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A machine that may have been intended to record messages from the dead; dogs trained for war; and a watch fob commemorating Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico.
PsychoPhone - A couple in Cincinnati acquired a peculiar phonograph
at an antiques auction. The machine, labeled "PsychoPhone,"
included four grooved wax cylinders. The contributors think Thomas
Edison invented the PsychoPhone to record messages from the
afterlife. As early as the 1870s, Edison and other scientific minds
explored psychic phenomena, believing every living being was made
of atoms that could "remember" past lives. Did Edison make a
machine to unlock the secrets of the dead? HISTORY DETECTIVES host
Gwendolyn Wright travels to the Thomas A. Edison Menlo Park museum
in New Jersey to find out.
War Dog Letter - A World War II collector from Kansas City,
Kansas, has a cryptic letter from a soldier to another military
man. The soldier explains that military investigators have
questioned him about a man named Prestre - specifically about his
character and qualifications as a dog trainer. The contributor
wants to know why the military was investigating Prestre and what
the dogs were being trained to do. The search takes HISTORY
DETECTIVES host Tukufu Zuberi to remote Cat Island near Gulfport,
Mississippi, and Fort Lee in Virginia. The military put great
effort into a new "War Dogs" program during WWII. What went wrong
on Cat Island?
Pancho Villa Watch Fob - Just before he died, a man gave his
neighbors a most unusual gift: a watch fob commemorating Francisco
"Pancho" Villa's murderous raid on the border town of Columbus, New
Mexico. The man says he was a boy when the raid occurred in 1916,
and he and his parents survived by hiding under a train car. The
new owners want to know more about this watch fob. Who made it? Did
their friend indeed witness this infamous raid? HISTORY DETECTIVES'
new guest host, Eduardo Pagán, leads an expedition that
reveals an especially wild chapter of the American West.