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March 28, 2024, 11:07:32 AM

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BBC's Uncanny podcast

Started by Keebleman, December 30, 2021, 06:09:43 PM

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Thomas

Thanks for bringing this up, Keebleman. I wasn't aware of this podcast, and I've been searching for a new spooky fix that isn't too straightforwardly gullible/American. I like Unexplained, but I don't think it's fair to call this a rip-off. Unexplained doesn't explore listeners' stories, or interview witnesses.

Or call on the expert advice of esteemed parapsychologists.

SCEPTIC: 'These accounts could be the result of muddled memories, hallucination, misinterpretation, pareidolia, infrasound, sleep paralysis, or many other environmental and psychological factors.'
PARAPSYCHOLOGIST: 'Those are some big ifs. It's far more likely that the dead come back to life and slam doors. We know that's true in this case because the witness says so.'

Nevertheless, I love spooky stories and would love to meet a ghost myself, if any of them are reading.

holdover

I didn't think much of the latest story. I was distracted by the Jay Rayner soundalike.

Spoiler alert
Reckon Jay didn't like his new home and gaslit his wife after vaguely remembering The Shining
[close]

I'm up to Episode 7 and I think the weakest one so far is the "message from a dead best friend" episode (Case 4), even the woman telling the story didn't sound convinced there was anything supernatural going on, just that she couldn't explain it to herself.

And the second incident she describes at least is explainable straight away,
Spoiler alert
she'd obviously forgotten telling one of her work colleagues about the friend's last words(she seemed incredibly vague about how many people she'd actually told about it, except that it was "hardly anyone") and they blabbed it to the medium while she was out of the room. She clearly didn't want to think they would do that, but surely someone did?
[close]

Mediums are just fucking bullshit in any case. I loathe the whole parasitical scam of them and that so many people still willingly buy into it. At least the woman in this case wasn't fooled by them which is what I was worried about at first.

iamcoop

Aye, I let out an audible groan when they said the second unexplainable event involved her going to see a medium. It was definitely the weakest of the lot (although the haunted house in Birmingham was preposterous as well. I mean, at least try and stay away from horror film tropes like
Spoiler alert
scary Victorian church sermons being heard over a baby monitor).
[close]

I found the first case the most interesting as all the people involved seemed totally plausible and rational people who, although probably deep down knew it was explainable, still clearly went through something that deeply affected them. That idea in itself, that there can be a perfect storm of events that manifests itself into one thing that absolutely terrifies you is more frightening to me than whether or not ghosts exist.



Cuellar

I was driving (or being driven) past Todmorden once, in about the mid-90s, and I actually thought I saw a UFO. I was young at the time, though. It was quite small. It was, as they all say, totally silent and appeared just on the crest of a hill. It didn't really move the whole time I saw it, just was sort of there. We were driving towards this hill, and as we approached it stayed completely still. Dead still until we got to within about 500 metres of it, then it disappeared behind the crest of this hill.

Tried to alert my parents/brother but they didn't seem that interested. You could tell they saw it, but they seemed oddly blasé about it. I was absolutely transfixed, though.

Turns out it was just a
Spoiler alert
pig
[close]

Nearly got through the whole lot. The Haunted Bothy episode has definitely been the most interesting/disturbing from the point of view of the events involving different groups of people over a long period of time, and also that it seems to have a profoundly negative effect on those involved, even years afterwards.

Spoiler alert
Did that poor fella really go into a spiral of depression and then kill himself as a result of what he'd experienced? That's horrific if so, but they haven't quite given us enough detail. We don't know if there were other factors in his life that contributed to his suicide so it would a bit presumptuous to say "a ghost made Dave kill himself" without knowing the whole story.
[close]

paruses

The bothy one was a good example of people corroborating events except, as the sceptic pointed out, they're never experiencing the same events. And I got the feeling a lot of information on that one was left out or skewed in the edit. One example would be the "live" event where the guy recorded audio of a return trip and some stones fell down while he was recording. I've been out in the countryside and some stones have fallen down when I've been near. It's not that rare. The scope of negative incidents involving people visiting the bothy seems too wide as well - consider that all those who survived the sinking of Titanic have perished in the intervening years and it seems like there was no escape from that cursed ship either.

