Possessed: The Watseka Wonder

But it's not like I'm taking my pants off at the airport. It's just my genes. It's for some reason what my genes do that just set off the thing. They set off the warning, like I have drugs in my pants? Are they loose? No, they were like tight jeans. I think they have like a weird extra thick crotch. Michelle and her extra thick crotch pants. I love a gene with extra thick crotch. I don't know about you Scary Mystery Surprise listeners, but I love my genes with three to four inch crotches. Introducing thick crotch Pants by Newman Media. I was gonna say by your friends as Scary Mystery Surprise, but new and Media can do it too. Get yours today. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. So we're gonna go super educational on this one. This is we're not gonna teach science. I can't wait for my brain to grow. This is a story of two girls, Mary Roth and laurency Venom v e n um Miss Venom. That's a great last name. I can imagine it at like a doctor's office. Miss Venom, Miss Venom, Miss Venom, your doctor is ready. These two girls, their time on Earth overlapped a little bit part of the story. We're gonna also introduce doctor E. Winchester Stevens, MD. It's heard applause. He's the one that helped document a lot of these events. And actually I have a PDF with the whole book when it was written way back in the day. I have to look up the exact date. But this happened like the eighteen hundred and so we're going back in time. So we're going back in time to the eighteen hundreds sometime, correct, Yeah, somewhere around Wait, should we get in the time machine or oh yeah, let's just do it. I get it out of the way. Did you get gas for it? Or it does use a lot of gasoline? And the price is at least they're better now than last time. It's true, It's very true. Okay, let's go, let's go. Wait, we don't know what year exactly the show Oh shit of eighteen sixty four, eighteen sixty four, okay, okay, eighteen sixty four. There we go. I hope this is right, Okay, where are we? What's happening? Who are these people? This story is, it's called the Watsiko Wonder. This doctor, doctor E. W. Stevens, the one that I said earlier, he wrote it and this is like the name that's stuck. This actually is one of the most bizarre stories. I think it's one of the more believable ones because it was written by a doctor who analyzed all these things. And there's a bunch of a couple of families involved, but a whole town. What's the Illinois by the way, that's the name of the town. So just south of what Tsika, Illinois, in a town called Midford. Back in eighteen sixty four, Loreinda Smith and Thomas Venom had a child, Mary larencey Venom, born on April sixteenth. The family, if they had to pinpoint exactly when the stuff started happening, it would probably around July eleventh, eighteen seventy seven. Larrence was thirteen years old by that time, and she had been working around the house and she was one of those handy women sewing and carpet making and woodworking, butter churning, maybe not all of it, but yeah, like the things that you had to know, but yeah, stuff like that. The mom noticed that Larncey was not doing too well. She was just like she's sick or something. Obviously, when she fell to the floor, it became clear to any person that was watching this girl was just gone. She was dead. She just wouldn't move. She was like like, it's like stiff. So the parents were obviously worried. They didn't know who to call or whatever, but they could tell she was so breathing. She stayed that way, completely frozen for five hours, and then she came back slowly, started coming back like she was able to move. She was fine. What happened while sitting around with her family, she claimed to have heard several people in her room yelling out her name Rancy, like a nickname Rancy instead of Lurrency as her nick that was her nickname. She said that people were coming up to her very close, so close that she could feel their breath on her face, and they were like, Rancy, unfortunate nickname. I'll just say it, Rancy is not a great nickname. It's like rancid, right, Like, yeah, it's just not especially because it's so close to like Nancy. But Rancy anyway, The night after that, she woke up in the middle of the night without being able to go back to sleep, saying that multiple people were in her room. Rancy run, run, fuck, shut up, everybody, just shut up. I hate that nickname. Her mom was like, all right, something's going on, so her mom stayed with her that night. By the way, mental health back in the eighteen hundreds is I think they just lock you away at that point, I think they don't burn you, but they lock you away. It was like one of those things where you're so embarrassed that you're willing to lock your child up in an attic type of thing, and that's real, like people would do that. Yeah, it's pretty weird. It's pretty twisted. That. And then eventually the asylums as well, which weren't a nice place. Bring that energy down. Baby, let's think of those asylums and those poor people locked in them. Hell, yeah, what are you gonna think. You're gonna think, Oh, this person's losing their mind, right, Like, what's going on? But she kept seeing spirits and people in the room, and she's, oh, they keep saying my name Rancy over and over. I just hate that nickname so much. It's driving me nuts rancy. So at one point she looked around the room and said, oh, mother, can't you see little Laura and Bertie? They are so beautiful. Bertie, by the way, had died already when Lurencey was only three years old. And there were things like that kept happening, where like she would say, ghosts or angels like she would call them, would be in the room, and doctors and people were that were trying to help her were like, this doesn't make any sense. So anyway, fast forward September, everything just stopped and she seemed to go back to normal. Nobody was suspecting, you know, what was coming though. This is where things got real. It was November twenty seventh, eighteen seventy seven, when she started experiencing extreme pain in her stomach. Every few hours, she would get violent pain and she would foold herself come completely. Doctor Stevens described Lurency folding her body back so much that her feet and her head touched. Oh, I was imagining folding the other way. Now. I don't know how to feel. It seems like anti like it goes against your instinct right, like your stomach urts is like you're not gonna fold backward. No, you've been forward. But anyway, I mean, obviously she's possessed. So it's December now, pains had stopped, but she would have all these trans like states. She would lose herself for hours at a time and then go unconscious. She would lay it down and start describing these angels and ghosts and stuff. She had been under the care of two doctors. The situation did not get any better, though, and even close friends and relatives started butting in and giving their opinion, like asylums are shake out this brochure, right, yeah, like maybe just look at it. Just we don't we're not saying anything, but I'm gonna leave this pamphlet here, just a case. Just think about it. No, just it's an option, makes your life easier, No pressure, no pressure. Obviously back then, patients were not treated well in asylum. So everybody was like the family was like no. But there were still people in that town that saw things differently. I imagine them as like the hippies of back then, like very open, like spiritual. This is a thing. Let me, let's talk about it. Maybe it's a spirit, maybe it's something else, maybe it's in your mind. Maybe it's just talk about it. It's something like a spiritual origin. And anyway, these spiritual people, I call them spiritual people, but we don't know if they were spiritual. Maybe it's something some other words. But they're saying that she might be possessed. I mean, look, not the most complicated jump from limited mental health. It's it's a pretty logical. It's a logical jump to make as a diagnosis back then. So imagine, sure, Okay, she might be possessed. You're like, oh, dang it. Okay, but word is spreading right, like people are talking about it. They're whispering. They're like, I don't know what words. I think you make better voices of the eighteen hundreds than I do. But imagine them gossip being outside of the pharmacy or whatever. I don't know. Oh did you hear about what Ramsay said? I think she's possessed by the demons inside of her head. Oh that turned into a poem for some reason. How did that happen? Oh? No, am I possessed? Among all those comments and stuff, there was this one guy who heard it got to his ears, mister Roff. It was from a family that lived across town and he was on the same side as a family saying that no, don't take it to an asylum. Let's just talk about it. I have an idea. Please let me talk to you about it. So mister Venom was like, all right, mister Roff, let's talk. So they met up. Mister Roff went over to the family's house. They brought along doctor E. W. Stevens from Wisconsin. That's a doctor who was going to help out. And the doctor would visit Wazika pretty often that he would hear what's going on, and after all it was it was like the talk of the town, I guess literally. But anyway, they both arrived at mister Vendam's house on January thirty, first of eighteen seventy eight. It was four pm. No one else was in the house except for the family, and that's when mister Roff saw Lurency sitting in a chair by a stove. She was curled up, she had a blank stare, completely in silence. The first account from the doctor again this is in that book. He says that she looked like a quote old hag. Okay, thank you, doctor Stevens. What a dick, right, old hag Jesus Christ. He was given a chair and he just sat there and it was just quiet. But as soon as doctor Stevens moved, she yelled at him to not come any closer. She did not want to greet the men, did not want to be touched, and she was rude and distant to the doctor and the other man. But then the doctor started asking a series of questions. It's like, what's your name, and she just immediately replied Katrina Hook and then said Katrina, how old are you? Where are you from? How long ago? How did you come? How long ago you stay? I think that through the air part makes it sound like some ghosts. It's like a spirit. Yeah. Once the questioning was over, she changed the way she was speaking and said that okay, fine, she was going to be honest. She was like, all right, now I'm going to tell you the truth. Then maybe so that makes me think, oh, was she lying with that first part? She was just trying to throw people off. She said that she was not a woman, but her real name was Willie. She said that her father's name was Peter Canning. And what was worried about it is that she would end up giving a full biography of these people, like describing them like who they were, where they worked, when they died, when they were born, everything right, So they were like, this is weird, right. The doctor's just like uh huh, probably adjusting his glasses or something. An hour later, mister Roff and doctor Stevens were about to leave when Laurencey also stood up and suddenly fell to the floor again completely rigid. I'm imagining those goats that get scared, and they're just like like her, just falling over from the chair, like fully sitting up, just frozen with like her hands and her feet are just out straight. Oh no, oh no, she's gonna haunt us. I know she is. I know, and we're gonna deserve it too. These guys they were like helping, right, And then she changed her demeanor because she was still reacting now and she seemed to be more of herself. But then also said that she knew that Willie and Katrina were evil spirits that kept bothering her, but went along looking around the room describing to the others what she could see. So that's when doctor Stevens was like, why don't you have a logical good spirit come to you instead of an evil one, and Larrencey looked around the room and she said, there is a good angel that wants to come. Because doctor Stevens was like, what's the angel's name, and Larncey replied, Mary Roth. Mister Roff, by the way, who was there was listening to the whole thing, and said that was his daughter, Mary Roth, and that she had died twelve years ago. So he was like, hey, yeah, let her come. We'll be glad to have her please. So who was this Mary Roth? By the way? By this point, I'm thinking, hold on, Mary is not an uncommon name. You know that this guy's last name is Roth. Eighty percent chances we're going to get that first name. Plus her own name was Mary Mary Lurency Venom, So okay, might be a coincidence anyway. But the real story of Mary Roth is that she was the daughter of Asa and and Roth right, mister Roth, and she was born on October eighth, eighteen forty six, in Indiana. When Mary was about six months old in eighteen forty seven, she had one of these fits, one of those fits, like a trans like The family thought that she was going to stay sick and eventually die, but a few weeks went by and she got better, and then she would have these episodes where her muscles would get very tense, she would twitch, and then it would go away, and it just kept happening. As years passed, these fits started getting worse and more violent, and doctors charted. They wanted to help her, so for over a year they came to see what was going on, check her out, do all these treatments, but nothing was working, and they found out that she was bleeding herself for relief, to get rid of these terrible headaches, which I guess it is ancient medicine, not ancient, but it's old medicine. When you eat it is old medicine that's gonna make her more. A mnemic could probably give her worse headaches. I think I was doing the bleeding thing. Man, she should have known. It was Saturday morning, July sixteenth, eighteen sixty four. She went out to her backyard with a knife and cut her arm. She was bleeding so much that she passed out. So when she came back it was already two in the afternoon and she had turned even more violent, so something was seriously going on. Five men had to hold her down and she has just lost a bunch of blood, just like, how the heck are you so strong? You should be like tired. Well, what's going on? Yeah, But after those five days, she acted normally. She did her own thing, but she could no longer recognize people around her. She could not hear, feel, or see. But from all of the tests that she was put through, they noticed that she could read blindfolded. She could act as if she