July Bonus Episode: Digging Into Exhumed with Aaron Mahnke

Summary

Morbid Podcast — July Bonus Episode: Digging Into Exhumed with Aaron Mahnke

Release Date: July 31, 2026
Hosts: Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart
Special Guest: Aaron Mahnke (Host of Lore, author of Exhumed)

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Episode Overview

This lively and nerdy episode features Ash and Alaina welcoming Aaron Mahnke to discuss his new book, Exhumed, which delves into real-life vampire panics, corpse medicine, and what folklore reveals about humanity—plus plenty of nerdy banter, historical rabbit holes, dad jokes, and a dash of “would you rather” macabre games. The trio explores everything from New England legends to the creative ways humans try to explain fear and the unknown.

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Key Discussion Points & Timed Highlights

1. Introducing Aaron Mahnke and Exhumed

• [03:00] Alaina gives Aaron a “special Morbid welcome,” highlighting his contributions to podcasting (Lore, Unobscured) and his new book Exhumed.
• [03:32] Alaina discovers her endorsement is on the book’s cover along with Amy Bruni and Josh Gates.
• [03:46] Erin gushes: “It is like Lore on crack. Like, it is so much information that is so interesting.” [03:46]

2. The Genesis of Exhumed

• [04:02] Aaron explains Exhumed is essentially “20 lore episodes,” much like an unwritten fifth season of Unobscured.
• [04:54] Alaina: “It's cozy. It's like a good read for a thunderstorm, you know, that's the vibe of it.”

Writing Style and Approach

• [05:13] Aaron: “I like to approach my writing style for things like this as a little more light-hearted. I don't want people to get bogged down in technicality...but there is some teaching that has to go on.” [05:09]
• [05:25] Erin: “It felt like you were talking to me about it...It felt very comfortable to read.”

On Mercy Brown and Context

• [06:03] Aaron revisits Mercy Brown—the first Lore episode—and how her story kept recurring as a “puzzle piece” in his folklore research.
• [07:11] Aaron: “I like puzzles. I like riddles. I grew up playing games like Myst in the 90s.”
• [08:29] Erin: “Once you talk about talking blood, it's like, oh, yeah, that's not weird anymore.”

3. Context & Humanity Behind Supernatural Beliefs

• [08:37] Aaron: “Context…is like 3D glasses at the movie theater.”
• [09:18] The hosts discuss how increased context lets readers sympathize with historical figures who otherwise seem barbaric.
• [09:24] Aaron: “They aren't dumb, barbaric people…When you actually dig into it, it's really human.”

4. Vampires, Disease, and Fear in History

• [10:07] The vampire panic as metaphor for disease (esp. TB); infectious disease was “an invisible thing robbing their loved ones…”
• [11:21] Aaron: “Even by the time Mercy passed…they really weren’t putting the pieces together. Even if you explain it to them, what they were being told is there's this invisible thing that's making you sick…It also sounds a lot like what they thought a vampire was doing.”

5. Vampire Panic and Language

• [12:14] Aaron discusses how “vampire” as an explicit term wasn’t used much by locals, but began circulating as a metaphor in newspapers and public discourse.
• [12:38] “You can't have a metaphor unless people understand what the word is supposed to mean.”

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6. Research Surprises: The Human Soul, Corpse Medicine, and Gross Folklore

Soul-Searching

• [13:46] Aaron describes his hardest chapter—as a deep dive into philosophies about where the soul is housed in the body.
• [14:10] “Different cultures had different ideas. Some cultures there were multiple souls—like in Egypt, it was at the very minimum nine different souls…” [14:12]

Corpse Medicine (Graveyard Cures)

• [15:14] The most absurd medical practice? Charles II’s laudanum and alcohol “drops” as painkillers, and general misuse of toxic substances: “You throw enough opium in anything, it's going to numb out something…” [15:59]
• [16:16] Alaina relates this to mercury poisoning, Mad Hatter’s disease, and modern analogs like chemotherapy: “In a hundred years, are people gonna be looking at us and saying, chemotherapy? Are you kidding me?”

The Hand of Glory

• [18:07] Ash and Alaina delight in the Hand of Glory—a dried, pickled hand (often from a thief), sometimes used as a magical talisman or for burglary. “For people who love to accessorize!” [18:15]
• [19:56] Aaron: “It starts with literally, a human hand…you hang it on your door for a while…the end result is essentially a mummified human hand that either wicks are attached to the fingers…or the hand is dipped in wax.”
• [20:51] “If you had it when you broke into somebody’s house, no one would be able to wake up from their sleep.”
• [24:24] Very few real examples exist—it’s “gross enough that very few people actually went about making them.”

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7. Notable Quotes & Moments

• [08:53] “When you put the 3D glasses on, all of a sudden, like, things are moving at you and you really get a sense for what's going on.” —Aaron, on context in history.
• [24:16] “It’s like confirmation bias.” —Erin
• [26:47] “I made a lot of hand puns in that chapter and I just wanna preemptively apologize to anyone they hit. Don’t even apologize, know what, you had to do.” —Aaron, Alaina
• [29:33] “Force a confession of, you know, like, I won’t do it, guys. I won’t do it, I’m just gonna confess right now.” —Aaron, on “talking blood” and psychological manipulation
• [32:53] “So blood became this really important thing in a lot of cultures for a lot of reasons, but it was because there was some vitality in the blood.” —Aaron

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8. Folklore, Fear, and Society

Why Folklore Is So Enduring (and So Odd)

• [47:01] Alaina: “Why do you think that New England is, like, such a hub of the spookiest legends and stories?”
• [48:58] Aaron: “A lot of folklore comes from fear…In New England, you were on the edge of the known world in the early 1600s, and there was a lot more danger…Fear was like this mist all around them, just trapping them in.”

Fear as a Driving Force

• [53:50] Aaron: “And fear is at the heart of all of what was going on. It is like reacting to a fear, inventing an answer to calm fears.”

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9. Behind the Scenes of Lore

Lore’s Origins

• [38:03] Aaron: “It’ll be 12 years in March.”
• [40:06] The bumpy technical beginnings (“the audio was so horrible”), how a friend convinced him “this is a podcast.”
• [41:54] “There needs to be a tax on a microphone, I think.” —Erin on the explosion of podcasts.

Lore’s Style & Research

• [41:41] Early days required technical know-how (“hosting your file, broadcasting an RSS feed…”)
• [44:11] Aaron reflects on his love/hate with “so many witch stories”—because they’re dense with community drama and reveal the personality of a place.

Notable Lore Episodes

• [61:28] “From a research standpoint, Emily Saguée and the doppelganger folklore…” —Aaron
• [63:00] Aaron describes the thrill of finding original German-language sources with Google Translate.
• [63:25] “From a storytelling aspect, I love episode 12, Half Hanged. Merry Webster. 17th century woman in colonial Massachusetts accused of witchcraft…and in the morning, she gets up off the ground and walks away.”
• [65:02] Alaina: “Would that be the first episode that…somebody was just starting Lore today…?”
• [65:11] Aaron: “It’s a good place to start.”

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10. Humanity, Hope, and Modern Equivalents

Folklore & The Human Condition

• [71:24] Aaron: “We're very creative. We're very hopeful…There is a hope there that I think is really admirable.”
• [72:23] “We as people are just lovers of story.”

The Hand of Glory (Modern Edition?)

• [65:23] “What do you think is going to be our hand of glory in 200 years?”
• [65:32] Aaron: “We talked about chemotherapy already. Surely there has to be a better way…In a century from now, I hope it’s less than that…But we would have to fund the sciences, wouldn’t we?”

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Notable Games & Rabbit Holes

‘Would You Rather’ Macabre Edition

• [73:53] Inspired by Lore episodes:
  • Phantom voices in a tunnel vs. seeing a vanishing figure?
  • Traveling a medieval German forest at night vs. spending a night in Bedburg during a werewolf panic?
  • Take powdered mummy, moss from a skull, or human fat ointment as medicine?
  • Witnessing George Washington’s bloodletting or the debate to reanimate his corpse?
  • Witnessing a famous autopsy vs. a famous séance?
• [75:23] Hammersmith ghost: A real person mistaken for a ghost—and killed. “It looked like a Scooby Doo cartoon.”
• [95:29] Roanoke vs. Jack the Ripper: The whole crew goes for solving Roanoke.

Rapid Fire: This or That

• [98:15] Salem Witch Trials or New England Vampire Panic?
• [98:25] Ghosts or cryptids?
• [102:47] Alchemy or Galvanism?
• [103:41] Medieval Germany or Victorian England?

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Memorable Quotes

• “Context…is like 3D glasses at the movie theater.” (Aaron, 08:37)
• “They aren’t dumb, barbaric people…When you actually dig into it, it’s really human.” (Aaron, 09:24)
• “I made a lot of hand puns in that chapter and I just wanna preemptively apologize…” (Aaron, 26:47)
• “We as people are just lovers of story.” (Aaron, 72:23)
• “The answer at the end of the day is fear.” (Aaron, 54:07)

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Closing & Book Tour Details

• [104:51] Alaina and Aaron plug the book tour, particularly their Wilbur Theatre event in Boston on August 4th, 2026.
• [106:20] Aaron: “Preorder, preorder, preorder—I’m begging the Morbid Army to go out there and…help.”
• [106:36] Alaina: “And everybody, we hope you keep listening—and we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don’t preorder Aaron Mahnke’s book and get him on the New York Times bestseller list…”

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Summary Takeaway

This episode is a feast for fans of the macabre, blending laughter, research, and deep empathy for our fearful ancestors with a fascination for folklore. Aaron Mahnke demonstrates, with both wit and rigor, how studying the strange past can illuminate that hope, fear, and storytelling are inseparable from what it means to be human.

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Listen to Morbid and preorder Exhumed by Aaron Mahnke for rare tales, weird rabbit holes, vampire panics, and lots of very good dad jokes!**

Transcript

[Alaina]

These long dog days of summer. I mean, we just made it through a heat wave. Mama was parched through this heat wave. I was hitting up Dunkin every single day. And I will continue to probably for the rest of my days, but especially this summer. Dunkin is helping everyone stay cool this summer with its lineup of refreshers. These drinks are packed with bold, fruity flavors and served ice cold. It's amazing. Dunkin Refreshers are the perfect afternoon. Pick me up. I like to start my morning with them personally, and then sometimes I go back for a second one because I'm just feeling crazy. They come in a variety of delicious flavors, including fan favorites mango pineapple and strawberry dragon fruit. And then for a limited time, there's black cherry and there's pink pineapple. I'm going to tell you something right now, and I. It's a bold claim, let me tell you, but I stand behind it. Pink pineapple will change your life. It is so good. It has me feeling like I'm sitting in a pool. Resort side, just living, honey. It's so yummy. Try your favorite flavor with green tea Sparkling Water lemonade or Dunkin's All New Limeade. I haven't tried the limeade yet, but I'm going to. Usually I get my drinks made with green tea and occasionally lemonade, but I do really like the green tea. Or. Or if you don't want to build your own, try one of Dunkin's curated refreshers like the Cherry Lime Ricky or the ultimate Pink Daydream. The Cherry Lime Ricky. Mmm. Scrumptious. I could drink like three of these a day. They're so frump. Freaking yummy. Head to Dunkin today and find your favorite refresher. Dunkin Refreshers contain less than 1% fruit juice. Limited time offer. When it comes to online college, Southern New Hampshire University is so good, it's scary. Listen, the facts don't lie. SNHU has degree programs that fit your goals, online classes that fit your life, and real support at every step. And if that wasn't enough, they've got some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S. this is an airtight case. You guys visit SNHU. Edu Morbid to get started. That's SNHU. Edu Morbid. Every good detective needs a partner to support them on important cases. Think of a State Farm agent like your sidekick, there to help you along the way in your search for coverage. State Farm can help you choose the coverage you need, whether it's for your home, car, boat, or even rv. With so many options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you so you can get back to solving all of life's bigger cases. Go to state farm.com or use the award winning app to connect with a local agent and get a quote. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

[Erin]

I'm Alaina.

[Aaron Manke]

And I'm Erin.

[Alaina]

And this is Morbid.

[Erin]

A very special Morbid.

[Alaina]

A special morbid welcome, Aaron.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you for having me.

[Alaina]

Thank you for coming, weirdos. Today we have Aaron Manke on the show. You probably know him from his award winning podcast, Lore, or perhaps the author of some of your favorite titles. And we have exciting news. Your latest book, exhumed, comes out August 4th.

[Erin]

It does.

[Alaina]

So soon.

[Aaron Manke]

So soon. Too soon.

[Alaina]

Congratulations.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you.

[Alaina]

You're welcome.

[Erin]

This book is amazing. I got an early copy of it. I feel very fortunate.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, you're on. You're on the back.

[Alaina]

Oh, that's so cool. I didn't even know that.

[Aaron Manke]

Right? Right at the top.

[Alaina]

Oh, look at me.

[Erin]

Look at that.

[Aaron Manke]

You're on there with Amy Bruni.

[Erin]

Oh.

[Aaron Manke]

From Kindred Spirits and Ghost Hunters and Josh Gates.

[Erin]

Oh, cool.

[Aaron Manke]

So good company. Good company.

[Erin]

I feel good about that.

[Alaina]

At the very top.

[Erin]

Oh, look at me.

[Alaina]

Look at you. Big red. I love it.

[Erin]

It's an amazing book. It is like lore on crack. Like, it is so much information. That is so interesting. My husband started reading it and he was like, this is amazing.

[Alaina]

He stole it at one point.

[Erin]

Yeah. It's phenomenal.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you.

[Erin]

So good.

[Aaron Manke]

So years ago, a couple years after I started Lore, I created a podcast called Unobscured. And the idea was, you know, we spent 30 minutes on a topic on Lore, but what if we spend a whole season on a topic and the first season is on the Salem witch trials, which still people listen to like every year that I get questions about it all the time. It was 10 episodes, you know, like 45 minutes a piece. And there was so much fun in spending just all that time exploring a big topic. Like, you can really take your time and dig deep and build the house. Right. You can take your time. And we did four seasons of that, and then I heart canceled it. But Exhumed in some ways is sort of like a. Like a fifth season. No, it is 20 lore episodes.

[Erin]

It feels like that.

[Aaron Manke]

It is. Yeah.

[Erin]

That's why I loved it. It was like, very homy. I was like, o, I'm ready for this.

[Alaina]

It's cozy. It's like a good Read for like a thunderstorm, you know, that's the vibe of it.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah. And I. I like to approach my writing style for things like this as a little bit more light hearted. And I don't want people to get bogged down in technicality.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

While at the same time, there is some teaching that has to go on in the book and we can, we can explore that.

