Episode 24 Hoax Ghosts Part 1

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
Hello, everyone, and welcome. My name is Graham Milne.

[00:00:04] - [Speaker 1]
My name's Karen Swanston.

[00:00:06] - [Speaker 0]
And welcome to Lights On, Still Scared, where today we'll be talking about fake ghosts, ghostly scams, and all manner of strangeness.

[00:01:06] - [Speaker 1]
Looking forward to this one, Graham.

[00:01:07] - [Speaker 0]
Yep. It should be fun. There are some fabulous stories, mainly can... I I would say mainly historic, but there's a few contemporary ones and they're very, very funny and... But not so funny for the people who were witness to them.

[00:01:23] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. And there's some pretty freaky ones as well I would like to add.

[00:01:28] - [Speaker 0]
Well, this is great. Well, this is our pre Halloween episode as it were. Halloween following between two episodes, I guess. So we'll we'll call it our Halloween episode, shall we?

[00:01:40] - [Speaker 1]
Yep. That would be fine.

[00:01:45] - [Speaker 0]
So how have you been, Karen?

[00:01:47] - [Speaker 1]
I've been very well. How have you been?

[00:01:49] - [Speaker 0]
Fine. Any excitement? No. Go and ask me.

[00:01:57] - [Speaker 1]
Any excitement?

[00:01:58] - [Speaker 0]
No. There you go. But this is exciting. So this is this is what we look forward to doing. So Karen, I would say, would you like to kick off today?

[00:02:08] - [Speaker 0]
Proceedings?

[00:02:09] - [Speaker 1]
I shall do that. No problem.

[00:02:12] - [Speaker 0]
What have you got for us?

[00:02:13] - [Speaker 1]
Well, I have got a Hammersmith ghost. A Hammersmith ghost.

[00:02:17] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, Hammersmith ghost. Very nice.

[00:02:19] - [Speaker 1]
Well, this is a little bit of an early one. So it's late eighteen oh three

[00:02:24] - [Speaker 0]
GG: Uh-huh.

[00:02:25] - [Speaker 1]
It happened. And it resides in Hammersmith.

[00:02:28] - [Speaker 0]
London?

[00:02:29] - [Speaker 1]
GG: Yeah. In London, yes, indeed. But at that point, Hammersmith was just a village on the outskirts of London.

[00:02:34] - [Speaker 0]
GG: Right. Okay.

[00:02:35] - [Speaker 1]
GG: So obviously, it's now part of London. So yes, so in 1803, residents of the Hammersmith reported a white shrouded figure around the churchyard and nearby lanes. Rumors linked the apparition to a man who had died by suicide. This was the explanation locally.

[00:02:57] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:02:57] - [Speaker 1]
Rather than established facts, so they never quite actually found out who it was. Mhmm. Some people suspected a person wearing a sheet. And armed patrols began searching for the supposed ghost.

[00:03:09] - [Speaker 0]
Yes.

[00:03:10] - [Speaker 1]
And there's a Thomas Millwood, who was a bricklayer, whose working clothes includes white trousers, a white waist coat and an apron. And he'd already been mistaken for the ghost. Mrs. Fallbrook later testified that Thomas had told her about frightening two ladies and a gentleman in a carriage. So, Mrs.

[00:03:33] - [Speaker 1]
Fallbrook, in some accounts, she's his wife.

[00:03:37] - [Speaker 0]
In the

[00:03:38] - [Speaker 1]
accounts, he's his mother-in-law.

[00:03:40] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:03:41] - [Speaker 1]
But anyway, she begged him to cover his white clothes with a great coat because she feared he might be in danger.

[00:03:47] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:03:48] - [Speaker 1]
Her reported words include, your clothes look white. Pray, do put on your great coat that you may not run any danger. So basically, what I just said is what she said.

[00:04:01] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But a very politely put, I must Yeah.

