Down the Drain

of Scranton. Life was simple and maybe even idyllic, so it was hard for him to expect anything other than the ordinary. But that's the trouble with assuming, isn't it. One summer day ninety eight, a storm blew into the area. Not one of those gray clouds and rain sort of storms, but the kind that drift in low and black with a rumble that seems to shake the very earth you're standing on. You'll know one when you see it, because the clouds will resemble a cauldron of black, magic and chaos.

From the windows of his home there in town, John could see darkness descend in the middle of the day, punctuated every few moments by great flashes of lightning. To a god fearing man, it was a powerful display of God's majesty. To the people rushing to bring their kids inside and close their windows, it was just annoying. At some point during the storm, John stepped into the bathroom. He was standing in front of the sink when something caught his attention. Just outside the window was a ball

of light, roughly the size of a grapefruit. He later described the color as something like old sodium arc lights that lined so many streets in America, yellow, weak and flickering. A bit even before the sight of it fully registered with him, the ball of light was already moving. It slipped through the screen of his window and floated softly to his bathroom floor. After a brief pause, the ball began to roll around his feet in a circle and

spiraled up as it went. John panicked and stepped backwards, getting out of the light's way, and then watched as it reached the lip of the porcelain sink and fell inside. When he stepped closer to inspect it, the ball of light was gone, but it had left evidence of its passing. The metal chain that connected the rubber stopper to the sink had been melted clean through nothing else had been damaged, though I realized this is a difficult story to believe.

Most of the accounts I've read referred to the thing that floated into John's window as ball lightning, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow. It just gives the bizarre event a name. But it gets weirder than that, it turns out. A few weeks after his unusual bathroom experience, the Good Reverend was visited by another black summer storm.

Perhaps out of curiosity and maybe just because he needed to pee, John paid the bathroom yet another visit, and while he was in there, a ball lightning made its repeat visit. This one, he later claimed, circled his feet before bouncing to the edge of the bathtub, and then toppled in. When he glanced inside, he saw exactly what he'd been expecting. The rubber stopper had been severed from the tub, just as it had inside the sinc weeks before,

the metal chain laying in pieces around the drain. The ball of light, though it was nowhere to be found. I wish this was one of those objects we could capture and store in a glass jar, just like a collector might display a fine mineral specimen or a butterfly. But there's nothing left for us to hold onto. No flickering yell glow, no bouncing ball of light, nothing but a bizarre, unexplainable memory. The proof, according to John, went down the drain. On June, Joseph left his home in

Cambridge to take a walk through the local market. He was a theologian and scholar who taught at christ College right there in the city, and what better way to wrap up a long Tuesday spent inside than by going out for an early evening stroll. The market was full of vendors selling all sorts of necessities, meats and cheeses, bread and vegetables. All of it was fresh, and most of it smelled wonderful. All of it except the fish,

of course, That wasn't surprising though. What was surprising, however, was the crowd gathered around one of the fishmonger stalls. Much like you and I, Joseph was a curious person, so he veered off his intended path to go and see what had captured the attention of so many people. When he arrived and pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He found a woman holding a fish knife and standing in front of a recently decapitated fish.

It was a cod, which is a good sized fish if you've ever seen one, they're typically around forty inches long and way upwards of two hundred pounds. But the only thing fascinating about this dead fish was the bundle of cloth sitting beside it on the stall work table. The crowd was muttering excitedly, and from all the whispers, Joseph was able to piece together the story. This bundle,

it seems, had been found inside the fish. It was small, maybe four by six inches, and it was wrapped in slimy sailcloth, but it was a familiar shape to a scholar like Joe of Mead. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin and then offered it to the woman. She hesitated a moment and then completed the transaction. Back in his study, Joseph unwrapped the bundle and then caught his breath. Inside was a small book, handwritten and signed by a man named John Frith. Joseph recognized the

man's name. He had been a Protestant minister roughly a century earlier, but had been thrown in prison by the Inquisition for taking a stand against various Roman Catholic teachings. Frith spent eight months locked up in a group prison cell inside the Tower of London before being dragged out and burned at the stake as a heretic of the church. But he didn't waste that time. Instead, he managed to obtain paper and ink so he could write about his views on various topics. Most of those made it out

before his death. This book, though, seemed new. I don't have answers for you about how it ends it up wrapped in sailcloth, let alone, inside the belly of a large fish. Some sources claim that Frith was held for a short while in a fish seller in Oxford, but I can't find proof of that. He was arrested in London, jailed there, and executed there. How the book ended up someplace else is unknown. How it ended up inside a dead cod a century later, well, that one's a mystery.

We do know how it all ended, though. A year after Joseph unwrapped that slimy little package in his study in Cambridge, the book was finally published. The original cover featured an engraving of a fish, a knife, and a little book, and they gave it the most obvious title they could think of vox pieces, The Voice of the Fish. 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 Mankey 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.