Speaker 1: Want to stay up to date with everything that's happening
Speaker 1: on the show, or do you have a story that
Speaker 1: you'd like to submit for one of our listener Stories episodes.
Speaker 1: You can get in touch with the show via the
Speaker 1: website at www dot hauntedukpodcast dot com, on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Haunted UK Podcast, on x at Haunted ukpod, or you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact us at hauntedukpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Facebook and TikTok, and if you want
Speaker 1: to support the show, you can do it via either
Speaker 1: Patreon or Coffee. Both platforms have exactly the same content,
Speaker 1: but work in slightly different ways. One of the advantages
Speaker 1: of Patreon is its sleek user interface. But if you
Speaker 1: want to avoid those pesky additional charges Apple, Google and
Speaker 1: Patreon apply to your subscription, then why not give Coffee
Speaker 1: a try. Simply open a browser window and type ko
Speaker 1: hyphen fi forward slash Haunted UK Podcast. That's Coffee Forward
Speaker 1: slash Haunted UK Podcast and you'll soon find us. Whichever
Speaker 1: platform YouTube, We're sure you'll enjoy the bonus content. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2: Are the aspects of they known that you would like
Speaker 2: to cover in future editions?
Speaker 3: Loads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big question.
Speaker 4: I'm starting with issue in issue too, we've got we're
Speaker 4: starting to tickle out a little bit. So I've got
Speaker 4: I've got something in there about the shadow timeline.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this this.
Speaker 4: The shadow timeline is is are we are we currently
Speaker 4: on a on a different timeline to the one that
Speaker 4: we're meant to be on? Has has there been has
Speaker 4: there been a shift in reality?
Speaker 2: My god, that's so interesting.
Speaker 4: Disrupted the timeline and we've stewed off into something probably
Speaker 4: when they invented extendards. Probably there's there's there's something here
Speaker 4: that shouldn't be here, and that's probably it. But no,
Speaker 4: there's there's there's something about that in the in the
Speaker 4: in the next issue, and i'd quite like And in
Speaker 4: issue three, I think we've got something which a lot
Speaker 4: of people forget about but is fascinated me as a kid.
Speaker 3: Is the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes.
Speaker 4: God, the amount of things that happen there still to
Speaker 4: this day and now it's kind of it's almost a commonplace.
Speaker 4: They just they just go, yeah, oh, there's another plane
Speaker 4: just disappearing. Where'd that boat come from?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: There's all sorts of things happen in there, so I'd
Speaker 4: like to have a good look at that. We've also
Speaker 4: got the Inn Issue three, a really interesting article I
Speaker 4: think is interesting anyway about Chernobyl Right, okay, and basically
Speaker 4: the the disaster that that happened there, what has happened
Speaker 4: since an unexplained phenomenon?
Speaker 1: Right, Okay. I was just I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to come out with them. Oh, what's the point pleasant
Speaker 1: the math man?
Speaker 4: Well, yes, there is a type of Yeah, there's a
Speaker 4: there's a there is a moth man there. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 4: and we've got that in the article. But there's lots
Speaker 4: and lots of other stuff. There's loads of apparitions and orbs,
Speaker 4: loads of unexplained lights and.
Speaker 3: And things like that.
Speaker 4: There's there's possibilities that some of the radiation has reacted
Speaker 4: with stuff, that magnetism is different there.
Speaker 3: There's you know, there's all.
Speaker 4: Sorts of really interesting skeptical arguments as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what sort of things are going on there?
Speaker 4: Well, there's there are there was a lot of people
Speaker 4: that died because of that particular disaster, maybe not straight away,
Speaker 4: but so since because there was a lot of people
Speaker 4: that were evacuated, but they were exposed to the highest
Speaker 4: level of radiation that's ever been recorded on the planet,
Speaker 4: but over twenty four hours before they removed, and all
Speaker 4: of them are dead to a person, there's there's nobody left.
Speaker 4: So there's there's a lot of ghost sightings there. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of there's a lot of shadow people. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of residual energy going on. There's time slips,
Speaker 4: and especially the closer that you get to the reactor
Speaker 4: that that did blow up or the sight of that
Speaker 4: which is still you know still to this day. There's
Speaker 4: there's a thousand mile mile exclusion zone around it because
Speaker 4: and the radiation levels are very very bad, very very toxic.
Speaker 4: But there's there's obviously people that research in the area
Speaker 4: and work in the area. They there's reports of light anomalies.
Speaker 4: So these are these are orbs, large balls of light
Speaker 4: which then seem to react when people are there, so
Speaker 4: they're not just it doesn't appear that they're natural. So
Speaker 4: they're going from point A to point B because the
Speaker 4: radiation is tampered with a lay line or something. If
Speaker 4: you're there, they they seem to censure there and come
Speaker 4: towards you. Wow and and in a couple of cases
Speaker 4: so encircle you. There's a lot of there's so there's
Speaker 4: a lot of that happening in different areas. That there's
Speaker 4: a town nearby that was completely evacuated. That's got that's
Speaker 4: where this potential mothman is.
Speaker 1: It's appropriate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few.