[Erin]

Yeah. And you know, when you say that, that is what I noticed immediately about the writing style is it doesn't bog you down with all these, like, technical things, but it's giving you the information. But I felt like you were talking to me about it.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Could you have like, a little side where you'll be like. Right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it felt very comfortable to read.

[Aaron Manke]

And there's a few dad jokes. I apologize, maybe some puns.

[Alaina]

You got to throw in the dad jokes where you can.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, I expect it.

[Aaron Manke]

It's my right.

[Erin]

Yes, absolutely it is. So in exhumed, you examine the Mercy Brown case, but that's not all. It also really examines, like, the attitudes about life and death that led up to and continued after that case. You've been asking on Lore the question why for a long time, what was the thing that made you want to explore it so deeply here?

[Aaron Manke]

Well, Mercy Brown was the very first episode of Lore. So we're talking March of 2015.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, almost 12 years ago. Yeah, I probably wrote it about 12 years ago this coming November.

[Erin]

Oh, wow.

[Aaron Manke]

And at the time, it was a. It was a cool, creepy story.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

That's really all that it was.

[Erin]

And it's local.

[Aaron Manke]

Hey, folks, have you ever heard of this before? Let me tell you about this. Right? And you know, and I. I built that episode. It was only like 12 minutes long because I was still trying to get my feet on the ground. And like, what is this format even supposed to be? So there's a little bit of vampire and premature barrier. There's some safety coffin stuff in there, but it's mostly about Mercy Brown.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And when I wrote and told the story in the podcast, I thought, folks just need to hear this wild story. But then what happened is I kept making Lore, and as the years went by, I would write and publish another episode and think, you know, that that kind of. This sounds weird. That kind of smells like the Mercy Brown story. Like there's some aspect of it that it's almost like it's from the same family. I wonder why. I feel like those are connected. And I like puzzles. I like Riddles. I grew up playing games like myst in the 90s.

[Erin]

Myst. Holy shit.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, my gosh. So it's like you have to pay attention to sounds you heard in one scene, and then you're using them as a code somewhere else. And I was just filing away certain episodes as I went through making lore, and I thought, oh, this. This really does feel like it might have some bearing on the Mercy Brown story. And I just kind of gathered those pieces together. And at some point a couple years ago, I realized, this is a book. I need to write about it. And so the idea was, yes, we've got the Mercy Brown story. And I can tell it. Actually, I tell it in the very beginning, kind of in the format that people typically bump into it with errors and all. And then at the end of the book, the last 20% is really covering Mercy's story. But that first 80% of the book is all those other stories that I bumped into along the way that help explain the why. Like you said, why was it. Why was it thought that what they did to her post death was an okay, acceptable thing to do?

[Erin]

How is that a valid question?

[Alaina]

Valid question.

[Aaron Manke]

Valid question. Why did they think, okay, let's do that?

[Erin]

You know, it really works too, in the book because like you said, it begins with her and ends with her. And when you eat up all that in the middle, when you get back to her, you're like, oh, okay. Like, it does. You're like, oh, shit. Okay. This doesn't seem as crazy when you put it in the context of all this other stuff.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly.

[Erin]

You know, once you talk about talking blood, it's like, oh, yeah, that's not weird anymore.

[Aaron Manke]

I wouldn't want to talk about talking. There's a lot of blood in the book, actually.

[Erin]

There is a lot of blood.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm a metaphor guy, and I tend to tell people that. Look, when we talk about context, what you're talking about is like 3D glasses at the movie theater. You know, if you watch the movie without them, it's going to look a little weird. You're not going to get the whole picture.

[Erin]

Oh, that is a good way of experimenting.

[Aaron Manke]

But when you put the 3D glasses on, all of a sudden, like, things are moving at you and you really get a sense for what's going on.

[Erin]

Ye.

[Aaron Manke]

That's what context does to a story, whether it's fiction or it's a historical exploration like this. So for me, I had to equip people so that, yes, by the time they get to that last Section of the book. Oh, my gosh. I have all the tools in my backpack that I need to go through this mission. I can do this now. Yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

It lets you appreciate the story more.

[Alaina]

It does.

[Erin]

Because you can, like, weirdly sympathize with other people in the story.

[Aaron Manke]

And that was one of the surprising things about it as I wrote it, I realized, oh, they aren't like dumb, barbaric people. Yeah, right. Like you. You.

[Erin]

Because it could come off that way at first when you hear that story.

[Aaron Manke]

Villagers cut open a dead woman's chest and, you know, burn her heart.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Well, that sounds bad about.

[Erin]

Right?

[Aaron Manke]

What is that? It sounds barbaric, but. But when you actually dig into it, it's. It's really human.

[Erin]

Yeah, absolutely. It is. Which is so scary.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Now, speaking of that, the monsters and things that people believe in often tell us a lot more about people than they do about the monsters. What do you think vampires in the panic around them reveals about the fears of people in 19th century New England?

[Aaron Manke]

Well, they were dealing with a lot of disease, you know, at the time. Tuberculosis was. It had been a thing for a very long time. But, yeah, there's just something about, you know, late 19th century, that TB was really.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Just having fun.

[Erin]

Everything was just gross.

[Aaron Manke]

Living its life chested, right.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And so there's this idea that there's this invisible thing that's robbing their loved ones from them, robbing their livelihood in some ways. It's funny, like, just a few years before, maybe it was a few months before Mercy's mother died in the early 1880s, they had actually figured out what was causing TB scientifically. But that was in Europe. And it was, you know, it was like a world away from this farming village outside of Newport in Rhode Island.

[Erin]

They didn't get the CNN update.

[Aaron Manke]

They did not get that. There was no alert on.

[Erin]

BBC wasn't just coming up.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. So there's like this. It's like a. It's like having a phone call with somebody and there's like a massive delay. And they just. They just didn't know. Even by the time Mercy passed away and in 1892, they really weren't putting the pieces together. And at the same time, even if you explain it to them, what they were being told is there's this invisible thing that is making you sick. And at the end of the day. But it also sounds a lot like what they thought a vampire was doing or this supernatural force. It is an invisible thing that is sucking the life out of them. Just In a different way.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

A little more scientific, you know?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Erin]

That makes more sense. I feel like a vampire is way more fun.

[Alaina]

I'd rather go at the hands of a vampire than tv.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

You know, I would have fallen victim to this whole vampire panic. Just I think I would have wanted.

[Alaina]

For the fun of it.

[Erin]

Like, I think I would have chose to.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Even if I was like, yeah, it's

[Alaina]

probably for the theater.

[Erin]

Yeah. Just for the theater of it all. Like, let's go.

[Aaron Manke]

The, The. The historian in the writer of me wants to say that, like, she was the end. She was the end of, like, a century of stories like hers Back to the 1790s with Sarah Tillingast. Also an exit of Rhode island, by the way.

[Erin]

Oh.

[Aaron Manke]

Ended by this little village in Rhode Island. And then. Then they were in between. They were all over.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Vermont, New Hampshire, everywhere. And we call it the New England vampire panic. But there's not a lot of evidence that people were out there at that moment saying, so and so's a vampire. What they were saying was, one of the people in the grave who died before the sick person who is currently dying is somehow sucking the life out of people.

[Erin]

What is that?

[Aaron Manke]

And we know that the word vampire has a history of appearing on the public record, but we also almost immediately see it being used as a metaphor. And I talk about this in the book. You'll see it in newspapers being used as a metaphor for politicians, for, you know, was it. Oliver Wendell Holmes used the word vampire to talk about women, which was, like, the most sexist thing, say, rude. And I, I, I hope his wife gave him hell for that. But it was being used as a metaphor, and you can't have a metaphor unless people understand what the word is supposed to mean.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So there, There is the assumption that it was floating around outside of print long before, but there's. There's really no record of it was kind of imprinted on Mercy's story by an outside newspaper. When you first see the word vampire show up to them, it was just sort of like, there's something supernatural going on.

[Erin]

Yeah. There's something sucking the life out of people.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly.

[Erin]

Like a blood sucker.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Great.

[Erin]

Or in true blood, a fanger.

[Alaina]

A fanger.

[Erin]

Yeah. So just in the book as a whole, was there a chapter that, like, challenged a belief you held previously? Just kind of like, rocked your world a little bit when you researched it?

[Aaron Manke]

I. That's a good question. The hardest chapter to write was probably the one that was all the philosophy about the human Soul.

[Erin]

I loved that.

[Alaina]

That must be fascinating.

[Aaron Manke]

It did challenge a lot of, like, preconceived notions I had going in, which was, oh, they always assumed it was in the heart, you know, that kind of thing. And, you know, they did cut out Mercy's heart, so I'm gonna find that. But what I found instead was that it was just everywhere.

[Erin]

I was gonna say, so much more complicated. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Different cultures had different ideas. Same cultures went through multiple ideas. Some cultures there were multiple souls. Like in Egypt, it was. It was, you know, at the. At the very minimum, nine different souls that had different functions.

[Erin]

That's wild.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. So that one, really. It was hard to write too, just from a philosophical standpoint. Like, I can explain creepy history and some science, but we get into the realm of the soul and what is the difference between each of these nine?

[Erin]

Gets a little murky.

[Alaina]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. It takes a lot out of you.

[Erin]

Yeah. We always has several souls.

[Alaina]

I have a lot of souls.

[Erin]

She'll slip into an accent sometimes and we're like, was that a soul?

[Alaina]

It might happen today.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

So just know it's a soul.

[Erin]

Yeah. You know, just to know she's got a few.

[Alaina]

Yeah. I have to say one of my favorite chapters in the book was corpse medicine because we covered that pretty recently.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And I fell down so many different rabbit holes with that.

[Erin]

That's so fascinating.

[Alaina]

What was the most absurd medical practice that you came across in your research?

[Aaron Manke]

Absurd?

[Alaina]

Well, so it's all pretty absurd.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, it's all pretty absurd. I mean, we can, we can get into blood later, but I think about the. The English king. Was it Charles II who had the drops that he carried with him?

[Erin]

Drops, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And in the firsthand accounts of people who had consumed them and what it was doing to them. And then you realize that the two main ingredients were like high proof alcohol and opium.

[Alaina]

They were just up, they were wasted.

[Aaron Manke]

And every time he felt like a twinge of pain, he was going for drops. I said, just give me the whole bottle.

[Alaina]

Just drinking them out of skulls too.

[Aaron Manke]

So no wonder it worked, right? I mean, worked in air quotes for a little bit. Yes, exactly. You throw enough opium in anything, it's

[Erin]

going to numb out something that'll hold

[Alaina]

you over for some time. In the end, I think he ended up dying of seizures. Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Maybe.

[Alaina]

I think he did. I don't remember after long term use of.

[Aaron Manke]

I would assume he was also a hobby alchemist. And at that time, alchemists in general tended to work a lot with mercury and like boiling it and Creating vapors from it. And so they just consumed so many toxic chemicals. I mean, Isaac Newton was gray, I think, in his 30s.

[Erin]

Wow.

[Aaron Manke]

When some of his journals went up for auction back in the 90s, I think it was in the 90s or the 80s, they opened up one of the books and found strands of his hair in there. And they had him tested, and their mercury levels were off the charts.

[Erin]

Oh, my God.

[Aaron Manke]

It's no wonder he couldn't eat. He had digestive issues and died young.

[Alaina]

Oh, my God. Mercury will mess you up. We just talked about that at our live show. It's called the Mad Hatter Madness of Hatter. That comes from them being poisoned by the vapors from mercury.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alaina]

It's crazy.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

That's nuts.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I think that's what happened in that podcast s town. Do you remember that podcast?

[Alaina]

I do remember mercury.

[Erin]

I think it was. It was some kind of poisoning like that.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay.

[Erin]

That made some shit go down.

[Alaina]

I'm actually kind of surprised that I haven't got mercury poisoning because I love sushi, so.

[Erin]

You do? I'm actually surprised you've never got.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I know.

[Erin]

You love the sea.

[Alaina]

Fingers crossed.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

It's one of those things that we look back now and we say, yeah, my gosh, what were you thinking? It's like a liquid metal.

[Erin]

I know.

[Aaron Manke]

Did you not notice people dying from that?

[Alaina]

Right.

[Erin]

But it's like radium, too.

[Aaron Manke]

Like, in a hundred years, are people gonna be looking at us and saying, chemotherapy? Are you kidding me?

[Alaina]

Probably.

[Aaron Manke]

You poison the body to the point of death to kill cancer. What were you thinking?

[Alaina]

Like, what were you thinking holding your phone 24 7? What's that?

[Erin]

Having it in your pocket next to your vital organs. Like, putting it in your bed next to your face.

[Aaron Manke]

But they didn't know better, you know, they just didn't know any better.

[Alaina]

And we don't even know.

[Erin]

The worst part is we kind of know better.

[Alaina]

I know. We do know a little.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

But more will come out, I'm sure.

[Erin]

Yeah, sure. They'll find out how stupid we are later. It's just.

[Alaina]

It's the next generation's.

[Erin]

It'll be. They'll deal with it. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Now, another chapter that I really loved was the Hand of Glory.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, my gosh.

[Erin]

I love the Hand of Glory.

[Alaina]

It's a wild concept.

[Erin]

It's so crazy.

[Aaron Manke]

For people who love to accessorize.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Alaina]

And I do. Yes, I do.

[Erin]

I do love it now. For people who are listening, who don't are like a hand of Glory. Can you give us a little synopsis of what it is?

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, definitely. So a Hand of Glory was a tool of folklore. Now, there's a couple different purposes with. There are uses with it, but it starts with literally, a human hand. Okay. Often the hand that was cut off of a thief. And that's important because it's an example of what's known as Sympathetic magic. And sympathetic magic is built on the concept of like is connected to like. There's also a branch of sympathetic magic that's like things that have touched something have passed on some of their power to things. But a good example would be most people have heard someone say, eat walnuts. They're good for your brain. And then they'll point to an open walnut and say, look, it even looks like a brain. Right?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So there's a lot of herbs. If you go look through the vitamin section at a CVS or something, you'll see things like blood, wart, and, like, a word with wart after it. And it's often named after a body part. And it's because somebody looked at the plant and said, wow, that looks a lot like the human body part. Let's name it after that. And I bet it's useful in treating that. Right. So that's sympathetic magic. It's this idea that God wrote the purpose of a thing into. Its physical appearance seems legit. Within this realm, we have the Hand of Glory. And the Hand of Glory was a hand, a human hand that was often dried, pickled. They drain it of blood, they set it out in the sun. There's a whole recipe in the book quoting from somebody from a few hundred years ago.