[00:04:05] - [Speaker 1]
So on the third of January eighteen o four, Francis Smith, who was an exiled officer carrying a gun. Why he was carrying a gun? They never said, but...

[00:04:17] - [Speaker 0]
There you go.

[00:04:18] - [Speaker 1]
So he encountered Thomas in Black Lion Lane, and in the darkness, Smith mistook Thomas's white working clothes for the apparition and shot him dead.

[00:04:31] - [Speaker 0]
Dear, dear, dear.

[00:04:32] - [Speaker 1]
Dear, dear, indeed. So the murder trial took place. Sir Smith was tried at the Old Bailey, and the jury initially returned a verdict of manslaughter. Yeah. But the judges told them that under the circumstances, this required either a murder or an acquittal.

[00:04:51] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:04:53] - [Speaker 1]
So he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

[00:04:56] - [Speaker 0]
Oh.

[00:04:57] - [Speaker 1]
But the execution was stayed, and he subsequently received a conditional pardon required a year's imprisonment.

[00:05:04] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:05:05] - [Speaker 1]
And the court's reasoning was that even shooting a person pretending to be a ghost would not have been justified. Frightening people was not an offence warranting the death penalty, which is good to hear, I suppose.

[00:05:19] - [Speaker 0]
Well, suppose so, but I mean, you know, unfortunate series of events for

[00:05:23] - [Speaker 1]
Indeed.

[00:05:24] - [Speaker 0]
For him, I have to say.

[00:05:25] - [Speaker 1]
Indeed. So, yeah, a local shoemaker called John Graham admitted dressing in a sheet to frighten his apprentice. He said the apprentice had been frightening Graham's children with ghost stories and other tricks. Okay. So I wonder if he actually got anywhere, well, was actually given any sentencing or anything, but I suppose he probably got away with it.

[00:05:52] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. His

[00:05:52] - [Speaker 1]
fault that this man got shot in the first place.

[00:05:56] - [Speaker 0]
It it seems to be a... I mean, it seems to have been a thing historically when you look at sort of various reports. There was one really funny one from up north. I'm not gonna really talk about it today in such in detail, but it was quite amusing. It came from a place near Stonehaven, you know, in the Northeast Of Scotland.

[00:06:14] - [Speaker 0]
And I was thinking it was about in the nineteen twenties. I remember was like... Basically, the the newspaper article said there was a bus going down the country road, and the the passengers were all screaming in terror because this apparition had bounced across the road in front of the bus and vanished in a field because the bus driver chased the ghost. The ghost turned out to be a young man wearing a white sheet, you know, sheets were obviously very popular in those days with a pair of springs on his feet and he was caught and given the birch. I mean he wasn't shot but you know the birch, so it's pretty painful.

[00:06:48] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So yeah, they didn't take they didn't take all that tomfoolery too kindly in those days.

[00:06:52] - [Speaker 1]
They did not know.

[00:06:53] - [Speaker 0]
They did not indeed. Well, I've got a story from Dundee which was again quite an old one dating from 1883, and the location is a place called Blackness Quarry. Now the neighborhood in Blackness Quarry was in a state of alarm due to appearance of what is called the black spectre.

[00:07:14] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, that sounds ominous.

[00:07:16] - [Speaker 0]
I know. It wasn't just the run of the mill black spectre, but one described as being of Herculean proportions. So he's a bit big basically.

[00:07:25] - [Speaker 1]
Okay.

[00:07:26] - [Speaker 0]
He was wearing as well, so there lots of eyewitness accounts wearing a top coat or cape from heel to nape and completing his ensemble was a slouch hat. So, know, it's a pretty well dressed Herculean ghost, let's face it.

[00:07:40] - [Speaker 1]
Sounds like a spit of a spiffy dress.

