For today’s Curse-O-Meter testing, we talk about the Candy Lady of Texas, a witch bullying a town treasurer, the real Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, a cheese-wielding maniac, and Athol’s Strange New Museum.
News Stories:
Witch Casts Spell on Town Treasurer
TRANSCRIPT:
For today’s Curse-O-Meter Testing, we talk about the Candy Lady of Texas, a witch bullying a town treasurer, the real Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, a cheese-wielding maniac, and Athol’s Strange New Museum. I’m your host, Chris. And I’m Sheryl. And we are recording this right after the first thunderstorm of the spring, so the air is charged.
It was fantastic. I loved hearing the thunder.
It definitely means that winter is behind us, at least for now. There’s another winter ahead of us, but it’s far off enough that we don’t have to look at it for a while. We should also announce we got our first DM. Someone reached out to us on our social media.
So Georges made a few episode suggestions, and Chris and I are going to look into them. And just a note for our other listeners, if there’s anything you’d like to hear an episode on, reach out to us, just like Georges did. We will gladly look into whatever your interest is and see if we can do an episode on it. Exactly.
Reach out to us on our email at probablycursepodcast@gmail.com or just reach out to us on our social medias. So we’ve got the classics, Facebook, Instagram, and also TikTok.
TikTok is mostly for our spooky videos.
That’s good stuff on there. Subscribe on all of them, and then you won’t miss a probably cursed moment. That’s correct. Now, as we do at the start of every episode, we will calibrate our Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter with news stories from the recent news to make sure our Curse-O-Meter properly calibrated for the main topic of today’s episode. Let me just activate the Curse-O-Meter now.
Okay, and we’ll get into the recent news here. Excellent.
I have our first story. Women allegedly used witchcraft to intimidate family. This news story is from 107.7GNA, New Country, Albany, from May 15th, 2024. So in New York State, a practicing witch has been charged for using witchcraft to intimidate a man and his family. The incident happened outside the home of Baldwinsville Village treasurer Mark Baker. According to the rest report, around 3.30pm on May 7th, one of the bakers observed a woman exiting a red Jeep Cherokee and sprinkling red powder on the front step of Mark Baker’s home. The witch Jennifer Johnson, who has since apologized for her actions, admitted to police that she left a mixture of cayenne pepper, cinnamon, black pepper, and eggshells on Baker’s property. The mixture she threw on the doorstep is presumed to be what is called hot foot powder. A mixture of herbs and minerals used in African American hoodoo folk magic to drive unwanted people away. She wanted him to drive him away from his own home.
I guess so. What I like is that she was doing this in broad daylight at 3pm on a Tuesday, just sprinkling powder. Like, you wouldn’t wait until the dead of night to cast an evil spell.
Yes, well, whatever. Jennifer Johnson allegedly used this as a bullying tactic to intimidate Mr. Baker from pursuing legal action in an unrelated criminal case.
I wonder if she was being hired by the other legal case? Like, I want to hire you for your services. I need you to do the hot foot magic spell on the other guys so they drop the court case.
I gotta say, I could definitely see that happening. The other thing is the name Jennifer Johnson, it kind of sounds like a villain from a Marvel comic or… It’s totally a comic book name. Yeah, like that’s just bizarre. And she was driving her red Jeep and sprinkling red powder. It’s a Scarlet Witch, guys.
Oh yeah, it is a Scarlet Witch. Showing up in the middle of the afternoon. Ah, she’s got no shame. Did you imagine if that happened like out front, like we just look out our front window, which we have full view of now and our red Jeep pulls up and some lady like shuffles out of her car and then dumps a bunch of powder on her stoop and drives away.
I’d probably take a picture of it and send it to you and be like, typical Tuesday in our neighborhood.
Alright, that is the first story put into the Curse-O-Meter. I have the second story. The curse behind King Tutankhamun’s tomb, mysterious death, finally solved, experts claim. This is from the New York Post on April 27th. The curse of King Tut’s tomb has puzzled archaeologists since its rediscovery in 1922. A scientist, Ross Fellows, believes he knows why. In an article, Fellows wrote in the April edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, radioactivity measurements at sites like King Tut’s tomb and others in the Giza region have revealed intense radioactivity at the order of 10 times accepted safety standards. Toxic levels of radiation emanating from uranium and poisonous waste are believed to have lingered inside the tomb for the past 3,000 years since it was sealed. He theorizes that the tomb builders were aware of the deadly nature of the toxins based on warnings carved on the walls, quote, they that break this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose.
