Season 06 Episode 5: The Boy Who (Pt. 2 of 2)

once again to find the boy had vanished. That July afternoon, Professor Daumer had gathered at Mayor Yakov Binder's house to meet with the mayor and anselm Rita von foyerback, famed humanitarian and president of the recently established Court of Appeal in the nearby town of Ansbach, who had ultimate responsibility

for any decisions involving Casper. Encouraged by the demonstrable warmth and interest that Dawmer had already shown Casper not to mention his credentials as a celebrated teacher, it was quickly decided that he should take the boy for the time being.

On July eighteenth, eighteen twenty eight, just over seven weeks after his mysterious arrival in Nuremberg, Casper was given a room in Dawmer's home on the edge of the city, where he lived with Duma and his sister and mother, and was invited to treat the house as his own. Since Professor Dawmer would be working most of the time, Gottlieb Frear Vontuka, the brother in law of famed philosopher

George Hagel, was installed as Casper's guardian. Together, they devised a daily course of lessons to help Casper's development, focusing mainly on speaking, reading, and writing. For the rest of the time, Casper was encouraged to keep up his drawing

and to exercise as much as possible. Having seen the progress that Casper had made in the short time he'd known him, Daurmer was convinced that his lack of intellectual faculties was not something inherent in his biology, but simply down to the environment in which he had been raised. This became all the more evident as Casper's speaking and writing skills continued to markedly improve in the weeks and

months following his arrival at Durmer's home. But there were other things about Casper that Daurmer hadn't expected to discover, such as his extraordinary ability to read in the dark, or pick his way around the house even in the most pitch black conditions, or perhaps more strangely, his heightened sense of smell, or the way in which he seemed

superhumanly attuned to someone's presence. Once, as he approached the cemetery of a nearby church went out for a stroll one day, Casper was suddenly overtaken by cold sweats and began to shake wildly. It was the sickly smell in the air, he said, as he tried not to vomit. Dalma, who hadn't smelt anything unusual, then realized he was talking about the corpses in the graveyard. Clearly, as Damer surmised, having been denied the use of his eyes for so long,

his other senses had intensified accordingly. And then there was his strange connection to metal. Once, when Casper was shown a magnet, he grabbed at his chest, suddenly complaining that he could feel the magnet dragging at him, as if it were sucking something out of his body. Another time, Casper was said to have correctly identified a gold coin

without looking at it. Intrigued by this bizarre ability, Dama devised an experiment in which he asked Casper to identify three different types of metal hidden under a sheet of paper. After placing his hand above each item for a moment, Casper successfully identified them all. Over time, Casper's diet also broadened as he learned to first keep down and then eventually appreciate a much wider variety of food beyond the

bread and water he'd become accustomed to. Within only a few months of moving into Dawma's house, he grew a further two inches, and soon as Casper's ability to communicate continue to improve, so too did his powers of reasoning. The way he comprehended himself and the world began to change.

Having had no qualms at all about removing his clothes in front of people, Casper slowly began to feel a sense of shame at being naked, and where once he'd looked at a statue of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross in a local church and demanded that somebody free the tortured man, he eventually came to understand the difference

between animate and inanimate objects. Those white wooden toy horses that he once so lovingly fed and watered were soon abandoned as childish and boring, and that stranger's face he'd so often seen in the mirror he slowly began to understand was his own. And as his sense of self and the world began to change, so too did his unders standing of the past and his place within it, or more specifically, his understanding of the countless years he spent locked up in the cage, as he called it.

For hours at a time, he would try to think back to how he felt before, puzzled as to how on earth that hadn't even occurred to him that there was an entire world beyond the four dark walls that surrounded him. At other times, the assault on his senses from all the new sounds, smells, and colors he had to contend with, and the speed at which his mind

was expanding, left him feeling overwhelmed. On occasion, he even longed to be back in the pitch black silence of his prison, often telling people how much more pleasurable it was for him to look at a blank white wall than to have to endure the tortuous, bucolic scenes of the country outside his bedroom window. In time, however, Casper learned to make peace with his new surroundings and even began to take pleasure in the beauty of the outside world.

