"Wyoming's own midget mummy" was found in the San Pedro Mountains in 1932 and mystified thousands before disappearing in 1950. but what was he? A little person, a baby, a fake? And where the heck did he get off to? https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/vote-for-pedro/ Key sources for this episode include Aaron Mahnke's The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures; Charles J. Cazeau and Stuart D. Scott's Exploring the Unknown: Great Mysteries Reexamined; Jeremy Fugelberg's "The Mysterious Pedro...

R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House was a marvel of modern technology that promised to create freedom by liberating the mind and curing all of society's problems... so why aren't you living in one right now? https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/fuller-houses/ Key sources for this episode include Jonathon Keats' You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future; Lloyd Steven Sieden's Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and His Work; and Michael Brian Schiffer's Spectacular...

Paul Otlet had a vision of an system that could search all the information ever created, from anywhere in the world, at the touch of a button... Too bad the most advanced technologies at his disposal were index cards. Transcript, links, and more at: https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/steampunk-google-and-the-world-city/ Key sources for this episode include Alex Wright’s Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age; Françoise Levie’s L’homme qui voulait classer le...

Everyone knows the first battles of the American Revolution were Lexington and Concord... unless, that is, you live in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-first-battle-of-the-american-revolution/ Key sources for this episode include Randolf C. Downes's "Dunmore's War: An Interpretation"; J.T. McAllister's "The Battle of Point Pleasant"; Virgil Lewis's History of the Battle of Point Pleasant, Fought Between White Men and Indians at the Mouth of the Great...

In which a mysterious lost people living in the mountains of Tennessee turn out to not be so mysterious after all... and maybe not even all that lost, if the Internet can be believed. Transcript, sources, and more: https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/neither-here-nor-there/ Key sources for this episode include Anita Puckett's "The Melungeon Identity Movement and the Construction of Appalachian Whiteness", Ariela Gross's "Of Portuguese Origin: Litigating Identity and Citizenship among the...

In 1837 Canadians tried and failed to overthrow the British government. The revolution seemed over... and then the Redcoats seized an American ship, set it on fire, and sent it over Niagara Falls, prolonging the conflict for years. Transcript, sources and more available at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/dangerous-excitement/ Key sources for this episode include Edwin C. Guillet's The Lives and Times of the Patriots: An Account of the Rebellion in Upper Canada, 1837-1838, and of the...

Enjoy this special treat: "Christmas Day" by Julia Ann Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, read by the incomparable Eric Leslie. Happy holidays!

An instructive little tale where Victorian scholars look back at five centuries of arms and armor and just start making stuff up, because they're just ever-so-clever. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/armor-class-4/ Key sources for this episode include Charles Henry Ashdown's "Armour & Weapons in the Middle Ages"; Charles John Ffoulkes's "The Armorer and His Craft from the XIth to the XVI Century"; John Hewitt's "Ancient Armor and Weapons in Europe, from the Iron Period of the Northern...

Countess Dorothy di Frasso was the most famous hostess in the world, who threw parties for kings and queens, dukes and barons; actors, athletes and aviators; Nazis, Fasists, and mobsters. This is the story of her amazing life. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-realest-housewife-of-beverly-hills/ Key sources for this episode include Graham Wallace's "Claude Grahame-White: A Biography"; Yvonne Elet's "Architectural Invention in Renaissance Rome: Artists, Humanists, and the Planning of...

Listen up, fruitcake... or, rather, listen up -- fruitcake! This week #7 (Dorothy White) drops by to tell you everything you never wanted to know about Christmas's most maligned tradition. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/fruitcake-subculture-conspiracy-revisited/ The only key source for this episode is #7's own Texas Cooking article “Fruitcake Subculture Conspiracy” but she consulted a number of other sources as well; including Marc Abrahams’ “Military Experiments on Fruitcake”, David...

For seven years he lived in hell, tormented nightly by a demon cat and the grim spectre of death. Finally, an angel told him what he had to do to end it all: kill the Witch of Ringtown Valley. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/seven-years-in-hell/ Key sources for this episode include Arthur Lewis's Hex and contemporary newspaper reports. Part of the That's Not Canon Productions podcast network. https://thatsnotcanon.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/Mbap3UQyCB Facebook:...

The story of Borley Rectory, the most haunted house in England... Just remember that the most haunted and least haunted house are the exact same amount of haunted. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-fakiest-fake-in-england/ Key sources for this episode include Harry Price's The Most Haunted House in England and The End of Borley Rectory; Eric J. Dingwall et al.'s The Haunting of Borley Rectory; Trevor Hall's The Search for Harry Price; Robert Wood's The Widow of Borley; and Andrew...