[Alaina]

I love the recipes.

[Aaron Manke]

You hang it on your door for a while. The. The end result.

[Erin]

Flowers.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes. It's on the door knocker.

[Alaina]

You can use it in the meantime.

[Aaron Manke]

And what you end up with is essentially a mummified human hand that either wicks are attached to the fingers.

[Erin]

I love that.

[Aaron Manke]

So that you can burn the fingers as candles, or the hand is dipped in wax and you simply light the fingers on fire themselves. Like.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Either way, because of its association with theft, you had a couple of uses for a Hand of Glory. One is that you could, as a thief, carry one with you. And if you had it, when you broke into somebody's house, no one would be able to wake up from their sleep. It was like carte blanche, freedom to do whatever you wanted in their house. Right. So it was like you imagine somebody with it on a chain hanging off their hip, like a rabbit foot.

[Erin]

Got this. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I've got this dead hand with me.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But then on the other side of it, also connected to theft. People who had a home and wanted to protect themselves could have a Hand of Glory in the house. And that was supposed to ward off

[Alaina]

evil, like a talisman.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Which if there's a hand hanging off your door, I'm not hitting you up. I'm not going to break into that house. Like, that would make sense.

[Aaron Manke]

That's.

[Erin]

I feel like they mean business.

[Alaina]

Yeah. So they're not messing around.

[Erin]

I think it makes sense.

[Aaron Manke]

Yep. Yep.

[Erin]

I love it.

[Aaron Manke]

It's just. It's. It's delightful to think that people had this hanging around, mounted human hand with, you know, half burned fingers on them.

[Erin]

I love that.

[Alaina]

And just imagine. I'm sorry, I have to go here. The smell. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. What did that. That was not a Yankee candle.

[Erin]

No, no.

[Alaina]

That's not what I look for in a candle.

[Erin]

You know, but I think everything smelled.

[Alaina]

That's true.

[Erin]

Maybe. I think it wouldn't even.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, yeah.

[Erin]

Like, you'd be like, that's just another smell.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Maybe the wax, like, slightly obscured the day, maybe.

[Erin]

Right.

[Alaina]

Yeah. You never know.

[Erin]

They all smelled like.

[Alaina]

That is for sure.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. It might have improved things.

[Alaina]

It.

[Erin]

Honestly.

[Alaina]

Exactly.

[Erin]

So at least you're getting, like, a burning smell, you know, something cancel out everything else. Yeah.

[Alaina]

No one deep in the streets.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and, you know, every version of a Hand of Glory, I feel like they have, like, a slightly different recipe, if you will.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

Is there one historical account of, like, a recipe or a Hand of Glory situation that made you be like, that's enough research for today. I think I'm gonna check out through

[Aaron Manke]

the magic of editing. I'm gonna look really quickly here.

[Erin]

I got this. He didn't slam the ties. Right now.

[Aaron Manke]

You just cut out the next 10 minutes of me flipping through. I mean, so chapter six is called overly Sympathetic. And there's a lovely drawing of lit hand of glory. Of a lit hand of glory. And I start off by talking about why hands? Because hands were this really symbolic thing in a lot of belief systems.

[Erin]

I get that, too. Other examples, you know, like, hands, I feel like, are individual.

[Alaina]

I'm a Gemini, so Gemini rules the hands.

[Erin]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I always look at people's hands.

[Alaina]

I know. You are fascinating.

[Erin]

I'm like a person.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Maybe it's not in the italic that I want it to be in, but there. There is a really good recipe in here that I just. I was struck by the deliberate nature of it. I mean, it's like Betty Crocker. Step by step here are very specific things that you need to do.

[Erin]

Don't measure with your heart. Like you have three quarters of a

[Alaina]

cup of blood, please.

[Erin]

This isn't like vanilla extract.

[Aaron Manke]

It's really eye opening. So I highly recommend digging into that chapter.

[Erin]

Yeah, get into that chapter.

[Alaina]

Cause, yeah, Chapter six, everybody.

[Erin]

Hands of Glory Forever. And what's crazy about Hands of Glory, like we were just talking about, is that people really believed this worked. Like, really believed, like, steadfast. Why do you think that people put so much faith into that specifically?

[Aaron Manke]

So if all you need is a handful of moments where it seems to have worked for people to say, see. So like, you know, one of the things that I have in the book is an article from an Irish newspaper from mid-1800s where it's like the police blotter in your local newspaper. Right. So and so had a break in at her house, but they attempted to use a hand of glory and they did. X, Y and Z. And the thieves were thwarted. And you throw a couple reports like that in a newspaper and people start to believe that, yeah, this is gonna work.

[Erin]

I mean, it's like confirmation bias.

[Alaina]

That's exactly what it is.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But it's also gross enough that very few people actually went about making them.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Aaron Manke]

So there aren't a. There's like a pub in England that used to have one on display. Oh, great. They claim to have found it in a wall, but then it was stolen. Irony of ironies. A talisman against theft was stolen a couple decades ago and they've never gotten it back.

[Erin]

Bring it back.

[Aaron Manke]

There's also a museum that has one, but there aren't a lot of them extant. So we also look at that and say, is it just a lot of story with very few examples, people believe that it would work.

[Erin]

I mean. Yeah. Would you have fallen for it back then, do you think?

[Aaron Manke]

Back then, probably.

[Erin]

I feel like it made sense.

[Alaina]

I was ready to just.

[Erin]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Aaron Manke]

It's the hand of a thief.

[Erin]

That's the thing. It's so.

[Alaina]

I believe it now.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alaina]

Like you said, you put that on your door. I'm not coming over.

[Erin]

No, it kind of makes sense. Yeah. You know, I don't know if I believe it for the thief. I believe it to thwart again.

[Alaina]

To thwart.

[Erin]

Yes, that's right.

[Aaron Manke]

Also, the weird thing where you have to douse the flame. Like there's a story in There about. And it's a. It's kind of legend, it's kind of fact, but Of a pub that was being robbed by a traveler who came, set up, the Hand of Glory said this magical phrase, and everybody in the house who was asleep stayed asleep. But the housemaid, who had been instructed to stay awake and take care of this traveler's needs, was still awake. So she didn't go to sleep. And she was able to run to the kitchen and get milk and extinguish the flames. Because that's what you do. You use milk to extinguish the flames, obviously. So Hand of Glory is lactose intolerant, Apparently.

[Alaina]

Bingo.

[Erin]

Dairy intolerance. There we go. Yeah. Hey, let's go. A lot of us are. Yeah.

[Alaina]

I mean, you know, join the club. Hand of Glory.

[Erin]

It wouldn't work in my house. Now, you have researched for lore as well, some really crazy cursed objects. Where do you think the Hand of Glory ranks among those objects?

[Aaron Manke]

It's definitely on the far side of, like, the gross scale.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

There are other, I guess, more neat and clean cursed objects, you know, like the car that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in, you know, was said to be very cursed. And James Dean's car, things like that. But as far as, like, gross cursed objects. Yeah, yeah.

[Alaina]

That's high up there.

[Aaron Manke]

It's right up there.

[Erin]

I would say.

[Alaina]

So.

[Erin]

Yeah. It's a tough one to make.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Like, you gotta get a person that can take their hand. So that's. That's a lot. Yeah. You gotta commit to it.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I made a lot of hand puns in that chapter and I just wanna love it. Preemptively apologize to anybody they hit every time.

[Alaina]

Don't even apologize. Know what you had to do?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Dad jokes. And never for puns. Do you apologize here?

[Aaron Manke]

Sometimes they just present themselves and you have to.

[Erin]

You gotta take em.

[Aaron Manke]

You have to take em. Yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

You can't let them pass by.

[Alaina]

You're speaking our language.

[Erin]

You really are.

[Alaina]

We love a dad joke.

[Erin]

We do.

[Alaina]

I feel like we've kind of foreshadowed this topic a bit. Talking blood. I love this concept.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

I had never heard of it before the book. So tell me, do you think that people genuinely expected the blood to reveal the killer, or do you think it was more about putting this, like, psychological pressure on somebody who might confess?

[Aaron Manke]

It's hard to say a couple centuries later because I don't want to spoil stuff, but there were some fairly recent examples, non European examples, of people thinking that the blood of A murder victim would cry out who their killer was.

[Erin]

We're obsessed with that.

[Aaron Manke]

I do really wish that the social aspect was understood and known because the idea of. So just to quickly summarize this, there was this idea that someone who was murdered, the blood in their body would react to the touch of the killer. So people have heard the phrase trial by fire. There's a whole different group of trials. There's trial by water. You know, the whole witch thing where they duck the witch under the water. Does she float? Does she not? That's a trial. There's a whole series of trials. And they're usually founded in some aspect of Christian theology. And trial by blood is also known as cruentation. And it just has to do with this idea that you find a body, somebody got stabbed, and let's bring all the suspects in and they'll touch the body and something will happen. If the killer touches the body, the wound that has been closed up will bleed fresh blood or the flesh will bruise. And it won't do that for innocent people. That was the belief God was going to speak a truth through some physical reaction. They really did believe it. Like, they really did believe that there was a religious aspect to this and that it was happening. But there's really a part of me that I want there to have been like a manipulation going on as well of the story that I told in the book of. Of one crew and had the entire village processed through the hall first before the guy that everybody suspected he was the last. He had to stand in line. He had to doubt, sweat it out. Yeah. And I want to believe that that was on purpose.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

It has to be. Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Force a confession of, you know, like, I won't do it, guys. I won't do it. I'm just confess right now.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Erin]

You know, or just watch him, like physically melt down as he's about to. It's like innocent people would be like, all right, well, it's not gonna happen. I didn't kill this person.

[Alaina]

But I guess we'll just get this over with. What a weird practice.

[Aaron Manke]

But there were instances where it was used and they used the results from these cruentation tests in court.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Erin]

Gnarly.

[Aaron Manke]

By the way, you're going to the gallows now because you touched a body that had a sewn up wound and blood came out and a little trickle

[Erin]

of blood clearly did this.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, clearly it was you.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Right.

[Erin]

That's like spectral evidence. It is exactly that. It's like, that's wild that that was just Used legally.

[Aaron Manke]

Right.

[Erin]

But they also used to think, like, in some places or times, they used to think that, like, the last image of someone's killer would be captured in someone's eyes.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

And I loved that.

[Alaina]

That is right next to that.

[Aaron Manke]

Didn't they do, like, all sorts of photography experiments?

[Alaina]

Yeah, they would try to see.

[Erin]

I loved it.

[Alaina]

Oh, that would be a great episode.

[Erin]

I know.

[Alaina]

It's another in and of itself.

[Erin]

Yeah, it's super interesting.

[Alaina]

Now, I wonder, I mean, you answered this question in your book, but why do you think blood specifically became the thing that people thought would reveal this truth?

[Aaron Manke]

So there were moments in writing the book where I thought, why am I talking about this topic? For reference. I sat down with my research assistant, Sam, and I said, here's where I think we need to go. Let's build an outline. You'll start researching. We'll find places where maybe we're a little off and we need to adjust or we'll expand, that kind of thing. And every now and then I had this thought of, is this really important to Mercy Brown? But what you had to understand about Mercy Brown's story was that they were looking for signs of fresh blood in the corpse of the supposed. You know, call them vampire, call them, you know, whatever. Well, why were they looking for signs of fresh blood? Well, blood meant something to people in previous eras. And it's because they believed that the blood, human blood, was like the connective tissue that held the soul and the body together and that gave blood a very special power. It was the glue. You had a layer of the human body and you had the soul, the material and the spiritual. But there had to be something that glued them together, and blood was it. This is why epilepsy comes up a lot in the drinking of blood in the book. Because for, like, 2,000 years, people believed that what was happening in an epileptic's body when they were having a seizure was that they were somehow. They were. They weren't dying, they weren't dead. They were, like. One scholar called it quasi dead.

[Erin]

Quasi.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm not dead yet. They were, like, almost dead. Because what was happening physiologically, their soul and their body were separating, and they needed an infusion of fresh blood to, like, reglue them back together again. So blood became this really important thing in a lot of cultures for a lot of reasons, but it was because there was some vitality in the blood. And that's where, like, you have a dead body, but the blood is still. There was an assumption that when you died. There was a linear process at life. You have runny blood, and as your body decomposes, that, like, congeals. It becomes thicker and thicker until it's just a dry dust in your veins. But in reality, what happens is you decompose and it gets a little thicker.

[Erin]

Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

And then you decompose some more, and it actually thins up more. And they. They went in with this false pretense of, well, if it's runny, it's got a lot of life left in it. And so that life could communicate things to us. God can use that and point to a killer.

[Alaina]

It's so fascinating, isn't it?

[Erin]

That's so crazy.

[Alaina]

I understand why they believed it to some extent, you know?

[Erin]

Yeah. You can see where it comes from.

[Alaina]

Right. Like, it's not crazy. No, but it is crazy.

[Aaron Manke]

It's not that they sat down and said, what is the most batshit idea I came up with? They worked through it with logic.

[Alaina]

They did.

[Aaron Manke]

They were doing the best they could with what they had.

[Alaina]

The tools they had.

[Erin]

Exactly. They had no way of knowing that it goes from runny to congealed and thick to runny again.

[Alaina]

And how would that.

[Erin]

So when they see it go runny again, they're like, well, something made that happen.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly.

[Erin]

Because that's not natural.

[Aaron Manke]

There must be life left in there.

[Erin]

Yeah, that's life.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Like, that's wild to think about.

[Aaron Manke]

You also see this in a lot of early vampire folklore in, like, Serbian culture, where there are people who are deemed just more likely to become a revenant or a vampire after death. Alcoholics, people who are irreligious. It's essentially like, you run through the list and you realize it's all the social outcasts, it's all the people who did bad things. Well, it turns out that people who do bad things in society 2, 3, 400 years ago, they don't get buried in the same way. They don't get put in a nice shroud in a coffin and buried in the ground at a good depth. They're usually thrown in with just a piece of cloth around them. And what happens is that makes the decomposition process very differently than it would inside of a box. And so they go. And maybe they open the grave by mistake, or they go to check on something and they find that the body has done something very unusual. Well, of course it has.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

It's totally different for this moment to have this unusual state.

[Erin]

So they othered them.

[Alaina]

Exactly.

[Aaron Manke]

Confirmation bias, essentially. Like, they. They built the system that created the bodies that made them believe in vampires by. By labeling. It's just.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, it makes so much sense. Yeah, it was all set up. They're set up to fail.