[00:07:43] - [Speaker 0]
Spiff ghost. Yeah. So first witnessed by children and adults that are well, first was by children but the adults were were very disapproving because they thought it was the havers of burns and were making up and fantasizing. But then the kids refused to be outside again because of this specter appearing, so the locals began to grow nervous and soon after sightings of the same figure were then witnessed by also adults describing him as gliding noiselessly. So as the news spread, the Dundee Courier, which was local paper, was soon on the trail and reports were sent about to try and contact the locals to speak with them.

[00:08:24] - [Speaker 0]
However, the locals were not too happy about these reporters because they described their living quarters in the area they lived in as a dreary and gruesome region especially at night. See, but there are many places like that obviously, but the thing is the locals were very suspicious of these reports because they were making up stories perhaps. Who knows?

[00:08:48] - [Speaker 1]
Indeed.

[00:08:49] - [Speaker 0]
So anyway, a local woman then claimed to have been followed home by the ghost who... This was this was at New Year by the way, which is very funny and demanded spirits from our... Of a more earthier nature.

[00:09:02] - [Speaker 1]
Oh.

[00:09:02] - [Speaker 0]
As he said, give us a swill from your New Year bottle. Oh. So the ghost was obviously had a a paunch on for fancy dressing and guzzling ale. She fled screaming into the night, attracting the attention of nearby residents. Later, an ex policeman saw the ghost standing in a nearby lane and plucking up the courage to confront him, seized a poker and demanded to know his business.

[00:09:29] - [Speaker 0]
The specter then fled splashing through the mire into a nearby quarry. Several days later, a local resident, no doubt inspired by the ex policeman's grit, took it upon herself to do the same, and she grabbed a poker and she confronted the ghost only to find it was just an innocent man who'd been walking about in the evening, so she need clobbered the poor guy, the poker. A ragtag mob quickly gathered who intervened saving the man from a potential beating. The former policeman who witnessed the debacle said afterwards that the ghost would have made two of him, adding insult to injury, basically saying the guy was a skinny wee runt, basically. And like all stories of it, Silk, boredom and hysteria played its part and very soon it transpired.

[00:10:16] - [Speaker 0]
It was more than likely a tramp hiding out in the quarry, albeit a rather well dressed one.

[00:10:23] - [Speaker 1]
Very well dressed for a tramp ish, you think.

[00:10:26] - [Speaker 0]
And it just vanished, the story just fizzled out and vanished leaving the locals perplexed. But that's typical of the time, mass hysteria. There was lots of creepy stuff going on at the time. I mean, had the whole Spring Hill Jack thing going on as Yeah. Well in There was a lot of Spring Hill Jack type apparitions appearing everywhere across Britain, which was bizarre, but, you know, that was that was the nature of the things in those days, I suppose.

[00:10:53] - [Speaker 0]
But anyway, that was it. That was Blackness Quarry Ghost Dundee.

[00:10:59] - [Speaker 1]
Lovely. Right. So I have a mummified fairy. Pardon? Mummified fairy.

[00:11:06] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. Do you

[00:11:07] - [Speaker 1]
believe it fairies?

[00:11:09] - [Speaker 0]
Not 100%. Oh, God. No. I've just killed one. Sorry.

[00:11:13] - [Speaker 0]
Sorry, Tinker Bell.

[00:11:16] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, well, this is quite a recent one. So it's the April Fool's Hulk in 2007.

[00:11:22] - [Speaker 0]
Alright. Okay. Okay.

[00:11:23] - [Speaker 1]
So it's a prop maker and illusion designer called Dan Baines, create a convincing fairy corpse and invent its discovery story. So he did admit it was a hoax. So the story claims that an anonymous man walking his dog along an old Roman road between Duffield and Belper.

[00:11:46] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, Derby? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:49] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Discovered something unusual near an Iron Age burial mound.

[00:11:54] - [Speaker 0]
Uh-huh.

