Mysterious

And although the Freemasons are not a secret society, they are a society with secrets. What goes on behind closed doors has been the subject of blockbuster movies and best selling novels. Members have included Beethoven, Winston Churchill, King, Edward Seventh, and Oscar Wilde. In the United States, fourteen presidents, thirty five Supreme Court justices, and thirteen signers of the Constitution have been Masons. The Freemasons are still well organized and

practicing today in America. It's said that the Freemasons lurk behind every aspect of life, from the early days of our nation's capital, to political influence to murder in sevent a British author claimed that secret factions of the Freemasons called the Illuminati, were subverting religions in state authority. Certainly, at the time, members held high ranking positions at every social, political,

and economic level. Rumors and whispers of conspiracies became widespread, but perhaps none as scandalous as the events of eighteen twenty six. On September twelfth, that year, stoneworker William Morgan vanished from an upstate New York jail. Considered more of a professional drunk and bagabond than Stonemason, Morgan had moved his family from town to town, and from one failed

business endeavor to another. Along the way, had managed to infiltrate the Freemasons, and it was there that Morgan's venture scheming took another direction. He had partnered with one David Miller, a struggling local newspaper publisher, to write a tell all book on the inner workings and secrets of the Freemasons. The two had begun teasing the public with the impending release, hinting there were mysterious ceremonies, rituals, and headline grabbing corruption.

The hype Morgan hoped would need an instant bestseller and a hefty fortune, and naturally, the Freemasons were less than thrilled. They demanded Morgan returned stolen documents and halt the release of the book. Neither happened. Lodges held meetings to discuss how to deal with the potential fallout. On September eleventh, law enforcement loyal to the organization arrested Morgan for outstanding debt. Later that night, several Masons arrived at the jail with

bail money. As they ushered Morgan away to an awaiting carriage, a witness allegedly heard him shout murder. The former Stonemason was never heard from, more seen again. As the news traveled, the story became more elaborate, until the rumor was that the Freemasons had kidnapped and killed Morgan. Miller went on to publish the book, even after a small, mysterious fire

broke out in his shop. The book, along with the story of Morgan's disappearance, became a symbol of all that was wrong with the young country, sparking the anti Masonic movement. The Mason's who had bailed Morgan out that night stood trial in eighteen twenty seven, though without sufficient evidence that there had been a murder, the judge handed down lenient sentences. The book went on to be a bestseller even without the many secrets the authors had promised, and membership in

the Freemasons dwindled for a while. Some believe Morgan was dead. Others thought he had fled to Canada. Some die hard conspiracists claimed he had assumed a new identity as a pirate in the Cayman Islands. Exactly what did happen to him is a mystery lost time. But we're drawn to mysteries and seemingly unsolvable disappearances. And there's one disappearance that has captivated historians and the public for centuries. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.

Welcome to American Shadows. In the first colonizers arrived on Broino, a small island nestled between what's now known as the Outer Banks Barrier Islands and the North Carolina Coast. Settlers and crew arrived to a land far from anything they've known back in England. One of their ships had been lost at sea, leaving the newcomers with few supplies. The captain set sail back to England, promising to return with

more ships and goods. After a harsh winter, those who survived elected to return to England on another ship that had arrived at the island. They set foot back in their homeland just days before the supply ship arrived on Rono. Unaware the settlers had left, The captain and crew were startled to find the camp deserted. Worried something had happened, the men searched for weeks before finally leaving a few soldiers and supplies behind and heading back to England. Within weeks,

those left behind were dead. Sir Walter Raleigh remained undaunted by this harsh, unforgiving land. For his next attempt to colonize North America. He sent just over a hundred men, women and children. The new colonists survived high seas to discover their new home wasn't anything like the land they expected. Like the other colonists before them, they had come unprepared with insufficient supplies. Raleigh chose colonist John White as the

first governor. While he had no political experience, he had been to the America's before. He had served as an artist tasked with illustrating and documenting the so called New World. The ship arrived on Roanoke on July twenty second of fifteen eighty seven. The next morning, Governor White led a search party and found the remnants of the former colony, including the skeletons of the men who had been left behind. White thought that Indigenous people had attacked and murdered the men.

It seems it didn't occur to him that the indigenous people in question probably weren't especially keen on having their land and resources forcibly taken over. Though the discovery was gruesome, it didn't persuade the colonizers to return to England. On July twenty five, they disembarked from the ship and sought to rebuild the camp, despite having no experience surviving in

the middle of the wilderness. The settlers hadn't come from England's elite society, but neither had they come from its underbelly. Many had been used to a bustling city. They had been shopkeepers, lawyers, or tradesmen. In exchange for colonizing America, England had promised them land of their own. With limited knowledge,

the settlers planted crops and built new homes. On August eighteenth, White's daughter Eleanor Dare gave birth to a girl, making Little Virginia Dare the first English child born in America. Life was hard but good. The newcomers did their best to make a better way of life than they had in England. Unfortunately, they had the little Ice age era to deal with. The weather proved inhospitable, with droughts in

the summer and harsh cold winter. When one of their own wandered off into the wilderness and was killed by one of the local peoples, White realized that they were greatly outnumbered and sent a delegation of twenty one men to try to make amends with the indigenous tribes. Assisting them was an indigenous man called Montero, who had lived among the English. After his intervention and negotiation, the colonists and the Crowatin people feasted together in a gesture of peace.

