Washed Away

than the skies above. It was the summer of eighteen seventy five in Alberta, Canada, and Sir Cecil Edward Denny was on his way to a nice little hunting and fishing spot along the Oldman River. Denny had been a member of the Northwest Mounted Police, but today he was manning a small boat looking for a place to unwind. He noticed in the early afternoon that dark clouds had

started to form in the distance. Normally a thunderstorm wouldn't be anything to worry about, but in this part of Canada where Denny was traveling, they could be devastating the farmer, Mounty just kept pressing forward. By the early afternoon, that storm that had seemed so far away was suddenly right above him. According to his own account of the event, there was a heavy wind with hail, rain, and perpetual lightning, followed by deafening peals of thunder, seemingly right overhead. As

the elements beat down on him. Filling the boat with water, he floated a little while longer until he reached a part of the shoreline where he could find refuge. He continued to paddle, and as he got closer to land, the storm began to subside, just for a moment, but it was a long enough pause for Denny to hear something from within the nearby woods drums. There was a Native American encampment close by. He hitched the boat to some nearby trees and ventured into the forest following the

sound of the drums. Shelter was only feet away, and good thing too, because the storm had now come back with a vengeance. He kept walking as the rain beat down on him. It wasn't long before he came to a clearing, and there it was a Native American camp bustling with activity. They had fires to keep them warm, and people were moving about almost as though the storm wasn't affecting them at all. Denny was shocked because he knew that the indigenous tribes didn't like to stay outside

during storms. They would hole up in their homes, avoiding the thunder, which they saw as the sound of the gods tossing boulders off the mountain. As Denny inched closer, he could make out more of the encampment. According to his ridings, he noticed about twenty lodges and some horses, aside from the men, women and children also living there. Suddenly, a crack of lightning struck at his feet, while a crash of thunder rattled his ears. The combination sent him

flying backward. Lightning struck a tree only feet away. Denny looked over and saw that it had practically been split in two. A few minutes later, he slowly got to his feet. The sound of the thunder still rang in his ears, and as he stood, he looked out at the open clearing where the Native American camp had stood, and much to his amazement, it was gone. The lodges and fires had disappeared, the horses had vanished, and the sounds of beating drums had evaporated. Denny darted off in

search of a higher vantage point. After all, the camp couldn't have just gotten up and walked away. He climbed to the top of a river bank and looked down. Sure enough, there was nothing there. Cold and wet from the storm, Denny kept walking. He traveled another fifteen miles until he reached a local forts at around midnight. By then the rain had stopped. The following morning, Denny to the other men what he had seen. One of them just laughed at him, but he knew what he had

witnessed was no figment of his imagination. Refusing to accept defeat, he set out that day with a Blackfoot interpreter to try and find the encampment. It took some time, but they eventually reached the location where Denny had first spotted it. There was nothing there, well, not exactly nothing. There were some stones covered in grass, and the remnants of an

old camp that had existed a long time ago. The interpreter told Denny a story about how a group of Blackfeet had come to this spot and killed an entire tribe of Cree many years before, and if Denny had any doubts. The two old skulls in the dirt were all the evidence he needed. So had the rain washed everything away? Or had these just been the ghosts of the cree filling the night air with song. Denny didn't have the answers. All he had were clouds of confusion

storming in his mind. Frederick had a dilemma. The Church of England had come to him with a tremendously important task. They wanted him to dig up the ruins of the thousand year old Glastonbury Abbey. As an architect and expert in medieval restoration, Frederick bly Bond certainly was the right man for the job. But there was one problem. He couldn't start digging, at least not yet. For centuries, Glastonbury had been one of the most important Catholic churches in England.

Not only home to hundreds of monks and worshippers, it also housed the tombs of three kings and a relic rumored to be a piece of the Cross of Jesus. In the fifteen hundreds, though, as Protestantism became the power of the land, Glastonbury became a target. Under the direction of Henry the eighth troops seized the abbey in fifteen thirty nine, executing the ababbo and raising the buildings to the ground. Ever since then, the land and the ruins

had belonged to private owners. Now four hundred years later, in nineteen oh seven, the Church of England was finally on the precipice of getting the ruins back to excavate them. But it would take years of research before they could break ground. If they started digging just anywhere, they might damage the ruins, and besides, until the final deed was signed, poor Frederick would have to sit tight. He, however, was

not of the waiting type. While he made his name in the practical world of architecture, he had other more obscure interests. You see, he believed that he knew a way to start the excavation without ever lifting a single shovel. This is why on November seventh of nineteen oh seven, Frederick invited Captain John Allen Bartlett to his office. They were going to dig up the abbey's past using a new method automatic writing. Because John wasn't just a good

friend of Frederick's. He was a psychic medium who claimed that he could speak to ghosts. Automatic writing is a technique in which a living person channels the words of the dead. They hold a pen to a piece of paper and let the spirit take control, using the earthly arm to write out a message from beyond the grave. The instant John began writing in Frederick's office. It quickly became clear that the dead were clamoring to be heard.

Dozens of voices came forward, but one rang through the loudest. This spirit claimed his name was Johannes Bryant, a Glastonbury monk who had lived from fourteen ninety seven to fifteen thirty three. Over dozens of seances, John and Frederick got to know the boisterous cleric with a love of fishing and drinking of ale. Johannes told them about his life at the abbey, describing a detailed plan of the building

that lay just beneath the soil. When Frederick was finally allowed to break ground at the Ruins in nineteen oh eight, the ghostly Monk's words proved to be deadly accurate. Every chapel in Cloister was exactly where Johanns said it would be. Frederick continued to excavate the abbey over the next decade, winning praise and fame for his careful excavation. While he was credited as a shrewd researcher and archaeologist, what he didn't reveal was the source of his information about the abbey.

He knew both the Church of England and his intellectual colleagues looked down on the world of spiritualism and the esoteric. Even so, he couldn't suppress his love for the field. In a few short years, Frederick joined nearly every psychic association and secret society he could find. He was a freemason and a theosophist. He joined the Society for Psychical Research and even England's first ghost hunting club, and soon

enough he couldn't keep his theories to himself. In nineteen nineteen he published a book called The Gait of Remembrance and brought his esoteric beliefs out into the harsh light of day. The Gates of Remembrance recounted exactly how Frederick had used seances and ghostly advice to excavate Glastonbury Abbey. It argued that beyond the grave, collective unconsciousness existed, He had merely tapped into that unconsciousness in the form of

johannas to learn about the abbey. His colleagues, though, weren't impressed. Other archaeologists quickly derided Frederick, claiming that he must have gotten his information about the abbey from ancient records, not a ghostly month. Some even pointed to the seance transcripts as proof of the hoax, claiming the rudimentary Old English in Latin that Johanna spoke sounded more like an English

schoolboy than a contemporary speaker. Because of all of this, the Church of England fired Frederick in nineteen twenty one, and by nineteen twenty six he had fled to America to escape the damage to his reputation. He began a second career there as a psychic investigator, and dedicated the rest of his life to proving that ghosts really existed.

Frederick didn't seem to care much that his reputation as an architect and archaeologist was ruined, because until the day he died in nineteen forty five, Frederick never won ones gave up the ghost. 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.