His languish skills had developed so much that he started work on an autobiography. He was, by all accounts, the happiest he had ever been, and especially fond of Professor Durmer and his family and the charity they'd afforded him, telling them that he wanted to stay in Nuremberg until he'd learned everything that Dumer had to teach him. One night, when the sky was especially clear, Dowmer led Casper outside and showed him the many thousands of stars that glistened

in the darkness above them. It was, said Casper, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in the world. We often talk about how the advent of streaming has revolutionized the way we engage with audio and visual content, placing countless numbers of films, TV shows, and music tracks at our fingertips. But did you know this has also been happening for books too. Described as the Netflix for books, scribt is quite simply the largest digital library in the world,

and all of it accessible from your favorite device. With scribbt, you get instant access to millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more. As the user myself, scribbt has been invaluable for me as a resource, giving me access to a huge range of sources that have helped informed many of

the stories featured on Unexplained. Enjoy instant access to scribb's entire library for less than the cost of a single book, and discover must read new work from celebrated authors like Rock sand Gay, Charles U, and more, premiering exclusively on scribbed. Right now, scribbt is offering our listeners a free sixty day trial. Go to triscribt dot com slash unexplained for your free trial. That's t r y scr ibd dot com slash unexplained to get sixty days of script for free.

In late August, Casper told his guardian Von Tuca about a peculiar dream he'd had the night before. Such things were apparently an entirely new experience for the young boy, who claimed never to have had them before he came to stay in Professor Dawmer's home. In it, he found himself walking the halls of a strange, grand building with huge paintings of people in fancy colored clothes hung up

on the walls. Looming over him. Then suddenly he was lying in bed in a room he didn't recognize when a woman appeared in the doorway wearing a yellow hat with thick, luxuriant feathers coming out of it, followed by a man in black with a tall hat and a sword at his side, and a blue ribbon pinned to his chest with a cross hanging down from it. A few weeks later, Vontuka took Casper to vest Castle in

the center of Nuremberg. As they approached the large French doors at the front and saw through into the grand hall beyond, Casper suddenly froze. Like my dream, he said, much to Vontuka's confusion. It wasn't the same place he'd seen exactly, but yet something about it felt familiar. It was, he said, as if he'd once lived in a place just like it. Another time, Casper dreamt about a woman who sat crying at the end of his bed, calling him Gottfried over and over again. He believed she was

his mother. With the dream sounding so vivid and Casper always being so insistent about them, Vontuca began to wander if they were in fact subconscious memories, slowly coming to the surface. When Professor Dawmer heard about the experience at vest Castle, he asked Casper if he could remember anything distinctive about the place he'd seen in his dream. A

coat of arms perhaps that could identify the location. After explaining what that meant to the boy, Casper then took a pen and paper and drew a shield split into four quadrants. In one corner he drew what looked like a lion. In another, he put what looked like a scepter, something he hadn't even seen before, while the last two were given to two swords crossed over and a simple cross. After an exhaustive search, however, Dawma couldn't find anything like

it anywhere. Even so, it was hard for Dalma and the others who taken such an interest in the young boy not to be stirred by these uncanny experiences. They began to wonder if there might be some truth to the rumors that he had indeed once come from a

family of considerable wealth. Over the next year, things continued a pace under Duma's guidance, as Casper continued to expand his mind while never quite losing his childhood innocence nor what was perhaps his most profound characteristic, his inherent sense

of injustice at the suffering of any living creature. A trip to the circus proved especially horrifying for Casper when it soon occurred to him that the performing monkeys he and everyone else were laughing at were in fact prisoners, just like he had been forced to repeat their tricks over and over again, night after night against their will. Realizing his own part in their misery, he turned Todwmer and begged him to be taken away. In time, he began to understand love too in a way. One day,

he was found sitting alone crying in his room. When Vontooka asked him what the matter was, he replied, through tears, why was it that he didn't have a mother or a brother or sister, and how it would be so beautiful if he did. Though there was nothing that Professor Dowmer could do for Casper in this regard, he was able to indulge Casper's love of horses by ranging for him to be taught how to ride. Strangely, Casper seemed to take to it as though he had ridden horses

his whole life. By all accounts were going well, it seemed By the autumn of eighteen twenty nine, however, Duma began to notice a shift in Casper's attitude, in which he seemed increasingly determined to do things on his own terms. He even began to skip some of the lessons that Duma had arranged for him. On October seventeenth, Dawma scolded Casper for missing yet another lesson, although Casper denied doing

any such thing. Later, Casper told Dalma that he felt unwell and was told to stay home in bed to recuperate. It was just after midday as Dawma's sister Katerina, was cleaning the house when she spotted what looked like blood on the stairs leading into the backyard. Looking closer, she noticed a bloody footprint too. Believing Casper had most likely suffered a nose bleat but neglected to clean up after himself, Katerina went to his room to ask him about it,