It turned out that they shared a common enemy, another group of indigenous people, perhaps called the Rono. Feeling more safely settled, White returned to England on November five, four more supplies. Unfortunately, the Spanish Armada prevented him from returning as quickly as he had hoped. The Anglo Spanish War caused Queen Elizabeth, the first to commandeer every available ship in anticipation of battle. White didn't return to the settlement

for three years. When he finally arrived on his granddaughter's birthday, in he found the Roanoke settlement completely deserted. Houses had been dismantled, the building supplies have been taken. Only a single clue to their whereabouts had been left. Someone had carved a word on a wooden gate post crow at in.

Believing the settlers had gone to live with the Crowdens, he returned to the ship for the night, intending to set out the next morning to look for them, but the anchor rope snapped and bad weather forced the ship out to sea and back to England. White never saw his family again. Roanoke remains one of America's enduring mysteries. The disappearance of an entire colony without a trace has since become an iconic enigma, fueled by fiction, speculation, and

insufficient evidence to point to any one explanation. In nineteen thirty seven, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech commemorating the lost colony. A bridge had connected Roanoke Island with the mainland, and the community had begun working on infrastructure to support tourism the island and the Lost Colony experienced a resurgence in interest. Historians discovered that Sir Walter Rally tried to return to the island again in fifteen ninety four,

but the expedition failed due to poor weather conditions. After he was implicated and imprisoned for his role in an attempt to dethrone King James the First, The next search for the colonists didn't happen until six seven. John Smith of the newly established Jamestown, Virginia settlement, had been captured by the Powatan people. In his talks with their leader, he learned about a place where people wore European clothing. Smith instantly thought of the Lost Colony and sent a

letter and map to England. Two of Smith's search parties in sixteen o eight failed to locate the colonists. In sixteen o nine, England received an unverified letter that the Powhatan had slaughtered any surviving colonists, though no evidence or remains suggested the statement was based on facts. Periodically, searches continued, though interest had faded over the years. Then, between seventeen

o one and seventeen o nine. Explorer and naturalist John Lawson spent time at the original colony site and visited the Hatteras tribe when he noticed the strong English influence. Members told him that some of their ancestors had been white with gray eyes. Lawson believed that the colonists had assimilated into the local peoples once they lost contact with England.

The explanation seemed plausible, and further research died out until the nineteenth century, when academics began to theorize about what had happened to the colonists again. One theory agreed with Lawson that the colonists had assimilated with some particular try. They further theorized the Powhatans had attacked them in retaliation for the English kidnapping their people. Another theory speculated that the colonists had integrated with possibly multiple peoples when they

realized no help was coming from England. The gate post carving seems to suggest that at least some left with the crow Atints, since none of the local tribes were large enough to take in all the colonists, scholars have determined splitting up the village among the local peoples would have been the most logical choice. The last holdouts in the village may have finally decided to leave with the

Croatans and left the carving in case White returned. Excavations have never turned up a sign of a struggle or massacre at the site. Along with missing building supplies, This suggests the colonists left of their own a core. There's also the possibility that tried to build a ship and returned to England, though this is unlikely since they wouldn't have had enough provisions to make the journey. If they did try this, they were most likely lost at sea.

But there's one more explanation. A small area off the outer banks has coffins inscribed with Christian markings, suggesting that the colonists might have moved there. The theory goes that they were harvesting sassafras for Rally to sell. This supports the conspiracy that Rally not only returned, but that he kept the colonists survival quiet for personal gain. In the late eighteen hundreds, archaeologists began digging at the Roan Oak site.

