This is an IHeart podcast.

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 Curiosity's.

Human kind is an image-driven species. We painted our stories on cave walls before the invention of the written word. Even podcast creators like myself have to admit the human

urge to illustrate our imaginations is one of our oldest impulses.

Flora Shalcroft Stone knew this better than most 19th century women. She was an avid patron

of the arts, a woman who loved the theater, and in 1871 she married a photographer.

It was an odd match from the start. Her new husband, Edward, was 20 years older, and quite a

workaholic. Although they would go on to have one son together, he rarely stayed in one place for very

long, often abandoning his family for assignments photographing landscapes along the west

coast of North America. So it's perhaps understandable that Flora, left alone with

relatives in Calistoga, California, felt abandoned. I mean, who wouldn't, right? In her loneliness,

she turned to a mutual friend of theirs, Harry Larkins, a reporter for the Evening Post. The two

began an illicit affair, which they did their best to conceal from the ever-absent

Edward. He would find out about it, however, and confront Larkins repeatedly. The reporter

did not seem intimidated, even when Edward visited him at the Evening Post offices and struck

him across the face. The matter seemed settled when Edward left again for an assignment in Portland,

but thanks to a mutual friend, he would learn that Flora and Harry were still writing each other

love letters. Enraged, he tracked Larkins down on October 17th of 1874. Larkins, staying at a hotel

on a job for the post, received a knock on his door.

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