Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to

explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

In 1851, a young British man visited London on Grim Business.

He had just finished burying his mother, and now he had the unenviable task of going through

her estate.

He was emptying her desk drawer when he found a small black object wrapped in paper.

When he realized what it was, he almost dropped it. It was his

father's burned and blackened heart. The story of how the heart wound up in that desk

begins in 1814 with one of the most quintessentially Gothic love affairs in history. It's centered

on two star-crossed lovers. Mary was the 16-year-old daughter of a broke novelist.

Percy was a young poet who hung around Mary's house, always trying to get her father to look at his writing.

He was also 21 and married, with a child on the way. Despite the obstacles, Mary and Percy were

instantly drawn to one another. They soon began

a torrid affair, meeting in secret by her mother's gravestone. Eventually, they decided to make

their love public, revealing it to Mary's father and Percy's wife. Neither family took the news very

well, and Percy was forbidden from seeing Mary ever again. But the young lovers refused to accept defeat.

They fled home and spent months traveling abroad in Europe. When they returned, Mary was pregnant.

Unfortunately, the child was born premature and died only a few days later. Mary's grief was made

worse when news of her affair spread. She and Percy were ostracized

by London society. The scandal soon became so overwhelming, the couple decided to flee England again,

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