Didn't care for the car crash one much. In fact the parting shot of the local paper reporting (and seemingly corroborating) the event with
Spoiler alert
I looked up to see a body on the bonnet of a van
[close]
could probably be taken from any number eye witness statements of cars or vans hitting pedestrians.

As above with the message from a dead friend episode my piss simmered a little where they played the woman saying she had
Spoiler alert
told barely anyone
[close]
about her friend's last words to her and then her being adamant that
Spoiler alert
no one could have told the medium
[close]
Well,
Spoiler alert
almost no one could have
[close]
. I do have a fascination with mediums though - just from the scam angle. There was always a programme on an obscure digital channel in the mornings when I stayed in hotels for work and which meant I was constantly late. Could not tear myself away from it.


DenzilHolles

Agreed on all of that. It's not really a serious program, but it is entertaining and I'm the same about Mediums as scammers. I think they also mentioned Uri Geller as an example of someone actually with telekenis.

The latest episode was very similar to
Spoiler alert
the dead floating victorian child one
[close]
in terms of sheer ridiculousness and horror film tropes. And yes it was
Spoiler alert
a scene straight out of the shining
[close]

Spoiler alert

Psybro

Quote from: Cuellar on January 12, 2022, 09:41:40 PMI was driving (or being driven) past Todmorden once, in about the mid-90s, and I actually thought I saw a UFO. I was young at the time, though. It was quite small. It was, as they all say, totally silent and appeared just on the crest of a hill. It didn't really move the whole time I saw it, just was sort of there. We were driving towards this hill, and as we approached it stayed completely still. Dead still until we got to within about 500 metres of it, then it disappeared behind the crest of this hill.

Tried to alert my parents/brother but they didn't seem that interested. You could tell they saw it, but they seemed oddly blasé about it. I was absolutely transfixed, though.

Turns out it was just a
Spoiler alert
pig
[close]

Everyone knows there's no such thing as Todmorden

paruses

Quote from: DenzilHolles on January 13, 2022, 06:54:12 PMAgreed on all of that. It's not really a serious program, but it is entertaining and I'm the same about Mediums as scammers. I think they also mentioned Uri Geller as an example of someone actually with telekenis.

Yes I meant to add at the end of my post that I do really enjoy listening to these. I find they make the hairs on my neck stand up even though I am rolling my eyes more and more as the series goes on (and not because I am possessed).
 
Forgot about the Uri Geller mention. Which ep was that? Seemed a really odd thing to throw in as someone who stands up to any scrutiny.

Keebleman

I'd say the least interesting episodes so far have been the dead friend and the car crash. In both cases natural explanations are readily apparent.

The most convincing is the 'Angel in the Bathroom' one, because the only explanation is that the guy is making it up, which of course shouldn't be ruled out.

I wouldn't be that surprised if the Hannah Betts one turns out to be her pulling a long-form prank (this Daily Mail article she wrote a couple of years ago contains pretty much all the info that was in the podcast https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-7894245/My-night-Britains-haunted-house-prepare-Hannah-Betts-Hampton-Court-Palace.html).  The phenomena she describes is certainly scary, but to me it sounds like stuff a professed atheist would dream up if they wanted to write a ghost story.  I'd be even less surprised if at least some of the phenomena had been created by one or more of her teenage siblings.

It's notable how prominent domestic disharmony is in many of the episodes.

paruses

#41
QuoteI wouldn't be that surprised if the Hannah Betts one turns out to be her pulling a long-form prank (this Daily Mail article she wrote a couple of years ago contains pretty much all the info that was in the podcast https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-7894245/My-night-Britains-haunted-house-prepare-Hannah-Betts-Hampton-Court-Palace.html).  The phenomena she describes is certainly scary, but to me it sounds like stuff a professed atheist would dream up if they wanted to write a ghost story.  I'd be even less surprised if at least some of the phenomena had been created by one or more of her teenage siblings.

