Cursed Christmas Ghost

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Alle Tools, die für die Auswertung von Verkaufszahlen wichtig sind, zum Beispiel von Lagerbeständen, findet man direkt im Dashboard. Starte jetzt deinen kostenlosen Test auf Shopify.com. Hey, true weirdos, at the end of this episode, stick around if you want for a little bonus content and conversation. Curses and restless spirits and haunted places.

Not the first thing that comes to mind during the Yuletide season. But ghosts pay no attention to the calendar. Ghosts no longer measure the hours and days the way we, the living, do. A ghost has nothing to look forward to, no future to dream of. A ghost has only the eternal now, pinned to this world by an anchor made of resentment, resistance, rage or regret.

And curses? That's not real. Is it? No. True weird stuff. We don't think of the Christmas season as a spooky time, even though one of our most beloved Christmas tales is really a ghost story. It's a ghost who visits the greedy, cruel businessman Ebenezer Scrooge one Christmas Eve. Scrooge's former partner, Jacob Marley, long dead and now spectral, draped in heavy chains, pleading with Scrooge to change his selfish ways, lest he too find himself condemned and lost for all eternity.

Scrooge doesn't want to hear it. The prophets over people crowd are almost always deaf to any plea made to their humanity. With the ghostly Marley banished, Scrooge settles into an uneasy sleep, only to be visited by three spirits, bent on showing Scrooge who he was, who he is, and the raw misery of who and what he will become if he doesn't change his ways.

Set aside the roast goose and the plum pudding and the God bless us everyone, and what you're left with is a good old fashioned ghost story, complete with apparitions, mysterious noises, and the threat of a dreadful reckoning to come. This is a ghost story too, one that has more than a few things in common with Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Greed and selfishness, of course, and broken promises, but also love and hope. It's just too bad that hope came in the form of an enormous, cursed stone. Her name was Mary Augusta Yohé. She was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on April 6th, 1866, to Elizabeth Lizzie Batchelor, and a former officer in a Pennsylvania Civil War regiment named William W. Yohé.

William was the son of Caleb Yohé, who owned the Eagle Hotel in Bethlehem. Baby Mary, who would later be better known as May, was born in room 23 at the Eagle Hotel. Its public spaces became her first stage. Even as a young girl, all May Yohé wanted was to perform. She would sing for the guests at her grandfather's hotel, turning the lobby into a theater.

She'd tell stories about her own life and childhood, twirling and dancing and modestly accepting the applause and cheers from delighted strangers. There was something about May that transcended mere beauty. Even in childhood, she had that it factor, that ineffable charisma that can neither be taught nor bought. A kind of inner radiance that we might call star power.

She showed an early talent for dance, and her voice when she sang in church was so riveting that it was nearly a distraction from the service. And she was a clever girl, too. A quick learner and someone who possessed a graceful confidence far beyond her years. All of which ended up serving her very well, since her parents' marriage didn't go the distance.

There's a bit of mystery about that whole situation. It was rumored that William Yohé intended to travel to Brazil, and there's a record of his passport application filed in 1878. Whether he ever made that trip or not, it became part of family legend that William died out west. Colorado, Montana, one of those remote frontiers.

In any case, William had faded out of his daughter's life long before his death in 1885. As for Mae's mother, Lizzie, the rumors were more pointed, and they hinted at uglier things. Lizzie Yohé was a gifted dressmaker. Philadelphia was only about 50 or so miles south of Bethlehem, and the city had a vibrant theater community.

Lizzie's reputation as a seamstress had spread to the city of brotherly love, and she had a number of theater clients who kept her busy and employed. But because people can be awful, there were raised eyebrows and whispers about whatever it was that Lizzie did in Philadelphia to earn a dollar. Of course, no one came right out and said, she must surely be a whore.

Instead, it was all polite remarks along the lines of, Lizzie's mysterious income and whatever she does in Philadelphia. People are the worst. With her father in the wind, Mae's mother, Lizzie, worked her connections on behalf of her daughter. With the help of wealthy German friends, Lizzie sent Mae abroad, first to a boarding school in Dresden, then to a finishing school in Paris.

This was the high life, the tall cotton, the headiest imaginable privilege for a girl from Bethlehem, PA, a girl from very humble beginnings. But then, Mae Yoey wasn't the kind of girl who was afraid of the wide world. She wanted it. She wanted all of it. The same connections that helped Mae set sail for Europe and the education that would vault her into the loftiest circles of society worked for her again when she returned to the US.

She was 21 years old. Her father was dead. Her mother, now living in Philadelphia, had made a solid success of her dressmaking business. Among her many prominent and wealthy clients was the actress Louisa Lane Drew, who just happened to be the manager of Mrs. John Drew's Art Street Theater Company, a position she'd held for more than 30 years.

Her husband, John Drew, also an actor, had the job first, but showed himself to be not much of a manager. Success came only after Louisa took the reins. Maybe there are only a handful of theater geeks who know this little bit of history, but listen, under Louisa's direction, her operation in Philadelphia evolved into one of the greatest repertory companies in the history of the American stage.

To have Louisa Drew as a mentor was a tremendous stroke of good luck for Mae Yoey. The woman was so impressed by Mae's talent and beauty and poise that she wrote a letter on her behalf to another fellow theater manager at the Union Square Theater in New York City. That first break was all she needed. Mae found herself employed as a chorus girl with a paycheck of $9 per week.

That's a tick under 300 bucks today. It was a fine beginning, but Mae's ambitions were bigger. In less than a year, she was cast as an understudy to the female lead in a musical comedy called Natural Gas. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of it. It's not one of the beloved staples of high school theater departments everywhere, possibly because, as one critic put it, the show didn't have even an apology for a plot.