Of the original 26 who were present when the tomb was opened in 1922, six died within the decade, including the namesake of our Curse-O-Meter Lord Canarvan who died of a mosquito bite infection. Also around the same time King Tut’s tomb was opened, Cairo reportedly suffered a bizarre power outage and a freak sandstorm at that time.
It’s interesting to me that it would have been considered radioactive because there’s nothing to say why there would be uranium waste in King Tut’s tomb.
Yeah, I mean it might have been like so another part of the article stated that just the Giza region in general has historically had higher rates of cancers brought on by like radioactive materials.
Interesting. So things like radon gas and other things. And I wonder if maybe you’re a stone mason even like way back then, you know that if you work with certain rocks from like a certain vein, like people just died early or got weird mysterious diseases and died.
Sounds like an episode of Doomsday Preppers where you build your secrets family vault with uranium to keep out the looters.
Oh yeah. They’re really lucky that all that radiation didn’t just mutate their dead pharaoh into some gigantic horrible monster like among scarab, a crocodile. They got Nile crocodiles. They could have had the first Godzilla.
Gosh, that would have been way cooler than him just dying and us never hearing of him until his tomb was discovered. Okay, I have our third story. This time you guys you’re in for a treat. We’re gonna have a fourth story here.
But the third story is short. It’s from our own country, Canada. An irate male assaulted Newfoundland police officers with a block of cheese. Police say so it’s from CTV on May 10th at around 9pm on May 9th. That sounds like it’s an omen of something.
Nine nine… five for the month in central St.
John’s Newfoundland. Police encountered a very irate male wielding a block of cheese. The man assaulted the officers with his cheese but was arrested and charged with assault, assault of an officer and breach of probation. No word on if there were any injuries or what type of cheese was used.
I like he was out on probation and he’s fighting cops with cheese. Now was he on probation for similar cheese related crimes that they let him out early for?
Good question. My other question is how big is that block of cheese?
Oh yeah. Was it just like a little handheld grocery store brick? Or was he wielding like a big honkin’ Costco wheel with cheese?
Yeah, like cause that makes a huge difference. I mean I suppose you could throw cheese curds at the police but like feel like that’s a crime that should be left for other places in our country that eat more poutine.
Alright and since that one was so short and I did want to include it because it doesn’t like a little bit of levity. I’ve included one more story here to make sure our Curse-O-Meter is fully calibrated and I included this one cause the people involved are very much on the same wavelength as Sheryl and I. This Massachusetts town is now home to a museum of cryptozoology and the paranormal. This is from May 13th from MassLive.com. A new museum has opened up in downtown Aetal called the Education Earth Museum. Attendees can learn about dinosaurs, native local wildlife, meet live reptiles and also learn about aliens, cryptozoology and the paranormal. The new museum founded by Storm Plains is trying to quote, promote different things upon this earth whether they’re real or not. Although Storm holds a bachelor’s degree in archaeology, a master’s in forensic psychology and was a former lecturer in paleontology, she’s a real smarty pants. She has long been interested in true crime and cryptids. Quote, I like things that are basically un-entraceable. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I need scientific proof but it’s fun. I thought, not just like you and me. She’s on our wavelength.
Yeah, it’s true. Current exhibits include Bigfoot, the mummy of King Tut, items and reproductions from TV and films, as well as live reptiles and bugs including Storm’s own six-year-old snapping turtle and a tarantula named Enoch. Storm hopes her museum can become a community space where people can give lectures, record podcasts, volunteer to educate, or even put up their own display.
Good job, Storm. One day we will also have our own museum and we should form a weird museum network. If we all got together once we have our own museum, just floating this idea now and we have like a pass that gets you into all the other weird museums. We all agree with it. Just one membership for a bunch of museums.
It’s a way better idea than what I had. I was like, why don’t we all get banners? Like everyone used to have in geocities when you wanted to link a bunch of pages together. Oh yeah, webbring. Yeah.