[00:11:54] - [Speaker 1]
His dog supposedly began barking and would not approach the mound. Investigating a crack in the ground, the man found a small, apparently mummified body with wings. The creature was described as approximately eight inches long with dried skin, teeth and flowing red hair. Photographs of the model accompanied the detailed account. There were claims that anthropologists and forensic experts had authenticated the remains.

[00:12:22] - [Speaker 1]
He really went into this story. He said, well, it's been proven, it's real.

[00:12:30] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Of course it is.

[00:12:32] - [Speaker 1]
It's described as a childlike skeleton with hollow bones resembling those of a bird and a navel suggesting reproduction similar to humans.

[00:12:41] - [Speaker 0]
Alright.

[00:12:42] - [Speaker 1]
So as I said, Dan Baines was a prop maker in illusion design and his skill in creating convincing objects explains the fairy's realistic Yeah. Yeah. Appearance.

[00:12:54] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. That wasn't thrown together with glue

[00:12:56] - [Speaker 1]
and a thick if you want to make this yourself, you can. In a later podcast interview, he described making a small plastic skeleton wrapped in paper masher using toilet paper

[00:13:08] - [Speaker 0]
Uh-huh.

[00:13:09] - [Speaker 1]
And drying it in an airing cupboard.

[00:13:11] - [Speaker 0]
Alright.

[00:13:12] - [Speaker 1]
The resulting shriveled appearance suggested a mummified body.

[00:13:20] - [Speaker 0]
Good to know.

[00:13:21] - [Speaker 1]
And he said he wrote a news style story and pitched it to a news paper as an Opal Falls hope.

[00:13:27] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:13:28] - [Speaker 1]
So, I mean, this... The photographs apparently spread online around April Fools' Day in 2007, as I've said previously. And he he subsequently admitted that the ferry was a fake. And I've just looked on his website as well when I was researching this, and and he does say this, and there's actually a picture of the the ferry on there

[00:13:49] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:13:50] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. As well. So he, you know, he does say, look, it is a fake. This is how I've done it.

[00:13:56] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:56] - [Speaker 1]
You know? So according to him in later account, he received messages from people who claimed to have encountered similar creatures. He also reported that some people rejected his confession. They suggested that he had been pressured to conceal a genuine discovery or that his mission was itself part of a cover up. So even though he has said, look, you know...

[00:14:23] - [Speaker 0]
This is not real.

[00:14:24] - [Speaker 1]
This is not real. Lots of people thought it was real.

[00:14:28] - [Speaker 0]
And that the fairies themselves had said, don't you go spreading those terrible rumors.

[00:14:32] - [Speaker 1]
No. No. Well, you don't want to piss off fairies. Excuse my language.

[00:14:35] - [Speaker 0]
Especially the Highland ones. They'll do you do you wrong, I reckon, according to legend anyway. Indeed. Wow. Isn't that wild?

[00:14:45] - [Speaker 0]
I was looking in eBay a few months ago, just a curiosity and it was all these people selling supposedly, you know, werewolf remains, strange vampire things, just... And just like, you know, in haunted boxes and haunted this and that and I think this is insane. The world's gone bad, you know.

[00:15:03] - [Speaker 1]
And people make a small fortune, I think, just put haunted on it.

[00:15:07] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Oh, dear. I've got some books for sale on some LPs. I'm gonna call them haunted LPs. I might shift.

[00:15:12] - [Speaker 0]
They've been on eBay for about six months. It might

[00:15:16] - [Speaker 1]
do. I've got Loopy Lou. Should I put Loopy Lou on?

[00:15:18] - [Speaker 0]
No. Don't do that. She may well be haunted. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:24] - [Speaker 0]
No. I never I never quite recovered from that. That was quite quite creepy.

[00:15:30] - [Speaker 1]
Right. We got now Graham.

[00:15:32] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. So we're going to Glasgow now. This is from the Herald newspaper, 07/14/1958. And basically it said three American students had been suffering from ghostly visitations and alleged poltergeist activity in their flat in Gibson Street which they were persuaded to believe was haunted due to this ongoing phenomena. However, the papers were not so kind and did not really believe it was a haunting, and basically, this is what happened.