It was a mix of funny songs, dancing, puns, and comedy, but it was a hit in New York and on the road. It seems almost destiny that the leading lady, Jeannie Amens, would fall ill and be unable to take the stage. Understudy Mae Yoey was ready. She later described this as the first great happy moment of my life. The promotion came with a pay raise to $60 a week.

That's $1,943.19 today. Mae was thrilled. Many, many years later, she described her big break like this. I had been just a dressmaker's little daughter with that same ambition that countless other girls have in their youth, to go on stage and set the world afire with my talents. After that moment, having attained my daydreams with one leap, I really was an actress.

And what is more, an actress of consequence, for I was replacing one of the high-priced women of the stage. Mae's good fortune proved to be her mother's as well. The owner of the show, a man named John Russell, threw Mae into a series of rushed rehearsals and told her that it would be most helpful to him if she could find a dressmaker to whip up the gown she'd need as costumes.

Did Mae happen to know a good dressmaker? She did. Oh, yes, she definitely knew a good dressmaker. Lizzie promptly created four exquisite dresses for her daughter, each costing $32. That's just over $1,000 today. When presented with the bill, John Russell let loose with a string of profanity, not in anger, but in surprise, at the quality and beauty of Lizzie's work.

It far surpassed what the dressmaker to the ailing and sidelined former star of the show had been able to create, and at a fraction of the cost. John Russell shoved the bill back into Mae's hands and told her to race it to the show's treasurer for payment before the dressmaker had a chance to change her mind about her prices.

Then he announced... If there are any girls in the company who want dresses made, I'd advise them to get this dressmaker of Miss Yoe's right away. That first night that Mae Yoe stepped onto the stage, she was terrified. She found her mother in the audience and fixed her gaze upon Lizzie, singing to her and for her alone.

But by the second act, Mae discovered that her nerves were gone, replaced by a thrilling new confidence. She belted out her big number, a song called Bid Me Goodbye by Arthur Toste, and by the time the roaring applause from the audience finally died down, Mae was a star. It all moved fast after that. Mae left the show natural gas for a big role in a bigger production called The Crystal Slipper.

Staged at the Chicago Opera House in the summer of 1888, the show was a whole wild extravaganza. 160 performers, 260 costumes, 84 pieces of hand-painted scenery, ballet, songs, comedy, all based off the beloved fairy tale Cinderella. Mae was cast in the role of Prince Polydor von Pritiewitz. The show was a huge success, running for months, despite the Chicago Tribune sniping that the Cinderella story had little appeal for adults.

Even though, as a spectacle, The Crystal Slipper was light and airy and a model of good taste. Mae Yoey's performance got a shout-out from the paper's theater critic, too. She was praised for her charming singing and then smacked for her failure to truly transform herself into the character. But what that critic didn't know, what Mae herself didn't know, was that playing Prince Pritiewitz on that stage in Chicago would launch her straight into a real-life fairy tale, complete with a dashing and wealthy bridegroom and a jewel so rare and magnificent that it was and is famous in its own right.

A jewel, it was whispered, that would destroy the life of any who dared to wear it. Now earning over $6,000 a week, Mae toured the country in one production after another, eventually finding herself in London in 1893. That show was called Little Christopher Columbus. Mae originated the title role. It was a burlesque opera in two acts, almost a parody of traditional opera.

The story, such as it was, is in the title. The adventures and exploits of the young explorer, beginning in Spain and ending in the New World with a rousing chorus of, All hail the great Christopher Columbus! Exactly the kind of thing that would not play today. But the beautiful Mae, costumed as a young sailor, caught the eye of a certain British aristocrat.

His name was Henry Francis Hope Pelham Clinton Hope, 8th Duke of Newcastle Underline. What a mouthful. Let's just call him Lord Francis for short. His resume ticked all the Brit nobility boxes. He'd gone to school first at Eaton, that bastion of generational wealth and power that not too long ago graduated both Prince William and Prince Harry.

His next stop was Trinity Hall at Cambridge University, and in the spirit of nobility and old money, he'd received a significant bequest from his grandmother, Anne Adele Hope, upon her death in 1884. He could have her whole estate, she declared, provided he agreed to take up the Hope name, coat of arms as his own. The estate included, among the usual assortment of country houses and antique pewter mugs and paintings of obscure relatives, something very rare and truly extraordinary.

The Hope Diamond. Where's that easy button, the one from Staples? You hand me over a giant estate and that amazing gem and all I have to do is change my last name? Done. Heck, I'd agree to be called Lady Ranch Dressing for less. And Anne Adele Hope, had she known what a feckless spendthrift her grandson would prove to be, probably would have been relieved to hand over the keys to a twice-divorced American podcaster like me.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Once Lord Francis Hope laid eyes on May Yohé, he was smitten past the point of reason. And why wouldn't May be taken with him? He was attractive in that mustachioed way that pale Victorian men of privilege were, in their somber suits and neatly knotted silk cravats. He looked a bit like you imagine George Darling might look.

You know, the father in Peter Pan. And May, thanks to her years of European boarding school and all that time spent on stage, knew how to slip into the rarefied world of the British nobility. It was the grandest role of her career. She knew how to play it. The couple were married in 1894. The talented little girl from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the eighth Duke of Newcastle, a fairy tale made real.

The newlyweds immediately embarked on a life so lavish and extravagant that you might have thought this fairy tale included a magical pot of gold that could never be emptied. Sadly, no. But, like all good fairy tales, this one did come with a fearsome curse. The curse was said to be on a massive 45-carat blue stone that Lord Francis inherited with his grandmother's estate.