Yes - being charitable a lot of it sounds like collective hysteria and kids dicking around and parents encouraging it. What's the phenomenon where one person says they're ill and then loads of people very close by get the same symptoms (but it turns out hardly anyone is ill)?  The mother was even more deliberately vague than the spirit world: "something to do with time". That's exactly the sort of thing I would tell my nephew to string along a family story. Being less charitable maybe the BBC (in the old days) or Netflix would like to make a limited series based on the account.

Here's the text of @Keebleman article - just to minimise click-throughs to The D**** M***:

QuoteA small band of five is wandering around Hampton Court Palace on a freezing winter's night, lit only by a minuscule torch and occasional washes of moonlight. 'Here's a bolt we had to have disabled because the door kept being locked from the other side, despite no human hand having touched it,' frowns Liam Stanley, who grew up delivering papers to the palace and is now one of its head warders. 'We try to work around these situations.' We all laugh a little too loudly. This laughter stops abruptly when we find the next door bolted.
Liam radios security: 'Did any of you lock us out of the State Bedroom?' 'Not us,' comes the reply. We take the long route through the darkness to approach from the opposite end of the quad. The bolt is drawn emphatically across, the rooms drenched in a rose and incense aroma. 'This scent occurs here a lot,' notes head of communications Laura Hutchinson. 'Scientists say it's something to do with the wood expanding.'
'But it only happens in Queen Caroline's apartments,' adds her colleague Adam Budhram, 'and that doesn't explain the door.'
I've known Laura and Adam for years. The former has worked at Hampton Court since 2012, the latter from 2014. They are rational, intelligent people who deal with having their headquarters at one of Britain's most haunted sites with equanimity, as do most of the palace's 651 employees. Their office has one side that feels normal, the other so sinister that a former cleaner would throw rice ahead of her to ward off evil spirits. 'Still, I'm a terminally sensible person,' beams Laura. 'I was raised Catholic, my mum was a nurse who used to look after people at the end of their lives. She'd tell me that the dying can see things we can't. I've always been comfortable with that idea, never really thinking about ghosts as a negative presence.' Adam is not quite so stoical: 'The minute the sun goes down you begin to convince yourself that, if there were spirits, this is the place they'd be: in room after room with creaking floors, endless shadows and few lights.'
Long before Cardinal Wolsey built this not-so-humble abode over 500 years ago, Hampton Court was the site of a manor belonging to the black-robed Order of St John of Jerusalem, meaning that even the Tudors found themselves haunted by those who'd gone before. For hundreds of years, the living have found themselves assailed by the dead. The past has made itself present in the form of royal apparitions, hooded figures, diabolic voices, dire threats, deformed faces, unearthly footsteps, mysterious writing, stroking fingers and pewter platter-stacking poltergeists.
So commonplace are the palace's spectres they have even been captured on film (you can see the images of 'Skeletor' on YouTube). There are also cat ghosts and dog ghosts. One might say that Hampton Court's 1,000-plus rooms are alive with dead, the dank mist that rises off the Thames meaning that day can be as shrouded as night.
Initially, when it was opened to the public in 1838, the authorities were reluctant to acknowledge the palace's ghoulish appeal. However, eventually they were forced to yield to the inevitable, as the supernatural experiences attested to by staff, residents and, increasingly, the public were simply too numerous.
More than half the faintings at the palace still happen at one particular spot
Today, Liam explains: 'We'll tell the stories and it's up to people to decide for themselves. But it's a bit awkward when mediums turn up and start telling you stuff they claim to be hearing.' There are ghost tours and a booklet entitled: Is the Palace Haunted? However, seances are prohibited. Even the infamous Haunted Gallery – which poor Catherine Howard has repeatedly been witnessed tearing down, screaming to Henry VIII for her life – is no longer signposted to limit any hysteria; visitors only discovering as they leave that this is where they have been.
Yet over half the faintings that take place at the palace still happen at one particular spot. It's here that a visitor claimed her earring had been ripped from her lobe and where chief curator Lucy Worsley admits to feeling uneasy. It is the point where Howard dropped to her knees and wept for her life. An abused child, later the subject of rape, she was married, aged 16, to an irascible Henry. Executed a couple of years later, she was so distraught she was put on suicide watch lest she beat her captors to it.