Speaker 4: Sightings of that over the last twenty years, and there
Speaker 4: are lots there are other anomalies and and there's there's
Speaker 4: there's also potential UFO activity there as well as certainly
Speaker 4: stuff doesn't seem to act normally. If there are aliens
Speaker 4: knocking about, they may have visited to have a look.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but there are certainly as a hotspot Chernobyl,
Speaker 4: given its tragic circumstances and the fact that also it's
Speaker 4: in northern Ukraine, it used to be part of the
Speaker 4: USSR at the time, there was a lot of secrecy
Speaker 4: about it, and also the fact that really even to
Speaker 4: this day, even that even the truth of what happened
Speaker 4: is not one hundred percent known. The official explanation for
Speaker 4: the disaster is part tech failure and part human error,
Speaker 4: but there are lots of theories about other ways that
Speaker 4: that may have happened. In the first place, including well,
Speaker 4: I think in the official version the reason that it
Speaker 4: happened is because they conducted a test in live conditions
Speaker 4: by switching off the cooling system to see if the
Speaker 4: reactor would be okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was to test the backup generators.
Speaker 4: But that official explanation defies logic. I mean, what these
Speaker 4: are scientists. You're not going to turn off a cooling
Speaker 4: system on a reactor to see if it works. It
Speaker 4: doesn't work on a live nuclear reactor. But whatever happened
Speaker 4: there happened, and then there's a there's a cause and
Speaker 4: effect afterwards where it's created lots and lots of new phenomenon,
Speaker 4: and there wasn't any stories of any phenomenon paranormal phenomenon
Speaker 4: in the area before the disaster. So as a magazine,
Speaker 4: you know, that for me is an interesting thing. It
Speaker 4: so it brings in elements of the paranormal or the unknown,
Speaker 4: but within a modern setting and something which is in
Speaker 4: recent I mean when that all happened, I was at school.
Speaker 4: It was it's not, you know.
Speaker 3: Ancient history. I would like to think it was an.
Speaker 4: Ancient history, but also you know, we we continue as well.
Speaker 4: And in issue three, we're going and bringing in We're
Speaker 4: doing a vampire special, so we want to we want
Speaker 4: to talk about the origins of vampires. We want to
Speaker 4: talk about vampire horror in the in the gothic horror context,
Speaker 4: and uniquely is the vamp scene. The vampire scene in
Speaker 4: the UK is actually very strong, and there's several thousand
Speaker 4: people who pretty much live their lives as vampires. Apart from,
Speaker 4: you know, they don't go around, you know, drinking blood
Speaker 4: from strangers next in that regard, but certainly the aspects
Speaker 4: of their lifestyle is a kind of offshoot of the
Speaker 4: Gothic well a fairly extreme offshoot where in some cases
Speaker 4: people you know, sleeping coffins, they have had their teeth
Speaker 4: done so they've got fangs, they drink blood.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's a subculture.
Speaker 4: And I'm interested in understanding that and and and and
Speaker 4: also giving giving that subculture a look at and a
Speaker 4: platform without passing any judgment at all. You know, it's
Speaker 4: it's it's these people aren't doing you know, anything anyone
Speaker 4: any harm. There are examples of vampires in legend and
Speaker 4: in in kind of in reality and or things that
Speaker 4: could be So the origins of where vampires come from
Speaker 4: is really interesting, I think so. And then so putting
Speaker 4: together a special like over a few pages where we
Speaker 4: explore the origins, explore the film portrayals, the literary fiction,
Speaker 4: but also the the real life impact on fans of
Speaker 4: the genre. Who are who are you know having lifestyle
Speaker 4: aspects of it?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: Is it a mystery? Yeah, it is to me, so
Speaker 3: I'd like to read about it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: We always draw the interview to a close by asking
Speaker 1: our guests this following question, and this is always a
Speaker 1: great one because it gives us a really good insight
Speaker 1: to the people that we've interviewed in the past. So,
Speaker 1: do you have a spooky film or book recommendation or both?
Speaker 1: Is there something that stied with you that you would
Speaker 1: recommend and you know, our listeners and us as well,
Speaker 1: a book and a film.
Speaker 3: Definitely, definitely.
Speaker 4: I mean, I love, I love it all, but I
Speaker 4: mean Amateurville horror because I was I was a kid.
Speaker 3: It's it's scared me the Bejesus out of me.
Speaker 4: Instead does Yeah, I can't even think of anything more
Speaker 4: scary than that I've ever seen. But I love I'm
Speaker 4: just rewatching because I've got loads of spare time, obviously,
Speaker 4: not just rewatching Supernatural the whole, you know, the whole,
Speaker 4: Dean and Sam Winchester, you know, fighting demons and stuff.
Speaker 4: And I used to love Buffy as well, So it's
Speaker 4: it's it's it's funny what I what I do. And
Speaker 4: I completely missed Supernatural really the first time around because
Speaker 4: I was busy doing other stuff. So but I would
Speaker 4: really recommend them. Supernatural is absolutely brilliant some of the
Speaker 4: some of the plot lines and some of the that
Speaker 4: it gives you knowledge of the of some of the
Speaker 4: different aspects of the supernatural and the paranormal book wi
Speaker 4: as well. I love the classics, and I think Mary
Speaker 4: Shelley's Frankenstein is genius.
Speaker 3: Also.
Speaker 4: Mary Shelley's from my neck of the well, not not
Speaker 4: where I live. She she's she's buried in in Bournemouth
Speaker 4: and her Yeah, she she's buried in in a church
Speaker 4: in Bournemouth Town center.
Speaker 3: If you're ever down that way, go and have a look.
Speaker 2: Well I did know that, and she was only nineteen
Speaker 2: when she wrote that. Just amazing.
Speaker 3: It was interesting.
Speaker 4: She's hanging around with Byron and and all of that
Speaker 4: sort of stuff at the time. I think that's that's
Speaker 4: it's really interesting. But the work itself and how how
Speaker 4: there's so much subcontext to it, and she's really clever
Speaker 4: in the way that she writes it. And it's not
Speaker 4: not just Frankenstein's Monster. It's not called Frankenstein's Monster, and
Speaker 4: it's not really about Frankenstein's Monster. Yeah, and that clever
Speaker 4: give given then what's followed with all of the films
Speaker 4: and all of the the the the art that it's
Speaker 4: inspired and the depictions that is inspired, and but its
Speaker 4: core themes are probably repeated now in not just in
Speaker 4: modern literature, but but you know, influences a lot of
Speaker 4: paranormal and supernatural films that are made. So it's a
Speaker 4: real piece of work. I also like the Dracula. The
Speaker 4: bram Stokers Virgin original is another great It's a great
Speaker 4: reason is it really takes you on a journey, a journey,
Speaker 4: and you're dipping back in history while you're doing it.
Speaker 4: So I quite like the original stuff and you can
Speaker 4: see where it's still influencing people one hundred years later.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I'd love to think that Enigma
Speaker 4: scene would would be influencing people in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, it's a good interesting about Mary Shelley. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was her husband that had a doppel ganga experience,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, it's interesting that you say about how he influences
Speaker 1: influences certain people even today, and I do agree with
Speaker 1: that in the sense of I think Frankenstein he's set
Speaker 1: out with the best intentions possible, but his judgment and
Speaker 1: his aims became clouded, which was which is what made
Speaker 1: him the monster in a sense. And it just I
Speaker 1: suppose it's a completely different thing. But with business, you
Speaker 1: look at say someone like Elizabeth Holmes who founded There
Speaker 1: on Us. She wanted a device to take a drop
Speaker 1: of blood that would then identify disease, that could deliver medication,
Speaker 1: that could do this, but in the end just became
Speaker 1: an absolute monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a really interesting parallel, actually, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean there's so many reflections in the modern day
Speaker 4: that can go back to those themes that Mary Shelley
Speaker 4: covered there. In fact, I think I'm going to reread
Speaker 4: it again because it's so good.
Speaker 3: I haven't read it for a few years.
Speaker 2: I think I will as well. Yeah, I can see
Speaker 2: it right now looking at me. I might go back
Speaker 2: to that. Yeah, frankenste I need to read your book
Speaker 2: as well, the Time Slip one that sounds fascinating, especially
Speaker 2: their little known time set stories.
Speaker 4: There's what it what the Times that book does is
Speaker 4: it kind of explains what they are and what what
Speaker 4: some of the theories are.
Speaker 3: So it goes into that side.
Speaker 4: And stories from history, and then it's got some some
Speaker 4: accounts in it, some real accounts. But that's that's that's
Speaker 4: good that that's on our website or Amazon.
Speaker 2: We'll put the link in our shy notes.
Speaker 4: I've also got this one which is ghostly Accounts and Phenomenon. Again,
Speaker 4: it's it's pretty much the history of ghosts. So what
Speaker 4: I've done there is I've got a chapter dedicated to
Speaker 4: most of the main types of ghosts and then explaining
Speaker 4: what they are, what their characteristics are, what types of
Speaker 4: sightings are associated with them, a potted history of that
Speaker 4: particular ghost phenomenon happening, because most things go right back
Speaker 4: to Egyptian times and Roman types and things like that.
Speaker 4: That's also got in probably six or seven or eight
Speaker 4: of the chapters. I've got untold ghost stories in there,
Speaker 4: which I've specifically collected over the last again, probably four years,
Speaker 4: where I've managed to get a story that hasn't been
Speaker 4: massively told out there yet and said, well, okay, I'll
Speaker 4: put it in a book.
Speaker 3: Don't tell anybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we like stories like that, don't we, Steve. I
Speaker 2: like the unknown stories we try to get. We try
Speaker 2: to look at a known cases, don't we Steve as
Speaker 2: much as we can.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we try our best. We do try our best.
Speaker 1: But the listeners are instrumental in, you know, helping us
Speaker 1: do that. They've been great.
Speaker 2: In the introduction of the latest edition of Enigma zine,
Speaker 2: you mentioned very briefly about being traumatized by a poltergeist
Speaker 2: in Yorkshire when you were a child.
Speaker 4: What I have done is I've written the account of
Speaker 4: that and that is an issue too. I shall fill
Speaker 4: you in with it now. I did have a poltergeist experience,
Speaker 4: and before before I tell you about it, what I
Speaker 4: would say is it scared me. Even looking at Google
Speaker 4: Maps to look at the pictures of the house from
Speaker 4: the outside that it happened in was a bit of
Speaker 4: a trauma for me.
Speaker 3: It was probably because it happened so young. But the
Speaker 3: story is so I'm.
Speaker 4: Originally from the Northeast, originally from County Durham. When I
Speaker 4: was a kid, just five years old, my dad died, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: and because I have had conversations with my father, who
Speaker 4: I didn't know was dead at the time when I
Speaker 4: was a kid, because it didn't tell.
Speaker 3: Me straight away. Wow, But that's a different story.
Speaker 4: My dad died and he died when he was young,
Speaker 4: so he's only fifty one. So I've got two older sisters,
Speaker 4: sixteen and thirteen years older than me. So I was
Speaker 4: the baby of the family and I was five, so
Speaker 4: they had both my sisters.
Speaker 3: Had moved out, so it was only me and my mother.
Speaker 4: So for the support and stuff like that, we my
Speaker 4: mother decided to move to Yorkshire because that's where my
Speaker 4: sister lived. And it was a little, tiny little village
Speaker 4: called Clifton, which is fairly close to a town called Edlington,
Speaker 4: which is next to Doncaster, and so this place, Clifton
Speaker 4: is kind of in between Doncaster and Rotherham, so it's
Speaker 4: to the south of Doncaster. Just a square of houses
Speaker 4: which were council owned in the middle of nowhere, completely
Speaker 4: surrounded by countryside and farmland. I think there was a quarry.
Speaker 4: There was definitely a maggot farm, you know. It was
Speaker 4: all rural and farmland around it. So the idea was
Speaker 4: I would move down to go to to start school.
Speaker 4: My mother would stay up in the Northeast to complete
Speaker 4: the sale of the house and then come to Yorkshire
Speaker 4: where she was buying in the house. So we were
Speaker 4: moving relocating, but I was gone first because I've got
Speaker 4: to go to school. They actually remember the day that
Speaker 4: we got this. So this place is so remote. There's
Speaker 4: just a few houses that there was no shops or anything.
Speaker 4: There was a there was a telephone box and a
Speaker 4: little square and then two or three times a week
Speaker 4: you would get a green grocer's van would come and
Speaker 4: you'd get the pop man.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And it was quite a pleasant sort of area.
Speaker 4: There was other kids who lived in the in the
Speaker 4: in and around the square. There was a couple of
Speaker 4: dogs opposite. My sister had a nice cat to play with.
Speaker 4: So it was a dyllic really until the first night
Speaker 4: that I was put to bed. So this is a
Speaker 4: two bedroom house. The two bedrooms upstairs and the small
Speaker 4: is this small spare bedroom is at the back of
Speaker 4: the house and it was kind of a box room,
Speaker 4: very very cold in there single glazing, so that it
Speaker 4: was it was cold, there was kind of felt damp
Speaker 4: in there. There was moisture on the on the windows
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. Wasn't very pleasant and I didn't
Speaker 4: like it at all. But anyway, it around about eight
Speaker 4: o'clock that night I was being put to bed. So
Speaker 4: back then, and even to some extent now, I like
Speaker 4: to draw and paint, and back then it's like coloring
Speaker 4: in and drawing and stuff like that, and I would
Speaker 4: before going to bed, I would always do things like
Speaker 4: drawing and coloring in and stuff like that and then
Speaker 4: drop off. So and that's what happened on this night,
Speaker 4: So I would have I must have dropped off, don't
Speaker 4: know what time it was. Wouldn't have been massively late,
Speaker 4: I thought. And then I was woken up by a
Speaker 4: pressure on my arm, on my left arm, and it
Speaker 4: was absolutely freezing cold. I mean I felt coldness on me,
Speaker 4: like as cold as a freezer. I opened my eyes
Speaker 4: and the bedside lamp was still on because I'd fallen
Speaker 4: asleep without switching it off. And everything that I'd been
Speaker 4: playing with was flying around the room.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the rulers.
Speaker 4: The felt tips, the pens, the book. Most scary of
Speaker 4: all was a green pair of plastic scissors making a
Speaker 4: scissor movement. And it was freezing cold in there, and
Speaker 4: the curtains were up straight out in the air, and
Speaker 4: I cried out, but nothing came out, and I felt
Speaker 4: more of a pressure on my arm but also on
Speaker 4: my chest, so I couldn't move, and I couldn't make
Speaker 4: a sound, couldn't get anything out. And it would have
Speaker 4: been for a few seconds that everything was swirling around
Speaker 4: in the air, and then I managed to sort of
Speaker 4: break free and then shout and I went straight out
Speaker 4: the room, opened the door, straight out the room across
Speaker 4: the corridor, and burst into my sister's room. Her husband
Speaker 4: was on nights night shift, so he wasn't there. She
Speaker 4: was reading. And the needless to say, that was the
Speaker 4: last time I went in that back room. I told
Speaker 4: her what happened. I'll skip to some time later. Actually
Speaker 4: i'll skip to many, many many years later. Probably it
Speaker 4: was probably about ten years ago. I visited my sister
Speaker 4: at the time still lived in Yorkshire, but in a
Speaker 4: different place, and I said to her, I said, I said,
Speaker 4: do you remember that place she lived in in Clifton,
Speaker 4: And she went oh God, don't talk about that, honestly,
Speaker 4: And I said, do you remember I had this. I've
Speaker 4: got this weird kind of almost dreamlike experience where where
Speaker 4: I've there's been things flying around that that back room
Speaker 4: and I've ran in she said, I said, do you
Speaker 4: remember that? And she's gone, yeah, I remember it. I
Speaker 4: remember the night you did it. Because you stayed with
Speaker 4: us for another two months, and for those two months
Speaker 4: you were in a little bed at the at the
Speaker 4: bottom of our bed because you wouldn't go back in there.
Speaker 4: She got up immediately to go and have a look,
Speaker 4: and what she what she saw was nothing apart from
Speaker 4: so she's all nothing flying around, but she saw all
Speaker 4: of my stuff scattered around the room and it was very,
Speaker 4: very cold. But then she went on to tell me
Speaker 4: of other things that had happened to her in that
Speaker 4: in that house.
Speaker 3: Right the she had.
Speaker 4: Heard the lounge was the lounge downstairs. She had been
Speaker 4: in there alone at night a few times, and her
Speaker 4: footsteps upstairs in the room that that that this thing
Speaker 4: had happened to me. The cat wouldn't go in that room.
Speaker 4: It would it would sometimes sit at the top of
Speaker 4: the stairs and hiss at the at the door to
Speaker 4: this to this back room. She said, things would go missing,
Speaker 4: like she'd put something down and then a couple of
Speaker 4: minutes she'd go and get it, and it it wasn't there,
Speaker 4: and it would turn up in the back room, on.
Speaker 3: The bed or on the.
Speaker 4: And then she was having She was a few weeks
Speaker 4: after that, so this was there was only a few houses,
Speaker 4: but she was. She was talking to one of the
Speaker 4: neighbors out in the garden. And I think this might
Speaker 4: have even been after I'd moved out. I'd relocated. My
Speaker 4: mother had sold the house. We bought this other house,
Speaker 4: and I went and lived there in this and this
Speaker 4: was in this nearby town of Edlington, but she was
Speaker 4: still in Clifton at the time. And and she was
Speaker 4: talking to a neighbor, and the neighbor mentioned one of
Speaker 4: the people that had lived in that house previously was
Speaker 4: a was an old fellow who died there, and he
Speaker 4: was a hoarder, and he said She said that the
Speaker 4: neighbor said he used to used to fix cars and
Speaker 4: motorbikes and actually had an inspection pit dug in the
Speaker 4: saide garden. I remember that she said that all of
Speaker 4: the rest of the house was just full of stuff,
Speaker 4: bits of motor cars, bits of caravans, all sorts of things,
Speaker 4: and it was all full up and the only space
Speaker 4: that he had was the back bedroom which he used
Speaker 4: to sleep in, which is the small bedroom which this
Speaker 4: happened to me in and he died there. And she
Speaker 4: said he wasn't found for several weeks because he was
Speaker 4: a bit of a reclusive person and he didn't have
Speaker 4: any friends. He was found by a rent collector, a
Speaker 4: council rent collector who had broken into the property because
Speaker 4: the rent hadn't been paid for several weeks. And then
Speaker 4: he had found he had found this this bloke in
Speaker 4: the back room. And then she said the final thing
Speaker 4: that happened, she said, we were so we were so
Speaker 4: happy to get a transfer. They they moved to Edlington
Speaker 4: as well, in a they did a council house transfer
Speaker 4: and then they bought that the new that next council
Speaker 4: house off the council. But she said, we were so
Speaker 4: happy to leave there because it was really horrible, creepy,
Speaker 4: and I was there a lot on my own, she said,
Speaker 4: because her husband was on night shift a lot. And
Speaker 4: she said, the night before we moved out, we we
Speaker 4: we'd been packing everything away, and we've moved everything to
Speaker 4: the kitchen because there was a there was the kitchen
Speaker 4: had had a door which opened into a kind of
Speaker 4: the drive area was on the side. So they booked
Speaker 4: a van and then they could load up easily from there.
Speaker 4: So they packed everything up in boxes and it was
Speaker 4: all in the kitchen, had their last night in bed,
Speaker 4: woke up in the morning and every box was open.
Speaker 4: It all it had all been. She'd sealed them all.
Speaker 4: And she said, the final thing that happened was they
Speaker 4: were they had loaded up the van and they did
Speaker 4: a final check of everywhere in the house. They did
Speaker 4: a final check to see have we left anything, you know,
Speaker 4: because you have to leave the house and tea and
Speaker 4: you know, do the last minute hoovering and everything like that.
Speaker 4: And she went into the back bedroom and on the
Speaker 4: window sill was a blue, rusty toolbox and she'd never
Speaker 4: seen it before. It wasn't theirs at all.
Speaker 2: That's so creepy.
Speaker 4: And she some some weeks, all months after, she she
Speaker 4: bumped into the neighbor that she had that she had
Speaker 4: told her about the old bloke, and and she told
Speaker 4: her about She told her neighbor about the toolbox, and
Speaker 4: she said, oh, that was his. He had it at
Speaker 4: the back door all the time because he was always
Speaker 4: fixing stuff at the back door and he always had
Speaker 4: that rusty old box at.
Speaker 3: The back door.
Speaker 4: So it was that it was it was, it belonged
Speaker 4: to him. Wow, So I haven't The one thing I
Speaker 4: haven't done is I haven't gone back to that house
Speaker 4: and I haven't contacted the people that currently live there,
Speaker 4: and it's it's on Google map, so currently.
Speaker 3: There must be someone there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I haven't got I haven't had the courage to
Speaker 4: go and say knock on the door and ask if
Speaker 4: they've had any any anything happened there. That's my polterguy's story.
Speaker 4: I mean, I must be sensitive to these things.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean I don't feel it all the time. I
Speaker 4: only feel if some if something's haunted and maybe pick
Speaker 4: it up.
Speaker 3: And that's probably because of my grandmother.
Speaker 4: But that was I instantly didn't like that house, and
Speaker 4: it was it was really really scary, and you know,
Speaker 4: the bathroom was next to that room, and you know
Speaker 4: that was horrible as well, and it was it was
Speaker 4: all creepy and cold and horrible.