[Alaina]

I was just gonna say they're working against themselves.

[Erin]

Like they're set up to be vampires.

[Alaina]

Right, Right.

[Erin]

Foreign.

[Alaina]

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[Erin]

Now moving just like kind of like parallel. Here to talk a little bit about lore. I love Lor.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you.

[Erin]

Lor was the first podcast I ever listened to. And I have to thank Deb. Deb, our.

[Alaina]

Yes.

[Erin]

One of my best friends who introduced me. She wanted to be here today. Cause she was like, I want to meet Aaron.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you, Deb.

[Erin]

Because I couldn't get childcare.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you, Deb.

[Alaina]

Deb. See, she'll die.

[Aaron Manke]

No, don't die.

[Erin]

Don't die. Say a less. But you've been doing lore for over a decade now. How long has it been?

[Aaron Manke]

It'll be 12 years in March.

[Erin]

That's crazy. So I have to ask, what made you start the show to begin with? I know you started with Mercy Brown. What. What made you want to go further?

[Aaron Manke]

I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to write like Stephen King type spooky stories. Right.

[Erin]

I feel like you could.

[Aaron Manke]

And he dips a lot into folklore, like Pet Sematary. He's dipping into Algonquin mythology and stories. And I self published a handful of thrillers like that. And what I tried to do is I would go look for good New England things like that and weave them in.

[Alaina]

We have so many good New England things.

[Erin]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And when you weave them in, it kind of grounds it like it. People say, I've heard of that and it makes the rest of the story more believable. But I would find more than I needed. And so I had this like overflowing folder of just information stories of like real life things that had happened. And I thought, I can't use all of these. But I was also self published and, you know, you'd write a book and sell five copies and it was a little disheartening. So I thought, well, if I could increase my email list because. Okay, we have to remember, this is like before the podcast wave.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Oh, yeah.

[Alaina]

This was back when you were at the very beginning.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, mailchimp was barely a thing.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't remember how I was doing my email list at the time, but. But I thought, I have like 60 people on my email list and if I could increase that, then I've increased how many people might buy a book.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So I thought, I'll give them something for free that will be of value and they'll sign up for my email list in return and I'll sell enough books to buy a cup of coffee.

[Alaina]

There you go. Win, win, win, win. That's all we want.

[Aaron Manke]

So I. I wrote one. It was the Mercy Brown story. And then I wrote another. I think I wrote four of them. And I looked at the PDF. At some point I realized, Holy crap. This is 10,000 words. And at the time, cell phones were like half the size that they are today. You know, they were tiny. And I thought, I'm gonna be giving people a PDF to pinch and zoom and read on this tiny little smartphone. It's just not worth it. And so I. I gave up.

[Erin]

I'll just tell it to him.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I gave up. I dragged the icon for this pages file over to my trash can. I was about to let go and I thought, well, wait a minute. I listen to audiobooks. Maybe it would be more convenient if people listened to me tell them these stories. So my next plan was to record those stories, put them in a zip folder, and give them a link to download it.

[Alaina]

Oh my God.

[Aaron Manke]

From Gumroad or someplace like that. And. And that was my grand plan. And the audio was so horrible.

[Alaina]

Oh, so horrible in there.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I was in a. The attic of my old house was horsehair plaster, hardwood floors, IKEA furniture.

[Alaina]

Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

Everything was reflective.

[Alaina]

It was pretty much our first. In the laundry room.

[Erin]

In a laundry room.

[Aaron Manke]

In a laundry room. Metal appliances, right?

[Alaina]

Yes, yes.

[Erin]

Things just dinging off of everywhere.

[Aaron Manke]

I might have been actually reading this script off of a glass fronted monitor. Like pick all the things you could do wrong. I did them wrong. And so I had to put some music underneath it.

[Erin]

That's one of the things I love about lore.

[Aaron Manke]

I had to get in the echo and take care of that tinniness. And then I sent a couple of them to a buddy of mine and I said, what do you think? And here's my plan. Zip link. They're going to download the file and they can listen to it however they want. And he said, don't do it.

[Alaina]

It.

[Aaron Manke]

Don't do it. This is a podcast.

[Erin]

Can you be like, what?

[Aaron Manke]

No. A podcast is like a couple of guys sitting around talking about technology because that's what it was a really long time. Because to make a podcast used to be a highly technical thing. Hosting your file, broadcasting an RSS feeds signal on the Internet.

[Erin]

Yeah. You weren't just doing it from your.

[Alaina]

You guys don't realize what goes into it.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, it's a little bit easier now.

[Alaina]

It is easier. A bit. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Maybe too easy.

[Erin]

I know.

[Alaina]

That's why there's 40 million.

[Erin]

Absolutely. Absolutely, too. There needs to be a tax on a microphone, I think.

[Aaron Manke]

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But I took him at his word. I said, okay. You know, I think he mentioned Serial at the time. He's like, no, there's a new show called Serial. They're like playing with storytelling within podcasting. This is storytelling. You should do it. And it's like, all right, I'll try it. So at the time, I was a graphic designer. I did branding for companies, so making the podcast artwork was no problem. I went to Squarespace because I had already been hearing ads for them elsewhere and set up a website and figured out how to work through itunes at the time, not Apple Podcasts.

[Erin]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And get it all broadcast. I hosted it on Libsyn. It was like five bucks a month, unlimited downloads. Yeah, it was great.

[Alaina]

What was our first one? Was it Blueberry? Blueberry.

[Erin]

Blueberry, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I remember them. Yeah. And then I launched it. And that day, that first day, I had nine downloads.

[Alaina]

Oh, my God. That's a big deal. Day one.

[Erin]

Day one, truly.

[Aaron Manke]

Day one, I might have been one or two of them.

[Alaina]

Hey, that's.

[Aaron Manke]

Whatever.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

There was still a few more over the last decade. I've met, I think, a couple of hundred people who've said, oh, I was. I listened to you since day one.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I love the. I love the idea of it.

[Erin]

Like, no, you couldn't have all done it.

[Alaina]

Couldn't have all done it. You're like, there's actually only seven of you.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm one of the nine.

[Erin]

I need to know. The seven people need to stand up right now. I need to see.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So, yeah, that was. That was it.

[Erin]

I love that.

[Aaron Manke]

March 15th.

[Erin]

What a cool way to start it, though.

[Alaina]

That's a great way to start. And thanks to the friend that made you do that.

[Erin]

Seriously.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah, truly. And now one of the things I love is the music behind. It's Chad Lawson. Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Chad's amazing.

[Erin]

Who does the score?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

The scoring. It is. If you're not listening to Laura, I don't know what you're doing right now, because it is the coziest. Like, my kids, like, there's certain episodes that I'll let them listen to if they're, like, not too spooky.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

And they love it. It's, like, very soothing in the car. Like, the music. Your voice is very soothing.

[Aaron Manke]

There's an ASMR quality to it, Right?

[Alaina]

Absolutely. There really is.

[Erin]

And is there a topic that you've covered on Lore that it was like a rabbit hole that you just couldn't get out of and, like, constantly find yourself going back to.

[Aaron Manke]

Well, yeah. I mean, maybe not to my listeners, delight. I. If I've gotten any compliments. Sorry. Any criticism. Over the last decade, it has been, why so many witch stories?

[Erin]

Well, never be Criticism.

[Aaron Manke]

Because there are a ton of them, and they're fascinating. They're fascinating. They're often like, about a single community, and they have their. Their personal community personality as being projected onto the events that happen. They. They're always fascinating. And so every time a new one comes up, it has a new spin. And to me, it's worth telling the story again.

[Erin]

Right? Absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

We've told quite a few which trials, and they're all different and all horrible, but fascinating.

[Aaron Manke]

But fascinating.

[Erin]

And I think the Salem witch trials, I'm like, I don't know how anybody gets sick of learning of that or hearing about that. No, I learned something new about that all the time.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I think that is one of the most fascinating things it is ever.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. And one of my personality traits is I like to tell people they're wrong about something they thought they knew.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't. I take great delight in that.

[Alaina]

You guys have that in common. You guys absolutely have that.

[Aaron Manke]

I say that it's because I want to be a teacher.

[Erin]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

I want to teach them.

[Erin]

That's a nice way of saying.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I just.

[Aaron Manke]

I like.

[Erin]

I just like to be right.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

That's not right.

[Alaina]

What's your star sign?

[Aaron Manke]

What's that?

[Alaina]

What's your star sign?

[Aaron Manke]

Leo.

[Alaina]

Okay, there you go.

[Aaron Manke]

Does that. Does that fit? I don't know anything about that. Okay.

[Alaina]

I think so. And not in a bad way.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. So, like, with the Salem witch trials, you'll hear people say, oh, it's just moldy bread.

[Erin]

Y.

[Aaron Manke]

Why are you spending so much time talking about. It was moldy bread.

[Erin]

No, look, so much more.

[Aaron Manke]

Moldy bread was a theory for, like, one month In, I think, 1976, somebody put it forward in a journal, and a month later, it was retracted. Yes, that was it.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But it's a simple answer.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

And. And simple answers have the longest legs. They go the distance.

[Alaina]

They please the masses. Right, right.

[Aaron Manke]

Which is why so much of what happens in exhumed stuck around for so long. Because in a way, they were very

[Erin]

simple answers, and they're easier to digest. People can be like, oh, moldy bread. That's why that happened.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly. You won't do that. Or it was a property dispute. No, it wasn't a property dispute.

[Erin]

No, it wasn't. It.

[Alaina]

There's so much more that goes into it.

[Erin]

That's also horrifying. If it was just a simple dispute. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. That. Honestly, those are also probably my rabbit holes, and probably yours, too. Whenever there's a witch trial somewhere, I. I Can't. I can't look away. I have to know what's going on there.

[Alaina]

I love a witch trial and I love a scandal. I love a good scandal. You do love, like an old money scandal. Those are the rabbit holes I fall down.

[Aaron Manke]

So dig into. There's an Italian witch trial. I want to say 1500s in a town called Triori.

[Erin]

Ooh.

[Aaron Manke]

T r I O R I.

[Alaina]

We've had that suggested.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

That one's. It's just so different.

[Erin]

Okay.

[Aaron Manke]

It's like a very different aspect of European culture, and I think it has a little bit of the drama of, like, you know, a nasty priest who's, you know, there's abuse and. Oh, yeah, A lot of, you know, patriarchy on full display.

[Alaina]

That's an alley.

[Erin]

Yeah, let's go.

[Alaina]

I love a messed up priest. So do you.

[Erin]

I do love a messed up priest. Yeah. That's why I love midnight mass. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I have yet to see that, but

[Alaina]

I will say it too.

[Aaron Manke]

The newest knives out. Oh, wake up, dead man.

[Alaina]

Oh, I haven't seen the newest one.

[Erin]

It's really good news. It's really good.

[Alaina]

Okay.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

All right.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, It'll be right up your alley.

[Alaina]

All right, cool.

[Erin]

You need to watch midnight mass.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay.

[Erin]

And swapping things. It's like a spooky little New England village, too, like fishing, so it's got those vibes to it.

[Aaron Manke]

Widow's Bay is next on my list to watch Widows.

[Alaina]

Oh, my God.

[Aaron Manke]

I haven't seen any of it.

[Alaina]

So we've been yelling at Aiden to watch Widow's Bay. I actually watched it all in one day.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, my gosh.

[Alaina]

Yeah, we had a day off. It was raining, and I said, I know what I'm doing.

[Erin]

It took John and I, like, so long to watch this.

[Alaina]

I almost wish that I. I don't watching it all in one day because now I'm like, I wanna do it all again. I'd like to stretch it out.

[Erin]

Yeah. It's so good that we are and we never get to watch it. Like, John and I will take 100 years to watch a show because the kids go to sleep. We'll sit down to watch it. Inevitably, one of them will come down and eat something or have a stomachache or a nightmare. We'll have to do the whole thing. So we get like 10 minutes of a show at a time where we can, like, stretch it out. And Widow's Bay was, like, just enough where we were able to finish it. But even now I'm like, I want to start it again and rewatch it. That's how good that show is. Yeah, that's an immaculate show, I think, too.

[Alaina]

It's one of those shows where on a re watch, you might notice things you didn't the first time. So I love that. Yeah, it's so fun, and it's got

[Erin]

really good New England vibes.

[Alaina]

I was literally. You took the words out of my mouth. I was just gonna say that.

[Aaron Manke]

Well, and I'm North Shore. I've driven south to be with you.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But Rockport and Gloucester, where they film. That's where they film are like, I was just in Rockport a couple weeks ago.

[Erin]

Yeah, we want to go.

[Alaina]

Because you can just like, walk around all the filming locations.

[Aaron Manke]

I can't wait to watch the show and picture it from that. From that angle.

[Erin]

Cause Rock Porch is Widow's Bay. Like, it's just.

[Aaron Manke]

That's amazing.

[Erin]

That's it. You're gonna see it and just be like, oh, that's that.

[Alaina]

They'll probably be like, I've been there.

[Erin]

And everybody in that show feels like they're from New England. Like, they just. It's right.

[Alaina]

My girl Rosemary. Love Rosemary.

[Erin]

Like, I just get it.

[Aaron Manke]

I love it.

[Alaina]

But speaking of New England, it worked out.

[Erin]

It kind of worked out perfect. Why do you think that New England is, like, such a hub of the spookiest legends and stories?

[Aaron Manke]

So a lot of folklore comes from fear. Right. And there's a lot of the United States that was settled in relative safety. There's a lot of nuance to that, and people can pick that apart. But in New England, it was sort of like you were on the edge of the known world in the early 1600s, and there was a lot more danger. I mean, when people want to talk about what really caused the Salem witch trials, one of the big factors was that there were settlers. So what is now the state of Maine used to be part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, like, extended all the way up there. And there were settlers way up in, like, wells who were essentially at war with the Native Americans because they had wandered into Native American territory and started to take land, and they were rightly defending themselves. So these white Christian colonists were referring to the Native Americans as the devil, and that the devil was out to get them. And the conflict was so bad that they were actually, like, reverse migrating back down to Salem. And so you had in Salem, people flooding in, having lost family members. They were wounded. They had been fighting with the devil, talking about the devil. Fear was like this mist all around them, just trapping Them in. And that's, I think, in New England, a lot more common than you might find in, like, where I grew up, Illinois, you know, by the time my hometown was settled, like the United States had forced Native Americans far, far away. And so that element of fear wasn't there. I think in New England you just get a lot of it. You also get a mix of a lot of different. There's a mix of faiths. You've got Protestant, Catholic, the Puritan element of that. There's mixtures of cultures. There's just different waves of it. And fear just becomes this really common thread through it all.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah. And it's a monster fear, definitely in

[Aaron Manke]

all these stories, because when you're afraid and you don't have the answers, the human instinct is to invent an answer that fills in the gap, you know. And so you see that with Mercy's family, right? You see, you know, George Brown loses his wife first. About a year later, he uses. He loses his oldest daughter. And then his son, his only son gets sick. And there's some weird stuff going on here. He's the only one they send out to Colorado to get better.