[00:16:08] - [Speaker 0]
So they had heard things which convinced them that they shared their dwelling with a poltergeist. This is this is the reporter's words, by the way. They're very funny. A mild murmuring elemental that sometimes turned off the radiogram and occasionally pushed egg boxes and breadboards off their kitchen shelf. It was a wordless visitant that mumbles in two voices but never so distinctly that listener can distinguish what it's trying to say.

[00:16:40] - [Speaker 0]
The disembodied voices and the acoustics are much more considered in one of the neighboring streets in Woodside. So, basically, the report was suggesting that what they were hearing was their neighbors arguing. Okay. And it was a common thing because at the time, there was various other streets nearby that people were claiming the same phenomena. And as he's going around interview, it would appear that it was people because the walls were incredibly thin.

[00:17:09] - [Speaker 0]
Right. They were grumbling and because of this rumor, they were sitting in panic every night thinking this was actually a ghost where it was actually somebody next door arguing. So basically, the report goes on to say, a colleague a colleague who lives in one of the streets in neighboring Woodside has been both instructed and entertained by his haunting in which the words and sense of the ghostly conversation have been heard very clearly. These manifestations are also convenient because they have a set pattern and a timetable. The voices question and answer in rising notes begin just before midnight, perhaps three times a week, go on for half an hour, they later dwindle and fade, and the listener may then settle down to sleep undisturbed for five or six hours.

[00:18:01] - [Speaker 0]
And if he wakens rest and sharp of hearing just before 07:00 in the morning, he can pick up the conversation where it left off and always ends with a sharp thudding noise of the slamming of a front door. He goes and say one of the voices is defending and the other attacking in a reoccurring debate of domestic extravagance I e the guy was going to the pub too often and his wife was shrieking at him and that was the cause. So, this was a common thing at the time and this has been going on for years. I mean, go back the eighteen hundreds, so many stories involved like families falling out and freaking out about supposed ghost stories and of course, the news goes around the taverns and everybody starts talking about it. Absolute absurd.

[00:18:45] - [Speaker 0]
But anyway, that's what it was. It was literally nothing, just people arguing next door. But it made the paper for about three weeks. So there you go. I think 58.

[00:18:54] - [Speaker 1]
She didn't think that sometimes that it's the papers that actually make something out of nothing.

[00:19:00] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Yeah. They do. Well, they do tell the truth sometimes, do they?

[00:19:09] - [Speaker 0]
Do they?

[00:19:12] - [Speaker 1]
Do they?

[00:19:12] - [Speaker 0]
Well, I don't know. There's an article being written about that. Very meta. No. I don't know.

[00:19:20] - [Speaker 0]
Probably not. I I mean, I remember being interviewed for things in the paper. I mean, nothing major, just stuff about books and that and even that which is just me telling, know, what who I am and what I did, even that got exaggerated and I was like, how can you get this so bloody wrong? I mean, I just sat there and told the guy what he was meant to say and he somehow managed to fantasize and create something else out of nothing. So, yeah, it's a pain in the neck.

[00:19:45] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, dear. What can you do? There you go.

[00:19:48] - [Speaker 0]
I know. Don't don't go to the papers, I reckon.

[00:19:50] - [Speaker 1]
No. I think so. Keep your thumb.

[00:19:51] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah. What have you got for us?

[00:19:53] - [Speaker 1]
Well, talking of talking. Have you heard of Jeff, the talking mongoose?

[00:19:59] - [Speaker 0]
Yes.

[00:20:00] - [Speaker 1]
You have? It's brilliant. Oh, that's good.

[00:20:04] - [Speaker 0]
Go for it. I'm I'm gonna enjoy this.

[00:20:06] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, well, if anyone has not heard of Jeff the talking mongoose, which I must admit, I've only just discovered, which I thought, this is brilliant. So this is a story dated back to September 1931 at Dawlish Cachin, also called Cachin Gap, near Delby on the Isle Of Man.

[00:20:30] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. Yeah.

[00:20:31] - [Speaker 1]
That's So in this farmhouse, James and Margaret Irvin lived there with their teenage daughter, very, I think, hilarious. Mhmm. The family reported scratching and animal noises behind the wooden paneling. Mhmm. According to them, the noises gradually began to speak.

[00:20:49] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm. The voice intensified... I'm sorry. I'm starting to giggle. The voice identified itself as Jeff.

[00:20:58] - [Speaker 1]
He claimed to be a mongoose. Born in India in eighteen fifty fifty two, making him nearly 80 years old when the story began. Now I thought, can mongoose last that long?

[00:21:13] - [Speaker 0]
And why do I do that?

[00:21:14] - [Speaker 1]
So I went off and I I researched. Apparently, mongoose typically lives about six to ten years in the wild depending on the species. Mhmm. And in captivity, some can reach fifteen to twenty years.

[00:21:27] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. But... Know. So he's an exceptional mongoose.

[00:21:31] - [Speaker 1]
He's an exceptional mongoose. So Jeff became especially attached to Voorhe and supposedly lived behind the bowling and in the rafters. So early stories were different. A report in Mona's Herald, know it well.

[00:21:53] - [Speaker 0]
Can't I've had the pleasure of that, but never mind you.

[00:21:56] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, on 03/08/1932 called the creature Jack and described him as half mongoose and half weasel.

[00:22:07] - [Speaker 0]
Sorry.

[00:22:08] - [Speaker 1]
Descriptions of his appearance also varied. He is being compared to a weasel, a polecat, a squirrel, or even a large cat. Locally, he'd become known as the Delby Spook. So, yes, so description of his appearance varied as the story developed. So, you know, he had...

[00:22:29] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, this is brilliant. Anyway, what the family said and what was Jeff like. So the following are what the family claims rather than establish events. So, you know, that's what they said. So Jeff held conversations from behind the panel.

[00:22:43] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. He

[00:22:45] - [Speaker 1]
sang along to the gramophone.

[00:22:46] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:22:47] - [Speaker 1]
Droked and swore and interrupted people. And he could be affectionate one moment and insulted the next. He reportedly called James Irvin a fat headed gnome. Oh, dear. How people believe this?

[00:23:08] - [Speaker 1]
I don't know. But anyway, he claimed to travel around the island hearing conversation and bringing back gossip. He supposedly caught rabbits for the family. This is a good one. And offered horse racing tips with little success.

[00:23:25] - [Speaker 0]
I'll bet.

[00:23:27] - [Speaker 1]
Ultras were said to move or be thrown around the house. And Jeff also claimed powers of invisibility, making him considerably more extraordinary than a usually talented animal. As you know, well, apparently, the central problem was getting Jeff to demonstrate his abilities when investigators were present.

[00:23:51] - [Speaker 0]
That old chestnut. Yikes.

[00:23:55] - [Speaker 1]
So Harry Price. Oh, great Harry Price. Yes. Paranormal investigator visited with Richard S. Lambert, editor of the BBC magazine, The Listener, in 1935.

[00:24:08] - [Speaker 1]
Jeff did not speak to them during their visit.

[00:24:10] - [Speaker 0]
Right.

[00:24:11] - [Speaker 1]
Well, that's a surprise, isn't it? No. And they published The Haunting of Cash and Cap in 1936. Price was unconvinced by the evidence.

[00:24:21] - [Speaker 0]
Right. Yeah. Well, can imagine so.

[00:24:25] - [Speaker 1]
There was a psycho researcher, Nandan Vordor.

[00:24:32] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, yeah. That's a that's a... Yeah. An interesting He name.

[00:24:37] - [Speaker 1]
Also stayed in the farmhouse. He did not see Jeff or converse with him, and his account depended heavily on the family's report and the other witnesses.

[00:24:46] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm.

[00:24:47] - [Speaker 1]
So what the other witnesses or some visitors claimed that they could hear Jeff, one investigator called Harold Dennis reported hearing a voice while the family members appeared to be accounted for. Mhmm. And some reports are part of the case. You know, it's it's not a controlled test to prove that it can

[00:25:06] - [Speaker 0]
actually talk,

[00:25:09] - [Speaker 1]
you know. There were hair samples apparently of Jeff.

[00:25:12] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:25:13] - [Speaker 1]
But the hair sample provided failed to establish a mongoose. Yeah. And was associated to the family dog.

[00:25:22] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:25:23] - [Speaker 1]
So apparently the hair slides still survive.

[00:25:26] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:25:27] - [Speaker 1]
At the Zoological Society of London.

[00:25:30] - [Speaker 0]
Very good.

[00:25:31] - [Speaker 1]
And they have recently said that their parents suggested domestic dog hair, but they have not gone genetic testing.

[00:25:39] - [Speaker 0]
So that's all,

[00:25:39] - [Speaker 1]
you know, they know it's a dog.

[00:25:41] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. It's hardly likely it'd be worth all that effort, I suppose.

[00:25:45] - [Speaker 1]
Yes. So there's photographs that Vori apparently took, but they did not clearly establish an unknown creature. There was also poor impressions as well, which was inconclusive. Identify as mongoose. Mhmm.

[00:26:02] - [Speaker 1]
Mhmm. So Price, Harry Price, described the hollow wooden panel that could carry sound around the building. And someone speaking through Gatz could potentially make a voice appear it coming elsewhere.

[00:26:14] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:26:15] - [Speaker 1]
And he concluded this is probably the possible method.

[00:26:18] - [Speaker 0]
That's bizarre.

[00:26:20] - [Speaker 1]
Yes. So what happened to Jeff? Do you know what happened to Jeff?

[00:26:25] - [Speaker 0]
He retired. No. Did he just vanish? Did he not...

[00:26:30] - [Speaker 1]
Jeff has never been confirmed dead. But after the Irvins left the farmhouse, his new owner, Leslie Graham, claimed to have killed Jeff. Harry Price Archives holds a photograph and press cuttings about the animal dated back to February 1947.

[00:26:48] - [Speaker 0]
Really?

[00:26:48] - [Speaker 1]
So if it really had been Jeff, and he claimed that his birthday was date was 1852, that would have made him '94, '95.

[00:26:58] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah. That's bizarre.

[00:27:00] - [Speaker 1]
However, Voorhees insists that the dead animal wasn't Jeff. Poorly black and white and larger than the creature she described.

[00:27:07] - [Speaker 0]
Right. Okay. Where did you find it from? I wonder the dead... Well, whatever animal it was.

[00:27:12] - [Speaker 0]
I mean Indeed. Probably killed a local.

[00:27:18] - [Speaker 1]
So so if you're still hanging around in 2026, that would make him a 174.

[00:27:24] - [Speaker 0]
That's crazy.

[00:27:26] - [Speaker 1]
And presumably still interrupting people from behind in the skirting boards.

[00:27:31] - [Speaker 0]
Well, like the swearing bit, I have to say. That's quite funny. There's actually a film being made of that or a play or TV thing. I do... I can't remember if it's on Netflix or

[00:27:42] - [Speaker 1]
Oh.

[00:27:42] - [Speaker 0]
Prime or something like that.

[00:27:44] - [Speaker 1]
I have to have a look.

[00:27:45] - [Speaker 0]
Nandor. I can never pronounce Nandor Fodor. I can never pronounce that guy's name.

[00:27:50] - [Speaker 1]
I know.

[00:27:51] - [Speaker 0]
It's about Hemi anyway.