The influx of Irish and German immigrants had sparked some multigenerational Americans to connect with their English ancestors. Meanwhile, the indigenous peoples who might have held some answers were driven from the area to grant the land to European descended farmers. Without a lot of facts or evidence, the legend of the lost Colony of Roanoke was revamped. All that remained were fictional stories until Louis Hammond made a rather unusual

discovery in ninety seven. James Lester, an Emory University geologist, was leaving the university's alumni building on November eight seven when Lewis Hammond approached and introduced himself. He showed Lester the rock he carried and asked if someone in the geology department might help to cipher the markings carved onto it. Hammond told the geologist had come across the stone near the Virginia, North Carolina border. Lester admitted that the markings

were unusual and difficult to make out. Before long, English and physics professors, as well several curious students, joined them. They pieced together a single word, an ananias Annanias had been Virginia Dair's father. Excitement washed over the group. The stone appeared to be a pivotal piece of evidence in the disappearance of those first colonists. The scholars took the

stone to the biophysics lab for further evaluation. One of Emery's rising star professors rushed to the lab when he heard the news, Heyward Jefferson Pierce Jr. Was the university's expert on southern history. The team studied the stone late into the evening, with barely a break for lunch or dinner. When Pierce and the others came out of the lab, they announced to their peers that they had deciphered the rest of the carvings. The stone told of heartbreak and loss.

It read Annonia Stare, and Virginia went hence into Heaven. The rest of the scratches mentioned a burial site where the remains of the colonists were buried after they had been massacred. The team made plans to revisit the site where the stone had been found and begin an archaeological day. Hammond signed an agreement that granted Emory temporary custody of the stone, as well as exclusive research and publication rights. Two days later, Hammond, Lester, and Pierce left for Edenton,

a town on the Virginia North Carolina border. When they arrived, they had difficulty finding the exact location of the stone's origin. After leading the professors around a swamp, Hammond pointed to an approximate location. They hunted for additional inscribed stones or any evidence of the lost colony. Two days of exhaustive searches turned up nothing. Then Hammond left, never contacting the men or the university. Again suspicious, Emery hired the Pinkerton

Agency to investigate. The agency reported that no named Lewis Hammond existed. Pierce bought the stone for five hundred dollars in nineteen thirty eight so that he could continue his study and perhaps locate additional evidence. If some of the colonists had survived, they might have left other clues to their whereabouts. He became so obsessed that he took a

leave of absence from Emory. Then, in May of ninety nine, a stone cutter by the name of Bill Eberhart claimed to have come across thirteen more inscribed stones on a hill in Greenville County, South Carolina. He contacted Pierce, who quickly bought the property. While his piers thought the discovery was another scam. Pierce concluded that the stone cutter wasn't smart enough to pull off such a scheme, though he

never found any more stones on the property. On July fifteenth, Isaac Turner of Atlanta, Georgia stepped forward, claiming he had found a fifteenth stone. Not to be outdone, Eberhart returned with stone sixteen through thirty five that he had allegedly uncovered in Habersham County, Georgia. Then a man named William Bruce delivered stone number thirty six, and Eberhart showed up once more with stone's thirty seventh through forty five, five

of which he claimed were grave markers. By winter, newcomer Tom Jett turned in stone's forty six through forty eight. With so many stones been nothing coming from them, Pierce began losing the university's support. Instead, he convinced his father to help Pierce Senior ran Burnow College in Georgia. To Emery's relief, the college took over support and funding. On October nineteenth of nineteen forty, Pierce called a press conference.

He claimed he had uncovered the story of Elizabeth Dair's survival from Massacre's forced marches and her desperate pleas for help. Pierce also wrote a lengthy piece about the Dare Stones and sent it to the Saturday Evening Post. The Post assigned one Boyden's Sparks. The investigative reporter interviewed Pierce's former Pierce and determined that the stones were fake and that

Pierce was trying to salvage his career and reputation. Eber Heart had a history in faking indigenous relics and had ties to two of the other men who had found stones. The Post's article pointed out Pierce's delusions and stated that Emery's greatest minds had been swindled by a Georgia hillbilly. After the story appeared, Pierce retorted that eber Heart had blackmailed him and his father, threatening to tell everyone they've

been working together to defraud the universities. For one day, the news knocked World War Two stories from the top headlines. Pierce moved to Michigan, and he never spoke of the Dare Stones again. Though historians and scholars discounted the Dare Stones as forgeries and hoaxes, Pierce believed the first stone was authentic, based on the journal of one English writer by the name of William Strachy. In sixteen o nine, Strachy had sailed North America for a new lease on life.

A shipwreck left him stranded on Bermuda for nearly a year before he and the other survivors built a small boat and hugged the coast line up to Jamestown, Virginia. Miraculously they've all survived the trip. They found the settlement in total disarray. Strachy wrote in detail about the conditions there, which in turn served as the basis of the study

of early colonial life for future historians like Pierce. Strachy also wrote about a prophecy and massacre that he said explained the Roanoke colonist's fate, and for Pierce, the prophecy neatly lined up with the inscription on that first stone. Pierce also relied on a Powhatan prediction of a pataquismic event, and the prophecy claimed a nation would rise from the

Chesapeake Bay and overtake the Powhatan. A chief had purportedly become so frightened that he ordered the Chessapeake people's extermination. The English had the misfortune of being in the Chesapeake Bay area around the same time, the colonists who went to live with locals may have been massacred along with them. The theory was speculative, but Pierce took it to heart. The wording and grammar on the stone matched the writing and the spelling of the time, and colonists had been

known to leave carvings in stone and wood. If Pierce was right, the first stone was authentic but discounted as fake. Though Brunell College kept all forty eight Dare stones, it removed them from public display in At first, they were stored in a boiler room beneath the school's auditorium. Today they reside in the attic inside one of the campus houses. Archaeologists are now certain that stones two through forty eight were indeed faked, but that first stone tests are inconclusive.

