HGB Ep. 521 - Haunted Smithsonian

Moment in Oddity - Heart Shaped Lead Casket with Embalmed Heart (Suggested by Michael Rogers)

With Valentine's Day just around the corner we wanted to share with our listeners an unusual artifact found in Cork city, Ireland. The relic was a lead heart shaped casket containing an embalmed human heart. It was discovered within the medieval crypt of Christ Church during the 19th century. Although the discovery was not completely unique. There had also been an embalmed heart found at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. This particular relic contained the heart of Archbishop Laurence O'Toole who was also a saint. He had died in 1180 AD. The owner of the heart found in Cork City is not currently known, but based upon similar findings it is believed to have belonged to someone noteworthy. The heart is said to now be on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Regardless of whom the heart belongs to, discovering an embalmed human heart within a lead case, certainly is odd. 

This Month in History - Happy Days Premiers

In the month of January, on the 15th in 1974, television sitcom Happy Days premiered. Created by Garry Marshall and running for 11 seasons, the hit show achieved number one in the Nielsen ratings in its third season. The show takes place during the 1950's and 60's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's centers around a post WWII middle American family with a teen son and daughter who enjoy hanging out at the local malt shop with their friends. Many of us can recall the first 2 seasons opening theme song featuring "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. Beginning the third season of Happy Days, viewers began hearing a re-recorded theme song sung by Pratt and McClain with the memorable lyrics starting with 'Sunday, Monday, Happy Days'. Although son, Ritchie Cunningham played by Ron Howard, was the protagonist of the show, the most memorable character was Arthur Fonzarelli AKA 'The Fonz' played by Henry Winkler. The greaser's motorcycle riding persona made him popular with the ladies, always emanating that 'cool' style. This portrayed Fonzie as a 'bad boy' who somewhat clashed with the wholesome, all American cast of characters. Despite Happy Days not being appreciated by television critics, the sitcom became a pop culture icon that is still enjoyed in syndication today.

Haunted Smithsonian 

The Smithsonian Institute is the world's largest museum and is located in Washington, D.C. There are dozens of museums that are a part of the Smithsonian and together they showcase the history and culture of America and the world. And this is also the world's foremost research center. Priceless art, collections featuring memorabilia, fossils, animals, ancient Chinese bronzes, stamps, flags, posters and even Kermit the Frog call the Smithsonian home. The Institute is also cloaked in mystery and legends and it is quite possible that several spirits call this place home. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Smithsonian!

The Smithsonian Institution was named for the man who started it all, James Smithson. Smithson was born as the illegitimate son of the 1st Duke of Northumberland, Hugh Percy Smithson. It is believed he was born in 1765 in Paris, but none of this information was officially recorded anywhere. He became a naturalized British citizen and attended Pembroke College in Oxford. While in school, he gravitated to the natural sciences and he focused on minerals and chemistry, which was a fairly new science at the time. Smithson traveled extensively throughout Europe collecting samples of ore and minerals. He was widely respected by his peers and was accepted into the Royal Society of London in 1787. This made James one of their youngest members as it came shortly after he graduated from college. Smithson died during a trip to Genoa, Italy in 1829 and he was buried at the San Beningo Cemetery just outside of Genoa. The gravesite was marked with an elaborate sarcophagus. James had left his estate to his nephew with the stipulation that if his nephew died without an heir, the estate would go to the United States. This was a surprising request to many because Smithson had never even been to the United States.

Before we talk about how this gift lead to the creation of the Smithsonian Institute, we want to finish out the rest of Smithson's history. In 1904, the cemetery was going to be destroyed when the quarry next to it was expanded. The Smithsonian Board of Regents decided to retrieve Smithson’s remains and bring them over to the United States even though Smithson had never been to America. It would be Gilbert Grosvenor and Alexander Graham Bell who would move the body from Italy to Washington, D.C. He was buried in a crypt in the Smithsonian Institution Building known as The Castle. He was disinterred in 1973 for a couple of reasons. One was to see if he was buried with any important documents, which he was not, and the other was to study the coffin and skeleton. The examination was conducted by anthropologist Larry Angel and a copy of his findings were put back in the coffin with the skeleton before it was sealed up again. And perhaps this is why Smithson is at unrest. But more on that later.

An attorney from Philadelphia named Richard Rush traveled to London to collect Smithson's personal effects and the money. Smithson had specified that the money would go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." After Rush returned to the United States in 1838, Congress began debating how exactly to use the money. It would take until 1846 before legislation would be passed that created the Smithsonian Institution and this was officially named the Smithsonian Act of Organization. This gave provisions that a “suitable” building should be used with enough rooms and area to host an art gallery, a library and rooms for the “reception and arrangement” of natural history objects. President James K. Polk signed it into law.

