She was the meandering metropolitan mystery, the famous will-o'-the-wisp of the continent, who fooled police and the public from Abilene to Akron. Who was this mysterious and alluring woman, and why did she love bread so much?

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/fluffy-raffles-comes-to-town

Thanks to the initiates who contributed their voices to this episode, including Dorothy Sibole (#7), Eric Leslie, and Jenn Thorson!

Jenn Thorson: https://jennthorson.com/
Little Lake Theater Company: https://www.littlelake.org/

Key sources for this episode include contemporary newspaper report and that's about it. (You may find this hard to believe, not a lot of people are out there writing about this.) So let me recommend Rebeca Rego Barry's The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells, where she does some literary detective work to track down this vanished author, and Bill Peschel's Sherlock Holmes: Great War Parodies and Pastiches, an anthology of Sherlockian oddities.

The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope is a secret society devoted to the idea that that which is least known is best to know. Each episode we share a strange story or amazing fact, and no topic is off limits -- if it's interesting or entertaining, we'll cover about it!

Email: jackalope@order-of-the-jackalope.com
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/order-of-the-jackalope.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/Mbap3UQyCB
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In 1903 Pennsylvania found the recipe for disaster: two of the greatest political cartoonists of the day, and an easily caricatured governor with no sense of humor. Their battle went to some...u unexpected places.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/unhuman-animals

Key sources for this episode include... Stephen Piott's "The Right of the Cartoonist: Samuel Pennypacker and the Freedom of the Press," contemporary newspaper reports... and that's it. Almost every other source I found either did not go into any detail about the act, or got the specifics so very wrong (like confusing the Pusey and Salus-Grady bills) to the point where I had to doubt everything else it had to say.

The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope is a secret society devoted to the idea that that which is least known is best to know. Each episode we share a strange story or amazing fact, and no topic is off limits -- if it's interesting or entertaining, we'll cover about it!

• Email: jackalope@order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/Mbap3UQyCB
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@orderjackalope
• Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/orderjackalope
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@orderjackalope

Milton D. Hays had two things: a dream of a railroad linking Pittsburgh to the coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania, and a lack of ethics that would allow him to realize that dream. This is the story of the Castle Shannon Railway War.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/such-was-railroading

Key sources for this episode include contemporary newspaper reports; the Bridgeville Area Historical Society, Brookline Connection, and Carrick-Overbrook Historical Society web sites; and N.A. Critchett's fantastic (and highly inaccurate) "Double Gauge."

The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope is a secret society devoted to the idea that that which is least known is best to know. Each episode we share a strange story or amazing fact, and no topic is off limits -- if it's interesting or entertaining, we'll cover about it!

• Email: jackalope@order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/Mbap3UQyCB
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@orderjackalope
• Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/orderjackalope
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@orderjackalope