Speaker 1: You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best
in paranormal talk radio in the UK and around the world.
Scary Era Era is the Irish or Gaelic word for Ireland.
Paranormal means all the things that are impossible to explain
by non natural forces or by science, and Ireland is
steep and lower ghosts, blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice, hunger, desperation
and charm. Oh and the paranormal. Welcome to Scary Era.
Speaker 2: Mark Manning.
Speaker 1: Same, why wouldn't you know? Hello, and welcome along to
Scary Era. I've had the beautiful paranormal parlor decorated especially
for you, so come on in and take the weight
off your face as I talk to you about many
things paranormal over the next whatever. We're going to County
Tipperary in just a moment's time as David McGlen aka
the Squire relates some strange monastic goings on in Kilcooley Abbey.
But first let's see what one of my favorite paranormal
investigators has been getting up to.
Speaker 3: Hi, it's Pja here from Kukovog Paranormal. We've just completed
our latest investigation in Lebcastle, our next two upcoming investigations
will be Redwood Castle and Lepcastle the return. We can
be found on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and of course
our team is Kukovog Paranoff.
Speaker 4: A series of unexplained phenomena at Kilcooley Abbey have been
reported over the years. At the twelfth century monastic site,
long regarded by locals as one of County Tipperary's hidden
historical landmark. Kilcooley Abbey, located approximately four and a half
kilometers southwest of Gordonaho, was founded in eleven eighty two
by the Cistercian Order under the patronage of Donald Moore O'Brien.
Speaker 1: Though now in ruins and.
Speaker 4: Situated on private farmland, the abbey continues to draw occasional
visitors due to its architecture, carvings and sense of solitude. However,
some informal accounts have cast the site in a different light.
Several individuals visiting the grounds over the past decade have
reported unexplained occurrences, prompting curiosity from regional history groups and
amateur investigators. Among the most commonly described events are sudden
temperature drops within specific chambers of the abbey, namely the
sacristy and chapter house. These shifts reportedly occur even on
warm summer afternoons. One visitor, who declined to be named
but provided a written account to a local heritage forum,
described a sharp coldness that passed through my jacket as
I stepped through the archway. It felt like I had
walked into a vault of ice, but only for a moment.
In addition to changes in temperatures, some visitors have reported
hearing faint sounds resembling chanting, particularly during evening hours. The
chanting is described as low and rhythmic, resembling monastic singing.
No audio recordings have been verified to date. A local
walking group leader noted it was just after six p m.
We were passing near the abbey when a few in
the group stopped and said they could hear something inside.
It sounded like a distant choir, but the place was
locked up and completely empty. Shadow like figures are also
mentioned in several accounts. These are usually described as dark
forms moving along the old cloisters or near the tombs
within the nave. No physical evidence has been found to
support these sightings. While we're aware of a couple of
investigations having been conducted. Interest has grown online and among
historical societies. One regional folklore researcher commented, Kilcooley has always
had stories attached to it. Any site this old will,
but what's interesting is the consistency of these reports, particularly
from people who aren't familiar with the old legends. Kilcooley
Abbey remains on private lands and access is restricted. Visitors
are advised to seek permission before entering the grounds. There
is currently no indication that the property owners planned to
open the site to formal paranormal investigations. As of now,
the reports remain anecdotal. Kilcooley Abbey continues to be listed
as a protected historical site under Irish Heritage law. For now,
the haunting tales remain part of the quiet rural fabric
of County Tipperary, intriguing, unverified and steep in centuries of
silent stone.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't such a long way Tipperary after all.
Girt Nahoe was mentioned there. My father was born in
Gertnahoe up County Tip. If you like scary era and
it resonates with you, perhaps you're in a paranormal community,
or else you're someone who just has an interest in
all the things that go bump in the night in
Ireland and anywhere else. Really I'd like to hear from you,
so contributions. Please email me your ghostly goings on's, paranormal
experiences or whatever too. Now take it down. Here we
go Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 5: That's Paranormal Island ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to do that or we ain't got a show.
And indeed, later on, like everywhere else, it's Pride Monte
here in Ireland in June. So we're gonna hear a
rather sad story dating back way back to nineteen eighty
two in fact, in relation to our gay community here
in Ireland. And also I mentioned, we're gonna have a
thing called every so often the International Interlude, and this
is where we listen to stories from around the globe
that could be on the doorstep of Ireland, in the States,
in Canada, in the Far East, who knows. But it's
something I want to do. And the guy I have
lined up for you, he is truly one of a
kind as he relates a story, an eerie one about
when he was a kid, well a teenager, and he
set up a pirate station in the middle of the
woods in Worthing in ye merry Old England. He's one
of my favorite people in the entire planet. So I
do want you to stick around and listen that first
Mason me Love, Love, Love. Have you ever been in
love before? We all know that amazing rush that you
get when you find somebody who is of the same
mind and thoughts and feelings as you are. But sometimes,
of course it goes wrong and we are left alone
to ponder infidelity or loss or whatever it might be
that has taken our love away from us, that is people,
or love away from us others, Will you go off?
I'm trying to be serious here. We really get money
of tits love being the operative word where the world
revolves around it. Here's a ghostly tale directly from County Wicklow,
a beautiful county. It's known as the Garden of Ireland
and it's got everything, the love triangle, infidelity on requited love.
Oh how many of us have gone through unrequited love
in our times? I know I have, And as you
get older you sometimes look back and you go, wow,
that one was for the best.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, he's so up his own arts.
Speaker 1: If you're lucky, you'll find the love of your life.
So there's a river runs through the aforementioned County Wicklow.