I stand here with Liam, Adam, Laura and my sister Florence. The Gallery as a whole may be warm, but this one spot is glacial, lightbulbs flickering. Bright lights appear on the photographs Florence takes, then her phone plunges from 60 per cent charged to nil. The air crackles with some sort of absent presence. None of us would say we've seen a ghost, but all of us feel shaken. Some great misery has happened here and it continues to seep out of the place almost half a millennium later.
My sister is with us because she and I once lived in a haunted house, although my family attempted to deny it, being atheists – believers in nothing. Ask us and we'll tell you that we still don't believe in ghosts. However, for a year or two after we moved in to our Midlands home – and less intensely for the 30 years that followed – ghosts were exactly what we experienced.
I was 16 the summer we took possession of this lofty Victorian villa: ivy-strewn, lurking behind trees, rich in hiding places. Our new home held a degree of notoriety. Local folklore claimed that it boasted three 'presences': a woman who paced the ground floor, an elderly doctor forever racing up its stairs seeking out a dying grandson and – in its attics – the victim of an argument that had spilled over into murder. There was even that Hammer House of Horror prerequisite: a bloodstain on the stairs.
We didn't care. My parents had five children – me, 15-year-old Victoria, 12-year-old-George, Flo, nine, and Tim, four – and we needed space; even space that everyone else was too afraid to occupy. Our new home was large, beautiful, surrounded by swaying greenery. However, there was something unsettling about it: a personality, almost, and sense that we were installing ourselves in a place already occupied. It never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own accord, footsteps echoed. It felt as if we were being watched, assessed.
Then all hell broke loose and the house erupted in a fit of resistance against its new owners. Every night at 4am, someone – something – would hurtle up its stairs, rattling, then thrusting open the doors in its wake, until it reached my parents' room, sweeping in in a ferocious, door-slamming storm. Once – ridiculously, but in hideously unequivocal fashion – it relieved its excess energy with a few strokes on their rowing machine.
Staunchly, Britishly, we refused to acknowledge this. Until, one night, my furious doctor father, writing books in the early hours, bellowed: 'Whoever's charging up and down the stairs, will they please stop?' The rest of us indignantly scrambled out of our bedrooms to declare that it wasn't us. Once, drunk in order to endure the nightly performance, I bellowed: 'Shut the **** up,' and it did for a couple of seconds, before recommencing with still more gusto. Florence was impressed by this heroic stance. Her son, now the age she was then, still notes: 'Hannah shouts at ghosts.'
The more we ignored the situation, the harder the house endeavoured to impress us with its fiendishness. We would return to find taps on full force, a third-floor oven with its rings set red hot. We had it disconnected. It happened again. One night, my room's boarded-up fireplace split open with the world's most horrific noise. Come morning, I discovered screwed up Victorian newspapers recording the house's murder that had been crammed up the chimney, then nailed over.
We elders finally acknowledged what was happening. Sitting in the kitchen, buoyed by tea and laughter, we were startled by a mirror springing off the wall and shattering. On the back of it, in old-fashioned script, the numbers 666 were repeatedly carved, together with the statement: 'I'm going to ******* kill you all.'
In the horror movie of our story, this would be the moment when the plucky householders called in the cavalry in the form of priests or new-age gurus. Nonbelievers, we had no cavalry to call. I told myself I could handle it so long as I never saw anything. My mother and infant brother were the only ones to lay eyes on anything that long summer. Waking in the night, she encountered a dead child. This is how she recalled it – not a ghost, but a dead child dressed in Victorian clothing, visible from the knees up. My four-year-old brother occupied the house's most eerie quarters: cut off down a corridor and forever freezing, even that sweltering August. That summer, he lost his infant ease, rendered watchful, hollow-eyed. Asked why he was so exhausted, he replied: 'Every night, it's the same: the lady with the big bottom [a bustle?] and the two men fighting over my bed, then one man hurts the other and the lady screams.'
