was still alive. After a brief investigation, it turned out that the kennel had faked the dog's death and sold it to a sister location in Florida. Thanks to Lady Wonder,

they were caught red handed. Paranormal researchers, magicians, and experts of all kinds performed countless tests on Lady to find the limits of her power, and what they found was complicated. She was capable of answering simple math equations, but more difficult problems stumped her. When they blindfolded her, all bets were off she got almost nothing right. What people like Duke University professor Joseph Banks Ryan finally figured out was that Lady Wonder wasn't so much a mind reader as

she was incredibly observant. She would watch her trainer at Claudia for clues to the answer. With the blindfold on, her human cheat sheet was gone, turning her into just another horse, however intelligent she might have been. That said, there were plenty of times when Lady Wonder really did live up to her name, when she was able to predict the outcomes of elections, sporting events, and the locations

of missing people. She might have been getting help on the basic questions, but even Claudia didn't know the answer to everything, and yet somehow Lady Wonder did. Clearly something was going on. What that something was, well, we'll never know, but we do know one thing. That's something. It was special. Emily had someone following her, but she never saw who. She was a teacher in the mid eighteen hundreds, and a good one. She was loved by her students, but

had trouble holding onto job. She allegedly held nineteen separate teaching positions over the course of sixteen years, but It wasn't due to a lack of skill or boredom. It was something more difficult to explain. Emily Sage was French born but taught at a private girls school in Russia. The kids seemed to like her well enough. She was patient and sweet and inviting, but there was something about her that confused some of the students, mainly that she

seemed to be everywhere at once. If one student went looking for her earn her classroom, she'd often be there at the same time another student would have eyes on her in another room in the school. At first, other students and teachers said the occasional coincidences were just tricks on the eyes, children seeing one thing and thinking it was something else. But the sightings kept happening. As the school year wore on, the incidents of Emily being in

two places at once grew more frequent. Then during class one day, her students saw the reason why Madam Zell Saggi was often seen in two rooms at the same time. She turned to write on the board when someone else suddenly appeared in the classroom. They stood next to Emily, wearing the same clothes as her. Their hair was tied up exactly the same way, and as the teacher moved her arm up and down the board, the other person

did the same. Although they weren't holding chalk or writing anything on the board, they were simply pantomiming the same movements. By all accounts, it was another Emily. Afterwards, school administrators talked to each member of the class, who all told the same story that an exact duplicate of their teacher appeared out of nowhere and started mimicking her actions. After the incident, another sighting happened when Emily was helping a

student into her dress for a garden party. The girl looked in the mirror to admire her dress, and standing beside her teacher was the doppelganger, again performing the same movements as Emily, with nothing in her hands. It seemed that once they'd seen her in the open, the second Emily had no qualms about showing herself as often as possible. She'd stand behind the real Emily at a meal and act like she was feeding herself, even though she wasn't

holding a fork or a plate. Other times, when the teacher would get up, the ghostly clone would stay behind in the chair. Perhaps the most bizarre sighting happened while students were gathered together to practice embroidery. Emily was outside picking flowers in the garden while another teacher watched the girls. Everyone could see her happily going about one of her favorite pastimes from the window. At some point, however, the teacher needed to attend to another matter and the students

were left alone. The empty seat where the teacher had been sitting didn't remain empty for long, though Emily appeared in the chair. The children looked out the window and saw the real Emily sa Ghee still picking flowers outside in clear view of the students. She looked tired now, like she'd just run a race. The doppelganger didn't move, though it sat looking straight ahead. Two students who had gone through this before decided to conduct an experiment with

the apparition. They both got out of their seats and approached her. One went to touch her and was able to pass her hand through her body, although with a slight effort, it felt like something was in the way, a dense fog or a thin fabric keeping the hand from moving smoothly through the other student managed to walk right through part of this other Emily before she faded away. The students caught up with the real Emily Sage afterward

and asked what had happened. She told them she had been upset at the other teacher leaving them alone and felt they needed someone to watch them while she was gone. Unfortunately, these strange occurrences add a negative effect on the school. Children who had gone home during Christmas or summer break periods often didn't come back. Eventually, the school had gone from forty two active students to only a dozen, and the reason for the drop was Emily Sage. The school

had no choice but to let her go. Her whereabouts after that went largely known, though one student did keep in touch with her. The student visited Emily at her sister in law's home while she was in between jobs, and the children of this sister in law like to tell their guests how they had to aunt. Emily's Emily Sage story sort of ends there. Despite the numerous witnesses to her bizarre phenomena, the tale of two teachers has changed considerably as it has been passed down through the years.

It wouldn't be a surprise to learn that many of her former students might have wanted to forget what they'd seen. After all, two teachers in one place is bad enough. Hopefully, though it didn't mean double the homework. 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. H