We can do that too. Bring it back. Alright, so those four stories have been fed into the Lord Carnarvon Curse-O-Meter. I will get it to tally the results.
Please stand by.
And for our, for the results of the first story about the witchcraft woman trying to intimidate a legal case, the Curse-O-Meter says… Definitely cursed. Yep, definitely cursed.
I mean she was trying, she even said she was trying to curse him or intimidate him. I mean that’s not cool.
And just the fact that this lady just has no boundaries showing up on your front stoop dumping things all over the place.
Pretending to be the Scarlet Witch. Just the audacity of it all.
I bet she doesn’t even look like Elizabeth Olson. And for our second story about the radioactivity in King Tut’s Tomb, the Curse-O-Meter says… Definitely cursed. It has radioactivity about 10 times the safety limit for regular working conditions. I mean it’s just the cursed tomb that keeps on given. People dying of blood infections and weird cancers and whoever. Because I assume King Tut himself didn’t create the curse. Like one of his, I don’t know, magicians did. I don’t know what you would call it, Ancient Egypt.
Yeah, I don’t know. I’d have to look into a little bit more. I almost wonder if the pharaoh was in charge of who built the tomb and how the tomb was built. I wonder if he just put that warning there himself.
Oh yeah. Well if they did have a chief curse, curser, curse maker, that guy did a bang up job on that tomb.
Good job sir, whoever you are.
I mean considering that it wasn’t even opened until, what did it say, 1922? Yeah. It’s just a little over 100 years ago. From probably like 2000 years prior. Yep. Did a good job. If only he knew, then he could go on his resume. For our third news story of the cheese wheeling maniac, the Curse-O-Meter says…
The real curse is people. The real curse is people. Who does that? Who picks up the walk of cheese and tries to throw it at police officers? Assault police officers? I wish I had more details to the article to know just like, what was wrong with this man? Why is he using cheese on police?
Are we going to have to include the same verbiage that is on alcohol and VLT machines that says please enjoy responsibly on every break of cheese?
I mean, this should be there already. I eat a lot of cheese.
That’s just good advice for everyone. And for the results for our fourth news story about the new cryptozoological and paranormal museum opening up in Massachusetts, UrCurse-O-Meter says probably benign. She’s not claiming that any of what’s in there is real. It’s just interesting. It’s more of like a curio museum or circus side show maybe? Yeah.
And I don’t think she’s really said anything to like, try convince people. Like it’s just an exhibit in her existing museum with a whole bunch of other really cool stuff.
So yeah, she’s not just there like screaming at little kids. He’s real big but is real. I don’t teach you this in school.
Besides, who doesn’t want a tarantula named Enoch?
I’m glad that he becomes an exhibit gets exposed to a lot of people. You can look at everyone with his compound eyes and wave with his pedipelps. All right. So we’ve completed calibrating the Curse-O-Meter. Before we get on to our main topic, we’re going to make a little side trip here to the probably cursed museum and gift shop.
This is for artifact number eight for probably cursed shop. It’s a statuette of a dancing couple. It’s kind of gold and dark green. The woman is wearing a veil. So it kind of gives like wedding vibes. What’s weird or I guess you could say curse but the item is the artistic styling of the piece. So on the faces of both the man and the woman, the eyes and the lips are like dark green. And it kind of gives them a zombie or dead like appearance, maybe corpse bride even.
Oh yeah. I’m looking at her right now.
So I can’t really tell you what this statuette is made from, but it’s slightly cold to the touch. Maybe painted porcelain? I don’t know. It’s kind of a little weird.
I mean, it’s heavy. In addition, there’s a sticker on the wooden stand that the statue sits on. And it says Urkite present, which I think might be a typo because when I googled it, I couldn’t find anything with that. And it kept trying to translate Urkite into Équerie in French.
So I don’t know. It’s not even spelt correctly. Stupid Google.
It could even be in a language that I don’t know. The statuette is a little bit dusty, which kind of adds to the spooky charm of it in my opinion.
It’s as is people. We don’t polish these up.
Yeah, it kind of, it comes with the dust from the original place it was in. Like Chris mentioned a few episodes back at this point, we’ve got so many artifacts. It’s kind of hard to keep track of what items are associated with what strange happenings in our house. Like I’ve seen shadow figures in our basement twice.