Not just any old gem, but one with a dark, and some say, darkly enchanted history. The first person to bring this cursed stone to the world's attention was a man named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. When he purchased it, it was over 112 carats, crudely cut, but clearly something special, with a color Tavernier described as violet.

He sold the stone in 1668 to King Louis XIV of France. The royal jeweler recut it to 67 carats and suspended it on a silken ribbon. The stone, now called the Blue Diamond of the Crown, was worn by the king on ceremonial occasions. Fast forward to 1749, when King Louis XV had the stone reset into a different piece of ceremonial jewelry for something called the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Things were quiet for a bit, and then comes Louis XVI and his much maligned bride, Marie Antoinette. They attempted to flee France in 1791 with the jewels of the French royal treasury. I mean, what would you do if the streets were filled with people screaming, for your literal head? That escape attempt failed, and the jewels were handed over to the French government, which was no protection for the Blue Diamond.

It was stolen in 1792 and vanished from sight. It was 20 years before the stone resurfaced, this time in the possession of a London diamond merchant. Some say it then fell into the hands of the British King George IV, only to be sold in 1830 to help settle the monarch's enormous debts. But, like so much about the stone, facts were scarce and murky and suspect.

It would take another nine years before the Blue Diamond appeared again in the public record. This time it was catalogued in the gem collection of one Henry Philip Hope, who, for whatever reason, ended up being the guy to give the stone the name we know today, the Hope Diamond. Those are the facts. Now, for the legend.

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier didn't find or buy this exceptional gemstone in India. He stole it from a statue of a Hindu goddess. The blue stone served as one of her eyes. It was the priests at the temple where the statue stood who laid a curse not just on the thief, but on any who dared possess the stone. When Henry Philip Hope died in 1838, there was an ugly, drawn-out battle over the stone.

But a nephew, also named Henry Hope, ended up the winner. In time, he would bequeath the stone to his wife, and then she to her grandson, Lord Francis Hope, who couldn't wait to see it sparkle on his lovely un-American bride, Now, if you're wondering how the British peerage reacted to Lord Francis marrying an American actress, well, let's just say Meghan Markle wasn't the first American actress to get a rather chilly reception from that crowd.

The press coverage hinted that the swells were put off by May's near-immediate monetization of her new title. The new Lady Francis defied expectations and norms. She didn't retire to a manor house in the country to, I don't know, pour tea and arrange flowers. She said her I do's and made her way right back to London's West End, where news of the marriage sent ticket sales to her latest musical soaring.

Even the American paper served up snobby, snotty little asides, like this one, printed in the Philadelphia Times in February 1895. If she lives and avoids divorce, May Yohé, daughter of a Philadelphia dressmaker and ex-chorus girl of McCall's opera, will become the Duchess of Newcastle, Countess of Lincoln, and a person of the highest rank in the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Spoiler alert, May definitely lived. But divorce? She didn't avoid that. Her marriage to Lord Francis began quietly in a magistrate's office. Whether May knew it or not, her groom had already been bankrupt at once. Money back then was far too vulgar a topic for civilized people to discuss. Civilized being code for wealthy.

It was thought unspeakably common and gauche for one to acknowledge one's financial difficulties. So we don't know what May knew about her husband's true net worth or when she knew it. What we do know is that the newlyweds were spending it like they were printing it. Within a year, the fortune Lord Francis had inherited was slipping away.

Family heirlooms and land sold. The couple managed to trade on their future titles and status as the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, borrowing funds here, accepting the hospitality of the mega-rich there. It all culminated in the pair embarking on a tour of the world in 1900. It was toward the end of that blowed-up boondoggle that May and her husband made a new acquaintance.

His name was Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong. He was a star in the U.S. Army and a real pet of then-President William McKinley. Strong was all the things Lord Francis wasn't. Bold, rugged, handsome, brash, and American. May fell for him hard. She left Lord Francis in the lurch. This was, of course, bewildering to both her husband and his fellow aristocrats.

What, she couldn't just stay married to Lord Francis and take Captain Strong as a lover the way civilized, a.k.a. wealthy people did? Ugh, they said. This is precisely why one doesn't marry an American actress, for heaven's sakes. Blah. May and Bradley? They made a beautiful twosome, and they were crazy in love. They married in 1902, but there was to be no happily ever after for the pair.

The scandal that engulfed their relationship cost Strong his military career. In July 1901, Strong was pressured into resigning from the United States Army on the grounds that his, quote, escapades with that woman had resulted in a scandal that negatively impacted his status as an officer. You know the phrase, true love conquers all?

Well, that's either a lie, or this wasn't true love. In just under two years, it was all over for May and her dashing captain. Poverty didn't suit either of them, and they were flat broke. Plus, you have to guess that Strong was still smarting from the very public loss of his once glorious military career. They split up, with May accusing her husband of stealing jewelry worth a fortune.

I've done the math, the conversion from pounds to dollars, factored in inflation, and it boggles the mind to learn that the jewelry he absconded with was worth nearly 3.5 million dollars. He fled to London with the loot, and May soon followed. Get it, sis! Now, the reconciliation that followed was surprising and a little bit awkward, what with Strong stealing the jewels and being declared a fugitive from justice, and May offering a big cash reward for anyone leading the law to her thieving spouse.

But, it appeared that the officer and the actress just couldn't quit each other. At least, not yet. Captain Strong sent an impassioned letter to his bride in August 1902. Dear Maisie, excuse the shakiness of my writing, I am nearly crazy. How could you accuse me of stealing? Remember, I am, even until the next world, yours.

No sooner did May receive this than she scrawled a hasty reply. Come back. I forgive all. But the curse of the Hope Diamond was just getting started with May. It wasn't enough that she'd suffered the end of not one, but two marriages, the theft of her jewels by the man she loved, and the humiliation heaped upon her by a gleeful press delighted to see her taken down a notch.

The curse went ahead and shoved her out of a carriage in Paris. Injured and unable to walk, she nonetheless insisted that she be taken to her beloved Bradley, even if she had to be carried. And so, reunited, back to America they sailed, that land of second and third chances, the one place willing to overlook the messiest of scandals, provided the entertainment value is high enough.

May had a plan to get the couple back on their feet and back on top. She created a vaudeville show for the two of them to star in. Unfortunately, May's theatrical success was behind her and the public had moved on, and Captain Strong turned out he had zero talent as a performer. He made his stage debut on April 24th, 1905 in Brooklyn.

The sketch May wrote was called The Actress and the Detective. The Times Union called it one of the weakest skits in vaudeville, but Strong's notoriety was enough to carry the day, at least for a little while. Americans, it turns out, have always been outstanding at creating celebrities and then destroying them. May fared no better.

Listen to this poisonous review from the Buffalo Courier Express. ... Ouch! Brings to mind the ghastly charade of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer delivering truly jaw-dropping takes on salsa dancing and the cha-cha on TV's Dancing with the Stars. May had been on the path to become a duchess. She gave it all up for love.

Captain Strong had been on the path to a long and distinguished Army career. He gave it all up for love. Such romantic sacrifice is the stuff of movies and songs. This is no movie. Whatever it was that drew these two people together, it wasn't enough to keep them together. By the end of 1905, Captain Strong was facing bankruptcy and ruin. He petitioned for a divorce from his darling Maisie, the great love that had proved to be his great undoing.

And if you think, well, this much misery is probably enough to satisfy the dark hunger of the curse of the Hope Diamond, think again. By 1908, May was eking out a living in 10-cent vaudeville shows in small California towns. Bradley Strong had decamped to Shanghai and then Macau where he prospered as a gambler. Pretty staggering fall for the officer who was once a favorite of the president. May had regrets.

Bitter regrets. And wasn't shy about voicing them. She told the press that she very much realized the mistake she'd made in abandoning Lord Francis Hope. He was a prince of a man, she said. The best man she'd ever known. And their happiness was shattered by the arrival on the scene of Putnam Bradlee Strong. In 1910, it was reported that May had suffered a paralytic stroke and was nearing death.

She has only days to live, declared reporter Hugh Hunt. Prematurely, as it happened. May didn't die. Maybe it was reading headlines describing her stage career as one speckled with sin that caused the scrappy little poor girl from Pennsylvania that lived inside her to rally. Because just a few months later, May traded her deathbed for an altar in Seattle and her newest husband, a musician named F.M. Reynolds. Coincidentally, on the same day that news of her remarriage broke, the authorities were watching all U.S. ports of entry for signs of the Hope Diamond.

The famous stone had allegedly been recut into multiple stones and was bound for America. Something that turned out to be untrue. But what spicy timing. Weirdly, the husband known as F.M. Reynolds is hard to find in the record and some accounts of May's life leave him out altogether. Which is probably fine since he was just her latest spouse and not her last. And poor Mr. Reynolds barely made a blip on May's marital radar. Credit for the third husband typically goes to a New York journalist named Newton Brown.

He married May in the spring of 1907 but was just a memory less than two years later when a newspaper in San Francisco blasted out a shocking scoop. May Yohé, the former lady Frances Hope, had just given up her adoption. An infant boy she conceived with yet another husband. This one hailing from British Columbia, going by the name of Murphy.

Your head spins just trying to keep up with May Yohé. It's no mystery why she earned the nickname Mad Cat May. And ever the romantic, May found love yet again. In 1912 it was reported that she was head over heels for prize fighter Jack McAuliffe. Calling McAuliffe her girlhood sweetheart, May teased that she just might marry again.

But what she most definitely had planned was a return to the stage. With none other than her new boyfriend as her co-star in a sketch called The Uplift. Which told the story of a classy lady, capital L, who tries her best to transform her beau, the boxer, into a refined gentleman. And just a few months later, there were new news reports that May Yohé had gone missing. Police allegedly found a handbag and coat with the name May Yohé sewn into the label at the reservoir in New York City's Central Park. In the handbag was a letter written by May to her mother. A letter hinting at suicide.

There was talk of the curse of the Hope Diamond finally doing her in for good. But then, May was found in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She coyly dismissed the whole incident, declaring that she'd only gone on a little automobile trip with friends. With newspapers around the world first reporting her disappearance, then her likely suicide, then her miraculous return, May managed to pull off a dazzling trick of publicity that rejuvenated her career.

By September of the following year, 1913, May was on the stage at the London Opera House crooning the song, Honey, My Honey, for a packed audience that included none other than Lord Francis Hope himself. Witnesses said she was an excellent voice and that Lord Francis was clearly moved. Rumor had it that overtures for a possible reconciliation had been made through Lord Francis' own brother. But that kind of cotton candy sweet ending wasn't to be. Either because Lord Francis couldn't bear the tackiness of remarrying his scandalous American sweetheart, or because the curse of the Hope Diamond didn't allow for backseas.

