Most Haunted House in England

Built in 1862, Borley Rectory became known as England's most haunted house. From ghostly nuns and unexplained disturbances to paranormal investigator Harry Price's controversial investigations, discover the history behind one of Britain's most famous haunting legends. Was Borley Rectory truly haunted, or was its reputation shaped by folklore, sensationalist journalism and questionable evidence? Join After Dark as we separate historical fact from supernatural fiction. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Tomos Delargy and McKenna Fernandez. Edited by Anna Brant. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. All music from Epidemic Sounds. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:25Speaker 00

  The year is 1862. Fear and gossip grips the sleepy English village of Baulie. Rumour has it that something strange is happening in the old rectory down the road. Something evil.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  The sound of scraping feet in empty rooms, furniture moving of its own accord, and a ghostly apparition silently walking a lonely path. Before long, the anxious whispers of villagers have reached fever pitch. And the national press and paranormal investigators have descended on the parish. Witness statements are taken. Investigators comb the site for clues and seances are conducted to commune with the dead. Only one question remains. Is Baulie Rectory really England's most haunted house? Welcome to After Dark.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. Spooky season is upon us. The clouds are coming over the moors and Gothicism has descended upon us. And you know, of course, how much we love our ghost stories here in After Dark. And that's what we're going to be turning our attention to today.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  We are going to be discussing today, England's most haunted house. Is it something you've heard of?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I mean, I've heard lots of things claimed to be England's most haunted house.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, it's one of those ones, like, um, England's oldest pub.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, or where Charles II hit or whatever.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baulie Rectory.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Where, where is Baulie? Maddypelling.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  It is in the county of Essex.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Everything seems to be in Essex, right?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Well, we've just done a peasants revolt episode with Matt Lewis and that's...

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Witchy stuff is always in Essex.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a dodgy county. If you're from Essex, look out. We are in the late Victorian period. Well, mid to late. We're starting in 1862, when Baulie Rectory is built. And this is what's surprising, I think, about this history is, you know, we think about ghosts occupying buildings that are centuries old. And that is not the case with this one. Yeah, it's built in 1862. It is in, it's the parrot rectory for a medieval church, though. So there is, you know, older stuff on the site.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  And can I ask, when is the haunting happening in the historical timeline?

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Over several decades.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  In the 19th century?

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Yes, going into the 20th.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so we're, we're in a new build essentially, though.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, we are. I mean, how depressing. It's, it's built in a sort of Gothic style, Victorian Gothic revival. And initially, it is built to house the Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  All right.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  And his family, including various sisters, I think, who live there. So it's a, it's a sort of family home. It's connected to the church. It's, you know, a functioning rectory. It's a new build, as you say. It should all be fine. There should be no hauntings going on at all here. Of course, this is, you know, a Victorian ghost story. We know the Victorians are obsessed with ghosts. How do you feel about the Victorian engagement with the idea of ghosts?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  A little, a little creepy, kind of. And by that, I mean, they creep me out a little bit because there is, we know factually, an incredible amount of hoaxery and, and finangling going on with what they interpret.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Hoaxery and finangling? That is what I should have called my book. Too late now.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So we know that they're duping when it comes to ghosts. We know that they purposefully do that in different ways. We also know that the Victorians change what it is to be a ghost, the physicality of a ghost. So we move from something that's far more early modern and a little bit more...

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Spectral.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Spectral, yeah. But this is where we get a lot of the tropes that we are familiar with, with ghosts in the, even in still in the 21st century.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  This is like seances, mediums. There's a lot of like material culture to do with this, right? You think of the table wobbling, like, sort of cards being laid out, various objects moving, lights flickering. Obviously, you've got early photography in this moment and you've got, you know, sort of the pictures that you get of, of mediums, where there's like, sort of ghost plasma coming out of them. And it's just like cheese cloth and stuff. That always makes me gag. It's, ugh, the texture, I couldn't, I couldn't do that.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  What's cheese cloth?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Like sort of muslin, I guess, something like that.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Is it used for ringing out cheese, literally ringing out cheese?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, wrapping cheese or...

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Don't ask me, I'm not a cheesemaker.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  You are.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Contrary to your claims when I was away.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  There was a cheese related one in there. Yeah, so we're starting to get a kind of a pseudoscience around ghosts, which kind of gives me the it, because I'm very much interested in like early modern ghosts. And, you know, I've spoken so much on this podcast and elsewhere about the early modern ghosts functioning in various ways as a sort of tool to articulate tension in the household, tension in society, frustration, anger, vengeance, all of these things. And suddenly in the Victorian period, people are like, no, they're entirely real and we're going to measure and capture them and record them. And, you know, it speaks very much to the 19th century's boom in technology