Speaker 1: So would you say that that experience really began to
Speaker 1: switch you onto the paranormal. I've only signed that because
Speaker 1: we interviewed Gal Porter a while ago, didn't we Murray
Speaker 1: and she mentioned doing was it dead Fimus?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, she was in a hotel, wasn't she?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was doing dead Fimus And she she was very,
Speaker 1: very skeptical at first, and she said it was just
Speaker 1: an offer that came up, and it was, well, do
Speaker 1: you want to you know you're going to do this year,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And she said, you've got these like
Speaker 1: psychics running around changing into people and doing She said,
Speaker 1: I was not thinking, what the hell's going on here?
Speaker 1: And she was rather skeptical all the way through this
Speaker 1: until they went to a hotel. I think it was
Speaker 1: in Colorado, Yeah, it was Colorado, Yeah, and she sactually
Speaker 1: went into this room. She had no idea about the hotel,
Speaker 1: no idea about the room, no idea about the history,
Speaker 1: nobody mentioned anything, and she went into that room and
Speaker 1: she said, everything changed. There was this feeling in there.
Speaker 1: There was this horrible feeling that just literally grabbed hold
Speaker 1: of her. And was it a vision or something Marie
Speaker 1: that she had about? Was it children? Or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she sent those children there, and yeah, I think
Speaker 2: she sort of see them in the mind's eye if
Speaker 2: I remember rightly. But yeah, she definitely sensed you know,
Speaker 2: ghost children and children spirit children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she she became physically upset, burst into tears,
Speaker 1: and she literally said to the crew, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to start this. I need to get out, I
Speaker 1: need to get some air. And it was then that
Speaker 1: she was told what had actually happened in that room,
Speaker 1: some quite disturbing things with children and stuff. And it
Speaker 1: was that precise moment that really started to switch around,
Speaker 1: wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what you were saying remind me of
Speaker 2: what she said, because she goes into places and since
Speaker 2: then she can immediately pick up on activity or you know,
Speaker 2: there's the atmosphere has changed.
Speaker 1: So do you think that do you think that poltergeist
Speaker 1: encounter maybe open something up inside you to because again
Speaker 1: not just not just to be sensitive, but to also
Speaker 1: have that experience going circling all the way back to
Speaker 1: the windbreak with your two relatives.
Speaker 4: Possibly and also you know, before that incident had happened,
Speaker 4: I had that is when I had had a conversation
Speaker 4: with my dad who didn't know was dead at the
Speaker 4: time because I wasn't told straight away. It was only five, right,
Speaker 4: so they didn't tell me for about six months. And
Speaker 4: I had a conversation with my dad at the top
Speaker 4: of the stairs because he was back from back from
Speaker 4: hospital and I was very happy to see him.
Speaker 3: But by all accounts he wasn't back from hospital. He
Speaker 3: was dead.
Speaker 4: My mother was at the bottom of the stairs watching
Speaker 4: me at the top of the stairs talking to nobody.
Speaker 2: No, Oh, that's so sad.
Speaker 3: Death has been.
Speaker 4: I was exposed to it early on, and you and
Speaker 4: I've had it a lot in my life. You kind
Speaker 4: of get no, you no, you don't get numb to
Speaker 4: it at all, but you become more understanding of it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And it's particular energies and things like that. And I
Speaker 4: think you can pick up on strangeness fairly easily. It's
Speaker 4: an instinct and I have it, but I don't get
Speaker 4: it very often. So I either don't go to anywhere
Speaker 4: that's very haunted very often, or when I when I do,
Speaker 4: it needs to be really haunted from to pick it up.
Speaker 3: But I do feel when I'm in those places now,
Speaker 3: that experience.
Speaker 4: In Clifton with a polterguy is scary because it happened
Speaker 4: to me as I was a kid. But what I
Speaker 4: would say is and qualify that as well, just to
Speaker 4: put it in the context. I had my father had
Speaker 4: just died. I had just found out that my father
Speaker 4: had died. There was some trauma in my family. Did
Speaker 4: that affect my young mind? Who knows? I wouldn't have
Speaker 4: thought so, because it was a very the experience was
Speaker 4: very real, and I remember it like it happened yesterday,
Speaker 4: and then recounting it again when I was writing the
Speaker 4: story for issue too, but also just telling it then
Speaker 4: now you kind of you know. I would absolutely swear
Speaker 4: on a stack of Bibles that it was absolutely verbat
Speaker 4: on what happened. But apart from that, when I think
Speaker 4: about these things, I'm not really scared. And one of
Speaker 4: the things is my grandmother, who was very you may
Speaker 4: have picked up as quite an influential character on me.
Speaker 4: She lived until she was ninety seven. She was born
Speaker 4: in eighteen ninety five. Wo and she or something like that.
Speaker 4: And she said to me, never be afraid of the dead,
Speaker 4: always be afraid of the living.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was her.
Speaker 4: Little mantra which puts you at ease. When you go
Speaker 4: into punted houses. It doesn't put you in ease when
Speaker 4: you go down the supermarket.
Speaker 3: But you know.
Speaker 4: What it di is is it kind of puts it
Speaker 4: in context. I think what she was trying to say
Speaker 4: was she was she had this gift. She was eleventh,
Speaker 4: the eleventh child in the youngest of eleven. She always
Speaker 4: spoke and to these people. She went to a spiritual church.