My grandmother spent one night there, then swore never to enter again. My mother followed suit, to prove her mother wrong. Next morning, the room was locked. She refused to divulge what had happened, saying only that it was 'something to do with time'. This remains the most horrifying thing I have ever heard.
Like any sane individual, I am wary of ghost stories with their dogged march towards crescendo. Real life isn't like that, nor unreal life, as it happens. This is a narrative with no dramatic climax. Gradually, over the next couple of years, events petered out. There would still be episodes of acting up – around newcomers, say, or children. Beds would shake at 4am, figures be observed striding through doors. We still kept that room locked. But the place lost its bite. Maybe its occupants got used to us, and we to them. By the time my parents were dying there, the house felt like a supportive presence, as I wandered about it in the small hours in search of drugs and linen. Its shadows soothed rather than disturbed. Were one being fanciful, one might say that it was at home with death as it hadn't been with new life, settled by it.
 'A mirror shattered. on the back in old-fashioned script the numbers 666 were carved repeatedly
Ghost stories are among the oldest tales in every culture. There are ghosts in both the Old and New Testament, Homer and Virgil. Humankind seems to crave phantoms in an attempt to fend off the one thing of which we can all be sure: that death is coming for us. In a YouGov survey, one in four Britons maintained that a house can be haunted by some kind of supernatural force; almost as many (34 per cent) were convinced that ghosts exist. Women are ten per cent more likely to believe in spirits and 15 per cent more likely to think that houses can be haunted. Almost one in ten of us assert we have communicated with the dead.
Certain eras, certain societies appear to need spectres more than others. The Victorians, with their queen who mourned for four decades, and hideous child mortality rate, embraced seances with a passion. After the First World War and the ensuing flu epidemic, a similar craze took hold. A friend took up spiritualism after fleeing the Nazis in the Second World War. She wanted to be assured that her loved ones had found peace.
In the same way, my attitude towards ghosts transformed after my parents died. Where I had been sceptical, I learned to yearn. A couple of weeks after my father died, I lay awake willing him to take my hand. I have never had any truck with life after death, and neither did he. However, I believed I might make him do it through sheer force of will.
Three and a half years later, I summon him on railway platforms. Some bearded old man will walk towards me and I will think: 'What if we were given another 24 hours?' My mother resisted her demise with every ounce of strength her ailing body could muster. Surely she, more than anyone, would come back if she could?
Florence was especially close to her. I ask whether she believes in ghosts. 'I think ghosts are a mixture of shared folkloric expectation, auto-suggestion, electromagnetic resonance, romance and wishful thinking. For a while, I was desperate to see Mum and Dad. Then I had bereavement counselling and they said: "What would you say to your mother's ghost?" I had an image of her withered, like a shade of herself, and the need to see them disappeared.'
Back at Hampton Court, Liam tells me that he doesn't mind being one of the custodians roaming about in its dark because 'there's no menace' in it. Not in Jane Seymour perhaps, seen on the Silverstick Stairs, silently seeking out her son. More so in the palace's most sinister chamber, Cardinal Wolsey's rooms, where three members of the public and one staff member heard a voice mutter: 'You will die'. A hooded figure with a disfigured face has been spotted here more than once and a witch's mark (gobbledegook said to distract the devil) has been knifed into the fireplace.
How does one explain such occurrences? Flo tells me there is a growing school of thought that the 'symptoms' of hauntings (feelings of dread, seeing things, hearing voices) can be explained by areas of extremely high or low magnetic resonance. Sleep paralysis – a state that occurs when someone wakes while still in the dream-inducing, rapid eye movement stage of sleep – may account for the classic sinister shape by the bed.
If pushed, I'd fall back on some vague version of the so-called Stone Tape theory, a sort of 'place memory' in which certain events somehow reproduce themselves through time. Do I believe this? Not really, but it's the nearest I'm going to get. What I do know is that the interaction between people and place can be complicated, strangely resonant, even terrifying at times – whether said place is my former home or Cardinal Wolsey's. I think of Wolf Hall novelist Hilary Mantel's remark about visiting Hampton Court for the first time: 'I knew then what it was to feel history through your skin.'