• 7:01Speaker 00

  and, you know, this new way of understanding the world and recording it around you and all of that. But there's just something about it, I just, I find, I find it frustrating and I find it disingenuous. I think.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get it. And then there are some people for whom it is absolutely genuine and it becomes the centre of their lives and the devotion of their, their, their impetus and the reason for being. Conan Doyle comes to mind, of course, it's a very stereotypical example, but, but he believes it. Do you know what I mean? I don't think he's trying to hoodwink anybody. But, but yeah, I, same as you, though, I more heavily lean towards the icky side of it, where I'm a bit like, oh, God, it's all a bit, it's all a bit weird going on there.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Thinking of Arthur Conan Doyle, the other day I was flicking through, you know, if you sort of find the back end of BBC iPlayer? And it's got, is it called like BBC Collections or something? It's like old bits of footage and programmes from the last, I don't know, 60, 70 years, whatever. And there was a programme on there, there was John Betjeman, the poet laureate, going around like absolutely wild presenter skills. He literally sort of walks, turns to the camera, says something and forgets what he's saying and sort of walks off. But he was doing a sort of, I don't know, a journey from like Edgeware to Stanmore or something in North London, like utterly bizarre.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  And he went into a church, which supposedly Handel played in in the 18th century. And he was talking to the rector there, who was recalling Arthur Conan Doyle, coming into the church with a gaggle of ladies in the 19th century. And going to the, I must have been an organ where Handel had played, and trying to speak to his ghosts. And it was so performative. And this man was still alive in, what, I don't know, the 60s, when this documentary was made. And he was sort of talking about the performative element of Arthur Conan Doyle and this, yeah, this sort of, this way of engaging ghosts that I think is, it's just full of tropes and repeated ideas.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  And it just doesn't feel very, it doesn't feel very elemental or human to me. It feels sort of, it's all, it's all about performance.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  And I don't love it.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Feels like freak show.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  You know, it's bringing in those tropes. But let's get to Baulie Rectory specifically.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  When do we start to see the supposed ghosts arrive there? Considering it's, it's built when? 1862?

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  What's the, what's the gap?

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so in the late 19th century, we start to get these, the first supernatural goings on, so called, when the Bull family is still living there. So we've got the rector and, and his family. There are unusual things that start to happen. So there are reports of things like footsteps being heard in the house, which, you know, is something that people have been reporting at this point for centuries. The ringing of bells, bells that aren't in the house.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  As well as, I guess, servants' bells would have been in the house as well. Doors opening and closing on their own, shadowy figures in the garden. And the, the thing about seeing actual people in this is going to be really important. Also, things like whispers, voices at night, the things that are waking the family up and disturbing them. And we're going to see various inhabitants of this house actually get out of their beds and arm themselves, thinking that people are in the house. So, you know, there is, there's, the phenomena that are being reported is significant. But the Bull family that are there for this part of the 19th century.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  They're seeing stuff that are nerved by it. They're not recording it with any scientific rigor. They're maybe mentioning it to people in the local community in Essex. It becomes sort of part of a local folklore, like, oh, yeah, Bauly Rectory, they've had some spooky goings on there.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Which is weird, though, because they've only been there for a generation. It's the same family.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Who's haunting them? Why would there be any disturbance?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Well, okay, so here is the myth version.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Am I gonna hate this?

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Yes, you're gonna absolutely hate this. So, one of the Bull sisters reports seeing, I think they've been playing tennis or something, the sisters, and they've come back to the house, and they're going through the garden, and one of them reports seeing a nun near the garden.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  And she calls the other sisters out, and this figure of a nun is walking towards them, and it disappears, it evaporates. And they're really freaked out by this. Now, this story emerges, and this is, this is what, I say this as someone who is fascinated by ghost stories, I'm potentially open to the idea of something. I think ghosts exist in the terms of our imagination, in terms of our need to engage with the idea of something after death, with ideas of memory and place, all of this. What I hate is when these stories, these big, like, sort of narratives build up around places, and it's always like, I'll just tell you what it is, and then you'll, this is such a, I hate this example, okay.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  So this is the local folklore that was told in the 19th century. So this nun that they keep seeing is a medieval nun who-

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Medieval? Sorry, I'm already interrupting. Go.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got to flatten the new build, and your imagination of the land is historic. And, you know, Essex is a very ancient county. It's lots of medieval and early modern history. This nun falls in love with a monk.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Falling in love, eh?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, doomed lovers can't be together. They try and escape the local nunnery monastery. They are caught, and the monk is executed.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Why?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Why? The nun is bricked up alive in the convent. None of this, to my knowledge, would happen in this time period. There are versions in which the monk is decapitated along with the carriage driver who's helping them escape. Also medieval monk, carriage driver.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Carriage driver, yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  This is like, just-

• 13:05Speaker 01

  The ensemble is growing.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Jumping his Roberto's go. It's just ridiculous. So there's this idea that there's like, you know, a nun who's been bricked up, he's walking the same route between the monastery and the nunnery, and the route that she's seen later gets renamed The Nun's Walk, and then all this, you know. So there's this, you know, star-crossed lovers, brutal murders, and the idea is that the nun is buried on the land in which Bauly Rectory is built.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Okay. But we also have, it's sitting into this idea, so you're saying medieval nun, late 19th century, Gothic revivalism, we're inventing fairy tales around actual medieval history. Is this the site of a nunnery or a monkery?