The first person put in charge of everything was Professor Joseph Henry of the future Princeton University. His specialty was electromagnetism and he was a natural philosopher. He served as the Secretary of Smithsonian Institution for 32 years. The first building to be part of the Smithsonian was completed in 1855 and was dubbed the Castle. Joseph Henry lived on the upper floor of the East Wing with his family and a statue of him is in front of the Castle. The building is gorgeous with several towers, constructed from Seneca red sandstone brought in from Montgomery County, Maryland. Architect James Renwick, Jr. built it in the Norman Revival style that combined Gothic Revival with Romanesque. The interior was mainly handled by contractor Gilbert Cameron. 

The Center of the building had museum space that is now the Great Hall. Above this is a lecture room and there were two galleries on the second floor that have been changed to a visitor's center and reception area. There is a large basement below the Great Hall. The East Wing not only had the living space for the Secretary, but had research and storage space. These are now administrative offices. The West Wing that is nicknamed the chapel was a library that is now just a quiet room for visitors. Fireproofing was done to the building, but this didn't stop an 1865 fire from destroying nearly all of James Smithson's correspondence and documents, library contents, artwork and several rooms were gutted. Renovations were done and extra floors were added to each wing. Electric lighting was added in 1895. The next renovation would come between 1968 and 1970 and a five-year renovation was started in February 2023. And, of course, James Smithson's tomb is inside the Castle.

The Great Hall first held exhibitions of natural history specimens. This space was soon outgrown and before long, three additional Smithsonian museums had been built. One of the first spaces to ever be designated for children in a museum would be at the Castle. This had a large aquarium with fish in the center of the room and cases with exhibits of the largest and  smallest birds of prey, the smallest and largest eggs of the world, the largest lump of gold  ever found, and the largest diamond ever cut were around the room at the eye level of children. The exterior of the Castle was surrounded with beautiful gardens that expanded through the years. Spencer Fullerton Baird became the second secretary in 1878 and he served for nine years. He also was the museums first curator. Samuel Langley became the third secretary and he served for 19 years. All three of the secretaries served until their deaths.

There are 21 museums and the National Zoo that are part of the Smithsonian Institute with the two most recent being added in 2020. These museums are the African American History and Culture Museum, African Art Museum, Air and Space Museum, Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, American Art Museum,  American History Museum, American Indian Museum, American Indian Museum New York, Archives of American Art, Freer Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn, Natural History Museum, Portrait Gallery, Postal Museum, Renwick Gallery, Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum. Here is just a sample of the artifacts that have been on display. Diane remembers seeing Fonzi's leather jacket and Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz when she visited as a kid. There is also Archie Bunker's chair, Abraham Lincoln's top hat, the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Greenboro lunch counter, the desk the Declaration of Independence was written upon, Thomas Edison's "New Year's Eve" lamp, Hank Aaron's jersey, Ulysses S, Grant's chair from Appomattox, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, dresses from the First Ladies of America and Eddie Van Halen's Frankenstein electric guitar that he played on tour in 2007. The National Zoo's most famous resident was Smokey the Bear who arrived as an orphaned cub in 1950.

Before we talk about the unexplained things going on at the Smithsonian, we wanted to share some of the urban legends that are connected to the museum. Listeners have heard us joke several times on episodes about the Smithsonian hiding things in the basement, specifically around the discovery of skeletons of giants. There are conspiracy theorists who believe that every time these skeletons were found, the Smithsonian would send archaeologists out and the skeletons would never be seen again. There was a fictional account written on a website many years ago that reported that the Smithsonian had admitted to destroying thousands of giant skeletons in the early 1900s. This was debunked in 2014. The Smithsonian did some debunking as well back in 1934. The curator of anthropology for the Institute, Ales Hrdlicka (All ez Herd leech kah), said that reports of giant skeletons were just based on people's will to believe and misinterpreting bones that belonged to animals. There was just this verbal debunking, but no actual proof.

For example, a massive skeleton found in Tennessee was toured around the state as a reconstructed skeleton mounted to a timber frame. A doctor in New Orleans looked at it and claimed that the bones were of a mastodon. So somehow, a giant elephant-like creature was mistaken as a very tall human-like creature. Kinda like swamp gas for UFOs. We could share dozens of newspaper articles detailing giant skeleton discoveries and legends from Native Americans who believed giants had roamed the earth and we could even share a speech that Abraham Lincoln gave that mentioned a lost race of giants, but in the end, it's really whatever you want to believe. For us, we have no doubt that a giant race of something human-like was on the earth. Too many cultures have the stories. It's like the giant flood stories that are in so many cultures. Clearly, some kind of flood happened for all these unconnected groups told the same basic story. So were there giant bones buried in mounds around America? Did the Smithsonian gather them up and hide them? We'll never know, but it makes for a great legend anyways.