[00:27:52] - [Speaker 1]
I think I struggled with that name as well. But it would be interesting to go and see the photographs. Yeah. And... But apparently, they're they're in a museum.

[00:28:03] - [Speaker 1]
Or was it a library? Sorry. No, it's a library in London.

[00:28:07] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:28:07] - [Speaker 1]
But I think it's closed at the moment. So, yeah. So...

[00:28:12] - [Speaker 0]
It always happens these lonely little places when people haven't got much company. I often wonder, do think that's got something Yeah. To do with it? Do you

[00:28:19] - [Speaker 1]
think they're

[00:28:20] - [Speaker 0]
bored or...

[00:28:21] - [Speaker 1]
Would it be like a a story or a joke or something from the family that's kinda like got out... Slightly out

[00:28:26] - [Speaker 0]
of hand? Yeah. True. True. True.

[00:28:28] - [Speaker 0]
And the papers, of course, as we mentioned, got hold of it. Who knows?

[00:28:33] - [Speaker 1]
Who knows indeed.

[00:28:35] - [Speaker 0]
Well, I've got one for you now but it's from Dundee and Angus. It's a story that appeared in the Dundee Courier in 1949 and was submitted to the paper by Perth reader who was was once upon a time a nurse working what was described as a big fever hospital. And the ghost or at least the main ghost that was supposed to haunt at the hospital was that of a priest and so these tales were going around the wards and of course were embellished and a lot of people thought that perhaps the story's been completely made up to scare, you know, trainee nurses, that kind of thing. One of the earliest reports was from a maid who having witnessed him, this priest figure, standing in a nearby balcony had been generally terrified by his appearance. Footsteps were heard frequently to be pacing outside the ward so no one was ever seen waiting there.

[00:29:34] - [Speaker 0]
And the witness assigned to Luke after infants and babies was given a two month stint, the main witness, at the night shift, which nobody actually wanted to do. The night shift was always unpopular because it was, you know, obviously, everybody was exhausted, etcetera etcetera and she had to work there all evening and so the work... I do work in a haunted ward became, you know, quite a terrifying prospect. So the first night of our shift, the nurse spent much of the night listening out for any sound that might be deemed out of the ornery and the evening was described as unending. It just went dragged on and on and on.

[00:30:10] - [Speaker 0]
And at around 12:00, while doing the rounds, she checked on each patient and found that one four year old girl was wide awake and afterwards she said, she looked steadily past me towards the big old fashioned fireplace and when asked if she would like to get some sleep, the girl replied in the negative saying that she liked to watch the lady. So whether the story is made up or not, she then went to say that lady goes when the nurses comes but appears again when they get back. So the nurse laughed this off and so eventually sat with the young girl. Not feeling, you know, she's feeling a little bit out of sorts, a little bit freaked out by this but sat with the wee girl. Eventually, she fell asleep.

[00:30:56] - [Speaker 0]
In the middle of the night, footsteps then are heard crunching across the gravel towards the hospital, and then the door opens or she can hear the door open downstairs and footsteps echoing through the hospital. And the nurse, now on her own, in this room of the young girl is generally terrified. She heard the steps and come along the corridor towards the room she was in and then she heard the door handle rattle And she said, described, she felt a scream rising in her throat, but no sound could come. Oh. So it was then that door handle opened and the figure then entered the room.

[00:31:34] - [Speaker 0]
Much to relief, it was a kindly voice, and it was a minister, by the way. And he inquired, where about was Ward 15? There was a poor man dying there who needed the comfort of a priest. Poor woman. So she probably nearly had like a a breakdown, but it was a genuine priest, not the ghost one.

[00:31:54] - [Speaker 0]
That was that was the story. Yeah. That was that was a true story allegedly from the Dundee Courier. But who knows? Who knows?

[00:32:02] - [Speaker 1]
Hope you enjoyed those stories. Join us next week for more ghosty hoax.