Ghost in the Machine

Eastman Kodak Company. From then on, photographers of all kinds, from amateurs to professionals, were able to capture special events and daily life with the press of a button. However, speed wasn't everything. There was something about those old cameras, the way that they could capture the truth of a moment. One photographer used her camera to capture more than a moment, though she managed to snap a picture of something entirely unexpected.

In eight Wellington Henry Stapleton Cotton, also known as Lord Combermere, was killed while visiting London. He had been injured in a horse drawn carriage accident, and weeks after the incident, a blood clot in his heart resulted in cardiac arrest. Four days later. He was laid to rest in the town of Wrenbury in Cheshire, County England. His wife's sister, Sybil Corbett, had been staying with them for a short time when he passed away. She joined Lady Combermere at

the funeral, providing support for her grieving sister. However, before she left the house, she set up a camera in the abbey library. It was an older camera, unlike the small point and shoot camera's Eastman Kodak was producing back in the United States, it required any subjects sitting in front of it to remain completely still for the duration of the photograph. Miss Corbett decided to avoid the hassle of a fidgety subject and let the camera capture the

empty library. Almost no one was in the house. Staff were either attending the funeral or relegated to their quarters until the family had returned from the cemetery. The cameras shutter remained open for an hour. When Miss Corbett returned to the abbey, she packed it up and stowed it until she was able to have the photographic clay inside developed. Eight months later, she got her chance, and upon examining the photos she had taken, noticed something odd about the

picture of the library. For one, the light from the windows had blown out much of the left side of the shot, casting a blinding glow across the bookshelves and some of the furniture. And seated in the chair in the foreground was a person, well not a whole person. He was transparent, almost a blur. The visage wore a high collared shirt and black cloak. His hair was white, and he had a beard his Corbett showed the photo to her sister, who confirmed that it was, in fact

the late Lord Combermere. Corbett couldn't believe it. She went back to check the date the photograph had been taken and was shocked to find that as the camera was capturing the ghostly image of Lord Combermere, everyone else was attending his funeral. Very few people within the family knew about the picture, and for several years things stayed that way. Then in a secret society of paranormal researchers known as the Society for Psychical Research published a journal detailing Ms.

Corbett's fantastic photo. It turns out a friend of hers had contacted them about looking into whether Lady combamere sister had in fact captured a ghost on film. The plate she'd used to take the photo had been prepackaged and had not been exposed prior to the day's events. She had also only ever taken pictures of landscapes and buildings, both subjects devoid of people. The obvious answer, then, was that someone in the house had taken a brief rest

in the chair before getting up again. However, the person sitting in the chair did not resemble any of the men who might have been in the house at the time. There was something else, though, too. While the top half of Lord Combermere's ghost was visible in the photograph, his legs were not. They weren't hidden behind anything. They simply weren't present, which made sense given his condition. Just before he died, the horse drawn carriage that had injured him

had also crushed his legs. A relative who attended him before his death claimed to a reporter at the time that his legs had been so badly damaged he would never walk again. Perhaps that's why he needed to sit in the first place. Evil's origins are nebulous. The debates over nature versus nurture whether a person is made evil or born That way has raged on since the beginning of time. For some, their environment and youth shapes who they become as an adult, where others it's as though

the darkness is a part of from birth. One man, however, was so terrible he was considered the first in a new breed of evil. His story had been told to William Danwberg by a local monk who had witnessed the event's firsthand. William was a medieval chronicler in England during the twelfth century, and the monk had lived near an antis castle where the events had taken place. A man who had performed terrible deeds in York had fled to

the castle to hide. The lord of the castle welcomed him in, providing him shelter from the people chasing him. When the heat died down, the man ventured into town, eventually finding a woman with whom he could settle down and start a new life. But there was trouble in paradise. Rumors had begun to circulate about the wife that she'd been seeing another man behind her husband's back. Determined to get to the bottom of things, the man told his wife that he'd be leaving for a trip and would

be gone for several days. Once he was gone, however, the truth about his wife was finally revealed. As she welcomed her lover into their home. Her husband saw the whole thing. He'd snuck back into the house and hid among the rafters in the bedroom waiting. He was furious about the revelation, and in his rage, he lost his footing he fell off a beam and landed hard beside

the bed. His wife's lover ran out while she hurried to her husband's aid, telling him he must have bumped his head rather hard as there had been no one else in the house. Whatever he thought he'd seen must have been a hallucination from the fall. But the man actually had hurt himself quite badly, and he was ordered to strict bed rest until he was healed. The monk went to visit him. He had heard the stories of

what the man had done in his previous life. He urged him to confess his sins and take holy communions so that he would be free of spiritual burden if his condition took a turn for the worse. The man, though, couldn't be bothered with the monk's request. He knew what he had seen, and no amount of misdirection could make him forget his wife had been with another man in their bed, and he couldn't rest until he had gotten justice.

He told the monk he'd consider his request the following day, but as the old saying goes, don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. The man's condition did, in fact worsen, and during the nights he passed away. Despite not confessing his sins or taking the Eucharist, the man was given a Christian burial, and perhaps that's where the monk's plan had gone wrong. A man with as much unquenched evil coursing through his veins could not be

stopped by such a ceremonial end. The nights after his burial he rose from the dead. He wandered all over town with a pack of barking dogs in tow, exacting vengeance on anyone in his path. Villagers refused to go out at night for fear of being attacked. Everyone locked their doors at night. Each evening he emerged, his rotting corpse growing worse. Its stench caried with it a cloud of death and decay that killed those who got too close.

Many who survived moved far away, leaving those who chose to stay to deal with the undead monster tormenting their town. The monk held gathering of other religious men from all over Europe to help him deal with it. However, some in the town couldn't wait any longer. The problem had to be dealt with immediately, so while the religious men ate and brainstormed, two brothers took matters into their own hands.

Their father had died after coming in contact with the walking corpse, and they didn't want anyone else meeting a similar fate. Shovels in hand, they went to the cemetery where the man had been buried. It didn't take them long to dig him up. He hadn't been buried as deeply as they had expected, and he didn't look the way a dead body was supposed to look. Rather than a rotting husk of dried skin and bones, he was instead filled with blood. The shroud he had been buried

with was ripped up as well. Something was odd about the ave. It had been disturbed from the inside. The brothers stabbed the corpse, the blood inside oozed all over. They hauled the body out of the grave and took it just outside of town, where they built a funeral pyre To finish it off once and for all. The brothers beat the body repeatedly with the shovel, before ripping its heart out and tossing the body and the hearts

on the fire. Once the corps had been reduced to ash, the two men told the monk and his companions at the church of what they had done. The monster was gone. No one else died from the evil man's poisonous clouds after that, but something else had emerged that night. It wouldn't be given a name for another five hundred years or so, but the Monk's story had given birth to a legend as immortal as the man it was based on. The monk and the townsfolk had faced off against what

is widely considered to be the first known vampire. I hope you've been joined 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. Yeah,