Or, was it because a man in uniform was May Yohé's kryptonite? Because now it's 1919 and May is back home in the U.S. in Seattle, scrubbing floors at the offices of the North Pacific Shipbuilding Company for $2 a day. She had a small house, a little flock of chickens, and a brand new husband, Captain John Addey Smuts, a former officer in the Boer Army.

Real and true happiness for a woman, May told the Philadelphia Inquirer, comes from the privilege of working for the one she loves. Because, yeah, it was that floor scrubbing money that paid for the house she shared with Captain Smuts. And if you're feeling a little whiplash, like, Whoa, girly, where'd this husband of Smuts come from? Check this out.

Though the love Lord Francis felt for May had never really died, and her fondness for him had only been marred by the cold rejection his family and friends had shown her, their reconciliation was doomed by the gallant and good-looking Captain Smuts. May Yohé, girl, listen, I am the last person with room to talk, but you do have a pattern, don't you?

And try as she might, May couldn't stay off the stage. She made the rounds on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1920s, in an act based on a so-so movie project she'd helped write called The Hope, Time, and Mystery. She and Captain Smuts tried their hand at the agricultural life, failing first as ranchers in California, then as farmers in New Hampshire.

1924 found them in Boston, with Smuts working as a janitor and surviving a gunshot to the chest. He said it happened as an accident while he was cleaning a gun. The police were like, yeah, but here's this suicide note, it's kind of an issue. Smuts refused to answer any more questions, which was a thing I guess you could get away with in Boston in the 20s.

Fourteen years later, with Captain Smuts and failing health and the Great Depression making for hard, hard living, May applied for a clerical job with the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. They turned her down at first because she'd surrendered her U.S. citizenship way back when she married Lord Francis Hope. But you should know by now that May wasn't going to be stopped from her goals by anything, much less a bureaucratic hiccup.

She took the steps to have her citizenship reinstated and started work at the WPA in May 1938. In August 1938, she died of a heart attack. in ill health, and forgotten by the theater community. May Yohé was 72 years old when she passed, followed in death just a few months later by the grieving Captain Smuts. There were many, many stories that dwelled on how far she'd fallen. Many that hinted that the curse of the Hope Diamond had done her in at long last.

As for May herself, she once said that she'd lived it all, fame and fortune and the friendship of the nobility to poverty and pain and scrubbing floors, and that through it all she'd always been happy. Happiness, she said, is in the heart and hers had been a very happy one indeed. The curse of the Hope Diamond, that's probably just a pile of superstitious nonsense, right?

Let's take a look. The man who discovered it, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier? Some say he died while being torn apart by wild dogs. Others say it was a fever as hot as hellfire that claimed his life. Nicolas Fouquet, superintendent of finances in France from 1653 until 1661 under King Louis XIV, borrowed the gem for a festive affair and was banished by the king and sentenced to life in prison. Marie Antoinette, who wore the dazzling stone, lost her head to the guillotine.

Ditto for her husband and the stone's then owner, King Louis XVI. Marie-Louise, the Princess de Lamballe, who was the closest confidante Marie Antoinette had at Versailles? She wore the stone once, only very briefly, and then died suddenly and mysteriously. Hendrick Falls, son of the diamond merchant who came into possession of the stone by stealing it, they say, died by suicide.

The first member of the Hope family to own the diamond? His favorite son died suddenly. Jacques Collot, another owner of the stone, went mad then died by suicide. The next owner, Prince Ivan Konotowski, was killed by revolutionaries. Before he died, though, he loaned the diamond to a friend named Lorena Ledoux. She was murdered by her lover.

Simon Moncarides, a Greek merchant who brokered the sale of the stone to the jeweler Pierre Cartier, was out on a drive with his wife and child when the family car went off a cliff. All three died in the accident. Sultan Abdul Hamid purchased the stone, and the next to wear it was a woman named Subaya, a favorite of the sultan.

She was killed by him. And Sultan Abdul Hamid? He lost his throne. Salim Habib, the Persian diamond broker who'd handled that sale to the sultan? He drowned. The most recent private owner of the diamond, Mrs. Edward McLean of Washington, D.C., was sued by the jeweler Cartier, which was nothing compared to the loss of her only child who was crushed to death.

Today, the Hope Diamond, valued north of $250 million, is ensconced in the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian. The curse seems to have spared the museum, though the postman who delivered the stone to the Smithsonian was injured in not one, but two car accidents afterward. Oh yeah, and his house burned down. And Mae Yoey?

That poor little girl from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania? The one with stars in her eyes and a voice that carried her all the way to England, where, as the wife of a nobleman, she wore the Hope Diamond. I think you could argue that whatever the stone's curse was, she beat it. She lived a life on her own terms, impulsive, romantic, resilient.

It wasn't an easy life, and hardship stalked her. You could also make a case that she suffered hardship by the choices she made. But that's just it. She made those choices. She was the star of her own life. And when that life was over, her body cremated, her ashes delivered into the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, she wasn't finished.

Veteran stage performer Mae Yoey was about to give her audience an encore. The hotel she was born in, the Eagle Hotel, that no longer exists. It was replaced in 1921 by the Grand Hotel Bethlehem. It was a masterpiece, boasting the finest amenities, and graced by visitors like Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison.

Stars stayed at the Hotel Bethlehem. Legendary athletes like Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicholas were guests. And the hotel hosted U.S. Presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton. It's still in business, popular as ever, and you can visit yourself. The place is especially magical at Christmas, as you'd expect for a legendary hotel in a city named in honor of the biblical Bethlehem of Judea, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

And it's at Christmastime, when, if you're lucky enough, to be sipping a cocktail in the tap room, or at 1741 on the terrace at the Hotel Bethlehem, you just might hear her. A hometown girl, whose talent and ambition took her all over the world, made her rich and famous, then poor and obscure. A hometown girl who once wore a spectacular and cursed diamond, then traded it away for love.