• 13:54Speaker 00

  A monkery? Is that where monkeys are? There is no archaeological or historical record of a nunnery or a monkery on this site at all. So-

• 14:05Speaker 01

  So this family is full of all-

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. But, yeah, perfect. It's total nonsense. But this is, you know, how these stories, they attach themselves to places, we repeat them, we're all guilty of it, we've all enjoyed it when you go to a historic house or a castle or whatever it is, and, oh, you know, there was a smuggler on this bit of coastline, and he was in love with a mermaid, and then she murdered him, and now he walks the cliffs, whatever, you know, I just made that up. You're welcome to use that. Yeah. You know, so this exists across England, and it's, you know, it's part of what we love about, specifically, I think, English folklore as well, is just kind of full of these fabrications that are very place-specific. But we're moving now out of the 19th century, where the Bull family, you know, are kind

• 14:52Speaker 00

  of, are they the ones who are putting this story forward? Is it just percolating in the local community? We're gonna see some more specific phenomena now reported, and it's gonna be reported and recorded crucially in a completely different way. So we're moving, say, out of the 19th century, early 20th century, of course, you've got the First World War, and then after the First World War, you've got a huge resurgence in the spiritualism of the Victorian Age, obviously huge loss during the First World War, and people feeling a desperate and very understandable need to contact the dead, including and specifically the young men who've been lost on the battlefields of Europe. And so between

• 15:35Speaker 00

  1918 and 1939, and obviously the start of the Second World War, there's a kind of peak of interest again in ghosts and in the supernatural. And the idea of sort of, I suppose, speaking to that world and there being a way to communicate is really important. And this is where we start to see Bauly Rectory again, with a new generation of tenants, becoming very, very quickly a famous site and the centre of actually national interest.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So we have this national resurgence, as you say, in the early 20th century. That gives us a little bit of context. But what is the, I can't imagine a story of a nun is going to necessarily spark a national imagination in, you know, the 1920s. So what is it that sets that off?

• 16:25Speaker 00

  So we're in the 1920s now, and we've got a new reverend moving in, the Reverend Guy Eric Smith, and his wife, who's just called Mrs. Smith in my notes. Maybe she had a name. But they-

• 16:36Speaker 01

  She didn't, I can confirm.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Maybe her first name was Mrs. We don't know. So Mrs. one day is cleaning out the house, and she finds a skull. And we do know, she really did find this skull, and later it was identified as the skull of a young woman. And so, of course, the, I mean, was it just chilling in a cupboard? Slightly intrigued by-

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Why was there a skull in the house?

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Especially given, you know, it's not, if it was like a house with like medieval foundations, or an early modern house where, you know, you'd find like a cat's skeleton in the wall, or something, like offerings that have been left, or whatever, apotropaic things. My guess is that it is part of the Bull family's collection that's been left behind, maybe, you know, they obviously had some kind of interest in supernatural, where there was a spiritualism, as you say, ounces and things like that going on in the house, was it used for that? Often 19th century clergymen are interested in antiquarianism, are collectors of-

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Or anatomy.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  Old stuff, or anatomy, exactly. So, you know, there's a world in which the skull is already centuries old, and it's been discovered nearby on a dig or something, and it's, you know, kind of come to the rector that way. But there doesn't seem to be any kind of concrete information about this, other than it is eventually identified to be the skull of a woman. And strange things start to happen to this family as well, the Smith family. They start to report similar things to the Bulls, noises, footsteps, a lot of domestic disturbance. Again, in a new, well, it's, you know, still a relatively new house. I mean, it's 80, 60, 60 years old at this point, good maths. But, you know, it's not a centuries-old

• 18:16Speaker 00

  castle or something. So they are disturbed by this. And it has this local reputation already. But, and this is where it's gonna start to annoy you, I think, because it's clear the-

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not annoyed yet.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  You are gonna be. It's clear the sort of, the self-interest of a lot of the people who live and pass through Bauly Rectory, I think, is quite frustrating. So the Reverend and Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Smith, decide, having found this skull and experienced some of these strange goings on, that they're gonna contact a national newspaper.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I don't have time now.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  The Daily Mirror, I know.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Have to go, sorry.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So their motivation for doing it is that they hope that readers of the paper will be able to give them advice, that experts on ghosts will be able to write in and say, oh, this is how you get rid of your ghost, or whatever, or this is, or, you know, it's subsidence calling these noises.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Surely a reverend is supposed to be one of the experts on ghosts?

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  If we're buying into it, like, you know.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  We have here an excerpt from the Daily Mirror's first, and this is important, first article covering the hauntings, because the Mirror and other papers are gonna cover this a lot in the next, in the coming years. Can you please read it for us?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I can.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  This is from the 10th of June, 1929, and the headline was "Ghosts Visit to a Rectory."

• 19:41Speaker 01

  "The first untoward happening was the sound of slow, dragging footsteps across the floor of an unoccupied room."

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Slightly overwritten.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  "Then one night, Mr. Smith, armed with a hockey stick, sat in the room and waited for the noise. Once again it came, the sound of feet in some kind of slippers treading on the bare boards. Mr. Smith lashed out with his stick at the spot where the footsteps seemed to be, but the stick whistled through the empty air, and the steps continued across the room. Then a servant girl brought from London. London suddenly gave notice after two days' work, declaring emphatically that she had seen a nun walking in the wood at the back of the house. The feckin' nun is back."

• 20:25Speaker 00

  She's back again. So the Smiths are, they have spent time in India, they're well-travelled, they've brought their maid from London with them. She's meant, you know, they pride themselves on being a cosmopolitan household. And this young woman spends literally a couple of days in the house after they've moved in, and is like, I'm off back to London. Maybe it's the Essex countryside she didn't like, maybe it is the sight of this horrifying spectral nun.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  It'd do it, like, if you did see a nun, you'd kind of be off.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Like, don't get me wrong, I would be back to London on the first train, thank you very much.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, for the next installation of What Happens at Bauly Rectory, you can join us after this short break. Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way, same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays, and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Hi. It's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. 12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series. The iconic Parker Posey hosts this unique reality competition show where 12 celebrity contestants shake down in an Italian villa to win a share of up to $250,000. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

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  In a world where swords were sharp.