One of the legendary objects at the Smithsonian is the Hope Diamond. The history of the diamond is murky. French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier claimed to have obtained it in 1666 in India and then it's believed he sold it to King Louis XIV in 1668. But there is no clear mention of the specific diamond, but a sketch shows a blue diamond. The court jeweler later cut the diamond and then it is listed as the Blue Diamond of the Crown of France. Most people called it the French Blue. It was believed to have been stolen during the French Revolution and disappeared from history, but tradition holds that the Hope Diamond was cut from the French Blue and some scientific testing seems to back that up. The Hope Diamond's official history starts in 1812 when it was in the possession of a London diamond merchant. It then went to the Royal Family and was probably sold for debts and was acquired by the man for whom it is named, Henry Philip Hope. The diamond passed to his nephew, Henry Thomas Hope, and then onto a grandson named Lord Francis Hope who sold it to a London jewel merchant in 1901 who sold it immediately to a man named Simon Frankel. Frankel started having financial issues and he started referring to the diamond as the "hoodoo diamond." There were some more owners and then it ends up with Pierre Cartier in 1910.

Although the diamond had been referred to as hoodoo before, it was Cartier that started the legend od the Hope Diamond being cursed. He fabricated a story to entice a Washington, D.C. socialite named Evalyn Walsh McLean to buy the gem. McLean was intrigued and she bought the diamond in 1911. And then, the story about the curse seemed to be true. Her husband left her for another woman and later died in a sanitarium. The McLean's son was struck and killed by a car and their daughter died of a drug overdose. Jeweler Harry Winston acquired the diamond after Evalyn McLean died and he donated it to the Smithsonian in 1958. And here again, the curse about the diamond seems to gain some credence. The diamond was delivered via the post office by registered mail. The postman who carried it was named James Todd and he had several misfortunes befall him. Within the year, he had broken his leg, had his dog die, his wife die and his house burned down. No bad luck seems to have fallen upon the Smithsonian and millions of people have visited it. Does it have a curse? That's for you to decide!

Here's one of the stranger urban legends connected to the Smithsonian. Gangster John Dillinger met his end in Chicago in 1934. He had been one of the greatest bank robbers in history, but now he was just laid out in a Chicago morgue, naked under a sheet. And rumor has it that this picture revealed that Dillinger was rather, umm...how shall we put this...well endowed. Newspapers decided not to run the picture as it might cause scandal. But the real story here is that somehow Dillingers appendage was removed from his body and became a part of the Smithsonian collection. The Smithsonian claims this is just a myth, but the rumors have been so intense that the Smithsonian created a form letter to respond to inquiries which reads, "In response to your recent query, we can assure you that anatomical specimens of John Dillinger are not, and never have been, in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.”

Another urban legend claims that the Smithsonian discovered Egyptian ruins in the Grand Canyon. This was actually sparked from a real newspaper article. The Arizona Gazette is the only paper in the country to run this story. The headline on April 5, 1909 read, "Explorations in Grand Canyon; Mysteries of Immense Rich Cavern Being Brought to Light; Jordan Is Enthused; Remarkable Find Indicates Ancient People Migrated from Orient." The article featured a man named G. E. Kincaid claiming that he had been traveling down the Green and Colorado Rivers when he found a site with relics that seemed to indicate an ancient civilization had been there and many of the artifacts appeared to be Egyptian in origin. The Smithsonian sent out an archaeologist named S. A. Jordan and he investigated the site and took many of the relics back to the Smithsonian with him. No records can be found to proof that either of these men really existed and the Smithsonian claims the story is untrue and they have no such artifacts. 

Another archaeological mission that seems to be a myth is that the Smithsonian sent a team to Mount Ararat to find Noah's Ark. There is a picture that seems to show a strange formation on Mount Ararat that some claim is the ark, but the ark has never been found and the Smithsonian has never tried to find it. And another rumor is that storage area under the Smithsonian we joke about. This legend actually claims that there is an archive center underneath the National Mall. This storage space reputedly has a labyrinth of tunnels stretching out under the ground beneath many of the museums. Gore Vidal wrote the novel "The Smithsonian Institute" and he writes about the Castle basement and a group of nuclear physicists doing experiments there. The movie "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" put forward the idea that this was a real thing too. The Smithsonian’s storage facilities are actually mostly located in Suitland, Maryland. However, there is an underground complex of tunnels that connect several buildings that are only accessible to staff.