[Erin]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

The man can go get better.

[Erin]

He gets to breathe fresh air.

[Aaron Manke]

While he's gone, Mercy gets sick and dies. He comes back after her death, they're afraid, right? Like they've lost. And it's interesting. I wanted to make sure that I noted this. So whenever you hear Mercy Brown's story, you hear about those four. You hear George has got a wife who dies. The oldest daughter, Edwin, is sick. And then Mercy dies. That's all you ever hear. But there are so many other kids. So Mary Eliza is the mom, Mary Olive is the oldest. And then you've got Edwin, Annie, Mercy, Hattie, Jenny and Myra. I mean, when George's wife dies, there's a two year old in the house. Holy shit. That's how, like people picture just a couple of teenagers who pass away. But it's like this bustling farmhouse, right?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

A couple years after his wife dies, his father dies. Not from tuberculosis, but still. Like that grief thread is still there. And I think George's mom is living in the house with them. And so you've just got all of this, this fear being mixed up. And it's really the community who's afraid. At some point. They're like, hey, there's a lot of Browns who are dying.

[Alaina]

What's up with your family? Right?

[Aaron Manke]

So let's, let's take care of this fear by doing this thing.

[Erin]

Right, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And what's ironic is that it doesn't work, right. Like Edwin, spoiler alert. Dies.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And then after that, three years later, in 1895, both Jenny and 25 year old Annie also pass away from consumption. In 1899, their youngest sister, Myra dies from consumption as well. Like, so tuberculosis is taking all of them out. The only one to live is Hattie, who actually lives until 1954, which is crazy. I put in the book here because I like putting people in a frame of reference to help people understand. She learned about her sisters and her mom being exhumed to look for signs of what was essentially a vampire and lived long enough to see the premieres of I Love Lucy, the Ed Sullivan show and American Bandstand when you can. Automobile telephones.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, it's mind boggling.

[Alaina]

That is absolutely mind boggling.

[Aaron Manke]

So she lived through it.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, I would say so.

[Erin]

She's the definition of I've seen some.

[Alaina]

Yeah. She said, you don't know what I've been through.

[Erin]

Yeah, she's seen it.

[Alaina]

Wow.

[Erin]

So.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. And fear is at the heart of all of what was going on. It is like reacting to a fear, inventing an answer to calm fears.

[Erin]

Yeah, right. To make you feel better about what's going on.

[Aaron Manke]

In some ways, that makes what I do for a living kind of boring. It's like, yeah, 12 years of making lore. But the answer at the end of

[Erin]

the day is fear.

[Aaron Manke]

People were afraid in the end of the story, right?

[Alaina]

Yeah, but our brains do some messed up things when we're afraid.

[Erin]

That's the thing. The way people react to fear is so scary. I mean, the Salem Witch Trials. Puritans are wild.

[Alaina]

Wild. They're wild. Yeah, Absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

They haven't stopped doing it since.

[Erin]

Nope. We keep on doing it. We don't learn a damn thing.

[Alaina]

Mystery repeats itself.

[Erin]

It sure does.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes.

[Erin]

Now, what would be the creepiest legend that you feel isn't talked about enough? Was there one that you saw that you were like, why is this not Bigfoot?

[Alaina]

That's the one.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Creepiest legend. I mean, some of the creepiest get talked about because they're super creepy. Mothman, for example.

[Alaina]

Oh yeah, I love Mothman.

[Aaron Manke]

The, the like, the seeing Mothman as like a portent of doom. And then looking at the events that happened. There's some really creepy things going on there.

[Erin]

Yeah, I love an omen. Like a harbinger.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Creepy in a different sense, you know. Have you, have you ever done the story of Mary Toft. The woman who gave birth to rabbits.

[Erin]

Oh, my God.

[Alaina]

I was just reading about that the other day. That's so strange you brought that up.

[Aaron Manke]

It's creepy in a different sense.

[Alaina]

Yeah, it sure is. It's.

[Erin]

It's got something.

[Aaron Manke]

What she did with those rabbit parts.

[Erin]

Yeah. What she did. Girl, that is.

[Alaina]

That's another one we need to cover. I just put that on my list recently. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Although I have to say I'm surprised that Gwyneth Paltrow hasn't, you know, tried some of those.

[Alaina]

Figured that out with me.

[Erin]

Hasn't added it into the Google lineup

[Alaina]

with the G company.

[Erin]

She has time.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

You know, T.M. paltrow.

[Alaina]

Now, I wonder, because this happens to us a lot. Have you ever started researching one topic and then you fall into a completely different topic that you stumble upon along the way?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. And so a decade ago, I thought that was distraction. Right. Like the inability to focus on something. But the more episodes you make, you know, this. That you need more episodes if you're gonna keep going. And you start to realize that those moments are the moments where you need to make a note, put a pin in it, set it aside, follow that rabbit trail later, and that becomes another episode.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Because the best stories are found in the midst of researching a story.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Right. Like.

[Erin]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

It's the side thing, the related thing, which is. I mean, it's why this book is. Is what it is, because.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

You. You research one thing, and you realize that there's five other things connected to

[Erin]

it, and those are links to each

[Aaron Manke]

other, and they become something later on.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So for Lore, we do. I don't know how you guys plan out stuff, but, like, we do an annual writer's room.

[Erin]

Whoa.

[Aaron Manke]

And so cool. We do lore every other week, and then in. In between, we do lore, legends. And those tend to be a little bit more toward, like, the urban legend, maybe a little less factually grounded. The idea that there's still valuable stories to tell.

[Erin]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Music. Slightly different. Format's the same. And so we'll do an annual writer's room for Lore, and then six months later, one for Legends. And it is the whole team of researchers and writers together pitching for, like, a day or two straight over video chat, pitching a story idea. Like, here's my micro outline for it. I think that we should do Act 1 on this, Act 2 on this, Act 3. The epilogue at the end of the episode can be about a related story about this.

[Erin]

Oh, that's cool.

[Aaron Manke]

And then we, like, brainstorm and throw Sources at each other. And we'll try to, over the course of maybe a day, day and a half, lockdown, 25, 30 stories.

[Erin]

Oh, wow.

[Alaina]

That's so fun.

[Aaron Manke]

So I'm. I'm planned out to the beginning of 28 right now.

[Alaina]

Oh, wow. I'm planned out to, like, a couple weeks from now.

[Erin]

I was gonna say, damn.

[Aaron Manke]

Living on the edge.

[Erin]

And honestly, that's us being like, look at us.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that's us being like, oh, look at us go. That's a cool concept. We're gonna. We're gonna give that a try.

[Erin]

I know. I feel like that's such a better way to do it, because sometimes we're like. We're like mood podcasters. We're like. We'll be like, I don't feel like telling this story today, so I'm gonna switch at the last second.

[Alaina]

Sometimes I'll have a completed story, and then I'm like, I don't want to tell it today. I'm gonna move on to this one.

[Erin]

Yeah, we'll switch. Which is not the way to do it.

[Aaron Manke]

No.

[Erin]

If I'm being quite honest, I mean,

[Alaina]

there's something to be said about it sometimes. Yeah, it works out.

[Aaron Manke]

Sometimes you have to talk about it. So if you're gonna talk about it, you might not.

[Alaina]

Right? Exactly. You have to be in the mood

[Erin]

to talk about it.

[Aaron Manke]

And the good news is, it's done when you are in the mood.

[Erin]

That's the thing.

[Alaina]

Exactly.

[Aaron Manke]

It's waiting for you.

[Erin]

That's the thing.

[Alaina]

That's what I always tell myself to make myself feel better.

[Erin]

We're always like, it's done so we can use it.

[Aaron Manke]

Right, Exactly.

[Erin]

There we go. But, yeah, we're constantly on the edge.

[Alaina]

We do that a lot. Now, I wonder, because, again, this has happened to us. Is there ever a piece of folklore that you stumble across that you either desperately want to debunk but can't or that you almost don't want to debunk that you do.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, wanting to preserve the. That. That raw innocence of people believing something. Again, back to my personality trait of liking to burst people's bubbles. I don't know that I've ever wanted to preserve the belief in something.

[Erin]

Why? Didn't say, I don't know how it feels.

[Alaina]

See, I'm the total opposite. I'm like, no, I don't want to ruin this for you. It's so fun.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm like, but I'll handle it. As a storyteller, I will tell people in an episode, but that's not true. But I'll do it after I've told them the story and they've had from a point of belief. Right. Like, here is the story that people tell and cling to, and I really want them to experience the story.

[Alaina]

Almost like you set up exhumed with the mercy that I'm story.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm just sorry to say that, like,

[Alaina]

it didn't go that far.

[Aaron Manke]

It didn't actually. And here's the three reasons why you're

[Erin]

like, am I really sorry to say, I don't know, because I'm a.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, I like fact. I like research. And if the research says that can't have happened, you know, there was a story we did of a. A haunting in D.C. like, one of the mansions in D.C. had this. You can do a ghost tour of it now. And the basic gist of it is that this family had two daughters when they were in their teens or so, each one, like, years apart, fell down the stairs and died.

[Alaina]

Okay.

[Erin]

Damn.

[Aaron Manke]

And, yeah, they lost both their kids falling down the stairs. And so, of course, they tell you this story on the stairs during the ghost tour.

[Erin]

Right, of course.

[Alaina]

Well, fun.

[Aaron Manke]

Well, those daughters are in a graveyard, and their gravestones have dates on them, and the dates do not match up the stories. And it turns out that we know how they both died. One of them was from an illness like tuberculosis.

[Erin]

Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, so it. It's. It's quaint to want to hold on to that.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I can see the. The drama and, like, the appeal of

[Alaina]

a story like that.

[Aaron Manke]

Go ahead and tell the story all you want, but at the end of the day, the evidence is there that says it didn't happen.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

And I feel like I wouldn't have integrity if I didn't at the very least say, by the way, we do

[Erin]

have this great story. Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

They're lying to me.

[Alaina]

I have to tell you the truth.

[Erin]

We do have records.

[Alaina]

Have you ever come across the story of the casket girls in New Orleans? Yeah, that one is so interesting. But then you get through it and you're like, yeah, that probably didn't happen. Exactly.

[Aaron Manke]

I think I know what that. So many people love the idea of that story.

[Alaina]

It's so fun. The idea of it is awesome because

[Erin]

how fun is that? Especially with New Orleans.

[Alaina]

But then the trio is pretty awful. Yeah, that's right.

[Erin]

Just way worse.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

That's why it's almost fun to lean on the. Yeah, the fun of it all.

[Erin]

That they were vampires or just smuggling vampires.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

You know what I want to give those women that power back. Yeah. You were vampires destroying the village hell.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Now, what episode of lore would you say are you most proud of? If you could pick one or even two.

[Aaron Manke]

So proud. From a couple different aspects. So I'll say from a research standpoint, Emily Segee and the Doppelganger Folklore.

[Erin]

Okay.

[Aaron Manke]

Because when I sat down, when I made that episode, it was still in the realm of me doing everything. I found the topic, I researched it, I wrote it, I published it. That's why it was every other week initially.

[Alaina]

It's a lot of work.

[Aaron Manke]

A ton of work to do. Yeah. And wanted to do the research. Right. So I would, as anybody does, start online and look for resources for Emily Sagu. Whether it was a book or an online article, it was always the same story. It was the same details rearranged by some new writer. But they only had a certain number of Lego pieces to work with. So the story always had the same pieces. And that frustrated me because it made me feel like there wasn't a core, original, more nuanced version of the story. And I really. I don't know how, but I pushed until I found a German book book that was available on like books.google.com it's

[Alaina]

always on like the 11th page of Google.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. And I remember having my laptop open to this German book and then holding my phone with like Google Translate app pointed at the screen and reading the German words being translated into English on my phone and realizing I had found source material behind the story that had more names, more dates, more places.

[Erin]

Nothing is better than that.

[Aaron Manke]

It just feels like mad respect.

[Alaina]

That is like, that is.

[Erin]

Is.

[Alaina]

That's top notch.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm. I'm proud of that one. Did I invent a new medication for some horrible disease? No. But I found some sources. When what felt like no other writer about that story felt like it was worth time spending to find.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And had gone that far.

[Aaron Manke]

And I. I was proud of that. From a storytelling aspect, I love episode 12, half hanged.

[Erin]

Oh, I love that one.

[Aaron Manke]

Merry Webster.

[Erin]

I love that one.

[Aaron Manke]

17th century woman in colonial Massachusetts accused of witchcraft. And this the victory. And like the middle finger to the establishment that that story is such a good story.

[Erin]

Half Hanged. Mary. We talked about that.

[Alaina]

We have talked about that.

[Erin]

I love that story.

[Aaron Manke]

And she is a real woman. Margaret Atwood is descended from her.

[Erin]

That's so crazy.

[Aaron Manke]

And Margaret Atwood wrote a poem, and it's like in 12 stanzas about the last 12 hours of her life. And at the end of the poem, you know, this is a woman that was accused of being a witch, and she's like, I'm not. Like, they shipped her off to Boston, and then. Yeah, for a court, and she came back acquitted. She. You know, nobody's like, you guys gotta

[Alaina]

be kidding me, right?

[Aaron Manke]

It was just because she was cranky. She wasn't religious. She wanted people to get off her property.

[Erin]

Good for her.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, she was standing up for her.

[Alaina]

She was a powerful woman.

[Aaron Manke]

She was poor. And the powerful people in town wanted to just blame everything on her. And they. They blamed her for the illness of their town leader, you know, their cult leader, and they hang her, and he still dies from his illness, but in the morning, she gets up off the ground and walks away. And so in Atwood's poem, she ends with this line, that's something like, I wasn't a witch before, but now I am a witch.

[Erin]

Hell, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And you get serious.

[Erin]

I love that when you hear it. Yeah. It's so good.

[Aaron Manke]

I love it.

[Erin]

So good.

[Alaina]

That's so good. Would that be the first episode that. If somebody was just starting lore today, would you tell them to start with digging?

[Aaron Manke]

Also from a formulaic standpoint, like, you'll get a good sense of how lore is structured. I'm gonna give you a lot of New England kind of like witch legends. There's even some wizard legends in there, which you don't bump into a lot.