While it may be possible to determine the authenticity of the stone, the media circus in the nine thirties has caused scholars and universities to be understandably reluctant. The project would be costly and time consuming, and there's some concern that it might damage their reputations, as it did with Pierce, which leaves us with the mystery intact. We may never know if the original dare Stones message was real or a hoax, or what truly became of the lost colony

of Roanoke. There's more to this story, and stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. Swan J. Turnblad had no idea what to do with the letter sitting on his desk. In all his time as the editor for Minneapolis's Swedish language newspaper, he had never seen anything like it. The author, fifty six year old Swedish born J. P. Hedburg, was a successful businessman. In his letter, he stated that a local man had discovered a stone slab in the roots of a tree

on his land. While that wasn't entirely unusual, the markings on it were. Hedberg included the inscription, which he said looked like an unknown alphabet, consisting of two hundred and nineteen characters. The three grouped characters, written in Roman letters, read a V M, believed to refer to the Virgin Mary. Others resembled archaic Greek and Phoenician letters. One set of characters bore no resemblance to the others and may have been Runic numerals, but most were old Scandinavian ruins. The

date carved on the stone read thirteen sixty two. Turned Blood sent a copy of the letter to the University of Minnesota for an expert opinion. There, Norwegian born professor O. J. Breda read the letter and examined the stone. His familiarity with Scandinavian languages allowed him to transcribe the writings. It told the story of eight Swedish and twenty two Norwegian men who had set up a camp. Some went fishing, and upon their return found ten men dead, and so

asked the Virgin Mary to save them. Although had translated it, Breda was skeptical about the inscriptions authenticity. He suggested that a runology expert studied the stone. Breda's translation found its way to the Minnesota University Student newspaper. On January fourteenth of eight nine. The story appeared, along with the editorial comment that further tests should decide whether the discovery should be ranked with the Rosetta Stone or the Cardiff Giant.

A month later, on February twenty second, turn Blood's newspaper also published Brata's translation. Turn Blood added comments, sparking rumors that the stone had been inscribed during a fourteenth century invasion of what now Minnesota. The theory became popular with the Swedish newspaper's readership. Other Midwestern Scandinavian papers printed the piece too. Eventually, the story made its way to larger publications like the Chicago Tribune. Somewhere in the telling, Breta's

opinion regarding the authenticity became lost. Many with Scandinavian heritage wanted to believe the stone was real. To them, it would prove that they had discovered America long before other Europeans. The Scandinavian immigrants began to boast that not only had they discovered the land before anyone else, but had also been the first to penetrate the country's interior. Naturally, no one stopped to think that indigenous peoples had lived on

the land, coast and interior long before anyone else. Still, for the Scandinavian and other European communities, there was a score to settle. The university shipped the stone by rail to a philologist at Northwestern University in Illinois. There, Professor George Kerm initially thought the stones inscriptions were genuine, but the more he considered it, the more the markings confused him.

Though the stone had survived over five hundred harsh Minnesota winters, the edges of the letters looked more like a newly carved tombstone. He agreed with Breda that a runologist should take a look, and sent copies of the newspaper clippings and the inscription to the University of Oslo. Three professors there replied that the stone was a fraud. They stated that the inscription had been clumsily written by someone with

barely any knowledge of runic letters or basic history. Northwestern returned to the stone to the man who had found it. Eight years later, in the summer of seven, a fellow Scandinavian hr Holland visited him, seeking materials to use in a Norwegian settlement. He had heard about the stone and convinced him to give it over. The following year, Holland

published a book on the runestone. He offered to sell the stone to the Minnesota Historical Society, but they refused the five thousand dollar asking price, though they also published an article declaring the stone's authenticity. They cited several experts opinions, though the experts in question denied ever looking at the stone. The public seemed less enamored with the story than they

had previously been, and the stone's popularity faded. But in nineteen forty eight, Minnesota established the Runestone Memorial Park in Alexandria. Holland found himself in a three way lawsuit over ownerships, so contentious that the court ordered the stone locked up and bonded for two dollars. Though there's no actual proof the stone is genuine, many still believe that the Norse people made it to Minnesota before other Europeans. It's a mystery that may never be settled. Today, the stone is

on display at the Ruined Stone Museum. American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from i Heeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. M