A big, amazing, adventurous life, until death brought her wild and glorious spirit home to Bethlehem. The ghost of Mae Yohé entertains guests at the hotel now, the way she once did as a living child a very, very long time ago. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin, mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.

Next time on True Weird Stuff Happy Holidays! Some call that the battle cry and the war on Christmas. Nope, wrong. The war on Christmas began before America was even a country. You won't believe who started that war or how far they were willing to go to keep Christmas from coming. So far, they make Christmas illegal. And that's just for starters.

On the next True Weird Stuff. Sherry, I really love this story about the Hope Diamond and, of course, about Mae Yoey. And I vaguely know a little bit about this only because as a kid we went down to the Smithsonian. I've seen the Hope Diamond more than once. You can go. It's on display and you look at it. And I would say it's probably one of the top things that anybody wants to see at the Smithsonian. And it is beautiful.

I mean, it's kind of like expected. It's kind of a bluish sort of color. You're thinking a diamond. You think it's clear, but no. But it is huge. It really is. And it was even bigger before. I mean, it's been cut down a bunch of times since Jean-Baptiste found it or stole it depending on which part of the story you believe.

So when you try to imagine the stone that Jean-Baptiste held in his hands, which was probably twice or more the size of the stone you saw and definitely had a more violet cast to it. It's just fascinating. And there's always like I think if you pull enough threads together, you can make a story out of it. And a lot of things are just coincidental and happenstance.

When it comes to the Hope Diamond, that's an awful lot of bad stuff. I'm not saying the curse is real, but you know what I mean? That's a lot of bad stuff. Yeah, there probably is a curse to it. I always enjoy like so the Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, so the story goes, the Hope Diamond came from India. And the story goes that it was in the statue outside a sacred Hindu temple and Tavernier stole the stone from the statue and the priests of course laid the curse on not just Jean-Baptiste Tavernier but anyone who touched or wore the stone afterward. So that's the legend of the stone.

I have read everything from Torn Apart by Wild Dogs, Died of Fever, Died in Obscurity of Old Age. Some of these Hope Diamond legends are kind of tangled and twisted. And then others, you could say, yeah, Marie Antoinette was beheaded. Was that the Hope Diamond or was that the French Revolution? So you can make all sorts of logical cases in every direction but then you get to some of these other ones right down to my personal favorite which is the mailman who delivered the stone to the museum officials.

Two car accidents and his house burned down. That's unlucky, isn't it? And then the woman that had the child die. There does seem to be a lot of tragedy with this. A lot of tragedy associated with it. So maybe we can just all agree that the legend is the truth and that Tavernier stole the stone and the curse was laid upon him and blah, blah, blah.

Mae Yoey's story fascinates me because it's a very modern take on celebrity even though it's a hundred years old. I want you to think about all of the modern echoes in Mae Yoey's story. The first lover, Captain Strong, taking him on stage. How many times have we seen people become infamous or notorious and then they get a big break in show business?

Yeah. Right? That kind of regular person in infamy, let's make them a star, is a modern phenomenon but Mae Yoey was living it a hundred years ago and over and over again. McAuliffe, Jack McAuliffe, he's a famous prize fighter if you're into that kind of thing, tried to make him into a star to prolong her own stage career.

Captain Smuts, I mean, it's just fascinating to see the ways that what we think of as reality based entertainment or reality based celebrity, that's not as new I think. I think maybe what Mae didn't understand was that the sheer force of her talent couldn't give somebody else talent. I mean, I can think of times that we've seen that sort of thing happen.

But she's a what a fascinating character she is. I mean, and you're right, she kind of, she always survived. She always found a way to get through. That's why I decided that she beat the curse. When I really reflected on it, I feel like let's operate under the idea that the Curse of the Hope Diamond is a real, legitimate, supernatural piece of magic, right?

Over and over again, things happened to Mae Yoey that could have crushed her and ended it. And it didn't. And I think it's because she would not submit to those negative forces or experiences. She was so resilient. She was the kind of star, the kind of performer who is always on. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes.

Like her whole life from the minute she opened her eyes in this world, instead of saying, it's a girl, somebody said, action. And she was off and performing. And there are a lot of people like that. There are a lot of famous people like that. A lot of famous people who we've seen in movies and whatnot who have kind of lived their lives that way.

Yeah. I was kind of sad that she didn't, that the hope, the guy she was married to, that they still had some sort of an attraction for one another. And because of what everybody thought about her, that that could never be again. And I was kind of sad about that. There are some interesting modern parallels to the beating that Meghan Markle has taken for marrying Prince Harry.

People are always comparing Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to Prince Edward and Wallace Simpson. But there's, this is a, this is another case of you're just not one of us. Right. And we're never really going to accept you as one of us. And to be fair, that, the British aristocracy, that set of tribal customs and mores and behaviors, I think is impenetrable. You know, it's funny that this diamond is at the Smithsonian because who is the Smithsonian named for?

A guy by the name, whose last name was Smithson. He was British. He was part, he was the product of an out of wedlock relationship with a woman and a nobleman who would not claim him. And so, Smithson in his life became successful. I can't remember exactly what he became successful for, but he became successful and wealthy on his own.

Right. But he, when he died, he gave his money to the United States. And the reason he did is because he said, that's a place that will give you a second chance. That's a country that will. And with that money they made the Smithsonian. And so, at some point along the line, he was buried somewhere and they were getting rid of the graveyard and they said, hey, to the Smithsonian, hey, we've got Smithson's body.

