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The Snail Telegraph (feat. Susie’s Dying)
Alasdair bundles James into a red telephone box and dials S for snail. There are ghosts in the wire. There are signals from the other side. The Wichita lineman is still on the LIIIIINE.
The year 1850 saw the bizarre tale of the “snail telegraph” play out in Paris: an eccentric inventor, a gullible journalist and forty-eight alphabetic-sympathetic snails. Magical molluscs? Or simply the work of a French fruitcake? You decide.
Alasdair shares the story, plus what might be the creepiest post script in the history of the pod: Lancashire’s own “Susie’s Dying” legend.
Credits:
The Loremen are Alasdair Beckett-King & James Shakeshaft.
Featured image from Four Caterpillars and a Snail, Wenceslas Hollar, 1646.
Music from La Lettre De Manon Valse played by Megone’s Orchestra, 1905.