Welcome to Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

There was a stir in the shoemaker's shop.

The apprentices were whispering excitedly.

Ira Armstrong, who owned the place, asked what they were talking about.

The sixteen-year-old Andrew showed him a printed advertisement.

On the top, in a blast of ink, it read,

Mesmerism, wonderful experiments, magnetizer and phrenologist.

Andrew had never heard the term mesmerism before.

He had no idea what was going to be on display.

But the pamphlets made one thing clear.

It was going to be a spectacle.

The boys could barely sit still.

The word passed through Pekipsi that the oncoming professor was some sort of wonder-worker, a man

who would demonstrate mesmeric miracles at the village hall.

Everyone in town was talking about it.

The boys wanted to see for themselves if the stories were true.

Ira grumbled something about magnetic buffunery, but he must not have been too hard a taskmaster.

He gave the boys the afternoon off, and so Andrew bounced off toward Hatches Hotel, with

fellow apprentice Edwin in tow.

When they arrived though, the pair were led to a quiet room upstairs.

This wasn't the miracles in the village hall the advertisements had promised.

When Andrew reached the little room, he found a crowd of boys fidgeting in their seats,

...