but Casper was nowhere to be found. Katerina eventually followed the trail of blood all the way to the outhouse at the back of the courtyard, where, much to her alarm, she found a large, thick puddle of it on the stone floor. Assuming that a cat had probably just given birth there. Katerina cleaned it up and thought nothing else of it. By lunchtime, however, Casper was still nowhere to

be found. When Professor Damer returned home from his mid morning walk, he noticed Casper's coat and shirt hanging up by the side, something he did whenever he went to the outhouse. It was only then that they noticed the dark stain the trapdoor that led to the cellar. Realizing it was blood too, Katerina lifted the door and cried out at the sight of even more drops of blood on the steps leading into the darkness below, Shouting for

a maid to bring a lamp. Katerina then made her way to the bottom, where in the far corner of the room, which was flooded ankle deep with water, she could just make out a pale skinned Casper lying slumped against the wall. When they finally managed to haul his seemingly lifeless body into the kitchen, all gasped in horror at the sight of his blood street shirt and the sickening gash on his forehead. Then, slowly, much to their relief, he began to stir the man. The man, he said weakly,

with a look of abject terror on his face. After being put to bed, Casper spent the next forty eight hours in a state of delirium, during which he intimated that the man who had once kept him prisoner had tried to murder him. Two days after the apparent attack, he was invited to give a statement to the police, As he explained it, after making a visit to the outhouse, he was just about to leave when he caught sight

of a man creeping into the courtyard. Having a bad feeling about it, he waited for the man to pass through before sticking his head out to check if the coast was clear, when he looked up suddenly to find the man was standing right in front of him. The man, who he described as being broad shouldered, was dressed all in black, with shiny boots and lemon colored kid's skin gloves and a dark scarf wrapped around his face so

he couldn't be seen. Then shouting you must die before you leave the city of Nuremberg, he raised his arm to reveal a huge bladed weapon like a meat cleaver. The next thing Casper remembered, he was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, having tried to get upstairs. He soon panicked that the man would come back to get him, so decided his best chance was to hide

in the basement. Only when he'd finally managed to find a dry spot to lie on by the wall, did he realize the mistake he'd made, worrying then that he would simply die down there alone before anybody found him anyway, and then he blacked out. Although Casper didn't see the man's face, he insisted that his voice was that of the man who had once kept him imprisoned for so long.

After hearing Casper's testimony, Professor Dawmer and von yer Back were in little doubt that the man had clearly come back to kill Casper, spurred on perhaps by the worry that he might one day be brought to justice for

his heinous crimes. However, despite the best efforts of the city's chief of Police, Lieutenant Joseph Hickle, no evidence to support Casper's story was ever found, and before long people were beginning to ask more questions about the mysterious boy whose life seemed so comfortable now compared to when he first appeared out of nowhere. Why had he been attacked in the middle of the day for example, and why hadn't the killer made sure to finish him off if

that was his intention. Nonetheless, the city agreed to give Casper police protection for the foreseeable future, with two officers ordered to chaperone his every move. A few weeks later, Casper was once more or to stay in his room by Professor Dowmer after the pair had argued again over Casper's increasing tendency to skip his lessons. An hour or so later, a shot was heard coming from his bedroom, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

When his police guard rushed in to investigate, they found a bloodied Casper on the floor alongside a pistol. Although the boy claimed he'd grabbed the gun accidentally, which was hanging on the wall when he fell reaching for a book, the officers were not so sure, with one even reporting it as an attempted suicide. The continuing changes in Casper's personality led Dowmer to write that his nature has lost much of its original purity, and that a highly regrettable

tendency to untruthfulness and dissimulation had manifested itself. Things only became more difficult for Casper when he was forced to leave Dawma's home in January eighteen thirty as Damer struggled with an ongoing illness. After four months spent living with the local businessman, who also found Casper to be infuriatingly untrustworthy, he was eventually taken in by his guardian, Vontuka in

May of eighteen thirty. It was around this time that another rumor began to emerge, when a priest from Peste in the Kingdom of Hungary accused two associates of a Countess Mathany of being involved in Casper's imprisonment. In response, Vontuca quizzed Casper with some Hungarian words. Incredibly, Casper claimed to recognize a significant number of them, including the Hungarian name Istan, so much so he thought it might even

be his own. At some point, with Casper's story now widely known throughout Europe, he began to arouse the interest of the English aristocrat and former Member of Parliament, Philip Henry Stanhope, The fourth Earl of Stanhope, also convinced that the boy was descended from nobility. Stanhope traveled to Nuremberg in May eighteen thirty one to pay him a visit.