paruses

Quote from: Keebleman on January 14, 2022, 02:28:08 AMI'd say the least interesting episodes so far have been the dead friend and the car crash. In both cases natural explanations are readily apparent.

The most convincing is the 'Angel in the Bathroom' one, because the only explanation is that the guy is making it up, which of course shouldn't be ruled out.

Forgot to put this in previous post.

I liked the sceptic's idea that you have no way of knowing what the bolt on the door was like. It could have been at a shit angle and loosened so with the jiggling it finally slipped free. The other thing about it is that he describes it as rising up and sliding seamlessly open and the sister witnessing it. From the account the sister only saw that the  door had opened therefore the bolt had been freed.

I thought that was the most interesting one and also got quite involved with the story from the jeopardy / human angle.

Alberon

I think the person who he was rescuing also was said to see the bolt move, but there really is only one witness - the person talking to the podcast.

We only have his word for it that the person being rescued saw the bolt lift and move and even if it was true it's not a testimony you can really rely on as at that very moment he was so distressed he was drinking bleach.

It was impossible in that particular case, but my biggest problem with the series is there is no attempt made to track down the other witnesses mentioned.

Robins will say something like "Three witnesses. That's big!" but he's only talked to one and really has no idea if these other people exist at all, let alone will corroborate the story.

paruses

Quote from: Alberon on January 14, 2022, 11:32:31 AMI think the person who he was rescuing also was said to see the bolt move

Yes, I forgot about that. And for the door to open the bolt had to move. I can't remember how the third person reporting of the eye witness testimony was phrased.

QuoteWe only have his word for it that the person being rescued saw the bolt lift and move and even if it was true it's not a testimony you can really rely on as at that very moment he was so distressed he was drinking bleach.

I am surprised the podcast didn't describe the guy as "having a drink of bleach" to give him more credibility.

Cuellar

Quote from: paruses on January 14, 2022, 11:59:36 AMYes, I forgot about that. And for the door to open the bolt had to move. I can't remember how the third person reporting of the eye witness testimony was phrased.

I am surprised the podcast didn't describe the guy as "having a drink of bleach" to give him more credibility.

I think the poor kid just said, according to the guy, 'How did you get in?', I'm not sure he ever said he saw the bolt move...Might be wrong though.

I'm with the sceptic, obviously. Who knows how solid that bolt was, and the guy admits that he'd tried to kick it in, barge it in, which could have easily dislodged it, if it was ever solidy lodged in the first place. He said he was just looking throuh the keyhole as it happened, but it was a very tense situation, could he still have been banging on the door/rattling the door, to keep the kid's attention?

Alberon

And memory cheats. If it seemed to miraculously open you might easily 'remember' it being lifted and opened.

When you press on a door the bolt might rotate if it or the barrel is not completely round or centred. So it might lift, especially if it is nearly open anyway.

Another argument I often have with newer poltergeist cases is why is no one recording them? Just like with UFOs most of us carry a very good audio/visual recording device in our pocket. At least some people should be catching this.

Cuellar

Also, I feel like if the angel wanted to help the kid, he could have knocked the bleach out of his hands, or forced the bleach out of his stomach, AND opened the door.

Ham Bap

I really like this podcast and love falling asleep to it. The best ones so far have been the student halls, #BloodyHellKen, and the Scottish bothy.
The Ufo one, car-crash one and a few others were a bit meh.

The most recent one
Spoiler alert
with the timeslips (!) was just The Shining
[close]

Icehaven

Quote from: Keebleman on January 14, 2022, 02:28:08 AMIt's notable how prominent domestic disharmony is in many of the episodes.

Absolutely, including in the most recent one too. That aspect is mentioned in a few episodes too but he never pushes it too far, probably to avoid awkwardness or going off topic (even though it isn't really).

turnstyle

Been listening to this based on the recommendations here.

I like how ya man points out how groovy it is that the skeptic and the believer can have differing but respectful opinions, as I always imagine the skeptic is just itching to shout out 'THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS GHOSTS, IT WAS THE FUCKING WIND YOU ABSOLUTE TWAT-MUFFIN'.

I don't know how I feel about the spooky sound effects they add in - on the one hand it is effective in setting the scene, but on the other...something about it feels slightly disingenuous. Like those Netflix true crime docs that flash up pictures of skeletons or use stock library footage of some blood being thrown against a wall or something.