It's called the Dargle, and here's a ghostly romantic tale
all about it. This is the story of the legend
of the Dargle Lovers. It has been recounted and embellished
in numerous publications to become one of the most romantic
and best known ghost stories from County Wicklow. This version
is recounted by Jay Dunn from the nineteen seventy seven
publication Haunted Ireland, A Romantic and Mysterious Ghosts. A young
lady of the locality was faithless to her lover, giving
her attentions instead to another young man who had started
to woo her with dash and charm. But while she
was singing a favorite song to please him, as she
paused between verses, she heard the distant toll of a
church bell, unmistakably signifying a death. On inquiring, and with
a terrible fear clutching her heart, she discovered that her
former lover, stricken by her infidelity, had died of a
broken heart. Overcome by remorse, she left her new admirer
and hurried to the graveyard where they had just buried
the youth who had died for her. There, despite the
entreaties of her friends, she spent a night of sleet
and rain at his graveside. On each following night, she
came again, and although her worried family tried to dissuade her,
she continued her lonely vigil, only going back to her
home during daylight hours. Indifferent to the pleadings of those
who loved her and the entreaties of her new admirer,
who had been responsible for her desertion of the dead youth,
she continued to spend each night at the graveside, determined
it seemed to die for him who had died for her. Eventually, inevitably,
her mind collapsed, and she told her distraught sister that
her lover had risen from the grave and walked with
her through the darkle Glen, promising to meet her again
and take her to a place where they would be
together forever. Much alarmed, the girl's family tried to keep
her confined to the house while she managed to escape.
Her absence was discovered a few minutes later, and her
brother quickly followed her, heading with old speed to the churchyard,
where he knew he would find her. He arrived too late,
only in time to catch a glimpse of her scarf
fluttering in the breeze as she ran towards the river,
trying desperately to overtake her. He saw her climb up
the huge crag, surmounting the Dargle, pause a moment on
its treacherous brink, and then plunge into the swollen river below,
doubtless lured to her death by the phantom lover, conjured
up by her tortured imagination. The spirit of the unhappy
Girl revisits every year, sometimes in the form of a dove,
and sometimes in the shape of a white fawn, disappearing
into the shadows of the woods.
Speaker 7: Bertie Brasen here recently the Scary Era podcast with Mark
and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully you can listen to
that podcast as well. But I'm a filmmaker, author and
video producer. For anyone that doesn't know me, you can
get all my information all my links at ww dot
Bertie braslanfilms dot com, including my recent book The Forgotten
Prince and novella detailing Brian Berru The Battle of Clontarfe,
his son Donaga and Brodier of Man, the villain of
the piece. This is a part of a trilogy and
I'm writing the sequel.
Speaker 5: At the moment.
Speaker 7: You can get it via my shot about ww dot
bertiebrasinfilms dot com, or just go on to Amazon and
type in the Forgotten Prince Bertie Brosnan and it should
come up. Thank you so much, Take care and enjoy
the rest of the show.
Speaker 2: Not paranormal, Mam Manning is real now that's a scary sort.
Speaker 1: Why, thank you very much, Your roy Royal snydness. Well,
the weather has been absolutely superb in Ireland over the
past few weeks, and myself and my wife went out
for a walk last Sunday afternoon down the East coast.
It is very beautiful there and we're very privileged to
live in quite an affluent area of South County Dublin,
so we have many many walks. But on our way
back through Monkstown, I saw this house and I said
to my wife, you know that used to be Vincent
Hanley's house and a murder occurred there. Who's Vincent Hanley?
Says you. Well, I'm referring to the late Vincent Hanley.
He was a groundbreaking DJ in Ireland, if not in
Europe itself, because he developed a formula called the Emptyusa formula.
It essentially was a show that he put together where
he went across from Ireland every week and he filmed
in New York. He conversed with American pop stars and
played their videos and had all knitted together beautifully. And
I think that format was either sold on or certainly
copied by a lot of companies in Europe. Now, this
story dates back to nineteen eighty two and I'd like
to dedicate it to all our LGBTQ plus plus plus
community right here in Ireland. Happy Pride Month to you.
This is a sad tale, but a sobering one. Oh
and just before we begin, if you hear me referring
to Guardie or Garda, they are our local police force
also known as the Guards.
Speaker 6: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Murder in Monkstown, County, Dublin. The brutal killing of child
South forty three years after a murder in the home
of DJ Vincent Tanley. The case remains unsolved. Can you
see Crumblin from hoth in nineteen eighty one, Gay Byrne
asked thin Lizzie's fill Linet that rather sarcastic question about
the rock stars move to a posher part of Dublin
on the Late Late Show. Linett's glaring cream suit was
offset by the most iconic Irish studio set of the time,
a backdrop of beige brown carpet cut in sharp angles.
It was the work of Child Self, a thirty three
year old Scottish man employed by RTE as a set designer.
Self designs were admired at Arte on January twentieth, nineteen
eighty two. He was in top form as his creativity
was being rewarded with a pay rise and more sets
to design. But that night child Self was stabbed to
death at his home in Monkstown, County, Dublin. Nobody has
ever been charged with his killing. Forty three years later,
those who knew him still grapple with the circumstances of
his murder and the controversial investigation that followed. Child Self
was an avid socializer and a well known figure in
Dublin's gay world at a time when homosexuality was still illegal.
Self's natural habitat was the Bailey Pub on Duke Street
off Grafton Street. A spot popular with gay scenesters at
the time. He was prone to cashing checks in the bar,
making them out to the well known department store Brown Thomas.
When the bank inquired about his tendency to catch a
lot of checks and pubs, he replied, they keep better
hours than you do. The gay scene at the time
focused on a few spots in Dublin two The Bailey,
the Hirshfield Center in Temple bar Risus at the corner
of South King Street, a pub since demolished as part
of the construction of the Saint Stephen's Green shopping Center.
Bartley Dunns a breath of Paris, reminiscent of Lais, bistros, cosmopolitan,
clean tell, left bank mood, rendezvous of intelligentsia, Bohemian literati,
theater personalities, socialites, beatniks ran a print out for the
pub in nineteen sixty nine, which was demolished in nineteen
ninety to make way for the break for the Border Bar.
And then there were the cruising spots, parks and public
toilets Burg Key was a notable busy spot January nineteen
eighty two. Lives on in Irish meteorology record books under
the category of exceptional weather events. Dublin was particularly badly affected.
Twenty six centimeters of snow fell between January eighth and
thirteenth at Dublin Airport, and there were drifts of one
and a half meters. The temperature fell below freezing for
eight consecutive days. Soldiers were brought in to d ice
Grafton Street and the Canadian government donated six snowmobiles. In
the depths of that extreme winter, few cars drove, and
Brighton Avenue in Monkstown County, Dublin would have been even
quieter the normal. The bottom of the avenue offers an
expansive view of the sea, but just before you get
to the coast road, overlooking the train line, Annesley Muse
is in a small lane way to the right. Self
lived here in a house he shared with the RTE
presenter Vincent Tanley, a friend who was away at the
time of Self's death while he made a new life
in London as a DJ. On the afternoon of Wednesday,
January twentieth, Charles Self was in the bailey with his
friend Bill Maher. They stayed until two fifty p m.
When Self went back to work in Arte, taking the
bus because his car was broken down. The last thing
he said to Mar was a joke. He cracked when
an older man walked past them and said hello to
the two men. Self poked fun at Mar, saying, hm,
I suppose you've had him as well. Later that day
Self was back in the city center again. He returned
to the Bailey, then went on to Bartley, Dnes. From
there he went to burg Key, the stretch of the
Liffey South Quays between the Tower Street junction and O'Connell Bridge.
From burg Key, he took a taxi back to Annesley
Muse with another man, whom the taxi driver described as
having fair hair. Self arrived home before one a m.
His favorite drink was black bush whiskey, and given the
high spirits friends had seen him in that day, he
had probably had a few. Charles self wasn't the kind
of person to sit in at night pubs, receptions, openings,
book launches. He was embedded in Dublin's social scene and
knew many in the entertainment business through his work. He
was in turn quite well known about town. He was
an avidant, intrepid traveler. A friend describes how Charles identified
a travel loophole, whereby if you book the full return
fare back from a destination with a particular travel agency,
you could stop off multi both times. He used this
to the optimum effect when he traveled to Russia and
came back through both Bragg and Paris. He had been
to New York a couple of times, Thailand, and also
loved Greece, especially Santorini, a destination he painted pictures of.
He often traveled alone. Charles Self also loved his work,
especially his job on the late late show Art and Music.
Bubbly good fun is how Mar describes him. In their
spare time, we were out a lot almost every night.
When he came home, Self turned on the radio, played
music or watched music videos, and often opened a bottle
of wine. He sometimes fell asleep in the chair in
the living room. But on the morning of January twenty first,
shortly before nine am, his body was found at the
end of the stairs. The crime scene itself was one
of absolute chaos, with records across the place, and the
murder had been vicious. He had been stabbed fourteen times.
There was a slash wound to the throat, a piece
of torn ligature around his neck, with the rest tied
to a chair. Some of the stab wounds were through
and through the weapon, an eight inch kitchen knife with
a white handle, had been wielded with such ferocity it
had gone through his body. The then state pathologist John
Harbison carried out South's post mortem, concluding that he had
died from stab wounds to the neck and back. It's
hard to imagine that anyone in the house could have
slept through the noise that must have accompanied such violence
and aber. In a separate property described hearing screaming, but
someone did sleep through the night, or most of it.
Bertie Tyr, an Englishman who also worked in Rte as
a designer, was staying in the house at the time
in a room that had been occupied by Vincentanley, who
was a Tyro who found Charles Self's body on the
morning of January twenty first, was in his late sixties
and may have been hard of hearing. He said he
heard no commotion during Self's violent death, but he was
woken by a man who came into Tyro's bedroom around
two thirty a m saying something like sorry, wrong room.
Tyr made a sketch of this man a drawing that
would become a contentious issue in the case, along with
an identicate photograph of a possible suspect. On the night
of January twenty fifth, Self's body was flown to Glasgow,
where the funeral took place. Earlier that day, a service
took place at Saint Andrew's Presbyterian Church in black Rock County, Dublin,
with a packed congregation, including the then Arte Director General
George Waters. A notice carried in the Irish Times from
Self's family in Scotland read, I wish to express my
sincere thanks to all his friends and colleagues in Ireland
for the kindness shown to the family during a time
of much distress. In particular, I would like to pay
tribute to the help and support given to us by
Radio Telefe Sharon and the spiritual guidance of the church
ministers in attendance. Detective Superintendent Hupert Reynolds and Detective Superintendent
Michael Sullivan led a team of thirty detectives investigating the killing.
The initial focus of the investigation was on two rent
boys as suspects. As the investigation got under way, the
pursuit of gay men as witnesses or suspects became one
of the most controversial aspects of the case, affecting the
lives of many people who had no connection to the murder.
By Saturday March twentieth, nineteen eighty two, harassment was being
reported from members of the gay community to the Irish
Council for Civil Liberties. The Irish Times reported Homosexuals complained
that guarding have been demanding they agree to be finger printed,
photographed and give statements Many were not openly gay. They
claimed that detectives have repeatedly called to their homes and
places of work, causing them considerable embarrassment. Some also claim
that family anguish has been caused when they were forced
to reveal details of their sex lives to their parents
because of the guardee. Cater Asthmal of the ICCL said
at the time, something rather odd is emerging. It appears
to me that in certain cases there is a desire
to draw up a profile on GAZE. In Dublin, Amon Sommers,
then president of the National Gay Federation, said people were
worried that information gathered by Guardie could be released to
civil servants screening job applicants. On March twenty third, Peter
Murta wrote an article in the Irish Times headlined Gay's
allege threats and taunts by Guardee. The article included an
instance of a man being approached by detectives in the
Phoenix Park for questioning. Another young man spoke of Guardy
coming to his home four times along with several phone calls,
and was pressured to come out to his family. Edmund Lynch,
who worked in RTE and New Child Self, has been
conducting interviews in recent years as part of his Irish
LGBT History project. Some of those interviews go over people's
memories of the Self investigation. Here on McKinney told Lynch
he new Charles vaguely to say hello to He used
to drink in the bailey and there were a whole
bunch of us who hung out there. After Self's death.
McKinney says Guardy showed no sensitivity, no sense of confidentiality
about people's lives. A bunch of my friends were outed
through that process. I know for a fact that a
number of people left the country because of that experience.
In late March, a public meeting was held by the
Council for Civil Liberties and the Prisoner's Rights Organization. A
human rights group that became involved because of the GARDA
investigation to discuss the large number of complaints. That meeting
was followed up by a protest in early April outside
Peer Street GARDA station over harassment and a failure to
publicly issue the pictures. If some people are hurt in
relation to our inquiries, then I'm sorry, but we must
go on. Detective Superintendent Hubert Reynolds said. There were two
other high profile killings of gay men in nineteen eighty two.
On September eighth, John Roach, a twenty nine year old
hotel porter who worked in the Monster Hotel in Cork,
was stabbed in the chest in a homophobic killing. On
September ninth, Decland Flynn, a gay Irishman who worked for Rianta,
was attacked and killed in Dublin's Fairview Park, a known
gay meeting point where a number of other homophobic attacks
had occurred before Flynn's death. In March nineteen eighty three,
after Flynn's killers were given suspended sentences, protests took place
in Dublin, a public expression of anger often seen as
the impetus for the gay pride movement in Ireland. While
the protests are often directly linked to the lenient sentences
of Flint s Kellard's self's murder, and the fear and
harassment gay men encountered during the investigation also contributed to
this tipping point. Alan Bailey, now retired, was the detective
sergeant in charge of the guard A Serious Crime Review Team.
In two thousand and nine, he presented a paper to
the FBI in Virginia in the US about the Self case,
in particular about what he believes were elements of the
crime scene that were staged. Why is a crime scene staged?
Bailey asks, its stage to deflect or impede the investigation,
or deflect from some suspect or another. Self's body was
found at the bottom of the stairs in the mews house.
It was close to the front door, making it impossible
to open the door. The presumption was the killer escaped
through a small kitchen window. However, there was a planter
box on the window sill, which in the process of
someone climbing out a window would have been disturbed or
knocked over. It was clear that it was placed on
the ground. Bailey says it wasn't knocked over. There was
no spillach whatsoever. It was lifted off the window sill
and placed on the ground. Another big anomaly, Bailey says,
relates to pools of blood at the scene. There was
furniture placed back over them. They weren't haphazard. It's physically impossible.
The big thing was with child self was the absolute overkill.
It would indicate somebody who wasn't just killing them to
rob them. The wounds that penetrated the body were no
mean achievement, he says. The kitchen knife, Bailey calls a
weapon of opportunity. Bailey says guardee were wrong at the
time to seek male prostitutes at suspects and instead should
have been calling them as witnesses. The presumption was this
rent boy for want of a better word, had panicked,
hadn't been able to get out because the position of
the body at the foot of the stairs and came
through the kitchen window. Bady disagrees with this hypothesis. It
was obviously someone else. Bertie Tyer died in December nineteen
ninety five, aged eighty. The sketch he made after the
murder had been in the shadows of the case for
many years. Following Self's death, there were several calls from
gay activists for GUARDE to release the sketch and the
identicate photo they had. They were never released publicly. Bill
maher recalled seeing the sketch in a guarda's station at
the time and remembers it as a black pen drawing
on a white sheet of paper. Marr has been told
by police many times in the intervening years that they
had no sketch, but in February twenty seventeen, Guardy told
Mar they did in fact have the sketch as well
as the photo fit, and were making further enquiries. Mar's
theory remains that Self met someone while waiting for a
taxi home, a person who would have been traveling in
the same direction and whom Charles asked in for a drink.
The person sketched by Bertie Tyler did not fit the
description of the fair haired man described as having accompanied
Self in the taxi home from town. The man Tyr
saw had dark, curly hair and what Marr says Tyre
characterized as a West brit accent. As nineteen eighty two,
rolled On Self's murder was overshadowed by the grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre,
and unprecedented aka gooboo series of incidents involving Malcolm MacArthur,
who had murdered a twenty seven year old nurse, Bridey
Gargan in the Phoenix Park and three days later a farmer,
Donald Dunn in Edenderry, County Offley. MacArthur was subsequently arrested
in the home of the Attorney General Patrick Connell in
Dawkey County, Dublin. MacArthur was known on the gay scene
in Dublin and also to south Some friends can't shake
what they say is a similarity between the description of
the person drawn and MacArthur's likeness. In October, MacArthur spoke
to a tabloid newspaper. While he did admit that he
was a regular drinker in Bartley Dun's, he claimed he
had stopped socializing there around the time Self was killed.
Bill Maher says he was told child Self's killer was
in prison. A reporter told me he was behind bars.
He says. The reporter said he was quoting a guard
a source. But there are many theories and there were
other men seen that night in Bartley Duns. Self spoke
to a man in his mid to late twenties who
was carrying a duffel bag. On burg Key, he met
two men in their late twenties, one who had dark
hair and wore a leather jacket. Then there was a
man in or around his late twenties in Brighton Lane
in Monkstown, opposite the lane where Annesley mus is. This
man had short brown hair and was wearing a tweed
beige jacket and trousers. A neighbors said they saw a
fairly tall man in dark clothes jump over a wall
at the Mews to day. The lane way where Annesley
Muse sits is one of those pleasant South Dublin nooks,
hidden away and peaceful. A woman who answers the door
to a property at Annesley Muse's, which was added on
in the mid nineteen nineties, says she knows little of
the events that occurred there in January nineteen eighty two.
I only know what's in the papers, she says. For
Bill Maher, those events still feel like yesterday. The whole
thing didn't fit with me. Charles was in great form
that day. He got promoted. He was getting a pay rise.
They were going to give him more work. He didn't
frequently bring guys back to the house I lived in
the house for six months, and I could count on
one hand the amount of people he brought back for sex.
There's another peculiar and unexplained aspect to the child Self story,
one that has no apparent connection with the gruesome murder,
but is yet another loose end. Almost exactly fourteen years later,
the person who had hired child Self for RTE, a
man named Alpho O'Reilly, left his home in Sandymount. Neither
he nor his car have ever been found. The case
may never be solved, but it isn't closed. A guard
A spokesman confirmed to The Irish Times that Charle Self's
murder remains under investigation.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, a couple of things over the years. But I've learned, well,
I don't I suppose it's not and I've just become
accustomed to it, and I think it's kind of it's
maybe it's another sense or something. But often when you
go into places, you will get a feeling for the place,
and you'll get a feeling of whether or not it's comfortable.
And whatever cause is that. Who knows what causes that.
But we have an intuition, we have an inbuilt intuition.
I can't describe what it is or where it comes from,
or the physics of it or the chemistry of it.
But it's there and anybody will will tell you to
stick with your intuition. If you think something doesn't feel right,
then don't hang around.
Speaker 2: Superb advice from regular contributor to Scary Era, David McGlynn
aka the Squire, and don't hang around either. If you've
got an Irish paranormal tale to tell, simply email Paranormal
Ireland at proton male dot com and it'll be read
out for you or you get to tell it on
air yourself. That's Paranormal Island at proton Male dot com.
Speaker 5: Hello Scary Are listeners.
Speaker 9: My name is Anthony Kerrigan and I'm a member of
a paranormal psychical research team called ghost Eer. You can
catch up on where we have been also see what
we've got up in the future by logging into our
website ww dot Ghostereo dot net. You can also watch
shows of the ghost a channel where we interview numerous
people in the field of the paranormal and FOURTEENA. You
can also check us on our social media pages on Facebook, Instagram,
and YouTube by just typing in Ghostterer or Ghosteer Paranormal.
You can also watch our new show Phantasm Collective on
channels such as Prime UK and also Paraflex and other
streaming services to be announced.
Speaker 5: I've just got to deal with this ghost now get
out to drug.
Speaker 6: Mark Manning.
Speaker 1: That would be me And that last was courtesy of
the Irish Times a few years back. I have been
haanging on recently saying that look, if you're not based
in Ireland, it doesn't preclude you from appearing on the show.
I want to put together a thing called the International Interlude.
You're about to hear an example of it right now.
And I don't go too far away at all, I
go across the pond to the UK. Now take the
name of this podcast down, Ray's Rants. I came across
it a few years back when I wanted an alternative
to all the head frying stuff on social media that
used to really put me in a bad mood. I
found the perfect antidote in Ray's Rants.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Ray is of cake baking years. He's in his early
to mid seventies and he is so young mind that
it's incredible. His podcasts, in the nicest possible way, often
put people to sleep and I've said it to Ray
myself because I've appeared on this show. I've said, Ray,
your voice really belongs to the Cardigan wearers of say
BBC Radio four. It's beautiful, but it does put people
to sleep. But that has a flip side and a
beneficial one, because you end up wanting to listen to
the podcast again when you're more awake. So Ray gets
basically twice the figures. He's based in Worthing on the
south coast of the United Kingdom, not far from where
my grandfather hailed from, and his podcasts are a social document,
if you like, of life in the nineteen sixties and
indeed going back to the nineteen fifties. What you're about
to hear has all the elements I love radio, EVPs,
electronic voice phenomena for those of you who don't know,
and the paranormal. We join Ray in his radio shack.
Because Ray never retired, he's still very active. After a
life of fixing televisions and radio, he is still very
much active in the ham radio world. He made this
video a few years ago. You can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 5: Actually, yes, you're mad if you go to YouTube.
Speaker 6: And typing postree Poil with wild You met you Woods.
Speaker 1: And he's sitting in his radio shack Stroke studio, and
he tells us all about a ghostly EVP that took
place on a pirate station he and his friends created
in the nineteen sixties. Listen up, time for international interlude
on Mark Manning's Scary Era.
Speaker 5: Hi me again, Ray from the radio workshop with more
tales of the expected or yes, tales of pirate days
of old. THEOT commented, Hello, THEOT, if you're watching, THEO said,
how about some what was it haunted scary stories or
scary haunted stories? Well, I don't actually have any ghost stories.
Well I say that that comment THEO. That reminded me
of a time. It's to do with pirate radio or
medium wave, yes, but it's to do more with this
derelict house. As always, we were looking, you know, us
a bunch of lads teens, early twenties, We were looking
for a place to pirate from, set up the medium
wave transmitter, the aerial you know, as you know from
all the other videos. Well, where I the town I
live in, going back decades, there was farm land around,
as probably with most places in the UK, there was
farmland and fields and just sort of waste land and
stuff like that, and it was great fun as kids.
We're always over the woods climbing trees. Wonder whether anyone
remembers Limbrick Cops. Limbrick Cops near Limbrick Lane, Goring is
it go, yes, Goring Maybridge out that way was all woods.
There was a pond, you know, we get sticklebacks and
newts and tadp and stuff like that. All great fun
as kids. Because now it's all housing estates. The whole
lot is housing estates. It's such a shame. It's all concrete. Anyway.
Going back, not at Limbrick Cops, but not too far
from there, there was a derelict house in the woods.
It was probably an old farm place, I don't know,
farm workers cottage, something like that. I don't know what
it was, but it was definitely derelict. Not many people
knew about it. Had a couple of broken windows, The
front door was jammed open permanently, the back door was missing.
The back door into this very small kitchen. There was
a kind of upstairs, but very narrow wooden stairs up
to basically was just a boarded attic with a very
small window. So it's a very small place downstairs. All
that was, assuming the bedroom was upstairs. Downstairs was like
a very small lounge, little hallway, any kitchen, and another room.
I don't know what that was, but a very small place,
definitely derelicts, not been lived in for years, and not
many people knew about it. So we thought, ideal place
for a bit of medium wave pirate radio. So we
sort of surveyed the place where we're going to put
the area. Oh blah blah blah, and we went back
in the evening. Now, bear in mind, is a lovely
summer evening. We went back in the evening with the
areel and the insulators, cutters, bits and pieces. All we're
going to do is put the area up, no trapsmitting gear.
But we took a few beers with us because we thought,
you know, we'd have a sort of chill out there
after we put the area up, and a bit of
a chat about what we're going to do. There were
bits of furniture. There was a kind of old sofa
and a chair, and a couple of other bits of
table and things. So we put the aerial from the
chimney to a tree some distance away. That was all
done and we're just sort of sitting there having our
beers and that now there was no road or track
or anything to the place, only a sort of narrow footpath,
not mutually even a footpath, you know, you had to
sort of trek through the woods to get to part
of it. And anyway, someone said that they walk up
the chip shop. I think there were four or five
of us. You had to walk right away to the
road then down to the chip shop. And he came
back with kind of six coln chips and wearing our
fish and chips and our beer. It was a great evening.
We had too many beers, as we did in those days,
and we all sort of went to sleep on this
old sofa and the chair and stuff. And it was
about half three in the morning. I remember that because
it wasn't quite daylight. In midsummer daylight it's about four o'clock.
It was about half three. One of the lads woke
the rest of us up and he said, there's someone
in the hall, so well blind me. We're all looking
out there. What what you said? There's lights, there's a torch,
so we're looking and it was it wasn't a torch.
It was flashing lights, you know, an art world and
when you're going you know, you've got your thing on
and all the flashing around the walls from the art
worlder it was like that. There was no sound with it,
but it was like that a kind of blue violety
color light, just like reflection of art worlding going on.
And because there was no electricity in the place, no water,
no nothing, so but it was an electrical type arcing light,
if you know what I mean. And we're sort of
looking none of us dare adventure out into the hallway
is the only way we could get out of the
of the house I say, house cottage, and anyway it stopped,
so you know, we're all sort of, well, this is
a bit scary. What else going on? Because it's by now,
you know, it's getting like like four o'clock is daylight,
and you know we're all sort of cleared off home.
We didn't know what that was. So yeah, I remember
specifically remember the dawn chorus. You know, the birds all
start singing about four in the morning in the summer,
and it was really loud because we're in the in
the woods and sort of fields, and that really loud,
these birds singing and the sun was coming up and
daylight and it wasn't so scary, but you know, we
didn't know what it was. Anyway, we all went home
and that was that we'd done the job. The area
was up, we'd had our beers and our fish and chips.
So what the plan was was the following Sunday we
were going to do our first transmission. Right, so the
idea was go along there Saturday night and set up
the gear. We weren't we hadn't planned to sleep there,
but as it was so such a remote place and Derek,
we thought, well, no one's going to nick the gear
save lugging it all out there Sunday morning. To go
on there at eleven, you know, we'd go out there,
set everything up and just just cover it with an
old blanket, you know, just distant case, which we did
on the Saturday night. We set it all up. We
took some beers again, always took beers wherever we went,
especially there, because we you know, we weren't able to
drive to the place. We had to walk quite a
distance from the road with the gear. That was another
reason for doing this on the Saturday night, because it
was obviously going to take quite a time lugging the
stuff and for start, the twelve vault car batteries big
and heavy, the transmitter, the you know, the vibrator pack,
and we also had a rotary transform member, the rotary transformers,
rotary converter, you know, twelve vaults in an ht out,
that sort of thing. We had quite a bit of
gear to lug in. There, a cassette tape recorder with
the programs on, you know, the cassette tapes with the programs.
So we did all this, set it all up, did
a quick test transmission, which was and we were all finished.
It was dark by this time. I don't know, it
was sort of getting dark anyway, nine no, not nine
ten at night in the summer, and we're sitting down
and having our beers and there's these lights again in
the hall, flashy lights. And someone said, someone's mucking about.
It's someone outside shining a torch in or something like that.
Someone whoever it was, they were saying, oh, someone's obviously
heard that we're here. We told a few people it
was a secret. Well it was a secret just among
our lot, you know, like in the pub we'd said, oh,
there's a Derek House and we're going there, and we
thought someone had decided to muck about. The flashing stopped
after you know, twenty seconds or thirty seconds. We were
going to go and have a look. We thought, you know,
let's go and find out who's doing this. At that
point we heard someone upstairs, or a noise upstairs. It
wasn't like walking across the boards up there, but someone
was definitely moving around upstairs in what we thought were
to be the kind of attic bedroom. None of us
would venture up the little narrow staircase to have a look.
We're taking torches with us, but none of us would
go up there and have a look. It's sort of old.
Someone's bucking about. You know, they'll come down eventually. You know,
there's no other way out, so we'll just wait till
they come down. We were having our beers and it
all went quiet, and in the end we went home.
We weren't going to go up there, and whoever it
was up there obviously wasn't going to come down, so
we went home.
Speaker 6: That was that.
Speaker 5: The following day, on the Sunday, we were there on
the air at eleven o'clock, pretty out the program great stuff,
No funny business, going on, no lights, no clonking around upstairs.
In fact, we did go up and I will look
nothing up there. You know, it's different in the middle
of the day, isn't it. When it's at night and
it's dark, it's a bit scary. Oh yeah, we were.
We were sort of young lads. We weren't scared of anything.
But that did frighten us, you know, that sort of
creaking around. Even though we thought, oh, it's someone up
there mucking about, we were. I remember that night when
I was in bed thinking, I was thinking then that
was a bit scary. You know, whoever it was didn't
come down. We thought they were going to come down
and have a laugh. But anyway, the transmission went out
on the sun. This was our first transmission. It was good.
It was a good signal round. Later on that day
we had reports that evening and we took the gear
out of the cottage that afternoon. We didn't want to
leave it in there all week, although we planned to
go on the air the following Sunday. We didn't want
to leave it there all week. What we did we
all met in the pub that night, and we weren't
always sounds like we were all rampant alcoholics, was boozing.
I suppose we were no met in the pub that night,
and this chap that we knew, he said, oh yeah,
great listening to it, but you know, shame about that.
Whoever it was singing in the studio was singing. What
do you mean singing? And he said, well, the DJ
was doing his bit on the pre recorded programs, and
the DJ Chap was with us. I think where was
it Rob? I think it was Rob, and he said
I was. I was alone, he said, I always doing
the pre recording programs. I do there on my own.
And he was sort of in his bedroom. He's got
his gear and stuff and his tape recorder, his microphone
and all that, and and this chapter, No, there was
a girl singing along and he remember, he said, well,
not singing, sort of humming. And you know, Rob said, well,
there was no one in there with me. I was
doing this on my own. There was no one there,
and we had we listened to the tape previously, and
there was you know, there was no girl. He said, yeah,
a young girl like a child, almost humming and sort
of singing along. Anyway, he didn't record, he didn't have
a recording of this, and we just thought, I don't
know what he's talking about. You know. We left it
at that, didn't think anything of it. The following week
we did the same thing. We set up on the
Saturday night there I say, we took a few beers
with us. Again, well bear in mind, we weren't going out,
you know, we normally on a Saturday night we'd go
out for the down the local nightclub or something. So
it was right to take a few beers, wasn't it.
And you know, we set up everything and we actually
sat there listening to the pre recorded Yeah we have
to caete tape recorded ready to go. We listened to
the programs you have a bit of music, and while
we're having our beers having a chat, the blue lights
flashing weren't in the hall, but there was a noise
upstairs again and this time, you know, we were convinced
that someone's up there. You know, it's one of our mates,
and we thought someone came up with the idea that
the chat that had said, oh you know there's someone singing,
some girls singing. We reckoned it was him. He been
flashing the torch, he been upstairs or him and his
accomplice or whatever. Then he's saying, oh, yeah, there's some
girl singing in the studio when he knew there wasn't.
Obviously there wasn't, And we thought, right, okay, we now
found out who it is. He's trying to scare us.
It had got dark. It was ten o'clock again, it
had just got dark. We had torches with us, and
we could hear something up there. Definitely, you know, it
was one hundred percent there was someone up there. It
wasn't just like a rat or an animal or something,
or just creaking how the wooden beams as the day
calls down in the summer, the beams creak and stuff.
It wasn't that there was someone up there. So okay,
we all get our torches right, we're coming up. We
all got up the stairs. Okay, no, we know you're here,
and no one up there. Then we were scared. You
know how on the back of your neck you get
the prick all the hairs stick up, and there was
We had definitely heard someone up there, and there's no
one there. There's a little window and it was only
a small like a little attic window. You couldn't get
in and out of that and even if you could,
you're on the kind of sloping roof, you know, it
would have made a head of a noise. So then
we were scared. We all went piling back down the stairs,
and we remember we didn't run. What we did. We
sort of we did a runner back to the road.
And yeah, it was we didn't know what to think.
I think we were scaring each other, you know, someone
us saying, oh, it's a ghost of places halted. You
know someone else was saying I knew all along it
was a ghost. Those flashing light. We were scaring each
other and you know that anyway, that was that we
had to go. All our gear was there. We were
all set up for the Sunday morning eleven o'clock transmission,
so we had to go back for that, which we did.
We were a bit wary, but we thought, okay, this
only happens at night, so this is all right. What
I did I before I went, I'd set up my tape,
my radio and my tape recorder and a time switch
at this time switch which I've been using to no,
not me, I don't use. I don't turn on transmitters
with time switches, but one that could have been used
to turn on a transmitter at a certain time. Anyway,
I put that, got my tape recorder on record, real
to real, didn't do the pinch with any good of course,
because it was left like that until the time switch
came on eleven o'clock, which was going to record the transmission.
So if anyone said, oh, you know, there's some girl
seeing some ghostly girl humming away on the on the transmission,
I could listen to the recorder and say, no, no,
there wasn't. We went to the place where did the transmission.
It was great, no problems, no ghosts, nothing like that.
No ghosts, and that was that. There was nothing to
tell about that. We eventually packed up our gear, lugged
it all back to the car, which we had parked
out on the road. That was it. I went home
because I thought that Sunday night, as usual, you went
down the pub and this chap to go say oh
there was a girl singing out of there. So I
got home and I put the tape on and I
replayed the recording. Okay, the live on air recording. Now
you know what I'm going to say next, don't you?
And you're right. I sat there and I listened and
there was a girl, childlike girl's voice, humming, singing, not
whining or moaning, but I can't describe it. Not loud,
but definitely there on the tape. I could hear it.
It wasn't through the other whole hour's transmission. It was
only now and then, but she was definitely there. Now
I had heard the original recording, the pre recorded tape.
There was nothing on there like that at all. This
was a live recording. No one could have got in
to you know, where my tape recorder was and done
anything superimposed ghostly singing girls on there or anything. It
had come from the transmission, our live transmission. It had
come from the transmitter in the cottage. I played it back,
must have been a dozen times or more. I phoned
the lads. They came round that Sunday afternoon and they
listened to it. And it wasn't just me dreaming or whatever.