Speaker 4: She said that she could, you know, communicate with the
Speaker 4: with the dead. But you know, I was a young
Speaker 4: a young boy who would probably just you know, had
Speaker 4: just lost his dad. So you know, her words to
Speaker 4: me resonate and they probably were said to put me
Speaker 4: at ease, but it does actually come in handy advice
Speaker 4: wise not to be too scared of things, because what
Speaker 4: I think she's trying to say is that these things
Speaker 4: can't really hurt you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you know what my grandmother is that exactly
Speaker 2: the same thing to me. And she was very so
Speaker 2: much she was very spiritual and she saw things. But
Speaker 2: it's your way, she's the same. Really, don't be scared
Speaker 2: of the dead. It's a living and it's it is true.
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's obviously something that you know, they
Speaker 4: they've had a lot more different life experience to us.
Speaker 3: They lived through wars.
Speaker 4: You know, I broke me near the other day. You
Speaker 4: have to listen to people that have had those deeper experiences.
Speaker 4: And I think when you've got tragedy like that all
Speaker 4: around you.
Speaker 3: Like that like in will wars and in.
Speaker 4: Death that happens in tragic circumstances. And certainly, I mean
Speaker 4: I could write a book about me Nana, and I
Speaker 4: probably will, because she had a lot of different things
Speaker 4: happened to her and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 4: tragedy in her life. Very it's very Catherine Cookson. Actually,
Speaker 4: actually I must just tell you this story. It's not
Speaker 4: very paranormal, but it's an example of how influenced I am.
Speaker 4: I think by Menana, I and all of my family
Speaker 4: would not be around today if it wasn't for a
Speaker 4: man who never met And this man who've never met
Speaker 4: was called Samuel Hall, and he is no relative. But
Speaker 4: what Samuel Hall was was my grandmother's first husband, and
Speaker 4: he died in the First World War. He died in Flanders,
Speaker 4: died in flanders Field. And if he hadn't given his
Speaker 4: life in the service of his country, none of us
Speaker 4: would be born, because my nanna then remarried my granddad
Speaker 4: and then went on to have you know, six or
Speaker 4: seven kids. There's all of us, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So I own my very existence to somebody that I've
Speaker 4: never met, and I do plan to go to Belgium
Speaker 4: and visit he's grave, and I always obviously remember him
Speaker 4: on on on Poppy Day and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a it's an example of the connections
Speaker 4: that we have and the fact that there are aspects
Speaker 4: of the paranormal which are normal. The emphasis is are normal, okay,
Speaker 4: and that some of these things that if we don't
Speaker 4: understand them, may well just be our ignorance. It may
Speaker 4: be a natural thing. Ghosts may well exist in different
Speaker 4: realms and in different ways. It's just they're not going
Speaker 4: to prove it anytime soon.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: The paranormal and the world of supernatural is kind of scary,
Speaker 4: but it's not as scary as real life. And it's
Speaker 4: certainly not as scary as these people having to live
Speaker 4: through world wars and you know, and all the tragedy
Speaker 4: that life can throw at you. Are those people in
Speaker 4: Chernobyl that we were talking about in the main show
Speaker 4: that lost their lives because of an accident or any
Speaker 4: of that. So I think it's it's good to have
Speaker 4: a respect for history and a respect for people and
Speaker 4: those that have gone before. And I don't think it's
Speaker 4: a surprise that some of those people that have gone
Speaker 4: before probably want to stick around sometimes.
Speaker 1: Again, that's that's a really good example as well of
Speaker 1: just how in a sense randomness can ply with people's lives.
Speaker 1: If that event hadn't have happened, I.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't be here, and also neither wouldn't my mother wouldn't
Speaker 4: be here. I would be in My sisters wouldn't have
Speaker 4: had a life. My You know that there's something by
Speaker 4: giving his life, Private Samuel Hall of the Durham Light
Speaker 4: Infantry gave his lie so that probably hundreds of direct
Speaker 4: descendants of my grandmother could live because we wouldn't have
Speaker 4: before then, because if he if he'd have come back
Speaker 4: from from the war. As you know, he was a
Speaker 4: married man, he had a child. He had left my
Speaker 4: grandmother to go off to war with her pregnant of
Speaker 4: course as well. So that's that's that's where it all
Speaker 4: gets a bit. Catherine Cookson. But you know, if he
Speaker 4: hadn't he gave his life so that several hundred people
Speaker 4: could could live and live on Without that, there may
Speaker 4: have been some other people born that were never born clearly,
Speaker 4: but you know, you don't know about that. What I
Speaker 4: do know about is the reality that I wouldn't be
Speaker 4: here without him. So I think it always pays to
Speaker 4: be respectful of the what what the people who have
Speaker 4: given their lives in any way s all connected or
Speaker 4: unconnected to us, because it all makes a difference.
Speaker 2: It does. It's nice that you feel you had that
Speaker 2: connection with him as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think you know, my grandmother, I often say,
Speaker 4: I mean she's you know, she was a really she
Speaker 4: was a lovely person, but I mean phenomenal, phenomenal. She
Speaker 4: was a tiny little thing, and you know, she knew everyone,
Speaker 4: and she.
Speaker 3: Knew everything pretty much.
Speaker 4: If if you go, if you would go down with
Speaker 4: bad news that you'd heard that someone that she knew
Speaker 4: had died, you went in to see as she'd tell
Speaker 4: you she hadn't she have a telephone? You know she
Speaker 4: hadn't she she knew before you did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing, you know it is.