[Alaina]

No.

[Aaron Manke]

And then. And then you dig right into the context of. Of Mary's story and what happens. And. Yeah, it's. I like it. It's a good place to start.

[Erin]

All right.

[Alaina]

Perfect.

[Erin]

Yeah, I think so, too.

[Alaina]

I heard it here first.

[Erin]

You did? Now, a lot of your stories revolve around people having a lot of faith in things. Like, we talked about the hint of glory. And we can look back on that and we can laugh at it.

[Aaron Manke]

Sure.

[Erin]

What do you think is going to be our hand of glory in 200 years? That people are going to look back and be like, are you guys serious?

[Alaina]

You thought that would work?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

We talked about chemotherapy already. Right. And surely there has to be a better way. Yeah, I imagine a century from now. I hope it's less than that. It'd be great if it's a decade from now.

[Erin]

Oh, that'd be great.

[Aaron Manke]

But we would have to fund the sciences, wouldn't we?

[Erin]

We sure would.

[Aaron Manke]

We would.

[Erin]

Yeah. That's a step.

[Alaina]

We're not really down to fund anything right now.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. You know, we could fund crypto, I guess that would get canceled.

[Erin]

You're funding something, it's not science.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

But I think that that's one of the big ones. Just the extremes that we're going to for something. You know, I think about some of the early material in exhumed talking about blood transfusion, and they were on the right path.

[Alaina]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Of course, sheep's blood might not have been the right path, but, you know,

[Alaina]

you have to start somewhere.

[Erin]

I get why they thought blood blood

[Aaron Manke]

experiments, but we don't think at all about blood transfusion today.

[Erin]

No.

[Aaron Manke]

It's just a normal part of medicine.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And it does make you wonder, what are the things that we'll look back on and see as either they were right on, they had it, they just didn't fully understand it, or, boy, were they way off base. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

That's what I'm excited to see. It's the thing that's like blood transfusion, where we're like, oh, you were so close. Right? You were this.

[Alaina]

What are we so close to right now?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I'm also still freaked out by, like, I love blood transfusions. Like, A plus. Yay for blood transfusions.

[Alaina]

But you've had two.

[Erin]

I have O negative blood, so I can only take O negative blood and I can give to anyone. But I had to have a blood transfusion after I had my twins, and I, like, panicked and I was like, I can only have no negative blood. And they were like, I know. Like, we went to medical school. We know that. And I was like, are you sure you're gonna poison me? Like, I freaked out.

[Alaina]

Well, most likely, when you do get a blood transfusion, aren't they going to likely give you O negative since it's,

[Erin]

you know, O negative. Don't know what they usually are gonna give you. But I just was so freaked out about being poisoned by someone else's blood.

[Alaina]

I was great.

[Erin]

I just had my first children. Don't kill me, don't kill me. I was like, oh, my God.

[Alaina]

It's valid.

[Erin]

It's weird. Anybody who's had a blood transfusion, it's weird because I'm like, just getting someone else's blood. Like, what?

[Aaron Manke]

Or people or an organ from someone else.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Erin]

It must be so strange.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Because.

[Erin]

But like, thank goodness we can do that. Imagine if we could.

[Alaina]

To dive down.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, it is. There's. I. Did I touch on that in the book? I feel like I talked a little bit about.

[Erin]

You did talk about.

[Aaron Manke]

There's this ideal image of a complete body. And even when we, you know, you're a healthy person who's gotten a kidney from somebody else you frequently talk about. You'll even decade later, you'll still talk about it as someone else's kidney. Like you are an incomplete your life has been saved. It's a miracle of medicine, but there's still something about it that like, doesn't jive with our ideal of the perfect human intact human body.

[Erin]

It's not mine, so it's fine. It's not mine. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Strange how we think that. Yeah, it is.

[Alaina]

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[Erin]

Now, after all these years, what do you think folklore says about people, about humans?

[Aaron Manke]

We're very creative. We're very, we're very hopeful. You know, we can focus on fear. That's fine. But I think the answers that people have invented over the centuries or millennia, there is a hope kind of lingering in the corner that, hey, guys, we figured it out, you know, or we can conquer this challenge or problem or get around this unknown. There is a hope there that I think is really admirable. It's going through the book and writing the story in that order really made me appreciate how, how very much not barbaric these people were by comparison. Yeah, there's some weird stuff.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But they were just trying, they were human. They wanted to be hopeful and find a solution. And you know, I think that's something to take away and say, I hope we always are.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

A very hopeful species.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

If we lose that, what do we become?

[Alaina]

Yeah. What do we have?

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.

[Aaron Manke]

And there's also, at the same time, we are, we as people are just lovers of story. You know, whether you want to write them or you just enjoy them. Very few people would say, I don't want to deal with stories at all. Those are, those are weird people.

[Erin]

I was just going to say I don't want those people around.

[Aaron Manke]

There's something sociopathic about that. I don't to want to, I don't want to watch TV or movies or read a book.

[Erin]

Yeah. I don't want to hear what do

[Aaron Manke]

you do then we for the most part love story.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And I love that something like podcasting where, yes. We're sitting on microphones, talking. And sometimes there's cameras involved. But we, we could have a campfire in between us, you know, in the woods, and we'd be doing the same thing that our ancestors did.

[Alaina]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, 20,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago. Telling stories. Right.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Telling though.

[Erin]

I love that.

[Alaina]

Yeah, I think that's perfect.

[Erin]

I think that's a perfect answer.

[Alaina]

I love it.

[Erin]

Well done. All right.

[Aaron Manke]

Pat myself on the shoulder.

[Alaina]

We're not done with you yet. Because we always end on a game. Oh, okay. So are you down for. Would you rather.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes.

[Alaina]

Okay. That's good. That works out.

[Aaron Manke]

Unless the question is, would you rather play a game?

[Erin]

Or imagine if you just said no.

[Alaina]

Actually. No.

[Erin]

Would you rather you're like, no.

[Aaron Manke]

For those who can't see, she's just handed me a hacksaw and I'm very worried what's going to happen here? Keep your left foot foot or keep your right foot.

[Alaina]

What do you think? Surprise. We've decided to become Jigsaw.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

All right. So inspired by episode two of Lore, the Bloody Pit on the Hoosac tunnel.

[Erin]

A really good episode.

[Alaina]

Great episode. Would you rather hear phantom voices calling your name whilst inside the tunnel? Okay. Or see somebody standing at the entrance, but they disappear every time you blink?

[Aaron Manke]

I think the more preferable would just be to see something, hearing things. I'm sorry.

[Erin]

It's a lot.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

It's overstimulating.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

That's really overstimulating.

[Aaron Manke]

No amount of adult diapers could help me in that situation.

[Alaina]

No.

[Erin]

Truly. Yeah.

[Alaina]

What do you think?

[Erin]

I'd probably feel the same way. Just. Cause sound overstimulates me. So as soon as voices started, I'd just be like, ugh. Like that would be it. I'd be useless.

[Alaina]

I picture this as like a lot of voices, like disembodied.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Just imagine that in what is essentially a man made cave.

[Erin]

That's the thing, right?

[Aaron Manke]

The echoing, the echoing, the resonance.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And here's the thing that would freak me out.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

But what if there's a real person that I'm seeing and I have to deal with them?

[Aaron Manke]

I get that.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Alaina]

I'd much rather deal with the disembodied voices.

[Aaron Manke]

Right. Because you could. You could reason that away.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

It's. It's an echo of my footsteps or whatever it is. But when you see something that's harder. That's a lot harder.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

So I'm going voices.

[Erin]

So then you're okay?

[Alaina]

I usually do.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

So you might be all right.

[Aaron Manke]

Does mace work on a ghost? Have you. Have you guys confirmed this?

[Erin]

I have never maced a ghost, so I do not know that.

[Alaina]

But what if it's not a ghost?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

What if it's an animal?

[Alaina]

What if the person that you see at the end of the tunnel is real?

[Aaron Manke]

That's funny. Years ago, you and I talked about doing an episode of morbid and like, coming on and talking about just an old, creepy true crime case. And we talked about the Hammersmith ghost.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Hammersmith or Hammersfield?

[Erin]

Hammersmith. Hammersmith. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And I think I've done this as a live show story before where this was in London and people kept seeing this white apparition walking around and like in. I don't know. True. Go get him. Fashion people. People formed mobs to go out and hunt down this ghost, of course. And eventually somebody found him and shot the ghost and the ghost died. And the ghost bled because the ghost was a guy who worked. He was a mason who worked with stone dust all day in white clothes.

[Alaina]

And so he was just covered in the dust.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, it looked like a Scooby Doo cartoon.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

And he got killed because people thought he was a ghost.

[Erin]

Damn.

[Alaina]

That's actually on my list too. You're naming all my things.

[Erin]

Yeah, I'm sorry.

[Alaina]

No, it's great. It's like, like foreshadowing.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Stay tuned.

[Alaina]

Yes, exactly.

[Erin]

It's true. All right, my next one is inspired by episode three, the Beast Within.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, yes.

[Erin]

Now, would you rather travel through a medieval German forest at night or spend one night inside Bedburg while everyone would believe there was a werewolf afoot? So you're either with people or you're alone in the woods.

[Aaron Manke]

See, what you're asking me is, would you rather endure the company of. Of fearful, suspicious people?

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Or the dark woods and whatever they contain?

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I think I'd rather be in the dark woods. That's a. Would you choose the bear question.

[Erin]

Yep, it absolutely is. People or a German forest at night?

[Alaina]

Yeah, I'll take the German forest.

[Erin]

German forest at night, alone.

[Alaina]

That's unanimous.

[Erin]

Yes. I think we all agree with that one.

[Alaina]

Just like I choose the bear. Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Bedberg was. Was mind boggling because not only was it a whole community of people who thought it was all real, but the guy that they accused thought it was real too.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

He's like, guys, I put a belt on and I rubbed my body with some salve that I made.

[Erin]

It's like, I think you're right.

[Aaron Manke]

It made me turn into a wolf.

[Alaina]

I think I did.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Like, who doesn't want that?

[Aaron Manke]

You couldn't win.

[Erin]

No.

[Alaina]

You really couldn't back them.

[Erin]

Yeah. Because even the guy that they're accusing is crazy.

[Alaina]

I can't believe I did this.

[Erin]

We're all in on the joke here, right? That. Sure.

[Alaina]

All right, next one is Inspired by episode 113, Word of Mouth Exploring Corpse Medicine. And we're giving you three options here to be nice.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay.

[Alaina]

Would you rather be prescribed powdered mummy moss from a hanged man's skull or a human fat ointment?

[Aaron Manke]

Okay. We can toss the human fat ointment out the door.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Because that. That's literally just like reduced human fat. Yeah. Like, to the point where. Yeah.

[Erin]

Oh, and just greasy.

[Aaron Manke]

Like a lotion you can rub on your hands.

[Alaina]

Yeah. And really, what's that gonna do for you?

[Erin]

It's greasy.

[Aaron Manke]

I'm afraid of mushrooms. And I know that that's not moss, but I would similar.

[Erin]

But, you know, mushrooms were in there.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. So it's. It's like, would I want to eat some strange moss? I don't know that I want to do that. So I'm gonna go with mummy powder. And I'm gonna say that because sometimes it was ground up mummy, and sometimes it was ground up bitumen, the black substance that was used.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

That's a fascinating bit of folklore.

[Alaina]

Yeah, it is.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't know if it. It's hard to capture it in a story, but in the book, I cover this idea that, like, the asphalt on our roads, it's a petroleum product. Right. And it's come up out of the ground all over the world for forever. And they used to call it bitumen. And for early days of Egyptian mummification, they actually covered the bodies in it to seal and preserve them. But it happens to look a lot as a sticky black liquid. Like, what would happen if you just mummified somebody without it and let them sit in the grave for a long time? The body fluids come out and they kind of congeal into a black, sticky substance, like tar. Like tar. And so people started to confuse that stuff with actual bitumen, which. Which, like, early Arabic writers prescribed us medicine for all sorts of things. And so eventually that bitumen started to be confused with this exudate that came out of the bodies. And so people were taking that instead. And then they were like, well, if we're taking this, the body itself that it's on must be useful. Probably useful as well. And so there's a Persian word for bitumen that is Mumia. And that started to cause the powder to be called mummy, and then the bodies were called mummies. And now we call all preserved corpses mummies.

[Alaina]

It's just a mistranslation.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly.

[Erin]

Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

But every time you drive on the road, you're basically driving on mummy. Something connected to that folklore, which I think is great.

[Alaina]

It's all metaphors, you know?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I like that. All that to say, if I had to pick between the three of them, I would pick the mummy powder because there is the chance it's just a natural substance, you know, I think I'm

[Alaina]

gonna go with your answer for that very reason.

[Erin]

Yeah. Now that I know that, I'm like, all right, that's a risk. Yeah, it's a risk. But the other ones, you know what you're getting?

[Alaina]

That's the thing.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

You know, you're getting straight up moss from a skull.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Or.

[Erin]

Or human fat ointment. Anything greasy, I'm out. Like, greasy on my skin.

[Alaina]

I know. I guess the only plus for the human fat ointment is that you're not ingesting it. It's going on your skin.

[Erin]

See, I have a thing with my hands. Anything on them or, like, greasiness on me. I have, like, a texture issue.

[Alaina]

But even the powdered mummy, sometimes they just, like, packed wounds with it.

[Erin]

So.

[Alaina]

Yeah, you could also do that when you're not ingesting it.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Alaina]

Yeah. I'm sticking powdered mummy.

[Erin]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna go with that, too. All right, look at us unanimous again.

[Aaron Manke]

All right, now, the next one is

[Erin]

inspired by chapter one of Exhumed, all right? And it's called Blood and Glory. Would you rather witness George Washington's bloodletting to his death? Death. Or witness the meeting where people seriously propose trying to reanimate his corpse? Both are pretty interesting.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, they are. I mean, they essentially drained half of his body's blood over the course of a day.

[Erin]

That's unbelievable.

[Aaron Manke]

And he was up walking around, dictating his last will and testament to his wife.

[Erin]

That's gnarly.

[Aaron Manke]

I would be unconscious.

[Erin]

Absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

I don't know how much I lost when I had the twins, but I was. Was.

[Alaina]

You were so scared.

[Erin]

Half dead.

[Alaina]

You were so scared.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't get enough coffee. I'm out of it, literally.

[Alaina]

If I don't get eight hours of sleep, I'm not fine.

[Erin]

I don't drink enough water. The other day, and I thought I was dying. My aura ring was like, you. You're Dead. Like something's happening.