Stanhope's meeting with Casper only served to heighten his fascination, after which he resolved to adopt the boy for himself and take him back to his family estate in Chievening in the southeast of England. After negotiating with the city, Stanhope donated the princely sum of five hundred golden for the boys, continued upkeep until he could return to take care of him himself. Then a few months later, something

else came to light. In October eighteen thirty one, Hungarian noble Ladislaus von mare was passing through Nuremberg when he requested a meeting with Casper, after then trying out a number of Hungarian phrases on the boy, to which he didn't respond. For Maree then said the phrase istan goes to zalah Kutz, at the sound of which Casper's eyes widened and he became suddenly animated. Yes, said Casper with great excitement. That's it. Salah Kutz was the castle home

of the Countess Mathany. Then von Mare asked Casper if he recognized the name Bartakovich, to which his eyes grew wide once more. That is my mother's name, he cried out, triumphantly. This, as it turned out, was also Countess mathanas maiden name. When the Earl of Stanhope took formal custody of Casper the following month, he contacted Lieutenant Hickl, the city's chief of police, and instructed him to look into Casper's extraordinary

claim immediately. In the meantime, with concern growing that Casper's life may be in danger if his true identity were discovered, Stanhope made arrangements to have him moved to the town of Ann's Back, fifty miles from Nuremberg and placed in the company of thirty two year old teacher, doctor Johann George Meyer. In January eighteen thirty two. Stanhope then returned to England, promising Casper that he would be brought to Chevening House at the first opportunity, but Stanhope would never

see Casper again. The following month, Lieutenant Hickel traveled to Hungary, where he visited the castle of Salacootz and the Countess Mathany herself. However, he found nothing to suggest that Casper's story was even remotely true, with the initial rumors of her involvement blamed on the bitterness of a former employee. It was said he had simply started it in revenge for having been sacked from his job as a tutor

to the countess's children. Despite this trail going cold, however, more rumors began to crop up, such as that Casper was in fact the prince and heir to Grand Duke Carl Louis Frederick of Baden and Stephanie de la Pagerie, the adopted daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, Their son they were led to believe, had died at birth in eighteen twelve, only for some to claim he had in fact been stolen as part of a plot conceived by Carl's stepmother,

Louise von Hochburg, to ensure her own children would inherit his title. Meanwhile, in Ann's back, with all the talk of Casper's supposed noble lineage, his enthusiasm for study had diminished even further, much to the exasperation of his new teacher, doctor Mayer. With none of the affection for his new pupil that Professor Daumer had, doctor Mayer grew quickly frustrated with what he saw as Casper's increasingly duplicitous behavior with

nowhere else to go. However, Casper had little choice but to endure Maya's bitterness as he awaited the return of the Earl of Stanhope. Later that year, Anselm Writa von Fouerbach published a full account of Casper's story, which he followed up in January eighteen thirty three with a pamphlet speculating that Casper could well be the mythical Prince of Baden, whose life would be seriously endangered should the truth ever

be discovered. Only a few months later, von Foubach fell gravely ill before dying of an apparent stroke on May twenty eighth, leading some to speculate that he had in fact been poisoned. This holiday season, I want to give a gift to my loved ones that makes them feel special and unique. That's why I'm giving everyone I care

about story Worth. Story Worth is an online service that helps you and your loved ones preserve precious memories and stories for years to come, a thoughtful and meaningful gift that connects you to those who matter most. Every week, story Worth emails your loved ones a thought provoking question of your choice from a vast pool of possible options like if you could see into the future, what would

you want to find out? After one year, story worth will compile all your loved ones stories, including photos, into a beautiful keepsake book that you will be able to share and revisit for generations to come. With story Worth, I'm giving those I love most a thoughtful personal gift from the heart and preserving their memories and stories for years to come. Go to storyworth dot com, slash unexplained

and saved ten dollars on your first purchase. That story worth dot com slash unexplained to save ten dollars on your first purchase. In December eighteen ninety three, with the Earl of Stanhope traveling through Germany on his way to meet with Casper, Casper and doctor Mayer fell out once again over Casper's apparent deceitfulness. A few days later, Maya and his wife were relaxing together in their home in Ann's back when a breathless Casper stumbled into the room,

clutching his chest. I've been stabbed, he said, as he grabbed Maya's arm and pointed toward the door. Shocked at the sight of blood under Casper's shirt, Maya followed Casper out into the snow as he led him to where he claimed it had happened. There, said Casper a short time later, pointing toward the back of a small courtyard garden not far from the Mayor's home. Man had knife, gave back, stabbed, ran as hard as could bag still there,