Speaker 4: And she Yeah, she died. I look lucky enough because
Speaker 4: some people don't get it. But you know, she died
Speaker 4: when I was nineteen, so I had nineteen years of
Speaker 4: knowing her, which was a great thing. And my my
Speaker 4: daughter now as a grandmother, it's alive eighty three and
Speaker 4: they get on like teenage friends.
Speaker 2: I feel so lucky because my grandmother, my maternal grandmother,
Speaker 2: she well, she died nine ninety five, and she lived
Speaker 2: through the Second World War. I remember way into my
Speaker 2: teenage years her telling me about the Blitz, and I
Speaker 2: feel so lucky that I got that account, that first
Speaker 2: hand account.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm connected to two centuries ago because of
Speaker 4: my grandmother, you know. Yeah, and what she told me,
Speaker 4: because you know, I think we both share the gift
Speaker 4: of the gap. What she would tell us was, you know,
Speaker 4: about all of the family and all of the decense.
Speaker 4: So I've got a really good, strong knowledge of the
Speaker 4: history of our families before, way before I was born,
Speaker 4: you know, for the last hundred years before I was born.
Speaker 4: And that was because I listened to my grandmother when
Speaker 4: she told me. So I think my key message their kids,
Speaker 4: listen to your grandparents.
Speaker 3: You know they're not they're.
Speaker 4: Talking about you don't yet, you won't until you're about,
Speaker 4: you know, an older person like forty or thirty or twenty.
Speaker 1: Very very very true, very true, indeed, very true. So
Speaker 1: as a closer, Neil, can you just let us know,
Speaker 1: let us let the listeners now again where we can
Speaker 1: get where we can get the magazine from, and your books,
Speaker 1: and where we could get in touch with you if
Speaker 1: people want to report a sighting or an encounter anything
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, well, I definitely encourage people to get in touch,
Speaker 4: even if it's just to tell us how wrong we are.
Speaker 4: There's readers at enigmazine dot com as the email address.
Speaker 4: You can drop us a line on that any of
Speaker 4: your stories. But any suggestions, any feedback, any questions, anything
Speaker 4: like that, anything that you'd like to see in a
Speaker 4: future edition, or you would you know, just you know,
Speaker 4: tell us what you think, think, give us some constructive criticism.
Speaker 4: A nigmazine dot com is the main website. So on
Speaker 4: there we've got general content that isn't isn't in the magazine,
Speaker 4: but you can also buy a subscription. There's there's we've
Speaker 4: got obviously the print magazine, so it's a monthly magazine,
Speaker 4: and that that's available in W. H. Smith and Tescos and.
Speaker 3: The like, but we have her.
Speaker 4: You know, people are finding it hard to find it,
Speaker 4: so the only guaranteed way of getting a copy is
Speaker 4: to subscribe or buy it on the website as a
Speaker 4: back issue.
Speaker 3: So we've got it.
Speaker 4: We've got a shop to do that, which is on
Speaker 4: the nigazine dot com website. There are four subscriptions. You
Speaker 4: can buy a print subscription and get it sent through
Speaker 4: your door anywhere in the world or in the UK.
Speaker 4: Or you can buy a digital subscription via pocket mags,
Speaker 4: or you can the cheapest way of.
Speaker 3: Doing it is.
Speaker 4: A pdf. We have a pdf version which you can
Speaker 4: subscribe to so every every month you'll get the magazine
Speaker 4: in PDF form in your inbox. So that's all available
Speaker 4: on a enigmazine dot com, as are the books. They're
Speaker 4: available in the shop as well. We've got Ghostly Encounters
Speaker 4: and Phenomena, and we've got the Time Slip Phenomenon. They're
Speaker 4: also available on Amazon. And we've finally, for now we've
Speaker 4: got an alien book, which we've called Alien Phenomena. You
Speaker 4: see what we're doing there. Yeah, We've we've found a word.
Speaker 4: We're not going to let it go. So we've we've
Speaker 4: got that an alien phenomena that's coming out in April
Speaker 4: or May April, late April. Okay, and yeah, that's that's
Speaker 4: it nigmazine dot com. If you can't find it in
Speaker 4: the stores, just go to a enigmazine dot com.
Speaker 3: You can find it there.
Speaker 2: It is brilliant. I've loved reading through it. There's so
Speaker 2: much it's jam pat with stories, everything in there. It's great.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time today, Neil. In
Speaker 2: this digital world, it's really refreshing and lovely to have
Speaker 2: a magazine that's tangible, you can flick through it, collect
Speaker 2: it and gets you away from your devices. So thank
Speaker 2: you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Maria, that's very nice. We're very kind words
Speaker 4: as well, and thank you Steven you for your kind
Speaker 4: words as well.
Speaker 1: No problem at all. Yeah, we've loved it. We've loved it,
Speaker 1: absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: Well, please come back on. We'd love to have you
Speaker 2: back on.
Speaker 4: Well, try not to give so many plugs to books
Speaker 4: and magazines next time.
Speaker 1: If not at all, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 3: Take care, Neil.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Trans him him a Frank B.
Speaker 2: Bacton, Acton, Acton Battin.
Speaker 4: Can then regret the act prety at the property, at
Speaker 4: stating nat I saw them at Bating, at the table
Speaker 4: and natty data.
Speaker 3: Yet I saw them Retty by act. I saw him
Speaker 3: at the Latin