As a die hard skeptic, who still enjoys a good ghost story, I also find myself muttering 'oh COME ON' quite regularly. The bit with the haunted house and the message behind the mirror. Come on mate.

holyzombiejesus

I've enjoyed most of these but so much of it wounds like a reconstruction rather than the actual people being interviewed. Was The Battersea Poltergeist any good?

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: bgmnts on December 31, 2021, 02:33:09 AMUsually, British supernatural/paranormal events are so shit it's pointless even making a thing of it.

What was that one in the 80s where it was a guy with a computer getting messages from someone from the past?

Frequency?

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on January 18, 2022, 09:10:21 PMI've enjoyed most of these but so much of it wounds like a reconstruction rather than the actual people being interviewed. Was The Battersea Poltergeist any good?
It started off really well. But I got to about episode 5 and I just stopped listening. So it couldn't have been that great. I keep meaning to go back to it. One of the actors got right on my tits, also.

Keebleman

The latest one - another to be set in student digs - has just been posted.  It is a terrific story, but the very fact that it has a neat narrative works against its credibility.

bgmnts

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on January 19, 2022, 12:22:48 PMFrequency?

Sorry I was referring to the Dodleston Messages. One of those mysteries where the mystery isn't the the paranormal or conspiratorial or wild out there angle, but it's a "how the fuck did they pull that off?" mystery.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Keebleman on January 14, 2022, 02:28:08 AMI'd say the least interesting episodes so far have been the dead friend and the car crash. In both cases natural explanations are readily apparent.

The most convincing is the 'Angel in the Bathroom' one, because the only explanation is that the guy is making it up, which of course shouldn't be ruled out.

I wouldn't be that surprised if the Hannah Betts one turns out to be her pulling a long-form prank (this Daily Mail article she wrote a couple of years ago contains pretty much all the info that was in the podcast https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-7894245/My-night-Britains-haunted-house-prepare-Hannah-Betts-Hampton-Court-Palace.html).  The phenomena she describes is certainly scary, but to me it sounds like stuff a professed atheist would dream up if they wanted to write a ghost story.  I'd be even less surprised if at least some of the phenomena had been created by one or more of her teenage siblings.

It's notable how prominent domestic disharmony is in many of the episodes.

I've not listened to this - but I'm pretty sure the Laura in that story is they same Laura Barry phoned up in episode 6 of the Parapod - works at Hampton palace, brings up catholic upbringing in relation to ghosts, named Laura.

Not particularly interesting, but I like making the connection.

paruses

#57
Quote from: holyzombiejesus on January 18, 2022, 09:10:21 PMI've enjoyed most of these but so much of it wounds like a reconstruction rather than the actual people being interviewed. Was The Battersea Poltergeist any good?

I've started The Battersea Poltergeist and it suffers from being an out and out dramatisation with discussion bits in between. Imagine listening to a Radio 4 play of cocker-nees in the 50s being haunted, with Uncanny bits in between.

Also the presenter seems way too unquestioning. The last bit I listened to diverted onto The Enfield Poltergeist to discuss how poltergeists are nonces like young children and had interviews with a few folk involved in that. My understanding is that that is largely regarded as a pure hoax these days, but it's presented very much as a still unexplained event.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: bgmnts on January 19, 2022, 01:56:45 PMSorry I was referring to the Dodleston Messages. One of those mysteries where the mystery isn't the the paranormal or conspiratorial or wild out there angle, but it's a "how the fuck did they pull that off?" mystery.
I should also apologise. This was my attempt at humour.
Sorry.

Cuellar

I thought the update/correction to the haunted bothy story, when that guy went back with a recorder to spend the night there again, was hilarious and could sum up pretty much every one of these sorts of cases

Spoiler alert
"here i am at the bothy...christ! some stones just fell down, that's weird..."

oh yes, sorry, we forgot to mention, when he went back to the bothy he wasn't actually alone, and had a few friends with him, so that's probably what caused that strange occurence. Still...weird, eh???

"Every night, at 4am, there'd be a great rattling sound and everyone in the house was always asleep, so it couldn't have been any of us"

oh yes, sorry, forgot to mention: the house was right next to a train line and the first train went off at 4am.

"I went upstairs and there was a big shadowy man standing in my room"

oh yes, sorry, forgot to mention: I was utterly cunted on lsd at the time

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