This one has it all: the afterlife, encyclopedia salesmen, evil stepmothers, Kickapoo princesses, New Yorkers with more money than sense, the Empress Alexandra, bigamy and fraud, ghost farts and spirit chickens. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/a-good-thing-to-die-by/ Key sources for this episode include Mary E. Cadwallader's "Mary S. Vanderbilt: A Twentieth Century Seer", Mira Ptacin's "The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna", Phineas T. Barnum's...

In 1862, William H. Mumler took the first known photograph of a ghost. Maybe. What unfolded over the next two decades was a story of fraud and self-deception... that even spilled over into the criminal courts of New York City. Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/what-joy-to-the-troubled-heart/ Key sources for this episode include James Appleton Morgan's "The Law of Literature"; Louis Kaplan's "The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit...

This week #7 drops by to tell us everything we need to know about pickles... and then throw a "pickle party" for her niece featuring all sorts of unconventional pickles. Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/pickle-me-this/ Key sources for this episode include Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, Prosper Montagne’s Larousse Gastronomique, and Sue Shepherd’s Pickled, Potted and Canned. Presented by #7 (Dorothy White). Voluptuary. Raconteur. Artist...

In 1876 poet Julia Ann Moore was beloved by the people of Grand Rapids, precisely because her poems were so bad. Eventually she went national... and cruel audiences stopped laughing at her poems, and started laughing at her. Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/i-started-a-joke/ Key sources for this episode include A.H. Greenly's "The Sweet Singer of Michigan Biographically Considered", Rudolph Umland's "The Blessed Sweet Singer"; Thomas J....

Josephine Bunkley wanted to raise awareness of problems within the convent system... but her "allies" just wanted to use her story to swing 1855 state elections to a party of reactionary xenophobes. Transcript, sources, links and more at: https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/miss-bunkleys-book/ Key sources for this episode include Catherine Yacovazzi's Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America; Charles Hale's "Our Houses are our Castles";...

In 1835 Maria Monk claimed that Montreal's Hôtel-Dieu convent was a vice den where the nuns were whores and the priests were baby murderers. She was making it all up... but Americans desperately wanted to believe her. Transcript, sources, links and more at: https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-awful-disclosures-of-maria-monk/ Key sources for this episode include Cassandra Yacovazzi's Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign against Convents in Antebellum America; Ray Allen...

In August 1834 Boston teamsters burned down a convent a convent full of nuns, thanks to religious prejudice and the suspicious testimony of Rebecca Reed, a lazy teenager with a grudge against the Mother Superior. Transcript, sources, links and more at: https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/six-months-in-a-convent/ Key sources for this episode include Cassandra Yacovazzi's Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign against Convents in Antebellum; James Phinney's "The Destruction of the...

The strange transformation of a Qu'ran study group into a UFO doomsday cult whose members believed they were psychic ancient alien Egyptian astronaut mound builders. With a quick break in the middle for their founder to catch disco fever. https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/space-is-the-place/ Key sources for this episode include Susan J. Palmer's Nuwaubian Nation: Black Spirituality and State Control; Theodore Gabriel's "The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors" from UFO Religions; Abu Ameenah...

In the early Twentieth Century Billy Sunday was America's foremost evangelist, whose admirers included young men, ex-presidents, and titans of industry. Today we're asking the hard questions about Billy -- like, was he any good at baseball? Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/a-month-of-billys/ Key sources for this episode include Robert Bruns' Preacher: Billy Sunday & Big-Time American Evangelism; William G. McLoughlin Jr.'s Billy Sunday Was...

Joseph Raber was "too lazy to live and too lazy to work" -- the perfect victim for conspirators who insured him to the gills and murdered him. Join us this week for 1879's Crime of the Century, the incredible tale of "the Blue-Eyed Six!" https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/make-insurance-double-sure/ Key sources for this episode include Gary Ludwig's The Blue-Eyed Six: A Historical Narrative; G. Thomas Gates's A History of Hangings for Homicide in Lebanon County; and contemporary...

This one has it all: sibling rivalry, country club politics, adultery, duels, the Civil War, Spanish colonial policy, three giant piles of bird poop, all connected by the greatest American painter of the 19th Century: James McNeill Whistler. Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/crepuscule-in-blood-and-guts/ Key sources for this episode include Daniel E. Sutherland's Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake; Nikolaus Pevsner's "Whistler's Valparaiso Harbour...

In 1809, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished into thin air. He was never seen again, and we're still debating what happened to him some 213 years later. Transcript, sources, links and more at https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/gone-guy/ Key sources for this episode include Sabine Baring-Gould's Historic Oddities and Strange Events; Michael Mason's "Benjamin Bathurst; The Case of the Missing Diplomat, 1809"; and Neville Thompson's "The...