he said, still clutching at his chest. Realizing that Casper was beginning to lose his strength, Maya then helped him back to the house and into bed and called for a doctor. When the doctor arrived, he quickly found a small puncture wound just on the left side of Casper's breast that was still bleeding a little. Thinking it little more than a superficial wound, he suggested the boy be given a few days to rest, after which he would

be fine. A police officer was dispatched to the garden, where, just as Casper had tried to explain, he found a small silk bag left out in the snow, inside which was a note tightly folded into a small triangle. Unfolding it, the police officer discovered a message written in pencil back to front in mirror writing back at doctor Maya's home. Maya took the note and held it in front of a mirror to be delivered. It read, houser will be able to tell you exactly how I look and from

whence I came to save house of the trouble. I will myself tell you where I come from. I come from the Bavarian frontier on the river. I will even give my name as well. The writer then signed off with the initials M l O with an umlaut. A few days later, with Casper's condition showing little sign of improvement, the police came to interview him about what exactly had

taken place. As Casper went on to explain, on the morning of the attack, he was approached by a man who claimed to have a message for him from the head gardener of the Courtyard park, requesting, strangely, that Casper meet with him at three thirty pm that afternoon to look at some specimens of clay that had been taken from the garden's artesian well. When Casper arrived, however, there

was nobody there. After moving further into the garden, he saw a man he didn't recognize, dressed in a dark cloak and black hat, coming quickly towards him, saying, suddenly, I give you this. The man gave Casper the silk bag before quickly stabbing him under the arm. Casper's instant reaction, he said, was to drop the bag and run straight home.

Later that evening, Casper began behaving strangely, moving his hands feverishly up and down his sheets, saying, I have much to write today, all in pencil, I must write, he said,

Sensing a turn for the worse. Maya then called for the doctor and the local pastor to come immediately before asking Casper if he had anything to say to him, demanding that he looked him full in the face when he said it, but Casper could only look back with confusion, before spouting a series of seemingly random statements, Sin destruction, cannot get free, the monster stronger than I. Why should I feel anger or rancor no one ever did me wrong? And then finally tie it very tired, A long journey

to take. As the last word left his mouth. By then deathly pale, Casper turned his face to the wall and died. Casper Houses post mortem revealed that although the puncture wound was small, it had in fact penetrated all the way to his heart, causing him to eventually bleed internally to death. Although efforts were made to trace the apparent culprit, police quickly began to suspect, owing largely to doctor Mayor's character assessment that Casper had in fact inflicted

the wound on himself. Despite extensive interviews with the local community, no one saw a man matching the description given by Casper in the vicinity on the day of the supposed attack. The police also thought it strange that, despite Casper telling people that the man had thrust a bag into his hands, he seemed to have no interest in what was actually in it. As for the note that was found, one spelling mistake and grammatical error were found, reminiscent of similar

mistakes that Casper often made himself. The way it had been folded into a triangle was also something that he was fond of doing. While the paper was found to match paper that was later found in a bin in Casper's bedroom, and despite the Earl of Stanhope offering up to ten thousand golden for any information leading to the capture of the culprit, nobody came forward to claim it.

In September eighteen thirty four, the investigation into Casper Houser's apparent murder came to an end with an inquest concluding that no murder had been committed. Few, however, believed that Casper intended to kill himself, suspecting rather that he'd tried to fake an attack, only to end up stabbing himself

a little deeper than he'd meant to. Professor Dawmer, however, continued to stand by his former pupil, and even accused the Earl of Stanhope of being involved in his assassination and possibly even the death of Anselm writ of von Foyebach. Over time, however, as news of the inquest resolved spread throughout the German Confederation, most came to doubt Casper's entire story, believing he'd simply made it all up to find himself a better life, and so things remained for the next

one hundred years until something new came to light. In nineteen nineteen, novelist Clara Hoffer and her husband moved into a castle by the name of Schloss Pilsack, located about

forty kilometers southeast of Nuremberg. It wasn't until nineteen twenty four, however, that they began a much needed renovation of the property, during which a strange dungeon like room was discovered hidden away on a mezzanine level of the building, roughly six feet by four and five feet high, with a tiny, blocked up window at one end and its floor of hard press dirt. It was almost identical to the room in which Casper claimed he'd been imprisoned for most of

his life. It was another sixty years later when workers carrying out reconstruction work on a basement staircase at the property discovered something peculiar buried in the earth underneath it. It was only when they dug it up and wiped it clean, however, that they realized what it was, A large white wooden toy horse, just like the one Casper said he used to play with in the cage. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you

can now do so via patroon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon Barnes and Noble and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced

by me Richard McClane Smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast