The Coin Flip

Today's tour introduces us to a fateful voyage and a plumbing problem with a haunting solution. Neither one are easy to believe, though.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. No one could agree on

(00:29):
what to do. The three travelers had just finished up
an appointment in Indianapolis on January. They planned to board
a train the next morning and begin the long journey
back to California. It was really Jane Peter's trip, but
she was traveling with her mother, Bess, along with a
mutual friend. Jane was the one calling the shots, but

(00:51):
had been happy to ride the train home until she
received a message from her husband, who was eager to
see her. To be honest, she was just as eager
to get home and be with him too, so when
he suggested they skip out on their train tickets and
catch a commercial airliner home, Jane lit up with joy.
The conflict arose when Jane's friends shook their heads and refused.

(01:13):
They both hated the thought of flying and would rather
take the slower but safer route home by train. In
the end, they did what any group of indecisive travelers
might do. They flipped a coin heads, they would follow
Jane onto the airplane and get home faster tails they
would take the train as planned. Everyone agreed to let

(01:35):
the coin decide for them, and so they pulled out
a coin and gave it a toss. The winner was
the airplane. They boarded t w A flight number three
at four a m. On January and began the westward
flight home. Today, that airplane would have made it all
the way to California without a problem, but in one

(01:56):
there were less flights, so they needed to pick up
a few people along. The St. Louis was their first stop,
and then on to Albuquerque. After that, they headed to
Las Vegas to refuel before heading west to California. The
plane took off from Las Vegas around six fifty five
am with twenty two people on board. Thirteen minutes later, however,

(02:18):
the captain made a navigational error and somehow flew the
plane into the side of Potosi Mountain. Everyone on board
the plane died instantly, including Jane. Jane Peter's husband, Clark,
was heartbroken. He flew to Las Vegas to claim his
wife's body, along with his mother in law and the
family friend. Actually the family friend was Clark's press agent.

(02:42):
Clark you see, was a well known film star named
Clark Gable and Jane Well. She was buried in Forest
Lawn Memorial Park outside of Burbank, near Hollywood, where she
spent most of her life. Jane you see was one
of the most important Hollywood stars of the nineteen thirties
and had just finished raising the modern equivalent of thirty

(03:03):
three million dollars for the war efforts. She was adored
and would be sorely missed. Most people don't know her
as Jane Peters, though, because that was her birth name. Instead,
her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, along with
the credits of all her films, bear her stage name
Carol Lombard. She accomplished so much in her short life,

(03:27):
but if it wasn't for the flip of a coin,
who knows what else she might have done. Sadly we
never will. Harry arrived at the old English mansion with

(03:50):
work on his mind, but he left with something else Entirely.
He had been called upon to take care of a
fairly simple task, much like the mansion itself. There in York.
The pipes in the basement were really old, and a
few of them needed replaced. As a plumber's apprentice, this
was the sort of task he could handle on his own,
so he was sent out to get the job done.

(04:14):
As he worked at the top of a ladder, his
neck bent to study the pipe above him, he was
startled by a sudden noise. He later told others that
it sounded like a trumpet with one long, steady blast.
It seemed to come out of nowhere and took him
by such surprise that he actually fell off the ladder
to the stone floor below. As he was returning to

(04:37):
his feet, the sound stopped and something entered the basement
through a far wall. Well entered is a misleading term.
This figure seemed to step out of the wall itself,
as if the stone there was nothing more than a mirage.
At the sight of this figure, Harry lost his cool
and rushed into a dark corner to watch it from

(04:58):
a distance. He claimed it was the figure of a
Roman soldier, complete with weapons, armor and a plumed helmet.
After the soldier had passed all the way through the
basement wall, it was followed by more. They walked in
pairs side by side, in front of horses that were
pulling carts. Harry was terrified, but he watched it all. Nonetheless,

(05:22):
each of the soldiers, he claimed were wearing short swords
on their right hip and carrying round metal and wood shields.
Beneath their armor, Harry could see green tunics, and their
feet were clad in leather sandals with straps that wound
all the way up to their knees. He watched this
ghostly parade for a few moments, as they exited the
wall on one side of the basement and then vanished

(05:44):
in the same manner on the opposite side. And then
they were gone. Harry, though, had a choice keep working
or run out of the basement as quickly as he could.
I can't find a record of which option he picked.
What I do know, though, is that he told others
about what he saw. It was a fantastic story, full

(06:05):
of suspense and drama, but it earned him a lot
of criticism. It was all fantasy. Some said the Roman
soldiers in his vision weren't historically accurate, because Romans wore red,
not green, and they carried rectangular shields, not round, with
their swords on their left hip not their right. Every
historian in nineteen fifty three was absolutely certain of this.

(06:30):
It turns out, Harry wasn't the only person to have
seen the ghostly soldiers. Decades before, a guest of the
previous owner of the mansion claimed to have seen them
as well, but just like Harry, he was laughed at
and ridiculed. Not that Frank Green, the man who owned
the place, ever, doubted a Roman connection to the mansion.
In fact, quite the opposite. Green knew for a fact

(06:54):
that his mansion had been built right on top of
an ancient Roman road. He had even uncovered a number
of Roman columns on the property and placed one of
them upstairs in the main house. The Romans were real,
as everyone knew, but the ghosts, well, that was just fantasy.
All of that changed years later archaeologists digging near the

(07:17):
mansion discovered the graves of Roman soldiers that dated to
a period after the Romans had left England and gone
back to Rome. They were, in fact Roman trained reserve
soldiers given the task of watching over Rome's investment in
the area, and there was something unexpected about them. Each
skeleton had a sword beside it, located not on the

(07:39):
left hip, as expected, but on the right. The shields
and the grave sites were also unusual since they were
round and not the typical rectangular shape. But the biggest
shock of all was the discovery of small scraps of
fabric which hinted at the true color of their tunics.
You can probably guess what color they were too. That's right,

(08:01):
they were green. Our old plumber friend, Harry took a
lot of flak for his bizarre encounter that day in
the basement of the mansion. He was mocked and shamed
and told he was wrong. But over the years he
stuck to his story and never wavered. And I think
it's safe to say that that was a good thing,
because time and a bit of digging eventually approved him. Right.

(08:29):
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 Manky in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

(08:52):
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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