While the Smithsonian is very secretive about what they have hidden in their "basement," so to say, they aren't shy about their spirits. The Smithsonian Institution Archives shares stories about strange phenomenon in their museums. Back in 1900, the US National Museum, that is now known as the Arts and Industries Museum, had a spirit bird that liked to wail. This wailing was so loud that the people who lived around the building could hear it and before long, the Washington Post was running an article about the strange disembodied sound. A 2015 article in the Smithsonian Archives by Hillary Brady describes what happened, "It was recounted as a 'soul-depressing' sound, a monotonous wail, a 'dolorous note' in the night. Residents took up arms against the apparition in a 'tragic' appeal to put an end to the noise—for a watchman, a gun, for a boy, a slingshot. The phantom noise lingered on. The only explanation? This bird with the 'weird' cry terrorizing the town was the disturbed spirit of another winged creature who had given up its life 'for the sake of science and now fill[s] the cases of the Smithsonian.'"

And Diane, the listeners might recall that during our recent interview with Sylvia Shults, she remarked that security guards were a wealth of haunting stories when it came to museums. That is true of the Smithsonian. Watchmen would routinely compare notes with each other about masks that moved on their own in cases, bronze animal sculptures that seemed to come alive and they too heard the screeching of the bird. Now, we will admit that some of the ghost stories had some non-ethereal explanations. One guard mistook a diving suit for a body. A mannequin that was dressed as a Japanese warrior had been moved out of its case to be photographed and a guard thought it had taken itself out of the case. And guards often mistook a museum aide named Jesse Beach who was living at the Museum of Natural History as a ghost when they saw her wandering the halls wearing a white nightgown with her long white hair flowing. 

But there are ghosts seen by staff and visitors. The namesake of the museum, James Smithson, is one of the apparitions staff have claimed to see. He had been seen so often that a curator had the casket examined in 1973. We mentioned earlier that the official explanation was just a cursory exam, but now we know the real reason behind the disinterment. The skeleton was completely intact. We're not really sure what the curator was looking for. The skeleton wasn't walking around. Clearly Smithson was dead. Maybe they did something to try to get the spirit to rest? And the former Secretaries who tenures came to an end upon their deaths, seem reluctant to leave the Smithsonian in the afterlife. First Secretary Joseph Henry has been spotted wearing the same clothes that he wore when he was alive. He walks through the exhibits and then steps into the statue of himself outside. 

Second Secretary Spencer Baird has been seen by almost every night watchmen who has worked in the Castle. The ghost disappears when it is approached. A paleontologist for the museum named Fielding B. Meek lived under a staircase in the castle with his cat. The 1865 fire forced him to change residences to one of the towers where he died in 1876. And staff claim to see him walking around the Castle. Emil Bessels was an arctic explorer and he has been seen in the Castle. That Washington Post article from 1900 also detailed the stories of some employees who believed they had seen former scientists in the Castle. It says of one long time employee that he "has been startled at the solemn hour of midnight by coming face to face with the former secretaries long since dead. The form of Dr. Bessels has often been seen traversing the long corridors and gliding about among the dingy looking old curios. Both former Secretary Baird and Professor Henry continue to supervise the affairs of both buildings, and though long since dead, there is scarcely a man who does duty there by night who cannot tell of meeting them more than once. When spoken to, their forms vanish." 

One of the haunted items at the Smithsonian is a purple dress that Mary Todd Lincoln had worn. She had no use for the dress after the President died as she wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life. She gave the dress to her cousin and that cousin's son sold the dress in 1916 to the Smithsonian for their First Ladies Collection. The dress is said to be haunted by Mary. People hear weeping near the dress. And her apparition has been seen near the dress too. A number of ancient Egyptian treasures are said to be cursed. A scarab from King Tut's tomb is said to carry a curse. There is also a mummified cat head and workers claim to have seen a ghost cat near the display. 

A woman named Molly Horrocks worked as a collections manager at the National Museum of American History. She told the following story in October 2022 on Season 8, Episode 9 of the Smithsonian's Podcast Sidedoor, "It was probably 8:30 or so, because we like to do things when people aren't around. So, I'm leaving my office, I've got my keys, I've got my supplies. I am meeting our mount maker at the case, which is right at the end of this stairwell...and I could tell that there was something here, but there was nobody here because it was silent. So, I'm at the point in the stairwell where I could either go up or down and I hear a sound above. Just kind of a thud, but it was enough of a sound, I knew it wasn't just a weird building sound. It got my attention. But again, I was I going somewhere. I didn't really think anything of it. I was just like, 'Oh, that's weird, whatever.' So, I would go down the stairs and at halfway down the stairs I'm like, 'Oh, that was a little weird, because there was no sound after.' I was thinking, 'Well, if there was somebody up there, wouldn't they have said 'hello'?" but there was nothing. There was just silence. So, I get to the bottom of the stairs, I'm at the door and I hear again this thud sound. And this time I looked up and when I looked up, there was a man peering at me from around the banister of the stairs that I had just come from, right where I had been. There was now a person there. I had never seen this person before. They were wearing an Ike jacket, a World War II-era jacket, olive drab, greenish kind of color. He was pretty young, in his mid 20s, maybe? We made eye contact. That's silly. Just because he wasn't real. He wasn't an alive person. It was just an awareness. This was not a living person. This is just something else. But we made eye contact. I didn't feel scared. It was just... It just was. And he seemed like he was just kind of curious. It was very strange, actually, how natural it all felt. And then I just left. I just opened the door and I left. And the door that I was going to go   opens up to the World War II section and I told the mount maker was there already waiting for me. I was like, 'I think I just saw a ghost.' And she's like, 'I don't doubt it. A lot of the staff have had some kind of weird experiences, so...'"

The third floor staff bathroom in the National Museum of Natural History is apparently haunted. And yes, it's the women's restroom. Deb Hull-Walski is a collections manager at the museum and she told the Sidedoor Podcast that when she first started working in the building back in the 1990s, she heard all kinds of ghostly experiences about the bathroom. People claimed that the manual faucet knobs would turn themselves on. Deb scoffed at the stories until one day she was in using the restroom when she heard the water turn on. There had been no one else in the restroom when she entered and she hadn't heard anyone come in. Deb finishes up and leaves her stall and turns off the water. She thinks that it just must have been pressure building up, but then the sink next to this one suddenly turns on. She turns off that faucet and then the next sink turns on. Deb turned that off and the sinks stopped turning on. A little while later, Deb brought her 15-year-old daughter to work. She had told her daughter the bathroom story and the teenager thought it was baloney. That was until both of them were sitting in Deb's office that dated to 1910 and the sink in that room turned itself on. Deb had to physically turn the knob to shut off the water and they looked at each other like, "What?" This was the first time this sink did that and it never happened again.

Kim Dixon worked at the National Zoo in 2001. One of her duties was to observe the elephants during the middle of the night. A new baby had just been born and Kim was watching them one night when she had a strange experience. She told the Sidedoor Podcast, "It was about 2:30 in the morning. I'd been on my shift maybe an hour, and I was taking my notes, sitting in the dark with my red light on, and I heard the far door by the hippo enclosure open. And then I heard the echoing footsteps of hard soles across the tile floor. Very slow, deliberate steps, just a simple click, click, click, click, click, click. And since it was a big open space with that concrete floor, it just echoed everywhere.  It didn't disturb me at that point in time, because I still thought it was maintenance, it was security, it was a keeper. It was someone that I knew. Not a big deal. So, I was in the middle of taking some notes and I looked over in front of Ambika's enclosure, who was the enclosure to the left of where I was sitting. And there was a tall, what I felt was male, figure. And he leaned into the lower bar and put his hip out and looked at the elephant. And then he turned and he looked at me. I don't remember any facial features and I didn't think anything of it. I smiled, I nodded. My timer went off. So, I looked down and I started to take my notes and then I looked up to say something to them and they were gone. I didn't even breathe at that moment, because I was listening for any footsteps around me since it was pitch black other than my little red light. And I didn't hear any footsteps and I didn't hear any door." Kim checked the facility and all the doors were still locked and she was the only human in it. She called security and they checked the building too. They found nothing. She wondered, " "Could it have been that you were falling asleep? Could it have been the lighting in the room?" Nope. That didn't work. I checked that. I checked that. I checked that. And to this day I can still kind of see how they were: gray figure, very solid-looking. And I know they turned and they looked at me. They noticed me. We made some type of contact in that moment. But the second I looked down, they vanished."

A curator of the Castle collection named Richard Stamm said of the reputed hauntings, "Many ghost stories have swirled about, but in the many years I have been in this building, no ghosts have ever shown their faces to me!" Is it because there really aren't any spirits at the Smithsonian. Or is it haunted? That is for you to decide!