[Aaron Manke]

Exactly. So he didn't have enough blood, and yet he was dictating and rolling. So there's a part of me, like, with some morbid curiosity. Lowercase M, not tm. Don't hit me with the lawsuit for using that word.

[Erin]

I would just.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I'd kind of want to see that whole thing. Whole process.

[Erin]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I also asked this question in the book, and you have to wonder, what did they do with all the blood?

[Erin]

I wonder that.

[Alaina]

Like, where did they. Probably just tossed it out the window.

[Aaron Manke]

I mean, that's what logic says. This was the era of Guardy Lou. Like, you fill a chamber pot, you

[Erin]

toss it out the window.

[Alaina]

That's my thought process.

[Aaron Manke]

Throw out 80 ounces of blood.

[Erin]

Of George Washington.

[Aaron Manke]

Of George Washington's blood.

[Alaina]

They might have. Because I think they were past the point of, you know, drinking it or doing anything with it.

[Aaron Manke]

There's a historical thriller in there for you. Somewhere in American Museum, there's, like, a vial, like, a box of vials of his.

[Erin]

Someone finds it. Yeah, Some, like, random George Washington inventory clerk finds it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Dan Brown, if you're listening.

[Alaina]

Yeah, call me.

[Aaron Manke]

So while it would be fun to listen to the doctors arguing, especially when the whack job shows up at the end and he's like, no, let's put some sheep's blood in him. Let's do it. We can. Can still bring him back to life. That would be fun. I want to see what. What I want to see. The blood works.

[Alaina]

That's what I want to see. Yeah.

[Erin]

What about you? Are you going with bloodletting?

[Alaina]

This is a tough one, because I hate to say this, but I think when they were trying to reanimate him, it might have been to hear those conversations and to hear the thought processes might be pretty fascinating. And I don't really love blood. I'm a little squeamish around blood.

[Aaron Manke]

So that would get you around that.

[Alaina]

Yeah, that would.

[Erin]

There would be some of that.

[Alaina]

Yeah. That's a tough one. I think I'm gonna go witness the meeting where we're coming up with ideas.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah, I can see it.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah, I'm going with the bloodletting.

[Alaina]

They're going. Yeah. I mean, you were an autopsy technician.

[Erin]

I feel like I should be there.

[Alaina]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

It just makes sense.

[Alaina]

I think so.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

All right, next one. Inspired Aaron, by your overall vibe. Would you rather have front row seats to one of history's most famous autopsies or one of history's Most famous seances.

[Erin]

Oh, this one's hard.

[Alaina]

This is so easy for me.

[Erin]

I mean, I know what I would pick, but.

[Alaina]

Yeah, everybody listening knows what you and

[Aaron Manke]

I would pick, too, I think. A seance in the heyday of the spiritualist movement.

[Alaina]

Yes. Like table tipping.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes. With, like, one of the key celebrity mediums at the time. Henry.

[Erin]

Maybe some ectoplasm coming out somewhere.

[Alaina]

Just gonna say that.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. That's another topic that I dipped into a lot.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Over the years with lore.

[Erin]

Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

Various celebrity mediums and the rackets they ran. Yeah. That'd be. That'd be fascinating to do.

[Alaina]

Terrible people. Really would.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Terrible people.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes.

[Alaina]

But, yeah, I agree. Seance, for sure.

[Aaron Manke]

Terrible people. I mean, they were charlatans, but so creative.

[Alaina]

Oh, absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

Everything they did, the tools they created, the.

[Erin]

Yeah. It was actually brilliant. Some of the things they did, they were like, you should have used that for better. Like, better society.

[Aaron Manke]

Seriously.

[Alaina]

I mean, I guess, in a way, they're trying to make people feel better.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

You know. You know, we could spend all day talking about that.

[Erin]

Yeah, you absolutely could. I. You know, my initial inclination is autopsy.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Because that's what I thought you would do. But I'm like, I've seen a lot of autopsies.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

So now I'm sitting here after you guys just thought I was like, you haven't seen that? I haven't. I haven't been around a historical seance.

[Aaron Manke]

Right.

[Alaina]

So are we all joining each other?

[Erin]

I think I'm gonna join you guys.

[Alaina]

All right.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

This is great.

[Aaron Manke]

If we're requesting attendees, like, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have to be at the table, Right.

[Erin]

Absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

He was all in on spiritualism.

[Erin]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Attended them constantly.

[Erin]

He'd be like, let's go, girls. Yeah, let's do this.

[Alaina]

I feel like I would have done that back then, too. How do you stop going to one once you see one?

[Aaron Manke]

Right.

[Erin]

I know.

[Alaina]

You know, right?

[Erin]

Once you start, like, I got to

[Alaina]

see this next one. What's this all about? Yep.

[Aaron Manke]

Chasing the next high.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

More ectoplasm, please. Yes, please. Now, my next one is Inspired by Chapter 18 of Pieces and Players.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay.

[Erin]

Would you rather explain germ theory to an 18th century physician or explain vampire folklore to a modern infectious disease expert? I feel like I know what this will be.

[Aaron Manke]

I think I'd rather explain the vampire folklore.

[Alaina]

That's what I thought you would say,

[Erin]

because that's kind of what you're doing anyway.

[Aaron Manke]

I feel like the audience would be receptionist deceptive.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't think going back in time and explaining germ theory would have. I. I could have been burned as a witch.

[Alaina]

I was gonna say, they may have just hanged you.

[Erin]

Yeah, I know that's. See, I love nothing more than to make someone understand something.

[Alaina]

You guys touched on that.

[Erin]

Like, so I feel like my inclination is like, I wanna make you believe germ theory. Like, I could make you believe it.

[Alaina]

You think you could? Like you.

[Erin]

I'm really persistent. Persistent.

[Alaina]

That's true. I know that.

[Erin]

I will not stop.

[Aaron Manke]

I mean, the frustrating part is until I'm burned, there will be listeners who simply not listeners of the show. But like, you go back in time and you talk to people, there will be people who listen to you and say, sorry, I don't, I don't believe it. Like, all the facts can be presented.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

And yet they believe this very, very. It's like Bizarro world. Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. But back then that's a problem

[Erin]

that never happens.

[Aaron Manke]

The cemetery scene where Mercy's body is when they exhume her mom and then her sister and then she's brought out of this above ground, essentially a walk in freezer where she's been for a couple of months. That scene is a great example of that because you've got the doctor who is always portrayed as like this old dude. He's a young doctor who worked in New York City and he was from the Providence area. So he came back. So he's like this young up on Modern science physician working in a small village. And they have begged him to do this. They've begged him to exhume the bodies and look for signs. And he's like, guys, you're not gonna find what you're looking for. Scientifically, what you believe does not exist.

[Erin]

And they're like, we don't care.

[Aaron Manke]

And they're like, we don't care. So finally they convince George Brown and he's like, fine, if you guys want to do it, you guys can do it. He's not gonna be there. All the stories say that George is in the graveyard. He was not there that day.

[Erin]

Okay.

[Aaron Manke]

The doctor is finally convinced by giving money. Like, they're like, we'll pay you to do it. And he's like, okay, fine, I'll.

[Erin]

Whatever, I'll indulge you.

[Aaron Manke]

He cuts open Mercy's body and he says, look, signs of tuberculosis. All of the pieces are here. This is exactly what you'd expect for a body that was kept in a cooler for two months. And not buried in the ground. And everybody looked at it and said, signs of a vampire or whatever they were calling it at the time. And they used that word.

[Alaina]

They all died of tb.

[Aaron Manke]

Supernatural. This is all supernatural.

[Erin]

And then they all coughed up blood into their handkerchiefs.

[Aaron Manke]

That's right.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

They had the evidence like literally right

[Alaina]

in front of them, staring themselves cut

[Aaron Manke]

open and presented to them. And they could not believe it.

[Alaina]

But like you said, the same thing happens today.

[Erin]

It's true.

[Alaina]

And it's because fear. It all goes back to fear.

[Erin]

I think it does.

[Aaron Manke]

Fear and simple answers.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yep. Those are easier paths to follow.

[Erin]

And that would make me crazy. Cause when someone simply will not take. Like that's how you've seen me in that situation where somebody just refuses to take facts. It will drive me to the.

[Alaina]

I've done it for fun. Sometimes just to mess with her.

[Erin]

It's never fun. No, it's never fun for anyone.

[Aaron Manke]

Imagine you are a visitor from the future in 1892 and you're trying to explain this to people and they will not believe you.

[Erin]

That would make.

[Aaron Manke]

Cause madness.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And you're a woman. So they'd just kill you.

[Erin]

They would just burn me at the stakes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

It would really not work out. I was gonna say it would work out better if you were a man. And then you told us that story.

[Erin]

Yeah. So that wouldn't work.

[Alaina]

I think you need to.

[Erin]

Shit.

[Alaina]

You gotta shift.

[Erin]

Oh, damn.

[Aaron Manke]

I think so.

[Erin]

I really want to convince them, but

[Alaina]

we could have been unanimous. I mean, you can stick with it.

[Erin]

All right.

[Alaina]

Okay.

[Erin]

I'll give it a try.

[Alaina]

Inspired again by your overall vibe. Would you rather time travel to witness one famous historical mystery or solve one famous historical mystery today from your desk?

[Aaron Manke]

Well, solving it today would be a lot of work.

[Erin]

Work.

[Aaron Manke]

And I'm busy.

[Alaina]

You are busy. You have a lot going on. Let me get you.

[Aaron Manke]

I've got a book tour coming up. I'm not really sure I've got that on my.

[Alaina]

How do I squeeze that in?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I. But then that going back in time and witnessing a mystery kind of suggests that you're like you're watching a murder happen and not doing anything to stop it.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Aaron Manke]

There's some moral ambiguity there.

[Erin]

There is.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Cuz it feels like a Jack the Ripper thing. Like you go back to White Chapel and you seeing who he is.

[Aaron Manke]

How could you not stop that?

[Erin]

Yeah. Yeah. I would have to.

[Alaina]

But could you.

[Aaron Manke]

So let me. Let me compromise and say I would have liked to have gone back to the the beginning of the Jack the Ripper investigations and help them make smarter choices.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Alaina]

I think you feel exactly the same. Yeah.

[Erin]

Steer them in a different direction.

[Aaron Manke]

We don't know so much of that story because of incompetence.

[Erin]

Yes. Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. And I. I feel like if somebody just went back in time and slapped them around a little bit.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

What are you doing?

[Erin]

Yeah. Yeah. They need, like, a parent back there.

[Alaina]

They do, like.

[Erin]

All right, sit down. We got to get this under control.

[Alaina]

You're all being crazy. Maybe you could appeal to them with dad jokes.

[Erin]

Yeah, I could.

[Alaina]

You know, y. Get your way in there.

[Aaron Manke]

Use a metaphor or two. I'm good at that.

[Alaina]

There you go.

[Erin]

Yeah, I think that would work.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Yeah. I think I would want to go back in time.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

And do something about it that will add that piece onto it, you know?

[Erin]

Yeah, that's true. Because I feel like solving one today would be really cool, but then, like, what happens after?

[Alaina]

I'm actually surprised you two didn't pick that, because then you have to convince people why you're correct.

[Erin]

But. And that's the thing. I feel like you really have to be solid because, like, how many people have thought they solved Jack the Ripper?

[Alaina]

A million.

[Erin]

Don't get me started on that. And they never have, and they never. Probably will, but. And you'd have to convince them of it. And it's the same thing as the germ theory. I feel like people are just setting their way.

[Alaina]

They are.

[Erin]

So I don't know. Yeah.

[Alaina]

So we can go back and try to change it.

[Erin]

I'm going back, and I'm watching and trying to. If I can partake. Yeah. In trying to change it.

[Aaron Manke]

Tripping somebody. Just stick your foot out and trip somebody.

[Alaina]

Yeah, There you go.

[Erin]

But then it's like the butterfly effect there, where you just, like, ruined the rest of history. That's true.

[Aaron Manke]

Altered the entire timeline.

[Alaina]

What happens?

[Erin]

Like the tapestry of the rest of the world. Yeah. But I don't know. Now in 2026, I'm like, maybe it'd be better. Maybe I will trip someone back, see what happens, see how it shakes out, you know, let's just try. Now, the next one is inspired by exhumed. Again. Would you rather have to diagnose an illness before germ theory or a murder before fingerprinting?

[Aaron Manke]

Ooh.

[Erin]

Not diagnose a murder, but solve one.

[Aaron Manke]

I think I would rather diagnose the illness. So Galen is sort of thought of as, like, the father of modern medicine. Of course. He was, what, 2,000 years ago? And he was very evidence focused. If I remember correctly, Hippocrates was. And then Galen was like, oh, let's talk about humors, and let's do this stuff. And there was in a lot of illness diagnosis, sort of a flowchart approach. You look for these pieces of evidence and then you find them on your chart, whether it's literal or in your brain. And then you follow the options over, and then they eventually lead you to, well, this is what you do.

[Erin]

That's what it is.

[Aaron Manke]

And then all the answers were bloodletting.

[Alaina]

Okay, great.

[Erin]

Wow. So that's. There you go. Let's just take the blood.

[Aaron Manke]

Right. Well, people talk about the four humors, and it's like black bile, yellow bile, blood. And then there's. I forget the other one. But you can also refer to them as another term for them. Was all blood based. Yeah, it was like, like black blood,

[Erin]

yellow blood, yellow blood.

[Aaron Manke]

Like, eventually all came down.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Which is why they just bloodlet everything. Yeah, yeah. The word plethora that we use for, like, today, we have told a plethora of stories.

[Erin]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Plethora literally meant you had too much blood.

[Alaina]

No way. I never do that.

[Erin]

Like, you got to get rid of them. We gotta let some of that.

[Aaron Manke]

Let's let some of that out, so.

[Erin]

Oh, man. Sure. Damn.

[Aaron Manke]

So I guess in some way I would like to go back in time and diagnose an illness. Because I could just close my eyes. All right, blood. Give me 2 ounces of blood and then we're done.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah. There you go with it.

[Aaron Manke]

Yep.

[Erin]

I feel like. Yeah. Because that would be really easy. Just go. And then everybody claps for you and you just get to.

[Aaron Manke]

What an amazing position.

[Erin]

Well, that's true. That's true. I. I feel like I would want to solve a murder.

[Alaina]

I agree.

[Erin]

Before fingerprinting.

[Alaina]

I agree. Because when we tell those stories, they're so fascinating. Like the.

[Erin]

How they actually got anything solved.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Aaron Manke]

Then would you use cruentation?

