 Hey Weirdos, our December Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, December 23rd, hosted by horror host Hall of Famers, Drac and Countess Corita. Dracula and his bride are bringing us the 1946 noir thriller Shock, starring Vincent Price. In the film, a psychologically distraught woman is committed to a private sanitarium only to find out that the man who committed her was the man she witnessed commit a murder. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch online with everybody, so grab your popcorn candy and soda and jump into the fun, and even get involved in the live chat as we watch the movie This Christmas Eve Eve. Starring Vincent Price, presented by Count Drac and Countess Corita, Saturday, December 23rd, starting at 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central, 8pm Mountain, 7pm Pacific. See a few clips from the film and invite your friends to watch along with you on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com and we'll see you on Saturday, December 23rd for the Weirdo Watch Party. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Even if you're not a psychology or neurology student, you may have heard of the fascinating case of Phineas Gage. Never before in history was there an accident where a person's brain was injured terribly but not fatally, leaving them with few lasting health problems but with a totally different personality. This man, who was impaled by an iron rod, not only lived through a horrible accident but went on to have an active life, where he walked, talked and even held jobs without trouble and yet he was profoundly changed. Also called the American Crowbar case, the case of Phineas Gage is unique. In the accident parts of Gage's brain were destroyed, fell out or died within his skull. It took skilled doctors a month to put him right again. And this all happened in the mid-1800s, hardly a time of medical expertise. So if you're curious how a man who had an iron rod in his brain could survive and how his case shaped the medical and psychological world today, keep listening. Just be aware, if you've never heard the story, what happened to Phineas Gage is bound to make you cringe. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's the impaled brain of Phineas Gage. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Back in the early and mid-1800s, railroad work was one of the most dangerous jobs a person could have. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, which meant that new machinery meant to make railroad construction and operations go faster was being implemented and updated regularly. Unfortunately, many of these new inventions and techniques could be dangerous, and there were few to know safety protocols. During the mid-1800s, thousands of rail workers died every year, and tens of thousands were injured on the job. This however is where Phineas Gage made his living. He was a railroad foreman in 1848, and was well respected in his position. He worked regularly with explosives for rail machinery and blasting, and was regarded by his employers as a good business man, intelligent and very hard working. All of this didn't stop things from going horrifyingly wrong, though, one September. In 1848, Phineas Gage was merely 25 years old, and he was already the foreman of the Rutland and Burlington Railroad, just south of Cavendish, Vermont. Work was going well that afternoon, and all the machinery and explosives were working according to plan. Phineas and his men were setting a blast, which involved boring a hole deep into an outcropping of rock, adding blasting powder and a fuse, then using a tamping iron which looks like a giant metal javelin to pack it deep into the rock. As sometimes happens, Gage let his guard down while doing this routine task, and became distracted. He put himself in front of the blast hole, right in front of the tamping iron, which was not yet packed with clay to prevent ignition. He was looking over his shoulder to speak with some men, and had just opened his mouth to say something when the iron caused a spark against the rock. This spark ignited the powder, and there was a massive explosion. Gage was just being careless, and at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's worth saying that the tamping iron was javelin-like, because that's precisely how it behaved. The force of the explosion behind the spike drove it out with incredible force, and it headed straight for Gage. The 13-pound spike entered the left side of his face, right through the side of his cheek and open mouth because he had been about to speak, and went up into his head. It went through the bone, the brain, and then out the other side. But it didn't stop there. All three feet seven inches of the rod went through his head, then out the other side, and landed roughly 80 feet away, smeared with blood and brains. As is to be expected, Gage collapsed onto the ground, convulsing. At this point Gage's fellow workers expected him to be dead. When a metal spike goes through your head entirely, bits of skull and brains fly out, and blood starts to go everywhere. You expect a person to be 100% dead. Miraculously, however, Gage was not only alive but aware of what was going on around him. After only a few minutes he sat up and spoke. Then Rose, and with little assistance, walked to an ox cart to be driven into town. It was almost a mile ride, and he sat upright for the entire time, and he