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  And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians.

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  Me, Matt Lewis.

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  And me, Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

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  So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Right, we have had a newspaper article.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Serving girl from London, she's high-tailed it back after two days. We have Mr. and Mrs. Smith living in the rectory. Now what?

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Enter a new character, Harry Price. Have you ever heard of him?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think I have. Why? Have we done an episode on him before?

• 23:17Speaker 00

  We haven't, but we absolutely should. So he is the most famous, probably, paranormal investigator of the 20th century. He's hugely famous. He set himself up as an expert, a psychical researcher, someone who would use supposedly scientific methods, go to sites where hauntings have been reported, record the phenomena. And he really makes his name with Bauly Rectory. This is it for him. This is the big one. And he is gonna make a lot of money off of it. And I want people to bear that in mind here, because that is important. So he's assigned by The Daily Mirror. They commission him to go and investigate this.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  They're paying him already, like, from the get-go, this is a cash cow for him.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Right, right. And for The Daily Mirror, right?

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, they're gonna sell a copy. So he, you know, he is already, he exists in this world. You know, he takes things like cameras, measuring tools. He's kind of writing down all these observations. He goes to Essex. And, you know, this already causes us stir. He's already something of a sort of celebrity ghost hunter at this moment. So people are like, oh, God, Harry Price has come. This must be serious. Have you heard what's happening about Bauly Rectory? It is important to say that even in this time period, though, he was criticized as something of a fraud.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  See, I love this, because you know I love the idea of disbelief as well, where it's kind of going, there's always been voices.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  You should write a book on disbelief.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  I don't have time. That's my answer to everything.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe you should make time, because I think that'd be a really good book.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Not for me. I'd read it, though. I would read it. You do it. Yeah, see, told you. It's a good book to read, but I don't want to write it.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Can someone out there write the book on disbelief? Okay, so we're in June 1929 now. Price arrives at the rectory, and straight away, he reports seeing phenomena. Okay.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Straight away.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, straight away. So he's seeing things like stones being thrown in some of the rooms, glass shattering. There's some sort of glass outbuilding type situation. And he's standing there with, I think, Mrs. Smith, maybe Mr. Smith, and one of the panels of glass falls off and smashes, and just, you know, sort of covers them in glass. And this is something that he writes down. He talks about strange noises that he can't explain. He's interviewing witnesses that have been in the house, people like cleaners coming in, servants working there, that kind of thing. He is convinced that the rectory phenomena are paranormal.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  That's the stance that he takes. And this is where the moniker of Bauly Rectory comes in as the most haunted house in England. This is what The Daily Mirror dubs it, right? It runs, you know, this huge headline, the most haunted house in England. So this, how motivated is Price or is The Daily Mirror to actually investigate this and the human element of this, right? Because how much copy are you gonna sell if you, if your title is the least haunted house in England?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Turns out.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  It's all fake, or the most haunted house in England. People are gonna pick that up, you know. And again, there's criticism at the time. Like, The Daily Mirror is criticized for being sensationalist, like, this seems to be kind of nonsense. And actually, even when there's nothing going on, they're still running it in the papers. So I have another article here from The Daily Mirror. This is from the 17th of June 1929. And the headline is, shy ghost of Bauly Rectory. Give us this one, because it's honestly, like, this is when you haven't done your homework.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  And you've been asked to, like, go and research something, or like, write about what you've done on the weekend, and you've done absolutely fuck all, and then need to write it up.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I will say, before I read this, what a waste to be writing about this kind of stuff in the middle of June. Can you not just wait until the first month at the very, very least?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, my God, exactly.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  High summer. Anyway. "Bauly's ghost failed to rise to the occasion at a specifically arranged seance in the now famous rectory. While apparently willing to demonstrate an informal sitting, it flatly declined to exhibit itself before the two mediums brought down specifically from London. The mediums waited anxiously for some phenomena to occur, and sat sometimes in the darkness and sometimes in the lamplighted. The rectory continues to receive the unwelcome attention of hundreds of curious people, and at night, the headlights of their cars may be seen from miles around."

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Right. First of all, as two people who like to preferably live in the middle of nowhere and not interact with anyone, this would piss me off. Can you imagine if you were a neighbor, just enjoying your nice little Essex countryside, and suddenly you're descended on by ghost hunters? No, thank you.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  "Yorkshire water came to my door the other Thursday night at 11:30 PM."