Our engagement photo has fallen off the wall like four times in the last two months. And it sounds like someone’s going up the stairs so often I’ve stopped paying attention.
I can hear my sister screaming at us right now. What are you doing?
And I’ve also come down in the morning a few times to find the TV has turned itself on. It might be the dog trying to watch squirrel videos in the middle of the night while we’re sleeping, but I think I would have found the TV on during the day too if it was the dog.
Also I think of the dog he would have the volume all the way up too.
Yeah, we would be instantly jarred from our sleep by squirrel noises echoing through the house. If you would like to see this haunting statuette bring a little paranormal activity into your home, you can purchase it on the Probably Cursed at Z Shop. I should also note that each item you purchase comes with a certificate that is signed by both Chris and I so you can display it with your artifact and bring it to your friends.
It’s legit AF.
The purchases you make from our shop help support the podcast and put us one step closer to our goal of having our own haunted museum. You can find our shop at probablycursed.etsy.com.
Alright, now to the main topic of today’s episode, the Candy Lady. In Terrell, Texas, about an hour east of Dallas comes the urban legend of the Candy Lady.
Can I stop you for a second? Is it spelled Tyrell like Alberta Tyrell?
More like Terrell. Okay. T-E-R-R-E-L. Just checking. But you know like how they have Canadian Texas down there? They probably stole that from Canada too. I just lost a bunch of Texas listeners.
It’s fine. You can edit it out later.
The legend is on the window sills of children in Terrell, Candy will appear. Kids assuming these treats were being left from their parents eat it thinking nothing of it. Then as the nights go on, more candy appears. But on the wrapper will be a message saying it’s from the Candy Lady. From this point, the notes will change asking the kids to come out and play. And those kids who went out lured by the promise of that sweet, sweet candy disappear forever.
I mean that’s the tactic for every pedophile out there. Just leave candy for kids until you butter them up enough that they’re willing to come with you.
That’s what they told us growing up and that’s probably what they’re telling kids now. I guess it just means it’s an extremely effective way of luring children.
Fun fact, not that this needs to be in the episode, but when I was in elementary school there was a guy who showed up on Halloween dressed as a clown and was handing out candy to kids in our school field. Somebody went and told one of the teachers and we all got called in for recess. Wow.
Yup. They’re like nope. Nope, nope, nope. So that is the urban legend, but like most legends it takes its roots from history. And it’s widely accepted that the Candy Lady was originally Clara Crane, born in Terrell, Texas in 1871. In the 1880s she married an older man, Leonard, who she had a single child with called Marcella. And when the daughter was five years old she accompanied her father to work and was killed in a tragic farming accident. Leonard had obviously been drinking and Clara immediately put the blame on her husband and became withdrawn over the next two years. And during that time her resentment and rage against her husband grew. And one day she decided to take revenge.
She took out a book and started learning how to be independent. Dun dun dun.
That’s the scariest thing a woman could do in the 1880s. That’s right. But she didn’t do that. She did the more popular thing that women did in the 80s when they needed to get rid of their ran. Poison. Poison.
This, before they invented divorce, all you had was poison. So she made her husband poisoned caramel candies, which caramel candies were her husband’s favorite. And the lethal candy did the trick. Leonard dies from her poisoned candy.
And about a day goes by before people notice something has happened to Leonard. And this next bit is taken from the Terrell Tribune in 1895 titled, Wife Poisons Husband with Candy. Clara Crane was arraigned in the Haddock Street Courthouse Wednesday morning. Mrs. Crane is suspected by Ellis County Sheriff’s of murdering her husband Leonard, Gilbert Crane, by poisoning. The Sheriff’s allege that the Crane woman poisoned caramels that were then consumed by her husband. The day after his death, a neighborhood come by the Crane house and found Mrs. Crane attempting to build a large fire next to her house in a shaken and frenzied state.
Can’t a woman just build a fire on her own and not draw questions from the whole neighborhood?
Yeah, it only took like a day for some nosy person to poke their nose in her business.
Oh yeah, it’s just not fair.
