True Genius

In fact, his works were likened to Chaucer, but his influences extended over a wide range of authors from his time. His beginnings hadn't been as extraordinary though. Fifteen weeks after Raleigh's birth, his father sadly passed away. His mother did her best to raise him and instilled in him the benefit it's of a good education with a focus on the arts. His father had also been a poet, so it only seemed fitting that Raleigh would join in the

family business. But Thomas was more interested in his uncle's background, specifically with regard to the church and the family history within. He spent his time studying the tombs and examining the furniture as well as pouring over the centuries of documentation preserved in the records room. From the very beginning, Thomas Raleigh was obsessed with legacy, his families and his own.

He wanted people to know his name. Yet, despite his outward nature, he was very quiet and closed off from others. He spent much of his time with his nose in a book or staring into space for hours on end, lost in his own mind. As he got older, though, his mother fed his curiosity by inundating him with books of all kinds. Eventually he realized reading alone would not quench the desire burning within him. It was time for

him to write books of his own. He started with religious poems he had published in a local paper called The Bristol Journal. Within the church's attic, he set himself up with towers of books and papers pilfered from the records room. He referred to his little corner of the world as his study, and it was where he did much of his writing and reading. Raleigh also made friends with local book collectors who possessed the volumes he wanted

to study. The more he read, the more he learned, hoping to one day find a wealthy patron who had fund his art and help him elevate his mother out of poverty. There were a few other people of means who offered to help with the bill for the young Mr Raleigh, but their checks eventually ran out as they discovered the work he was producing was not as successful as they'd hoped. Raleigh then pivoted. He stopped writing poems and put his pen to more serious topics like politics.

Using a pseudonym, he wrote devastating letters against dukes, earls, and even princes in an effort to get recognition and a little money or his work. The letters proved more lucrative than the poems, but he was amitted to Bristol. He knew he had to go somewhere larger to find greater success. He made some money in London, contributing to publications like Hamilton's Town and Country magazine, but it was

barely enough to get by. He sent what he made back home to his mother in the form of gifts, all while networking with other authors in the city for a leg up, and he wrote. He wrote all kinds of things, from prose to poems, to biting satire and even operas, and though he was paid for it. It was a pittance, not nearly enough to live on. He went days without food, but his pride prevented him from taking up his neighbors on their generosity and the pieces

that he had made decent money writing. The letters and satirical essays were now rendered effectively illegal due to recent prosecutions in the press. Unable to provide for himself or his family any longer, Mr Raleigh destroyed his remaining works and tragically took his own life. It wasn't until after his death, though, when people learned the truth about Thomas Raleigh. He didn't actually exist. His real name had been Thomas Chatterton.

He had been born in seventeen fifty two in Bristol, and his father had died fifteen weeks after he was born. Almost everything you've heard about his life was true, although he wasn't a monk and he didn't live during the fifteenth century. Raleigh had been a persona away for the teenage Chatterton to have his work published. He was an expert forger, having written dozens of medieval poems and selling them as real historical artifacts to unwitting journalists and collectors.

He could mimic the writing styles of countless authors in a variety of mediums such as poems and essays. He hadn't plagiarized anyone. All of his pieces, including the full length manuscripts he had painstakingly aged over a lit candle, had been conjured from his own mind. He'd only been seventeen when he had done it, but he couldn't tell anyone. His lack of money and the notion of never be being recognized for his talents were what contributed to his downfall,

and the world was worse off for his loss. It wasn't until many years after his death, when scholars and authors were debating the merits of Chatterton's work, that he was finally recognized. He was immortalized in poems by the likes of Shelley, Wordsworth, cool Ridge and Keats, as well as plays and operas. Artists painted portraits of him which now hang in museums all over Britain, and Chatterton's own

poems have been adapted into songs and stories. Thomas Chatterton produced an incredible library of work during his tragically short life, though he wasn't able to tell anyone at the time. His legacy has been preserved so that generations to come can see how one person with boundless talent managed to fool the world all before he was old enough to drink. Paradolia.

It's something that we've all experienced, even if the word is unfamiliar to us, every time we see a shape in the clouds or a face comprised of the knots of a piece of wood. We experienced paradolia. In Clearwater, Florida, in the mid nineteen nineties, the image of the Virgin Mary appeared in the glass on the outside of an office building. What many considered an act of divinity was eventually revealed to be the result of water deposits on

the weathered glass. The Biblical Jesus has also made appearances in everyday objects, such as cheetos, rocks, and even tortillas. Now whether these were truly spiritual acts or not is up for debate, and I will leave that to you to decide. But for one Spanish woman in nineteen seventy one, the paradolia she faced was real, But it wasn't Jesus

or Mary that she saw. It was something so much worse. Maria, her husband, and their son lived in Belmez, a small village in the coastal community of on the Lucia, Spain. Maria had been in her kitchen when she spotted a stain on the floor. Thinking that something had been spilled, or perhaps been tracked into the house by her son, she grabbed a scrub brush and started removing the stain,

except she couldn't. It wouldn't come up. The stain grew bigger as time passed, and Maria noticed something else about it as well. It was changing. In fact, it was shifting into much more than just a stain. It had the appearance of a face, and Maria knew she had to get rid of it. She tried to scrub it away again, but did more harm to the floor than to the stain, which wouldn't budge her. Husband, Juan had a better idea. He and their son grabbed a pick

axe and started ripping up the floor. Once the whole thing was in pieces, wand cleared out the debris and poured a new floor from cement. Soon it dried and Maria was able to resume her life without the stain watching her from below. But then it came back. The problem with the small village is that once one person knows something, it isn't long before everyone else knows about it too. News of Maria's floor spread far and wide, with a mayor himself stepping in to make sure nothing

happened to it. Surveyors were brought in to excavate the kitchen to find the cause of the stain. It might have been a leaking pipe in the ground, or even a spring of some kind that was bubbling up to the floor. They dug and they dug, eventually locating the source of the face. When they'd finished, the family were allowed back into their home and their kitchen floor was restored to its former glory, and the face did not return.

Weeks later, another face took its place, then another Where the original stain took days or weeks to materialize, These new faces appeared over the course of ours. Men, women, children, Faces of all kinds had taken over their floor. Soon the faces weren't the only things invading their home. It was overtaken by curious visitors hoping to see the ghostly formations for themselves. Everyone from students, the clergymen to the police came to glimpse what they had dubbed as the

bell Mez faces. The first thought was that the whole thing had been a hoax. It wouldn't have been the first time, and the sudden jump from one face to five or six was severe. Yet there was no evidence that Maria, her husband, or their son were behind any of it, which brought the discussion back to what the surveyors had found beneath the floor in the first place. During their excavation, diggers had found the remains of several bodies under the house, dated to be about seven hundred

years old. They told the story of a mass grave that had been filled in with concrete before the house was built. On top of the skeletons, some of which were missing their heads, were moved to a nearby Catholic cemetery where they were reinterred properly, Yet it seems their spirits refused to leave the family's home. Scholars attributed the paranormal activity to Maria herself, claiming that she was forming

something called thoughtography. Basically, Maria's thoughts were manifesting in the floor. This theory gained steam as researchers realized that the faces seemed to appear and shift only when she was around. Others concluded Maria's son Miguel had drawn the faces himself, using a combination of paint and acid. How a child was able to figure out how to convincingly pull off such an elaborate hoax, though, remains to be seen. Maria

passed away in two thousand four. The faces are still there parts of the kitchen floor, and although everyone has a theory, the fact is there is no definitive conclusion as to their origin. Maybe, though, if we're lucky, Maria will show her face as well and tell us all about it. 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 visit 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. Yeah,