[Erin]

What is crunch? Oh, that's the trial. That's the blood.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Talking. Yeah, yeah, I would.

[Alaina]

Oh, just fun of it.

[Erin]

Bring them in, have them touch the body, see what happens.

[Aaron Manke]

I would want to use. I would want to use it as like a social tool to force a confession.

[Erin]

I want the psychological aspect. Expect to be present.

[Aaron Manke]

I don't want to stand in court and be like, look, the body bled, so he's the killer. I don't want to do that.

[Erin]

I just want to witness what's going on right now.

[Aaron Manke]

I want to manipulate the criminal I want someone.

[Erin]

In fact, I'm going to. You're going to walk up and I'm going to hold my hand over your pulse.

[Aaron Manke]

Yes.

[Erin]

And I'm going to feel it. What's going on there?

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

I want everybody observing the sweat that's dripping down the brow. I want all of that.

[Alaina]

That's right.

[Erin]

Yeah, I like that. So, yeah, I'm solving a murder, period. Let's go.

[Alaina]

All right, our next. Would you rather. Is inspired by Elena's deep obsession. Would you rather know exactly what Jack the Tripper looked like or know exactly what happened at Roanoke County?

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, Roanoke, hands down, that's exactly what you would say.

[Erin]

Yep, yep.

[Aaron Manke]

I mean, what the guy looked like doesn't do much. It doesn't do much. At that point, we're drifting into, like, the realms of phrenology. Like, if you're. If your head was shaped like this, you had a propensity toward this. That was the. I don't want to dip into that. I want to know. I think we know what happened at Roanoke. They went and integrated into the Native American population.

[Erin]

And they tried to leave a note.

[Aaron Manke]

And they tried to leave a note.

[Alaina]

Got lost in translation.

[Aaron Manke]

Named the tribe. They. They merged into.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But I want. I want to see the. Cause, the. The process. I would love to watch that.

[Erin]

Yeah. Watch the person, like, inscribe it on the.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

And I would also like to be there, like, like 50 years later when Elizabeth Dare is, you know, this, you know, older, blonde haired, white woman living in a community of Native Americans speaking their language.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, she's probably got tattoos.

[Alaina]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Like, I want to witness the last remnants of the English settlers as they're being absorbed into a more diverse culture. This would have been really cool to see.

[Alaina]

That would be a great documentary.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Because there are legends of, like, blonde. Sorry. Of blue eyed indigenous people in that Virginia area.

[Alaina]

Oh, so that does make sense.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

That is interesting.

[Erin]

I like that.

[Alaina]

That's a rabbit hole. I'd like to get out.

[Erin]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

And I think I agree that because it's like, it's not saying, know who

[Alaina]

Jack the Ripper is, just what he looks like. What are you gonna do with.

[Erin]

And at that point, too, back then, you're like, I don't know, probably had a mustache. Looks like some guy. He probably had a mustache.

[Aaron Manke]

You know, he looked like H.H. holmes.

[Erin]

You know, literally who he was not. Yeah.

[Alaina]

No, don't get us started.

[Erin]

Don't worry. I agree. And honestly, it's so dark back then, you're really only gonna see, like, the outline of someone. So you're gonna be like, I don't know, it's a person. I guess maybe they had a hat

[Alaina]

on to know it's Jack the Ripper. Are you also witnessing a brutal murder? Yeah.

[Erin]

And, like, what am I gonna do?

[Aaron Manke]

Or are you just watching him eat fish and chips?

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

You know, which I don't really wanna

[Alaina]

watch anyone eat, so.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Murder a filet haddock.

[Erin]

Yeah. Like, what am I watching?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. What is this?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Roanoke it is.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Because if I can't have a name and identity to come back with, I don't wanna see it.

[Alaina]

This doesn't happen that often that we're so unanimous in these.

[Erin]

And mine have, like, evolved, I think.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Good for you, girl.

[Erin]

Look at me. Growth. All right, now we're gonna do a quick little rapid fire. This or that.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay.

[Erin]

Okay. So.

[Aaron Manke]

Okay, through the magic of editing, I will answer quickly, really quick.

[Erin]

Salem witch trials or New England Vampire Panic?

[Aaron Manke]

New England vampire panic.

[Alaina]

Ah, Salem witch trials.

[Erin]

Salem witch trials for me.

[Alaina]

All right, ghosts or Cryptids?

[Aaron Manke]

Cryptids.

[Alaina]

Ghosts.

[Erin]

Oh, no, I think. I think I'm going with ghosts. Yeah, yeah, I think. But Cryptids? Oh, that's a hard one.

[Alaina]

It's a tough one. I thought about it as I wrote it. It.

[Erin]

I thought I knew that one.

[Aaron Manke]

See, I'm working with possibilities. Okay, so New England Vampire Panic and Salem Witch Trials. We really know a lot about the Salem Witch Trials at this point. I mean, it's been studied ad nauseam. The New England Vampire Panic has so many unanswered questions.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Aaron Manke]

That's what's more fascinating to me. There's. There's just a crap ton of what in the world caused this to happen?

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

We still don't actually know where they got the information to even suggest, well, dig the bodies up and cut them open and look for.

[Alaina]

Right.

[Erin]

Like, that was like, where did that come from?

[Aaron Manke]

The signs they were looking for was known in Europe. There's this weird thing that happened in writing the book. I got. I got about, I don't know, three quarters of the way through, and I realized I was summing up a bunch of things in one chapter and I realized, oh, all of those are German details. Oh, just very, very weirdly. Those are all like Paracelsus, the executions where blood was being drunk at the. The. The execution site. Like, all of these things were like German footprints were everywhere in the room where it happened.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

And I want to know Why I do. And the first recorded New England Vampire panic, like, exhumation, was late 1700s, like 1790s. And we're talking like a generation after the Revolutionary War, the British brought Hessian mercenaries over. Actually, I was in the UK last week, was speaking with archaeologists because that's the program that one of my kiddos wants to go into.

[Erin]

That's about us.

[Aaron Manke]

And this archaeologist was dealing with a military site outside of Winchester in southern England that was a staging ground for those Hessian mercenaries as they came over. And I was able to ask him, would they have brought German physicians with them?

[Erin]

Oh, shit.

[Aaron Manke]

And he said, oh, absolutely. And it was common for those Hessian mercenaries to get to a place like North America and say, I kind of like it here. I want to stick around.

[Alaina]

So there you go.

[Aaron Manke]

So my theory, my working theory is that some doctors, it could have only been one or two, stayed after the Revolutionary War and just wander the countryside helping villages out with medical problems.

[Erin]

Oh.

[Aaron Manke]

And they passed it on to, you know, through practice, they passed some of these beliefs on. By the time you get to, like, 1790s, it's starting to become a common thing.

[Alaina]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Erin]

That really does. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

So for me, when you say Salem Witch Trials or the New England Vampire Page Panic, there's so many more questions I want to answer with the Vampire panic.

[Alaina]

That.

[Aaron Manke]

That's why I go that way.

[Erin]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Aaron Manke]

And then what was the second one you asked me?

[Alaina]

Ghosts or Cryptids?

[Aaron Manke]

Cryptids just have more possibility. I feel like.

[Erin]

Like they're very.

[Aaron Manke]

We've been trying to tape and photograph and record ghosts for so long, but we keep finding new species of creatures.

[Erin]

That's. That's what got me. Like, I was like, there's so much fun with ghosts. Ghosts are so fun.

[Aaron Manke]

I know.

[Alaina]

And a lot of times I feel like Cryptids. Like you said, it's like just an animal we haven't discovered yet, you know?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. A little bit of disappointment at the end of that.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, it's just a lemur.

[Alaina]

Yeah, exactly.

[Erin]

Exactly. But I want to believe in Bigfoot so much.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

But is he just, like, a bear or, like.

[Erin]

No, I think he's a Bigfoot.

[Alaina]

Is he a bear that hooked up with, like, a cousin? I guess.

[Erin]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Aaron Manke]

Is he some branch of, like, Homo erectus or, like, is it some.

[Erin]

Yeah, like that, like, didn't evolve in the same way.

[Aaron Manke]

Was it the NATO, Denovians and Neanderthals? And there's all these different branches, and there were hybrids. And, like, is it from they just hanging around?

[Erin]

It's like Nessie. It is interesting. Is that just. Is she just hanging around in there?

[Aaron Manke]

Right?

[Alaina]

It's true.

[Erin]

Yeah, I know.

[Alaina]

It proves that. All these questions that it is interesting.

[Erin]

I'm going Cryptids. I love ghosts. Like, if. I think it depends also on, like, what I'm. Why I'm choosing. I love ghosts. But there is a lot more to ask about Cryptid.

[Alaina]

I'd like to spend more time with ghosts.

[Erin]

That's true.

[Alaina]

And I've seen ghosts than I know it.

[Erin]

So, you know, I. I struggle with that one.

[Alaina]

I love it. No, I've seen them.

[Erin]

I don't know. No, I mean, I struggle with, like, which I'm gonna pick.

[Alaina]

Oh, I was like, no, no, no,

[Erin]

no, no, no, no. I've seen some of that.

[Alaina]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Erin]

All right. Galvinism or alchemy.

[Aaron Manke]

Alchemy.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

It's more punk rock, isn't it?

[Alaina]

Absolutely.

[Aaron Manke]

Galvanism is just somebody sticking a corpse with a. An electrified rod.

[Erin]

It moves. Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

But boy, alchemy.

[Erin]

Cool.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alaina]

It's rock and roll.

[Aaron Manke]

Fun fact, and I cover this in the book. The. The Philosopher's Stone wasn't a stone. It wasn't a rock. It was a powder.

[Erin]

So it's like, why.

[Aaron Manke]

Why they called it a stone? Because it. It had a. A stable state.

[Erin]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Aaron Manke]

Like a stone.

[Erin]

Oh, okay. But you always picture, like. I picture like, a smooth zone.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. Like a river rock or something.

[Erin]

Yeah, like super smooth.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Skip it.

[Erin]

I could skip the Philosopher's Stone.

[Alaina]

Yeah. Alchemy across the board.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Finally, very Last question number 13. Medieval Germany or Victorian England?

[Aaron Manke]

Ooh, Medieval Germany.

[Alaina]

I think I would go there, too, because, again, we know a lot about Victorian England.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

Anything.

[Aaron Manke]

Any culture that is employed a. A town executioner.

[Erin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

Who carried like a three and a half foot long sword.

[Erin]

Yeah, I want to know about that.

[Aaron Manke]

I just.

[Alaina]

Tell me more.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alaina]

What other weird shit did you do?

[Erin]

Yeah, I got to know about that.

[Alaina]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah. Look at us, all in agreement.

[Alaina]

We were unanimous. Look at so many of you. You were quick, too.

[Erin]

You were really mad at the editing.

[Aaron Manke]

We were just watching the episode of Friends last night where Phoebe has that game where she's like, all right, I'm gonna ask you these questions, and you have to answer right away. That stresses me out so much. Meat or vegetables? Meat. You know, going through the thing. And that's what we did.

[Erin]

That was what that was.

[Alaina]

You prepared rapid Fire. You were ready. You didn't even know it. That's fun. That was so much fun. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

[Aaron Manke]

Oh, this was a blast.

[Erin]

Yeah, this was awesome. We have to do this again.

[Aaron Manke]

We should. I record by myself so I don't get to talk to other weirdos.

[Alaina]

See, you know we brought you here for that. You're always gotta bring you out of the cave.

[Aaron Manke]

Thank you.

[Erin]

You're part of us.

[Alaina]

Everybody go get exhumed. You can order it right now. You can pre order it and it will be available August 1st fourth.

[Erin]

Yes.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, it's either fourth or the sixth. I've got. We've got the event on the fourth. We should talk about this for a second.

[Erin]

I was going to say we're going to be at the Wilbur.

[Aaron Manke]

So obviously we're in the Boston area. There's a great theater in Boston called the Wilbur and it seats like a thousand people. And Elaine is going to join me there on the fourth, which is it a Tuesday night?

[Alaina]

I think it is a Tuesday night.

[Aaron Manke]

It's like a book with ticket event. So come you buy your ticket but you also get the book. And then I'll be there. My philosophy for signing things is I'll stay until everybody's taken care of.

[Erin]

That's about us.

[Aaron Manke]

So if you get a book and you want me to sign it, I will sign it for you there. But we're going to talk more in depth about it, revisit some of these questions and ideas and have fun with it. Yeah, it's going to be a blast.

[Erin]

It'll be fun.

[Aaron Manke]

So I, I'll probably do a reading or something from the book too. Maybe read like the initial false version of her story from the prologue.

[Erin]

Oh, I love that.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, just to set that up. So that is August 4th pre order link for the book tickets for like that event or any of the other book tour events that I've got on my schedule. Just go over to Aaron manke.com exhumed.

[Erin]

Yes. Perfect.

[Aaron Manke]

These amazing ladies will put those links in.

[Erin]

Yes, we will link it.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah. But it's just my name. Aaron Mankey dot com.

[Erin]

Yeah, you can remember that.

[Aaron Manke]

The thing that you know that a lot of people don't know is that for pre orders like you could put a book up for pre order for like 10 months.

[Erin]

Months.

[Aaron Manke]

All of the pre order sales count toward the very first week of this release. For book sales. That's how people hit the New York Times bestsellers list.

[Erin]

It's a big.

[Alaina]

We got to get you there.

[Aaron Manke]

Pre order. Pre order. Pre order. I'm begging the morbid army to go out there and. And let's go help.

[Alaina]

And this will come out beforehand. So you know your job.

[Erin]

Yes. You know what you have to do?

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Manke]

For sure.

[Erin]

Yeah.

[Alaina]

All right. Well, thank you again for joining us.

[Erin]

You're welcome.

[Alaina]

And everybody, we hope you keep listening

[Erin]

and we hope you keep it weird.

[Alaina]

But not so weird that you don't pre order Aaron Mickey's book and get him on the New York Times bestseller list of authors.

[Aaron Manke]

Otherwise.

[Erin]

Not the other one.

[Alaina]

Yes, they'll give you a hand of glory.

[Aaron Manke]

Otherwise, that sounds like a weird.

[Alaina]

It did sound euphantic.

[Aaron Manke]

Yeah, I'm not gonna give anybody a hand of glory.

[Erin]

I won't do that.

[Aaron Manke]

I promise.

[Erin]

Sa.

[Aaron Manke]

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[Alaina]

Stop.

[Aaron Manke]

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[Erin]

at $49.99 a month.

[Aaron Manke]

Visit simplisafe.com licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.