When Sheriff Deputy Fred Springer arrived at the residence, Mrs. Crane became physically aggressive and was restrained and taken into custody. The Sheriff Department would not comment on the possibility that Mrs. Crane might have had the intention of burning down the residence. Mrs. Crane faces the charges of murder in the first degree. She is facing a life sentence, though some close to the investigation have alleged that she may be suffering from mania. This possibility could mean leniency in sentencing or commitment to an asylum.
Well in mania it was just one of those catch all terms. Like if they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with you they just like slapped that on you. They’re like yeah you got mania.
Depressed? You got mania. Can’t get a song out of your head for three days? That’s a mania. I feel like that’s, I mean to
be fair I do feel she deserves leniency but.
I’m surprised it wasn’t, you know they blame every woman’s problem on hysteria back in the day. I think mania would be for man because it’s the first half of the word.
Maybe I’ll have to look into that a little bit deeper.
So speculation in the article turned out to be true. She did murder her husband with poison candy. And Clara was committed to the North Texas lunatic asylum now known as the Terrell State Hospital. She didn’t cause any trouble at the asylum. In fact she was a model patient following her doctor’s treatments and keeping to herself. The only thing that was off-putting was that she had made a doll out of torn bed sheets she named Marcy, her deceased daughter’s name. She’d sing lullabies and talk to it.
I mean I feel like for free room and board for a woman in the 1800s that didn’t have a husband anymore that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I would make a doll and call it, I don’t know, somebody’s name and sing to it if it got me free room and board.
Yeah I think if the state didn’t take her in like her next move would have just been living in the forest. And a few years later her sentence in the asylum is cut short. The asylum is suffering from overcrowding and her doctors assume that she’s probably okay to be released.
Even though she talks and sings to a doll like it’s her own daughter. As she was preparing for her release she writes this letter to her sister. Dearest Aggie, I am elated. I have been informed by Dr. Matthews that Marcy and I will be returning home in less than three weeks. Marcy being her unallocated home maid, asylum maid doll.
Yeah, doll child. As you can imagine Marcy can barely contain her excitement. Every night she asks, is tomorrow the day when we go home mother?
Very soon I will be able to tell her yes. Our stay here has been somewhat of a trial though I have been grateful to the good doctor and his staff in their dedication to our treatment and recovery. Leonard’s death had put us in such a severe state of melancholy that I feared we would never escape it. These past few years have been more difficult than any in my life and my dear Marcella. After all that she has had to endure has become my strength, my flame of hope.
That’s the end of the letter. After her release any official documentation about the whereabouts where Clara went after her release aren’t available. But it’s said shortly after her release in her hometown of Terrell, children have started to go missing. Over the years over eight children have gone missing and the children admit to their parents that they have been receiving candy on their window sills from the candy lady and it’s around this time also a local farmer finds in his field bloody children’s teeth inside a candy wrapper.
Oh well you know that’s probably normal in Texas.
I don’t know what dental care was like back around the turn of the century.
Besides which how would they be able to? Was it a farmer saying they were children’s teeth or was it I wonder?
It doesn’t say who identified it but I mean kids teeth are small. Maybe it’s an easy idea. Maybe they’re just like eating taffy and it just pulls their teeth out and they’re like I’ll just put these in the wrapper. So the parents in the neighborhood are terrified. Children are going missing and they’re finding children’s teeth in a random farmer’s field and it’s around this point they remember the story about Clara Crane the woman who poisoned her husband with candy. So they’re like that crime involves candy and this crime involves candy it must be Clara. And so they order their sheriff to investigate and he does but during his investigation he went missing and was found a couple days later with his pockets stuffed full of candy and his eyes stabbed out with forks.
That’s a little bit of an overreaction to getting questioned by police.
And then it ended. After the sheriff was found no more children went missing and no one knows what ultimately happened to Clara although it’s unlikely she’s still out there to this day alive but some say her spirit still roams Terrel looking for children to abduct and to add a little bit more testimony because this is kind of very apocryphal tales passed down and what not. I’ll add this comment I found on legendofthecandylady.wordpress .com. Basically the posting had most of the same elements I had there and then someone in the comments wrote I recently went to see my grandma 81 years old who loves to talk about local history and asked her about the candy lady story. Her retelling was a little different than I had heard but it’s likely to be closer to the source though she couldn’t admit where she had heard it only that it used to scare the crap out of her as a little girl.