• 28:13Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Knock, knock, knock. I was probably watching some kind of murder mystery thing on the TV. I looked at Shane, I was like, huh.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  We're about to be murdered.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  What's going on? I could see him at the glass thing as well, go, I'm just here to fix the thing. This is not relevant to this in any way.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. We have bat people in our street, like, a bat survey going on. And we had a letter through the door saying they might be filming people's houses with infrared cameras. And if they need access to your garden, you're meant to grant it to them. And they came and knocked on our door. When I'd spent an hour and a half getting the baby to sleep, they knocked on the door, the dog was going mental, woke the baby up, and they're like, can we come in your garden? I was like, no. I'm a spooky bitch who loves a bat.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I love a bat.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  I love a bat. Will go out of my way to protect the bats. If you step foot on my property again and wake my baby up, I cannot be responsible for my actions. Oh, my God. So if you're a bat person, and you're listening to this, don't come around to my house.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Just don't.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  You've been told.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Okay. So, moving away from the bats. Yeah. So basically, the newspapers are running stories like, the ghost didn't appear. Like, it's just endlessly silly.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  What year are we? Oh, 1929.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And Harry Price is really kind of, he's doubling down on this. So he is quoted, though, as saying, you know, even though nothing's happening, the ghost isn't turning up, he calls this, this event, "16 hours of thrills." He says, "It's a day to be remembered, even by an experienced investigator." So he is really leaning into the, like, I am here on the ground, I'm seeing stuff, even if the ghost isn't appearing for other people, my God, I'm having a good time. 1930.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  The Smiths are out. And we have a new family moving in. October 1930, the Reverend.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Oh, here we go. It's spooky season now. This is better than June.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, perfect. The Reverend Lionel Foyster, something about the name Foyster.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Oh, Foisted, aren't you?

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Foister, yeah. It's, it sounds like, it's like, it's not a very satisfying word to say. And his wife, Marianne, and his daughter Adelaide move into the rectory. Now, Marianne is the one that you want to focus on here, I think.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Wait, that was the wife?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  That's the wife. We've got Lionel, the dad, Marianne, and Adele, the daughter. So Lionel suffers from health problems. And aside from being the reverend of the parish, his wife, Marianne, is actually doing a lot of both the domestic tasks and kind of a lot of his parish responsibilities as well. So she is, you know, sort of more visible in the community. Obviously, she's a mother to their child as well, all of this. And I think she might be stretched a bit thin and maybe in need of some attention.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  You said it, I didn't.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Well.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Because, because what she, she starts feeding into, now, hold on a second. I am noticing a little bit of a pattern. Am I? Am I?

• 31:10Speaker 00

  It's the women.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Well, the women are the thread through this.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  It's the bull sisters.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Who say they see the nun. It's Mrs. Smith who finds the skull.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Do you know, I hadn't made that connection, actually. That's very interesting.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And now we're back. And it doesn't say, it actually doesn't say much about the women themselves. It says something about how these things are being reported, potentially.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're not saying women be lying.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  But also, maybe in this particular instance, women are lying.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  So anyway, so she indulges herself in, apparently she indulges herself in these stories.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Well, okay, so the whole family do report witnessing things in the house. And it's very similar things, you know, figures in the garden, maybe seeing the nun, bells ringing at night, footsteps, all of the stuff that has previously been reported. But you've got to remember at this point, you know, if you move into Bauly Rectory, it's already been in The Daily Mirror, hundreds of people, like, you're not going to be unaware of those things. Would you move in?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Uh, if it wasn't a new build, yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean?

• 32:13Speaker 00

  It wouldn't be the, the deranged, demented nun, it would be.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  I'm just like, if you like, give me the whole, if I'm gonna have this, give me the whole thing.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Oh, you want it to be like a 17th century house?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Give it the whole Gothic experience, yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  I think it would have to be a no from me, even though I don't think any of this really happened. I'd be like, just to be on the safe side.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  I will say this, though, I like a rectory.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  I would like to, to live in.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Well, you keep trying to buy churches to live in, so.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Well, I know. Well, I don't keep trying, but I am looking, yeah. It might happen.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  If you have an empty church to sell, get in touch at aftertargethistory.com. You're gonna get so many emails now. Um, okay, so the whole family, it's not just Marianne, but just focus on her. Um, and they, what happens next is that their testimony kind of becomes the most famous because it's so detailed and prolific.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  But also the most controversial.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Okay, so.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  1930 now, yes?

• 33:07Speaker 00

  We're in 1930 and we're gonna have three years of paranormal activity. So they report poltergeist activity, things like items being thrown around, um, furniture being moved, bells ringing, as we've already said, ghostly voices, footsteps, messages on the wall.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  All right.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Which are often addressed to Marianne. There's one. Yeah, so one says, Marianne, please help me.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it's written? It's not like tapped out on the wall?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  No, no, it's written on the wall. Um, another says light mass prayers. Is that just a reminder? Is Lionel just trying to remind himself what he's gotta do that day? Um, Marianne claims that she is punched, slapped, pushed down the stairs, kicked, pinched, thrown out of her bed. Um, and again, we're seeing the nun, not just outside the house this time, but inside the house as well, she's come in. Um, it's, but everything seems to be focused on Marianne. Thoughts, please?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Um, ah, poor Marianne, I guess, is my thought. Something's going on there, but again, that's just.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  I mean, if it is supernatural, she's having a really horrible time.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  She is.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  It's, it's really violent.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Why has the nun ventured in? I'm just thinking narratively now, right? So I'm like, well, what's brought the nun in?