knew how to get home. From arrival there, he simply sat in a chair and waited for the doctor to arrive. Hardly the kind of actions you would expect from someone with a literal gaping hole in their head. Even with this miraculous recovery, Gage probably would have been dead without the help of doctors Edward H. Williams and John Martin Harlow. When Williams first came upon Gage, sitting in a chair on the front porch of his lodging, the sight was one to behold. Gage told the doctor, here's business enough for you, and Williams observed that there was actual pulsing brain matter protruding from a massive hole in the man's skull. Gage explained what happened several times because Williams did not initially believe it. Then Gage vomited. The effort of him vomiting caused brain matter about a cupful to leak out of his skull onto the ground. At this point a horrified Williams called Dr. Harlow. Harlow noted how calm Gage was that he was conversational, though understandably exhausted and bloodied. The two doctors then said about removing bone fragments as well as about an ounce of brain matter that was falling out. They cleaned the wound and wrapped Gage in a nightcap, then waited and watched to see what would happen. When you've been impaled through the head with a spike, the last thing you are probably thinking of is going back to work. This was not the case with Phineas Gage. Initially he told the doctors he hoped he was not hurt and that he intended to return to work in a few days. It seemed his employers were correct when they called him hard-working. Sadly for Gage it was not meant to be. By the second day he was showing signs of memory loss. And then he slowly slipped into a semi-comatose state. By day 12 he was mostly unresponsive. His family began to give up hope that he would recover and they even constructed a coffin. Dr. Harlow, though, wasn't giving up yet. The reason Phineas Gage was doing so poorly was that his wound had become the absolute worst kind of infected. Harlow realized this and decided to make an attempt to save his life. He reopened the wound and cut out the growing fungus which was beginning to sprout from the top of his brain. He opened up the muscles from the nose and from around the exit wound and saw that there was a massive abscess brewing underneath it all. He drained at least eight ounces of pus, blood and bile from the wound, then retreated it and bandaged it. This time Gage's condition continued to improve and Harlow succeeded in bringing the impaled man back from the brink of death again. Initially there were not a lot of notable side effects from the accident, but one thing that developed during his twelve days of decline was an issue with half of his face. Behind the left eye where the spike had passed an infection began to grow. The eye began to bulge and bits of infected brain and pus oozed from the socket. Gage stopped being able to see from that eye and it developed ptosis or a drooping of the eyelid. This ptosis would not go away for the remainder of his life and the scars from the initial injury still remained as well. In fact many muscles in the left side of his face never fully recovered leaving him with little movement on that side. Outside of physical side effects there were a multitude of mental and psychological ones. After all a large portion of his frontal lobe had been damaged, destroyed or completely removed from his head. Although he was pretty much functional his friends said he wasn't the same Gage anymore and did not behave as the kind, focused and friendly gentlemen they'd become familiar with. He became vulgar, profane and coarse with his language and actions. He no longer seemed to care how others reacted to what he said or did and Harlow noted in a report about Gage's recovery that he behaved as if he had no impulse control at all. Unfortunately for Gage this meant that he could no longer return to his work on the railroad as a foreman. Gage would have to find another way to make a living. In the 1800s it was still considered acceptable to put someone with a disability or disfigurement on display for entertainment purposes. Although Gage held a series of jobs after his accident including stagecoach driver, stable owner and research subject, one of the first things he did to get a little cash was to put himself on display. He went to Henry Jacob Bigelow the professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School where he was studied and he was presented to medical school classes there as well as at the Boston Society for Medical Improvement. This didn't exactly pay the bills though so Gage then went to Barnum's American Museum. Yes, the same Barnum with the circus. He was never in the circus but there were ads for public appearances and shows where people could observe his still scarred face and hear the story of his unlikely survival. We have a limited number of photos of Phineas Gage and some supposed photos of him are unconfirmed. However we do know that he was regarded as quite good looking even after his accident. Dr. Harlow commented in his notes that Gage was disfigured but still handsome and this may have been part of what made him such a fascinating subject. People wanted to come see him and they even made a life mask of his face to preserve his appearance which we still have to this day. Even with his looks intact, Gage never had a spouse or any children during the 12 years he survived after his