This would have been in the early 1940s. At first I made the mistake of calling the candy lady the candy fairy and she quickly reprimanded me insisting it is lady not fairy. She told me the story I already knew but had details I hadn’t heard before. Apparently people started getting really paranoid after the first few kids disappeared and started asking questions. They started looking for a connection between the children. That’s when the stories of the candy lady started the spread. All told about seven or eight kids went missing over five years and this of course terrified parents. She says the town didn’t celebrate Halloween for years after that.
Did they celebrate it now I wonder? I bet they do.
I bet it just got that little extra surge of adrenaline because they’re like oh is there one of these houses the candy lady? I asked her if the story about the police officer was true and she said yes. Apparently the candy lady didn’t like people looking into her works. What creeped me out the most was watching my Nana tell the story.
She looked genuinely disturbed. She obviously does not like talking about this story. After my grandma went to bed I mentioned to my mom that Nana and I had talked about the candy lady story. I was then surprised that my mom a big fan of horror like me didn’t light up. She got kind of quiet and asked if Nana mentioned the girl up the road from their home who had gone missing and was never found when my mom was nine.
I said that she hadn’t. My mom said it was after that incident that she was told the candy lady story by Nana and it scared the crap out of her. My mom said for like a month she’d wait until her parents were asleep then turn on all the lights in her room so she could fall asleep.
The next day alone in the car with my grandma I asked her about the girl that went missing up the road. This would have been the mid 60s and then Nana actually got kind of irritated. She said it was all just a silly legend. A noticeable difference from her openness the night before. When I asked her about her telling my mom the candy lady story she said that she didn’t that mom must have heard it from one of her friends.
So here’s what I think. I think my grandma was totally terrified of the candy lady story when she was a child. When she herself was a mom and the girl up the road went missing she felt that fear again and probably did tell my mom the story almost in some cathartic effort to rid herself of the rehashed terror.
And of course it scared my mom at the time as well. Now I have to know more. So apparently the urban legends still passed around Texas. Also other areas but like it kind of grows and it changes and changed but it all started little town in Texas.
There’s part of me that wonders if the whole like candy lady incident could have been avoided if they just had court proceedings like back then to charge people with negligence when it came to the child dying. Like if her husband had been charged in court and sentenced to jail would she have gone out and tried to murder him and it spiraled from there. Yeah. Because like I don’t think there was charges for that sort of thing. Men could just go get drunk and do whatever the hell they wanted and everyone was like ah oops.
Get out of here you scoundrel. Lay off the sauce. Yeah. Don’t let it happen again.
I don’t know. I did feel sorry for her at the beginning of the story but then she just went crazy like stabbing people in the eyes of the forks. Not good.
Maybe the sheriff was her husband’s brother or something.
That’s true those details are left out. Or he just looked like him. Did you manage to find any articles that showed the kids that had died? Was there any?
I couldn’t. Okay. Terrell’s like a small town. Fair. And it’s hard to find. Articles.
Things online. Yeah. I bet if I drove all the way out to Texas I could go look in some archive. But it’s one of those things a lot of people say children went missing around this time. It’s interesting. So we’ll feed the story of the candy lady into our Curse-O-Meter here. Please stand by.
And it looks like the results are definitely cursed.
Yeah. Don’t try lure children away and put their teeth in candy wrappers and leave them for people to find them.
If you’re in Terrell, Texas avoid candy entirely. Yeah. Nothing like is going to happen to the person eating celery.
Or lean into it hard. Open a store called the candy lady and sell candy teeth.
And your store mascot is Marcy. A big bed sheet doll. Yeah.
You got to go one way or the other. You can’t go in between because if you lean into it hard people just think you’re joking. I like this. Yes. TM.
TM this idea.
If we open our probably cursed museum and we have money left over we’ll open the candy lady in Terrell, Texas.
Candy lady confectioners. Well that brings us to the end of this probably cursed episode. Make sure you listen to us on the first of next month when we come out with our new episode and the new artifact drops onto our online store.
You can reach out to us at probablycursedpodcast@gmail.com or visit our website at probablycursed.wordpress.com.
Until next time this is Chris. And this is Sheryl.
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