Do you want it? And they said, sure. So Smithson's body is now actually at the Smithsonian. And I believe there's more information about the Hope Diamond. There's a great podcast that the Smithsonian does called Side Door. And if you want to know some fascinating stories, it's one of my favorite podcasts. I believe that they do one that is indeed about the Hope Diamond if you want a little bit more information about it as well, and how it ended up coming to the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian is a legendary and mysterious kind of place. There are holdings in the Smithsonian that are inaccessible to the public and, boy, would I like to get my hands on some of that. The Smithsonian has a lot of humanities in the world's most intriguing and treasured and mysterious objects. And it also has whole acres of things under lock and key. And what you said about Smithson and America being a land of second chances, I was thinking about Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, ex-wife of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

I don't even know if he's still the Duke of York. Did they strip his title? I can't remember. But anyway, after that divorce and that scandalous business with the Texas financier guy chomping on her feet, poolside, and just all this terrible drama, you know, Sarah Ferguson had to dust herself off and find a way to make a living, and she did.

And she was very successful here in the United States, and she said that she loved America because it was a place where a girl could have a second chance. Right. You saw that played out for Mae Yoey as well, that you could come home to America, and as long as you could keep the ticket sales going and it was entertaining enough, you'd be welcomed back in. And I think that is the catch on the great American second and third chance.

You better entertain the crowd. I think that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, I think they have not benefited from that America land of second chances in the same way that Smithson did or Sarah Ferguson did or Mae Yoey did. And maybe it was timing, maybe it was COVID. I don't know why Harry and Meghan have not enjoyed that lift of the great American second chance, unless you disagree, Max?

I don't think that they have, no. I agree with you. And perhaps not all these situations are the same, but one thing, and I suppose we take it for granted from living here, but it seems like if you really screw up and you come forward and go, I really screwed up and you're completely honest about it, people seem to be more forgiving of it, and then are like, okay, fine, you're forgiven. Go on your way.

See, that was the other thing that Mae Yoey understood innately that is so modern. For this to be a story that's 100 years old, Mae, when she would talk to the press, made no secret of her struggles, her losses, her humiliations. She didn't hide the fact that she was scrubbing floors for $2 a day. She didn't hide the fact that she had screwed up by walking away from Lord Francis. She was extremely candid in a way that is very modern and that was absolutely shocking for the time.

She, in some ways, you could make the argument, was our first modern celebrity. And here's the scary existential freefall, y'all. Nobody knows who she is. She lived this extraordinary life that was incredible. She was all over the world. She was on stages from Los Angeles to New York to London, Paris. She married and divorced nobility. She married and divorced a superstar in the U.S. military and had success after success, failure after failure, scandal after scandal, rebirth after rebirth, and she has been completely forgotten, which puts our own lives into perspective.

Sherry, I hate when you say that. What I like to think about our own lives is that perhaps my name will be long forgotten, but I'm hoping that the positive energy that I may have put out may be passed on. That's all you can hope for, right? That's the only thing that I hope for. That's all you can hope for. I was thinking about May before we jumped on to record today. I was doing scrolling and reading posts on Travis, Kelsey, and Taylor Swift. There are people who make these...

I don't think they go back and re-read what they write because they would hit delete. You'd be embarrassed to have it out there. They make these posts where they are so negative and so hateful and so full of their own certainty about what is and what isn't real and true and proper. I'm like, listen, the world forgot May Yohé.

I just forgot you as I scrolled past your comment. Why do you want to spend your brief... We flicker in and out of existence like fireflies. We're here for just the briefest moment. Why do you want to spend it? Why do you want to spend it on such garbage when even someone who lived with both hands wide open and all this gusto and passion and enthusiasm and can-do spirit has been forgotten?

Maybe just don't be such a dick. It's not going to matter anyway, right? Maybe don't do it. Have you been to the Hotel Bethlehem? No, I haven't, but now, of course, I want to. They say it's only at Christmas time that you can hear May singing. And I couldn't really come up with a reason for that. You know why that time of year? But here's what I think. Tell me if this rings true for you.

You know, May was born, of course, on the ground where the Hotel Bethlehem stands. And if you've never been to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, it is Christmas Wonderland in the city, turns out. And the Hotel Bethlehem is a particularly enchanted place at Christmas time. And all I could think was that May's spirit, wherever it is the rest of the year, comes home to Bethlehem in December.

Because that might be the truest and realest and richest connection she had to the place where she was born. And maybe that's why you hear her go to the Christmas time. What do you think? That would certainly make sense, yes. So is her appearance a good thing or a bad thing? Does that mean that she is bound into something, or is it a positive thing that she's making appearances there for her?

So we're going to have to make a wild guess, since I forgot to check with my Ouija board. I think that for May, I think that she was so alive and so deeply vibrantly enmeshed with this material world, I think that she is not ready or able to let it go. And I think she may come home to Bethlehem at Christmas time, and then who knows where else her spirit drifts the rest of the year.

You know, if it's real and all that. What would your guess be? Well, some people love performing, and they just love to do it, and they always love to find an audience, and now here she is, she's still finding an audience, and maybe that she looks at it as a positive thing that she's giving out. Maybe it's not a negative thing for her. I mean, not all people that are ghosts are trapped by that. I don't think, you had mentioned that somewhere in the episode that sometimes people are, but I don't know that that's always the case. I think sometimes it's a positive thing that people are still ghosts and they're still around.

