What Happened to The Men Who Made a Deal With the Devil?

hey 42 here years ago famed country singer songwriter a Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan gave an unsettling interview on 60 minutes when asked why he was continuing to go out and perform after a five decade long career Dylan said that he had made a deal with something a long time ago and he was simply holding up his end of the bargain when the interviewer asked him what he had made a bargain for Dylan said it was to get where he is now his fame success accolades an enormous musical talent naturally the interviewer wanted to know

who or what Dylan had made a bargain with but the answer was not what he expected Dylan said he had made a bargain with the chief of this world this earth and the world we cannot see this isn't the first time Dylan has made such a revelation back in 2008 he commented that he had traveled to the crossroads and made a deal of something and when he came back he was the man he is today this might seem strange but in the music industry especially the blues there are countless legends of figures going to the

crossroads and making a deal with a very specific entity and then they return with incredible music prowess such as legendary blues musicians Robert and Tommy Johnson and what's interesting is that in Martin Scorsese's documentary nodirectionhome which traces the life of Dylan a childhood friend makes an intriguing comment stating that Dylan used to play at parties and he was okay just average but after returning from a few months in New York Dylan was performing feats of musical skill his friends couldn't believe and another friend even referred to him as a shape changer or a man possessed

and so the ordinary Robert Zimmerman and Dylan's real name had begun his journey towards becoming the legendary Bob Dylan but who was this chief of the earth and the world we cannot see the strange entity that Dylan had struck a deal with it would be natural to assume that Dylan was referring to God right well the New Testament poses another idea that it is the devil not God who is the Prince of this world throughout history there have been various myths legends or even first-hand admissions of men making deals with the devil so let's explore

some ostensibly true stories of men who apparently signed a contract in blood to make a deal with the devil some of these stories so unsettling they may play on your mind but first what saw he was the devil anyway the devil or Satan Lucifer Beelzebub and mephistopheles appears across multiple religions and cultures around the world in fact he's so common that some might consider him or the idea of him to be an innate quality of human beings and he always has one thing in common he is the personification of evil an extremely hostile and destructive

force whose chief weapons are deception and temptation perhaps the best concept of the devil is in John Milton's poem Paradise Lost where the devil is two fallen angel Lucifer whose great pride leads him to rebel against God he is portrayed as a charismatic passionate but deeply flawed entity who is incapable of doing good or even seeing how his schemes will harm himself at one point he quite literally states he is going to make a heaven out of hell as a man of science I'm skeptical of any fallen angel at Mawson to a pitchfork wielding goat

so I consider the devil to be more of a meta physical manifestation of humanity's vices a reminder that our selfish inclinations might lead us astray and lead us to self ruin but regardless of what you believe there are some legends of folk who made a deal with the devil that stand well apart from the rest not just because they involve notable figures from history but because of the bizarre unsettling and disturbing consequences that followed the first and perhaps the most famous legend of a man making a deal devil is Faust a story that has been

told time and time again by writers such as to again give wild man Marlow and most famously Goethe Faust began as a morality tale warning against the costs of worldly ambition goethe's faust tells the story of a man who in his search for ultimate knowledge falls into suicidal despair at his failed efforts and makes a deal with the devil who appears before him offering a helping hand but what if I told you this story was actually based on a real man a man who seemed every bit is touched by the hand of evil as his

fictitious counterpart German doctor Johann Georg Faust was a notable but incredibly mysterious figure in the 15th and early 16th centuries for around 30 years he appeared all over Europe performing magic tricks offering horoscopes and was often accused of fraud and regularly claimed to be a physician doctor of philosophy Alchemist and an astrologer all sources indicate that he was a widely traveled and widely known man and all these sources testify to his incredibly evil nature in fact his reputation at the time was steeped in the supernatural he claimed he could repeat and exceed all of the