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  I'm also thinking like how, how prevalent nuns are in the.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  They're such a horror trope.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the 20th century, that, that, that, that kind of religious thing starts to become monstrous. And so therefore we.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Even as a rectory, interestingly.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Which is kind of fascinating.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my, my thoughts are she's on well, that Marianne is on well.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, potentially. So her involvement in this, her testimony does start to get questioned publicly.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Um, subsequent investigators and historians afterwards have kind of questioned, you know, how much of the kind of myth that already existed had been absorbed by Marianne. You know, is this where she, she is imagining these things or truly believing that she's experiencing them? And the stories that have been told to her about this place have just sort of seeped into that? Is she looking for attention and actively fabricating this stuff? It's really hard to tell. The Society of Psychical Research, which still exists.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Um, I think still exists, has, says it doubts the legitimacy of her claims, which is interesting.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Sometimes I like these guys because they turn up often in some of the stories that, the histories that we look at, and they're like, nah. And I like, I like that for them.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  And then, yeah, and I think this is, this is, Bauly Rectory kind of becomes this site, this push and pull between the sort of, the, the so-called science of looking for ghosts. And, you know, and, and bringing scientific approaches and rigor to it, right? Sort of controlled testing and documenting things over a long period of time, gathering testimonies from different people. Like, that is what you would do if you were investigating anything else. So it is a legitimate way of investigation. Um, and Marianne, what she's reporting just seems to be quite extreme. It's, it's very regular. It's mostly, if not entirely, centered on her. There are definite questions.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Um, however, whatever, whatever we think of Marianne, whether she, you know, just wants attention, whatever it is, by 1935, she and her family have gone from the rectory.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So they've been there for five years.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  They've had enough.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And she's had three years of pretty intense haunting.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  And so we're out.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  They've gone. They, they don't stay longer than that. Um, now moved to 1937.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  And Harry Price, the psychological investigator, leases the house for a year.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Aye.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  I mean, I'd love to be able to just rent a house for a year because I thought it was haunted and wanted to see a ghost. Uh, if anyone wants to pay me to write that book, I will happily go anywhere and do that. Um, and, but I think this is kind of interesting, right? This says so much about like this specific moment in 1937, the interest in these interwar years in ghost hunting in particular, not just ghosts, but this process of ghost hunting, investigation, that he can make a living doing this. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna spend a year of my life living in this famous haunted house and people are gonna be interested for the entire year that I'm here. And people are interested. He gets a team of 48 volunteers who've come at various times to help him out with things, to try and witness stuff. Um.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Is he living there full time?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  He's living there full time. So he, he invites other people in, he uses cameras. Um, he's making floor plans, he's got observational logs and notebooks, he's documenting everything. He's bringing in mediums and spiritualists who are doing regular seances. Um, during one of the seances, there is a claim that one of the mediums makes that the rectory is going to burn down and that the bones of a murdered nun are gonna be discovered during that destruction.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  And that, like, just keep hold of that because this is an interesting element in the story.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  I will, I will say that if there is a medieval nun somewhere on these grounds, the chances of those remains reappearing just because a late 19th century house burns down is unlikely, unless she's built into the walls.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Wait and see.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Um, okay, so between 1937, when he moves in, and 1938 for this year, as I say, we have these volunteers, some of them are staying overnight. Um, they're keeping their own records, they're contributing to what Price is doing. Um, some, I think it's important to say, some do report that they're seeing this activity, the same things that have already been mentioned, the ghostly voices, the footsteps, the ringing of bells, blah, blah, blah. Some say they see the nun. Others say they don't see anything. And, you know, thinking about your skepticism in history and stuff, I think that is important to just hold that in balance. Um, Harry Price says of this year, um, and that he's, he's either writing at the time in these quotes or shortly after, but referring to this time when he lived there.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  In 1938, he says, "The super normal played no part in the wonders that we have witnessed." 1939, he's recorded by a contemporary as saying, "I do not believe in spirits and I do not believe in the Bauly Rectory legend."

• 39:34Speaker 01

  He says?

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So he's gone from saying, this is, you know, I spent 16 thrilling hours in this house, I'm seeing stuff all the time, to saying, eh, I don't believe in stuff, there's nothing in it. But it still is cash cow and that's important to remember. We're gonna go to a break and afterwards I'm gonna tell you how he makes his money.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Hi, it's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. 12 celebrities, one Don and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series. The iconic Parker Posey hosts this unique reality competition show where 12 celebrity contestants shake down in an Italian villa to win a share of up to $250,000. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  In a world where swords were sharp.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Me, Matt Lewis.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  And me, Dr. Eleanor Yanaga. Dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Tell me how he makes his money, Maddie.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Well, thank you for asking. Okay, so after Harry has done this investigation, he's lived there for a year, drumroll, he's got a book deal. What is the title gonna be coming out in 1940? The Most Haunted House in England.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  He's literally said he doesn't believe it's haunted, kind of.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  So it's a huge bestseller in England and internationally. It's massive. And it covers everything from the earliest documentation of the events that have been happening in the house with the Bull family through to all of his investigations. And what it does, and of course, this is what it does when you think he's written it, is it really cements him as, you know, the nation's leading paranormal investigator. He's a huge authority on it. Not only is this such a bestselling book that he makes a lot of money out of it, but six years later, he publishes another book on Bauly Rectory called The End of Bauly Rectory.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  He's choosing that it's the end. Why is it the end of Bauly Rectory?

