The Great Beyond

is another side. Those who have lived long, fulfilling lives, however, might see death as the next frontier. After all they've seen and done it all over here. The idea of the unknowing might not seem so terrifying to them. But in the nineteen twenties, one man set out to prove the unprovable by doing the unthinkable. His name was Thomas Bradford, a professor in Detroit, Michigan. Bradford held a number of

jobs over the course of his life. He dabbled in acting, sports, and engineering, but later on he found himself swept up in the spiritualism movement that had captivated people during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was one of the many individuals who conducted and attended seances attempting to communicate with spirits from beyond the grave, an interest that no doubt, had been catalyzed by the loss of his wife sometime earlier.

As well. Spiritualism had taken off in the years following the Civil War, and although many so called mediums were nothing more than opportunistic fraudsters, the idea that the dead were never really gone proved comforting to those in mourning. Harry Houdini's wife, Bess, famously held a seance every year in the hopes of talking to her beloved husband one

more time, and yet he never showed up. And so it was natural for someone like Bradford to look at the griffs being carried out and do a little bit more digging. More than anything, he just wanted proof, proof that these spirits were really there somewhere, waiting to chat with their living loved ones. In other words, he wanted proof that there was an afterlife. To test this, Bradford came up with in experiments, one which required an assistant to help complete. He placed an ad in the local

newspaper seeking someone with a passion for spiritualistic science. He received a response from a woman named Ruth Dorin. Dorian was not a spiritualist, nor did she believe in the veracity of things like seances or automatic writing. She was reported as saying, I answered his advertisement through a simple desire to know more about a thing in which I was little versed. In a way, they were opposite sides of the same coin. Both Bradford and Dorian wanted the truth,

but they each had different motives. He wanted to believe the afterlife was real, whereas she was just hoping for a little more clarity on a subject that she knew nothing about. So Bradford explained his experiment to her. According to a note the police found on his typewriter after it was all over, it is through scientific facts that I proposed to demonstrate clearly the phenomena of spirits and prove that all the phenomena is outside the domain of

the supernatural. How he was able to prove the existence of a realm beyond the living, though well, he had to go there by taking his own life. He believed that once he reached the afterlife, he'd be able to communicate with these still alive. Dorian Bradford carried out his tests on February fifth of nineteen twenty one. After sealing his apartment, he turned on his heater and blew out the pilot light. The room filled with gas as Bradford laid down on his bed waiting for the inevitable. He

was only forty eight years old. The police soon discovered his body and questioned miss Doran about her involvement. She claimed that he had not explained exactly what he was going to do, only that he intended to prove that the dead and the living could communicate between realm, a fishy alibi given her involvement, but it was enough to satisfy the police, who ruled his death a suicide. She later told the press, I am his friend. If he can cause his spirit to come back to earth, I

believe his spirit will come to me. First hours passed without a word from Bradford, and over the following days a number of stories were published about what he had done to himself. It all ended with a fairly definitive article published in The New York Times on February eighth of nineteen twenty one, three days after the incident. The headline read dead spiritualist silent I guess he finally got his answer. Boxing is a strategic sport, one that requires

more than just strong arms and quick feet. It's about understanding Europe and knowing everything about them, from their strengths and weaknesses to their go to moves in the ring. Boxing is just as much about your mind as it is about your fists. Although every now and then a fighter can find themselves getting help without even knowing it. Could it be intervention from a higher power maybe, or maybe they can see what's going to happen on fight

nights before anybody else, like Sugar Ray Robinson. Robinson was actually born Walker Smith Junior in nineteen twenty one. His father had started out as a farmer before moving the family to Detroit, where he found jobs in construction and as a sewer worker. After his parents divorced, though, Smith and his mother moved to Harlem in New York City, where he had originally planned on becoming a doctor, but come high school, he quickly realized that his passions lived elsewhere.

He dropped out of school and started training as a boxer. He tried to compete in his first boxing tournament when he was only fourteen years old, but the Amateur Athletic Union required him to be a member first, a feat he'd be unable to accomplish for another two years. But Smith was resourceful. He borrowed the identity of another young boxer named Ray Robinson, who had given up the sport, and so from that point on, Walker Smith Junior became

known as Ray Robinson. The nickname Sugar Ray came about what a spectator was heard describing him as sweet as sugar, and it stuck. Robinson worked his way up, gaining a reputation as an unbeatable opponent. He fought and won forty matches before facing his first loss in a rematch against rival Jake Lamatta in the early nineteen forties. As a welterweight fighter, in nineteen forty six, he secured a record of seventy three wins and the title, which he successfully

defended several times over the next year. In nineteen forty seven, though Robinson would come face to face with an opponent he couldn't knock out. It wasn't another fighter. Maybe it was fear, or perhaps fate had laced up its own pair of gloves to take him on. Whatever it was it scared him enough to make him want out. Robinson was slated to fight old boxer named Jimmy Doyle. Doyle was a few years younger than Sugar Ray. His parents came from New Orleans before moving to Los Angeles, California,

in nineteen twenty one. This wasn't a regular match either. Robinson was defending his title once again and Doyle was ready to take it. But the night before the bout, Robinson was awakened by a dream, well more like a nightmare. He dreamt that he had knocked out Doyle, not an uncommon feat in the fighter's line of work. He had knocked out plenty of guys before, but this felt different. In the dream, Sugar Ray kept screaming at his unconscious

opponent to get up, Get up, Jimmy. He kept shouting, but the rival boxer wouldn't budge, and then Robinson woke up to him. It was more than a dream. It was a premonition that he wouldn't just beat Jimmy Doyle. He believed that he was going to kill him. Robinson told the promoters the next morning that he didn't want to go through with the fight, but they assured him that he had nothing to worry about. It had just

been a dream, nothing more. He even spoke to a Catholic priest who also told him everything would be fine. That was enough to put Robinson's fears to bed. On June twenty fourth of nineteen forty seven, Sugar Ray, Robinson, and Jimmy Doyle entered the ring. They punched and jabbed for seven rounds until the eighth, when Robinson scored a left hook that sent Doyle to the mat. He hit the canvas hard and lost consciousness before being taken to

a local hospital. Doyle sadly never woke up. Hours after being admitted, he was pronounced dead. It was the first death of a boxer during a title fight, and it shook Robinson to his core. Distraught over what had transpired, Sugar Ray set up a trust fund for Doyle's parents, which he paid fifty dollars into every month for the next ten years. Robinson went on to become one of the most famous and well respected boxers in the sport's history, but he would be haunted by the death of Jimmy

Doyle his entire life. It had been a dream come true in the worst way possible. 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 Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.