We could all hear it, and we were looking, we're
looking at each other. It was none of us knew
what to say, what to think. That really was scary.
It was at that point that we didn't say. We
all decided, but we all knew there was something very weird.
About that cottage. It wasn't someone mucking about upstairs. We've
been up there. There was no one there. The lights
in the hall you couldn't do it with a torch
on and off. It wasn't that. It was like, as
I said earlier, like an arc light reflecting on the
on the walls. Electrical arc. You can't simulate or emulate
that with a torch. We came to the conclusion that
the place was haunted. Do you remember the cassette tape
recorders where the microphone would have a double jack, you know,
the was it the little three point five bill on
the large one or whatever it was, the double jackplide
with a switch on the microphone, so you put your
little cassette on record, okay, and then you can switch
it on, do your dictation, switch it off. We had
a tape recorder like that, and what we knocked up
was a little transistor circuit and a relay little microphone.
So any any sound, right, the little transistor circuit would
pick it up and flick the relay, which would we'd
then plug into the tape recorder and it would record.
We set a like a capacitor, a time thing on
the on the relay, so any noise, the tape recorder
would switch on for about thirty seconds and then the
relay would flip out again. It would trip out. Okay,
we set this up and we took it there. We
all went into this cottage. Even telling you the story now,
even thinking back, just relating this, it does make me
feel I don't know, weird, eerie. So we put it
on the table in this room, set it up, checked it,
you know, clap clap, Yes, it's recording. About thirty seconds
and it switches off. And we did this on the
Saturday evening before it was dark. I hastened to add
and we all cleared off pretty quick. We did a
runner on a Sunday morning. I got a phone call
about seven o'clock and I know it's early, but let's
go and get the tape. Let's go and listen. So
we all went there. I think we got there about nine.
In the end. There's the tape recorder. We wound it
back in. Obviously recorded something. We wound it back and
we pressed play to have a listen. Right, there's a
few bangings about like that. You know, it could have
been a fox coming into the place, animals, whatever, a
fox sniffing about setting the tape recorder off. There was
the kind of moving around upstairs. It was quite a
sensitive mic on this tape recorder. There was the kind
of moving around noise upstairs that we recognized as if
someone was up there. There was that. And don't forget
that these were like thirty second recordings, So one thump
like that would switch the tape on to record for
thirty seconds. Then it would stop and then and this
is a bit where what we did. In fact, when
we heard this, we grabbed the tape recorder and ran
out of that cottage because we were listening to the
stuff in the cottage tape recorder on the table. It's
scary even thinking about it now. We were listening and
we heard the girl. We heard this humming sort of singing,
and we just looked at each other and one of us,
I forget who grabbed the tape recorder, and we just
ran out of that cottage and back to the road
as fas as we didn't stop. As fast as we could.
We ran back to the road and were kind of
on the pavement, look at each other and looking back
at the woods, and we were shaking. You know, I've
got to admit it. We were shaking. We were that scared.
It's what was it. We listened to that again and again.
It was several times on the tape. Several places on
the tape it had switched on and you could hear
this faint humming singing in the background. I don't know
what it was. I didn't none of us told anyone,
because you can't go around and saying to people we
heard the voice of a ghostly girl singing in a
haunted cottage. You know, people are yeah, right, okay, yeah,
and he's lost it, he's lost the plot. So we
didn't ever tell anyone. I don't think I've ever told
anyone to this day. Is only now because you know
this this thing about scary haunted stories. It's only that
that made me think, oh, well, that's the thought. Yes,
I haven't got loads of ghost stories. There were one
or two other things over the years that have happened,
but I haven't got loads of ghost stories because that
girl that was not the girl, the girl's voice in
the cottage, we couldn't hear it. We're only here on
the tape. The microphone picked it up. Somehow it went
out on the RF you know signal on the transmission,
but we couldn't hear it ourselves, so what was it?
There are no such things as ghosts, are they?
Speaker 4: Remember you don't have to be Irish or even living
in Ireland to contribute to scary error. Send you a
paranormal experience by email to Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot
com Mark Manning.
Speaker 10: My name is Matthew Clark and I'm with the Cork
Supernatural Society. Our most recent investigation took us to a
location called the Blackgates in County Cork, which is the
ruins of an ancient churchyard said to be hunted by
demonic presence of a vicar who gave evidence against the
Irish Rebels to the British, and the Irish rebels ended
up being executed with their heads cut off and put
on the gator. You can find out about the investigation
by following us on Facebook or Instagram at Cork Supernatural
Society and we'll update any evidence caught on that investigation.
We'll go up on ease of those pages. Follow us
on Cork Supernatural Society on Facebook or Instagram.
Speaker 1: Oh I do love the way Matthew makes beheading sounds
so absolutely casual. There they are. Chop the head off
and put them on a spike, a little bit like
putting out the rubbish or making a drichine. I'm only Kidney, Matthew.
Thanks again Matthew from the Cork Supernatural Society, as well
as PJ from Pooka Vogue and Old Paranormal Pants himself,
Anthony of Ghost Era. Meant to hear from Jenny this
week as well from Emerald dial Paranormal, but she's a
busy lady out with guided tours of Belfast and indeed
Scotland this week, Jenny, I hope to hear what you've
been up to next episode. My thanks to my old
friend and great reader David McGlynn aka the Squire, as
well as the lovely Sarah Campbell. You can check her out,
go google her for voiceovers, et cetera. She's brilliant. Not
to labor the point, but if you want to get
in touch do so. Email Paranormal Ireland at ProtonMail dot com.
I'm Mark Manning. Somebody has to be so long and
thanks for all the fish. See you on the next
Scary Era, Scariera
Speaker 9: Get Out, Get Out