accident. As previously mentioned, we don't have many photographs of Gage but the few we do have tells us something rather interesting about what he did after the accident. While working with Barnum, Gage posed for photographs with a tamping iron, supposedly the same one that went right through his skull and out the other side. He kept it with him when he traveled as well and when he spoke to groups he took it along as a morbid prop. After his death the spike was recovered and it is now displayed alongside his damaged and deformed skull in museums and shows. It may seem like an odd thing to do but it made the story of his accident more remarkable and to this day it is still enough to make people cringe when they see the size of the thing that destroyed a portion of Gage's brain. Unfortunately for Phineas Gage, his lifespan was still cut short even after surviving such a horrifying accident. In 1860 Gage began to have epileptic seizures that made it difficult for him to work. He returned to his mother and brother-in-law in San Francisco to rest and rehabilitate but in May he had a sudden and severe convulsion. They called a doctor, bled him and rested him but the convulsions kept happening. Finally during one particularly bad epileptic seizure Phineas Gage died on May 21st, 1860. He was only 36 years old. Gage was then buried in San Francisco's Lone Mountain Cemetery by his family. But the story didn't stop there. Dr. Harlow had not seen or heard from Phineas Gage in years and had pretty much given hope of ever coming across his famous former patient. However, when he read Gage's obituary in 1860 it re-sparked his interest in the case and he got in contact with Gage's family. But it wasn't for condolences or sorrows. It was because he wanted to dig up Gage's skull. Gage's mother shockingly consented, given that the man had saved her son's life and Gage's head was exhumed in 1867. Harlow took the skull himself as well as the iron bar that had become Gage's constant prop and studied it for a time. Once he was satisfied and had recorded papers and studies about the incident, he gave the skull and spike to the Warren Museum where they remain on display to this day. Although this case is well over 150 years old that doesn't mean it's still not talked about today. There has never been a case quite like Phineas Gage's where so much of the brain was destroyed and the patient was still able to talk, walk, perform a job and function in day-to-day society. It was in a day where medicine was still in its early phases and where phrenology was still widely accepted. Yet this man, with help from some very skilled doctors, was somehow able to survive and live on for over a decade. More than that, this is a fascinating case study for psychology, biology and anatomy alike. Phineas personality changes have been studied in relation to the frontal lobe and his lack of impulse control has been scrutinized as well. The case has taught us about how the brain heals itself, where many of our brains controls rest and it has shaped how we do psychosurgery. The accident is sometimes referred to as the first lobotomy. We still don't fully understand what happened to Phineas Gage or how he survived, but his case study exists and likely will exist for years in textbooks around the world. In fact, roughly two-thirds of introductory psychology textbooks mention Phineas Gage. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. Doing so helps the show to get noticed. You can also email me anytime with your questions or comments through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. It's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for the email newsletter to win monthly prizes, find the other podcasts that I host and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. The impaled brain of Phineas Gage was written by Laura Allen for Graveyard Shift. You can find a link to the original article in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Philippians 2-5-8. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Who, being a very nature-god, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. And a final thought from Bill Bradley. Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. I was waiting and waiting and it has finally hit the website. Built Bar now has my absolute favorite flavor available for the holiday season. Candy cane brownie, but they have surprised me by coming out with two varieties. The original candy cane brownie bar, which is chocolatey, chewy and truly does taste like a chocolate-covered candy cane, and now they have the new candy cane brownie puff, which brings the whole holiday flavor to a marshmallow-filled creation. Both bars are covered with candy cane sprinkles, but because these are protein bars, not candy bars, each one is only 150 calories or less, and each has 17 grams of protein. So I can use these as a meal or as a low-calorie dessert. Or in my case, both. I have no discipline. I've ordered enough to get me through the Christmas season and beyond because it is a limited-release seasonal flavor. You can join me in the holiday taste festivities at WeirdDarkness.com slash Built. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built, and use the promo code WeirdDarkness all one word and you'll get 10% off everything in your cart. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built, promo code WeirdDarkness. It's beginning to taste a lot like Christmas.