could see when she was blindfolded with a heavy cloth, which was really weird. By the way, all these are like smart, very smart people that are trying to figure this out. We're not gonna put like this light silk cloth around your eyes and make you read. No, we're gonna really yeah, just like the crotch of my geen pants. It's that fair, yeah it yeah, probably as thick as your crotch pants. I mean, you're the crutch of your pants. Yeah, that's what we Yeah. I'm just assuming she's gonna plug in the product here. Yeah, you gotta plug always be selling. Doctor Stevens's book mentions that if she was handed a letter upside down, she would flip it the correct way and read it exactly word for word. While she was blindfolded. Doctors called it catalepsy. Members of the church called it a mystery of God. I guess that's better than being possessed. I guess it's better than it just being like, oh, let's burn her. As a mystery of God's way more pleasant. Then, on July fifth, eighteen forty five, she had breakfast, went to lay down on her bed and started screaming. Sorry. I don't know why I found that funny. I just imagined it, like you're going to bed. Yeah, you're just having a normal just a normal warning. You just go lay down, and then you just start screaming. This is gonna make me feel even worse, but we just gotta get through it. Here we go. When those in the house are her thrashing and twitching, they did what they usually did and made sure that she didn't hurt herself. A few moments after that she died. Oh shit, So she went to bed, screamed and then died. Oh no, I feel terrible. You owe Mary Roth a big apology, Edwin. I'm so sorry, Mary. I am sorry, so is Michelle. I guess I am for eating beef jerky. Well, while we're talking about your death, it was good beef jerky okay, and I put mute on so no one had to hear me too once. Okay, So she's dead. Now she's a spirit or this is the spirit that Lurency is trying to invite in instead of these evil spirits. Right by this time, they had already negotiated with this spirit, which was supposedly Mary Roth, when she was going to come into her body, when she was gonna take over. So it was like scheduled beyond time, nine o'clock, blah blah blah, how long are you going to stay? Yeah, it was that like structured. Anyway. About a week after the supposed spirit of Mary had taken over Larencey's body, Missus rob and her daughter Minerva went to see her, and as they were coming up to the house, Mary sounded so excited when she said, there comes my ma and my sister Nervy. Oh, and that's what Mary like, Mary, the original the Mary Roth used to call Minerva when they were both young Nervy. When they came into the house, she hugged them and cried of joy to see them. But after their visit, Larncey seemed sadder around the house and she kept saying that she wanted to go home. So Larncey's family was like, okay, how about we send you to the Rough family's home, and sure, why not? That's not weird. Let's just send you. Why not. It's not like Rancy hasn't been full of drama, you know what I mean, She's been a lot, she's been a hand. So maybe being like instead of the asylum, as they brush those pamphlets away, why don't you go stay with the Roth family. You want to hang out with them so badly go We'll be fine anyway, they asked the family, and they said, yeah, of course. So on February eleventh, eighteen seventy eight, Laurencey was sent off to the Roths home, and when they asked how long she was gonna stay, she said that the angels would let her stay until sometime in May. So remember this is February. It's a long time spent at someone's home or whatever. It's a lot. That's a long guest, that's a long haul guest. And so she was there. She was happy, remembering old times with her family, remembering hundreds of scores of the music she used to study as a child, and she acted like a normal member of the family. She recognized all the acquaintances, greeted one of them, Missus Parker, as Auntie Parker, just like Mary used to call her twelve years before, before Larncey was born. Yeah. She looked at her and her daughter was Nellie Parker and asked, Nellie, do you remember when Nervy and I would come over to your house and sing? And in fact, that was true. Mary used to do that. Her and her sister used to sing along with Nelly again, stuff that Larrencey would never know, right, and lots of other details. At one point, Missus Roff put on a dress that Mary used to wear, and when she came into the house and found it, she recognized their dress immediately and then asked for a box of letters of old relics of her old life, and she relived and retold all of those stories from before Mary died. Mister Roff and trying to speak with his daughter but also testing Larency, asked if she remembered when they used to live in Texas, because the family had lived there at some point, to