miracles of Christ and he was reported to travel with a doc and a horse with the dog's shape-shifting into a servant at will he even had dozens of grimoires magical texts attributed to him it was thought that he was in league with the devil and had made some kind of deal with him so much so that he was officially denounced by the church whilst most scholars of his time scoffed at his magical abilities he was taken very seriously by notable figures such as Martin Luther continually accused of fraud and other things like sodomy Faust was

eventually banned from cities or denied entry one he was recognized but it wasn't until his death that things turned to truly strange killed in a chemical explosion fast body was discovered to be heavily mutated so much so that perhaps he had been mutated prior to the explosion many assumed this was at all that Lucifer's evil hadn't acted on Faust to contort his body into a maligned mess and more strangely despite the fact fast body was laid on its back it was continually found to have turned over and over and over again to face the very

bowels of the earth no matter how many times someone righted it that is a story of Faust from history or rather the man known as Faust according to historians Faust was his assumed name however the true identity of this man and whatever deal he made with the devil may never truly be known the second legend is that of Bernard Fokker the fastest sailor of his age in the 17th century the Dutch Empire touched every corner of the known world with colonies on most continents the Dutch Empire wielded enormous power and wealth driven largely by its

control of extremely valuable spices one such colony in Jakarta Indonesia had spices that were desired all around the world the problem was the journey from the Netherlands to Indonesia took at best a whole year making the trade of valuable spices extraordinarily lengthy and vulnerable to piracy sinking disease and much more yet despite this incredible distance and the perils involved one captain Bernard Fokker was consistently completing the journey in his little as free most how was this possible there was no Suez Canal to travel through this meant Fokker would have had to be in sailing around

Europe Africa and southern Asia to get there that is no small journey even for modern boats but in the 17th century this was impossible two hundred years later this journey still took T Clippers the fastest ships on the seas for months perhaps even more unbelievable is that the ship's letters verify the journey time as correct unless the letters were faked Fokker was actually sailing this extraordinary journey and as little as three months but fake documents wouldn't explain third party accounts that support [ __ ] movements and time scales stories of the times hold the fuck-ass

strange and menacing character it was said that all who served on to the captor were controlled by an iron fist and were punished to such diabolical extremes that [ __ ] made their lives a living hell of endless misery but there was another rumor that was whispered around [ __ ] one that explained his unnatural speed he had sold his soul to the devil in order to be the fastest sailor who ever lived the devil had agreed and made supernatural modifications to [ __ ] his ship allowing it to reach speeds that were impossible for

any contemporary vessel and so [ __ ] became just what he bargained for the fastest and most famous sailor of his age but that is not where his story ends because legend has it after [ __ ] had enjoyed the fruits of his deal the devil had come back to claim his Jew he sentenced [ __ ] and his ship to sail the oceans for all eternity as captain of none other than the legendary go ship the Flying Dutchman doomed to never find port again and since its sighting near the Cape of Good Hope in

1709 the Flying Dutchman has haunted sailors as a terrible specter and a reminder of the true cost of doing business with the devil eternal damnation now to return to the theme we touched on at the start of the video the likes of Bob Dylan and Robert Johnson aren't the only musicians who have supposedly made a deal with the devil there are countless stories of hopeful musicians wandering out to the crossroads and coming back with a complete almost supernatural mastery of their instruments but amongst all these stories there is one figure from history that stands head

and shoulders above the rest niccolò paganini in perhaps the most satanic story of the lot it is said that his relationship with the devil began before he was even born it was rumoured that pregnant with her son Paganini's mother sought to commune with the devil in order to assure that her son would become a great virtuoso and whatever deal she made certainly paid off but not without it costs by age 13 Paganini skills with the violin were progressing it's such a rate that his master declared there was nothing more he could teach him he was

a natural child prodigy and what came to others only through decades of effort came to him with almost supernatural ease by age 15 he was already performing solo tours astonishing his audience with his skill and confidence but this is where Paganini's problems began although enormous Lee gifted with a rare and valuable skill Paganini fell into a breakdown and swiftly turned to alcohol to ease his torment this may have been one of the reasons why despite being a young man enduring enormous Fame and success Paganini was rapidly seduced by gambling womanizing and even more alcoholism and

now someone settling rumors about Paganini began to emerge with one popular story saying that Paganini had murdered a woman he'd seduced used her intestines as violin strings and imprisoned her soul within his instrument forever but whilst outlandish many of these rumors had roots within the bizarre and unusual character of Paganini himself firstly his skill was on power he could play at a rate of 12 notes per second and he performed and popularized complex techniques almost effortlessly on none other than the violin which was known to many as the devil's instrument but perhaps most striking and

most satanic was his appearance he was said to have enormous ly long fingers with lengthy immaculate snails his skin was ghostly pale and he had hollow sunken cheeks thin lips and his tall thin body was always dressed in black this may be why too many people he was thought to be the devil himself it was reported by some audience members that a terrible bolt of lightning struck during one of his performances writers Paganini bowed and what audience member claimed to have saw some kind of supernatural being helping Paganini as he performed eventually after age and

disease ravaged his body and he had long retired from performing Paganini died of larynx cancer with one of his final actions being to turn away the priests who offered him his last rites a decision taken by many to indicate his satanic connection his body was soon after refused by the church but after years of being transported around he was finally forgiven by Pope Gregory and buried in Parma northern Italy lastly there is one final man said to have made a deal with the devil and in fact he is a man who supposedly tried to best

the devil at his own game after all as the saying goes it's no sin to cheat the devil Jonathan Moulton was a legendary civil war hero who came into enormous wealth in later life whilst he may have been a fantastic soldier I'm respected for his feats in battle he was simultaneously despised by the poor Puritan population of his local town the reason he frequently flaunted his enormous wealth in front of them with little regard for how much it was rubbed in their faces in fact he had risen to wealth so quickly it was widely believed

there was some supernatural Humbert this was why when his house suddenly burned down for no obvious reason many suspected that Malta had brought about some kind of unholy retribution upon himself molten took further actions that damaged the public's view of him when his wife suddenly died he waited no time in marrying her much younger attractive friends and then flaunting her around town it was even whispered in the community that the spirit of his deceased wife would haunt his new wife's marital bed seeking to reclaim the ring that had been stolen from her but the story

of how Moulton suddenly came to be opulent in the first place is the most disturbing of all offering his soul in return for riches molten made a pact with the devil and in return the devil would fill two of his boots which were hanging over his fireplace to the brim with gold each day the devil accepted the arrangement and soon molten was a fabulously rich man but boot full of gold soon became insufficient for him and driven mad by his greed he ordered that larger and larger boots be made and hung over his fireplace so

that each day the devil would give him more gold than he had previously seeing that their arrangement hadn't changed the devil continued filling Waltons boots to the brim as promised but it was here that Moulton decided to trick the devil coming up with the idea that if he cut the bottom off the boots the coins would pour out onto the floor and try as he might the devil could never fill them being left to poor and poor and unsurprisingly the devil didn't take this deceit very well discovering Moulton's trick and finding the coins spilling out

over the floor the devil was filled with incandescent age and legend has it burnt Moulton's house to the ground he and his family barely escaped alive but that's not where our story ends years later when molten died at the age of 61 his body vanished from his coffin it seemed that the devil hadn't forgotten what happened and had dragged molten body and all straight down to hell and it said that all I was left in the coffin was a small pot of gold bearing a demonic insignia whatever actually happened to Moulton we may never know

now you might want to consider what you would sell your soul for and would it be worth it because as the Gospel of Matthew says what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me on patreon it really helps me to continue to make these videos the links in the description also you can get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my book stick a flag in it a thousand years of bizarre history

from Britain and Beyond by going to unbound publishing and ordering yours today links in the description thank you