I forget where, so, you know, I'm always reading about all this kind of stuff, and I read recently that some people don't know they're dead, and that's why they're ghosts. They don't realize they're dead, and if you think about the movie The Others, the Nicole Kidman movie The Others, if you can send your mind back in that, if you've never watched it, five stars, totally recommend.

It's completely worth a watch. The movie The Others takes a look at the possibility of a ghost not knowing that he or she is gone, and so they're determined to go through the rituals and the routines of living because they don't know any different. That's one kind of ghost. And then another kind of ghost is someone who knows they're gone, but they have unfinished business, right?

Another kind of ghost is someone who chose to not enter the light, who chose to remain behind. And I don't know that Mae Yoey feels like any of those. Yeah, I mean, it's not... Although you could say she died suddenly of a heart attack. 72 is pretty young, you know, by the standards we have today. Yeah, it wasn't young then to die, though, was it?

No, I mean, in the 30s, for Mae, it probably felt young, but she died. It wasn't like a lingering illness. She died, and maybe opened her eyes on the next plane and refused to accept it, and so she's doing the things that she did in life, entertaining the guests at her grandfather's hotel at Christmas time. Now, one thing, and this is another reason why I think Mae Yoey beat the curse of the Hope Diamond.

Yeah, things didn't work out with Lord John. Things didn't work out with Captain Strong. There were a handful of other husbands or boyfriends, depending on what you think, and also the mores of the time. If you're living with a man and having his baby, that's your husband, whether or not you're legally married, which is why I think there's some confusion about Mae's body count.

But for all of that... Interesting way to put it. Yeah. For all of that, she fell in love with Captain Smuts. She was scrubbing floors. They were raising chickens. They were ranchers. They were maple syrup farmers in New Hampshire. They ended up in Boston. He was working as a janitor. She was working as a clerk with the WPA during the Depression. And when she died, he couldn't bear it.

He died a few months later of a broken heart. So, whatever else you want to say about Mae Yoey, you can't tell me she didn't find love. Yeah. And that feels to me like the greatest vanquishing of the curse of the Hope Diamond that you could want. She didn't find fame, really, or fortune. Not that lasted. Those were both fleeting things for her.

But she did find true and deep and real and lasting love. And she died loved and beloved. And that feels to me like the end of whatever hold that curse had on her. Yeah. The poor mailman who delivered the stone to the Smithsonian. Maybe that's just a weird coincidence, huh? He wasn't... Two car accidents and his house burns down?

I don't know. I mean, I guess that could be a weird coincidence. If you're that mailman, wherever he is, you're like, Hey, yeah, before I handled that stone, I wasn't having car accidents and my house wasn't burning down. Here's the other thing about her. She may have been impressed by it, but at the same time, she was a person that always wanted to make her own way.

She worked. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. She wasn't depending on somebody else to get by. Whether it was scrubbing floors or working as an actress or working for the WPA. No matter what it was, she seems like she's got a work resume connected to this story that's pretty extensive. I think that might be part of it, too.

I really liked her at the end of it. I kind of really loved her at the end of it because when she married Lord Francis Hope, and by the way, at the end of the day, in case anyone's wondering, he ended up... Listen, he was a screw-up. He was weak-willed and a spendthrift and no, he didn't have a fraction of Mae's ambition or drive or business acumen, but he did end up meeting someone else and remarrying someone more of his own class.

He disappears into the obscure British peerage, the 8th Duke of this or that or the other. He was fine. He was fine. Mae could have let her fire be dimmed and lived a life of comfort and ease as Lady Francis Hope. She didn't do it. She did not do that. That was not going to be enough for her. How do you not love someone who is willing to risk everything to be who they are?

That's right, and she was. Let's real quick before we wrap up. There's a really wonderful book called Mad Cat Mae, if you want to know more about the Mae Yoey story. She was a real, just a real trailblazer in so, so, so many ways. She never had a singing lesson and that was something she was really proud of. She was not the world's greatest actress.

All the critics agreed that she was charming on stage and she had a lovely voice and beautiful. She was a beautiful dancer but not much of an actress. And so you can see how like a lot of modern celebrities where she's got a lot of the pieces but not all of the pieces and yet she's not going to quit. She's going to find a way to get back out on that stage and make a go of it.

Well, I can tell you from having been involved in theater and musicals, bad acting is always overlooked if you can sing the part. If you can't sing the part but you're a really good actor, I've seen this happen where somebody was a really good actor but they couldn't sing it. It's a debacle. But the other way around, if they're charming and they can sing you go, I'll overlook that because you've got to be able to deliver the songs.

Well, and a lot of the shows that May was in, I mean they had this one thing in common. They had no plot, really. They were like extravaganzas or vaudevilles or flasks or whatever. Yeah, she wasn't doing the dollhouse, for God's sake. She was doing some stuff that you've never heard of that I promise you when you go looking for it, it's really hard to find the content of some of these shows that she was in because they were crap. They were crap, right?

But she was a true old-time star in the sense that it didn't matter that it was crap. What mattered was what you brought to it. She was just there to get out on that stage and I love that about her and I do think she beat the curse and I do think that she died knowing what true love was and I cannot wait to go to the Hotel Bethlehem and listen for her Love that.

And speaking of her ghost, we want to thank the very talented Emily Kohn for singing the ghostly bit that was May Yohé and we will see you next week on True Weird Stuff for our last episode of 2023. We're going to take a little look at the war on Christmas. You're going to be real surprised at who fired the first shot.

Seriously. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and every episode of True Weird Stuff. Love you. We'll see you next time. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts hit the plus button in the top right corner and now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate, and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website trueweirdstuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at trueweirdstuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and Twitter.

True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2023, Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.

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