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Because of an event that happened there. Dun dun dun. Okay, so.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  More nuns.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Let's go back to the 1930s now. So before Harry Price publishes his books. And in, so he was there 1937 to 38. In 1939, the rectory is purchased by Captain W. H. Gregson. So it's no longer a rectory, it's just a home to live in. It's not functioning that way. 27th of February, 1939, the rectory has a fire.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  There better be witch bones, very nun bones somewhere in this.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  So Gregson says that the fire, it's not begun by supernatural means, and an oil lamp is accidentally knocked over. And the building, interestingly, for a new building in the 1860s, the building is timber framed. So the fire spreads really quickly. That's odd, because on the outside, it looks brick. So a little bit weird. And yeah, oil lamp in 1930s. What are you doing, Captain Gregson? Get some electric lights in there, pal?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  He's got his own little thing going on.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  So some of the locals report, because of course, you know, if you lived there and you knew all the legends of this house, if you then see flames coming out of it, like you are going to watch that, right?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  So a crowd, the crowd kind of gathers as this disaster is happening. And some of the locals report hearing strange noises that come from the house while it's burning.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's called burning noises.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's probably just the house.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Falling in on itself.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  So the house is damaged, and it's eventually just knocked down in its entirety. It's not fixable. In 1943, there are some excavations that take place very close to the foundations of the house. And human bones are found.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I mean, I can buy that.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  It's a bit weird, though, right?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I can buy it, especially when you say like, close to, because then it makes me go, well, how close to? Is it in Six Fields Over? And also.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  I think it's on the same site as the house.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  It's not Six Fields, like it's in, it's literally very close to the foundations.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  And here's the other thing, this is the rectory, or was the rectory.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Which means it's probably close to or attached to a church, which means it's probably close to or attached to a graveyard.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  So maybe we're not that surprised.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  So some people obviously jump to the conclusion, it's the nun, of course. But the archaeologists that did the dig said it's very unlikely to be, and it's actually much likelier to be an earlier burial.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  So much earlier. And, you know, that kind of plays into this idea of the graveyard, you know, and often, in England, certainly, you get churchyards that are built on earlier, maybe Anglo-Saxon sites, or sometimes even earlier than that, Roman burial sites and things. So, you know, I always say this, and to some point, I will write a book on this, the fact that the landscape in Britain is just full of bodies from across history that have been forgotten about. Like, I think the burial of people over centuries, how we discover them, how we think about them, how we attach stories to different burials, like burials at crossroads and things like that. I just find that absolutely fascinating. You know, people who've been murdered, people who've died violently, but also people who

• 45:26Speaker 00

  were put into hedgerows, babies who were buried outside of consecrated ground, all of that. I just, I'm so interested in that. So I think, you know, I think that this sort of plays into this history, not a supernatural history. In 1944, the building's entirely demolished, it's all gone. But the story of the rectory, it doesn't die, it has this kind of ghostly afterlife. It's, it really endures. It's such a, it captures people's imagination. And I can see why, to a certain extent, particularly in the context of the time in which the story breaks in the late Victorian period, and then again, in the interwar years, this kind of resurgence, and, you know, people's desperation, the absolute

• 46:11Speaker 00

  horror that they faced during the First World War. And I suppose also, in both cases, like you mentioned about the Victorian sort of Gothicism, and certainly after the war, this idea of harking back to an England that's been lost, that's historic, that's gone. There is something, even if it's threatening, or even if, you know, the ghosts that are coming up out of the ground are frightening, it's a comforting past.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  I think. So I think all of that is coming into it. Just to give you a sense of how widespread the story is and how far this travels. In 1947, I mean, we're like, in the aftermath of the Second World War, like, there's other stuff to talk about in the world. An Australian newspaper called The Herald titles an article, "There's queer goings-on at Bauly, they do say."

• 47:03Speaker 01

  They do say.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, they do say. And it describes, it's talking about the excavation zone. It says, "Three men with spades and a crowbar began digging today at the centuries-old village church at Bauly Rectory, often described as the most haunted house in England." So there are still excavations going on in the churchyard, around the house. There's still an interest in, in kind of finding the remains of the nun, maybe, all of that. People are so invested in it, even on the other side of the world.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  In the aftermath of the World War.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Good stories are good stories, right?

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Good stories, good stories. And it's also, I suppose, escapism in the 40s. Harry Price dies in 1948, which prompts another resurgence. Of course, the book becomes a bestseller again, because he's just died, as often happens. Members of the Society of Psychological Research reexamine all of the documentation that he left behind. But they're really critical of his method, his conclusions. They state that some of the evidence that was gathered is kind of poorly documented, he's exaggerated things, even though he didn't necessarily, you know, go hard on there actually being ghosts there. He changes his tone.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  At some point, yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. But yeah, there's certainly a kind of criticism underlying all of that work. But yeah, I mean, what do you make of this story? Because I just find this history so frustrating. And I love, I love, love, love a ghost story. I love a ghost story as a consumer of ghost stories. I love a ghost story as a visitor to historic places and buildings. I love the idea of a haunted landscape. This history frankly pisses me off.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  We've had a few of those recently. What did I throw paper at you the other week for? Where I was like, oh, Maddie, I don't want to listen to this anymore.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Well, what's that like? I remember that.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Something, anyway. So I, I'm actually, I'm surprised I wasn't more pissed off at it. So that's something.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  You've been quite zen, actually.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Thanks very much. I, I get the appeal of a good story above all else. And actually, sometimes I think there's merit and need for that. And you kind of just summed it up there, didn't you? Where you said, like, you know, there's also this talk around, does, does Price give us these tropes of modern ghost hunting and all that kind of thing? And I think, no, he's, he's picking up on what's already been laid down. And he might bring some of that more modern technology in.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  I think he is, we can see a sort of DNA through line, right, between earlier seance doers. You know, I mean, we can go all the way back to things like the cockling ghost, by my book. But, but also, you know, the sort of Victorian seance scene, obviously, like the Conan Doyle's, all of that. And then we've got Harry Price. And I think, you know, we can even take that to like, TV ghost hunting, things like that, right? Like, there's a kind of, there is a through line there of the kind of the performance, the showmanship of it. You know, there are popular podcasts today, we had Danny Robbins on the show. You know, that I think that there is a through line there. I think it's entertainment. I