which Larency immediately replied that yes, she remembers crossing the Red River and seeing Indians and also Missus Reader girls who had gone with them. She made detailed claims in this book, by the way, like in the book that doctor wrote. Some were letters to doctor Stevens in gratitude for giving her the chance to come back and also recording what she was going through. On May seven, she told missus Roff that Larencey Venom was coming back and was very sad about the whole thing and asked if she could gather Nerve and everybody to say goodbye. She was being interviewed about her former life, and she explained that she was not aware that she was in someone else's body at first. There's all these people that interviewed her for there's all these articles for the time that was like, this is really weird, who are you all this stuff? By the way, all this time her health and appearance were improving, and when asked where Laurencey was, she would say that Larncey was in heaven taking lessons. She started answering as many questions as possible about how whatever she was going through actually worked to the best of her knowledge, which is really cool because I've always wondered if you had a chance to talk with a go through a spirit. What would you talk to them about? And I would want to know how to replicate that, like how are you doing this? And how can I do it too? Or something like that. I wouldn't ask the secret of life or whatever or though no, and also why would they know that? Just they were humans? So how would they know that's true? Darn it, I would have wasted my question. I'm thinking of it as a genie even though it's probably not. They're not a genie. It's just like Aunt Susan or whatever. I don't know. I'm just your aunt. You remember me. I didn't do anything, yeah, when you even give me some cigarettes. So she said goodbye to everyone that she knew. She gave advice to her family and said that her family would be able to feel her close at times. Rancy was going to return at eleven o'clock, and so Mary's sister and the family gathered. She spoke of them, and at the time she predicted Laurency came back. She addressed mister Roff as mister Roff and has to be taken home. She grew up by the way before I continue right, all this stuff that was going on with her, like she was just like, yeah, this happened, like at the time, she was really that other person. And it's still one of the most bizarre like spiritual physical realm type of combination things recorded. If it's real, right, if it's real. She grew up to be a very happy young woman and she couldn't remember much of Mary's possession, and she lived a healthy life. After the publication of Lorency's story, the family offered their own perspective and thoughts on the matter. And I think Mary's sister said it best in one of her letters when she was asked on the supposed possession by Mary on Lorencey's body, And here's what she said. And as the sunset approaches Harbor, no fear of the coming night, its shadows contained within their folds, no demand to torment with horror the closing hour. I understand that this account might be tough to believe, but even if it wasn't true, and in the worst case scenario it was all made up, it still managed to change the life on an individual, the lives of a family and of an entire community. The job there, even as Minerva or Nerve said, it was to trust that once we leave the earth they can rest assured that there's nothing there to be afraid of, that there's more to us than just our bodies, and that perhaps once we leave our bodies, we can still come back, maybe to convey a message and relive our memories to this day. I think that's one of those weird possession stories that aren't creepy necessarily for it to be all made of I don't know. It might be like I never want to cross that out because obviously there's a healthy level of skepticism and I think we should all have that. But it's very convincing, Like when I read it, I read the whole thing like in one sitting, and I was like, Wow, could this be real? What if this stuff happens? And then you hear of all these things that are happening now with past lives and hypnosis and you find out who you were in another life and it makes sense and you're like, oh, wow, might be real. But anyway, if we are missing any really famous legends or stories or weird mysteries, send them to us. Have you gotten emails? I haven't gotten emails. Send us emails. Edwin's feeling lonely, so you better send him some emails even though I'm on the DM, so whatever, but we share them, so it's not like, yeah, eventually we see everything. But I guess I see the first emails and you see the first dms, right, you see them first, so cool. But anyway, Yeah, send us messages, send us your ideas. So what are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise, all right, Bye bye,