Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart 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. Humans are social creatures. Ever since our ancestors first walked on two legs we've depended on each other to survive.

Not only that, but to thrive.

We need people to talk to, to relate to, to share our thoughts and emotions with.

Life is already hard enough. We don't want to go it alone.

Sometimes though we don't have a choice. We could be forced to venture out on our own or

we might be cast out of society.

Or sometimes like in the case of the lone woman of San Nucales, we are left behind.

In the summer of 1853, Hunter George Nidever landed on the tiny windswept island of San Nicholas off the coast of Southern California.

He had come to the island on a mission to finally find the woman rumored to live there.

Before long they came upon a small hut,

where two dogs growled at the intruders.

Sitting in the yard by a small cookfire was a figure in a dark cloak.

As she rose to her feet to greet them,

Knight of her realized that it was a woman wearing a dress made from cormorant feathers,

and they were the first humans to interact with her in nearly 18 years.

The lone woman of San Nicholas did not begin her life in isolation.

When she was born in the early 1800s, she was a member of the Nicolania. They were an indigenous group of about 300 people

who had lived on the island for thousands of years. Shortly after the lone woman's birth,

their way of life came to a violent end.

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