• 50:08Speaker 00

  don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. I, I just, I think what frustrates me about this kind of ghost story is that it's all founded on a historic narrative that is not real. Okay, the, I mean, there are some strange coincidences in here. The house burned down. There were, there was a burial found nearby. Not surprising, given the location.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  But I, I really find frustrating, you know, this claim of sightings that, you know, oh, it was a headless horseman, all these kind of tropes. And there is, in fact, in this story, I think the Bulls early on, as well as the nun, they report seeing like, headless driver of a coach and horses that goes through the garden at one point and things like that. It's so, it's kind of high Gothic, right? Like, it's, it's all, it's ridiculous. It belongs in like, a late 18th century Gothic novel. But I don't like when people.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Just run with those stories and those histories and say, yes, so it was a, there was a monastery nearby and this happened and blah, blah. No, there wasn't. It didn't happen. And there's, there's so much about history that is exciting and interesting and concrete. And we can, we can say stuff definitively happened that is chilling and haunting and entertaining and all of those things. I, when it's fabricated to this extent, I lose interest in it because I lose patience in.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  It's a device.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, but when it's taken at face value, I think, well, I'm not, I don't want to waste my time with this because it's nonsense. So I have wasted my time for this entire episode.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  So often you will miss a historian from some of those conversations where actually a real historian, and I've seen, I've also seen people be like, I'm a historian. I'm like, are you though? That's not what a historian is. And it's like, but a real historian could either shed light on this or draw a line under this right now. In some way, in terms of some of the story, like the monastery thing or whatever. Like, obviously I don't know that area specifically.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think often with ghost stories, you know, even if, you know, we, there might be offered like, you know, ooh, in the archive, we found that someone in this building died at some point. So therefore they must be the ghost that's haunting this 500 year old castle. This one specific person we found who died here. And I think often just the historical context is missing. And I think it's a, it's a dangerous game because, you know, it is entertainment. We've had a light-hearted conversation about this, but I think often when we're talking about hauntings and particularly bad things that have happened in the past, violent things, horrible things, we need to be a little bit careful to put them into their context and to understand the seriousness of them and to not make them

• 52:48Speaker 00

  flippant tourism, I think. And it bothers me when that happens, when we take real events at sights and turn them into something a little bit sensationalist, a little bit dramatic and, and less poignant than they maybe should be. Although in this case, it's all founded on nothing. It's literally nothing.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Who's your favourite nun? Do you have one?

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Um, I do have a favourite nun. Uh, my great, my Catholic great grandfather was in a nursing home run by nuns and he died when he was 102.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Did he have 102?

• 53:28Speaker 00

  He was born in 1898 and he died in, somebody do that maths, 2001.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Wait, what did you say? Great grandfather?

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Great grandfather. So he, but he just about lived over three centuries.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Flipping hell.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Survived the First World War. And he was looked after by nuns. And there was a really gorgeous, kind Irish nun who was there, who, every time me and my cousins would go and we were little children to see him, she would always have a selection box and a can of coke waiting for us.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Whether it was Christmas or not.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Absolutely did not matter. Was not relevant. And.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  What was her name? Can you remember? Because they always have great names.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  I'm so sad that I can't remember. I really can't remember. I mean, he died when I was, uh, gosh, don't know, eight, nine, something like that. Um, I can't, I can't remember. But she, I remember her being so kind and so calming and reassuring. Um, maybe I'm misremembering it and she was vile, but.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  He was like, she was awful.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, but yeah, what about you?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  I have three. Um, Sister Sheila.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Can I just say, of course you do.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Sister Sheila, Sister Vera and Sister Maculata. And Sister Sheila taught me biology until I was 15. She was also the first educational figure to talk to me, a nun, not just me, the class, about the birds and the bees. Doesn't that explain an awful lot? Sister Vera was my Irish teacher for the first two years of secondary school. And once she got hit in the head with a basketball, but she was fine. Sister, Sister Maculata didn't actually teach me, but she did parole the corridors of my school. But here's the thing about Sister Maculata, she had also taught my granny.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Not just my mother, my granny. So I had intergenerational nuns.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  And she's still teaching today.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  She now teaches my nephew.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Was she a ghost? Just walking the corridors. She never actually taught you, hold on.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  She didn't, she wasn't a ghost. And I'll tell you why I know she wasn't, because she was literally rotting in front of our eyes. She had growth on her face that was like, no, don't make that, that she was weird. The, and she was the only one that wore the full habit. The others wore, maybe she was a ghost. I'm talking about it. The others are kind of, um, as much as, as nuns in the 20th century did, kind of, they still had, you know, like school uniform type things. And it was very conservative looking, but she had the habit still.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  The full thing.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's weird now that I say that. But she definitely was alive. Cause I remember talking to other people about her. So it wasn't just me.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Okay. Um.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  In the comments, tell us your top three nuns.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Sally Field.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  She was a nun.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Sally Field.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  The flying nun or something. I don't know. I'm editing myself.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  Right. I'm ending this before it becomes a problem.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  No. Um, Sister Michael.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Who? What?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Derry Girls.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  Oh my, oh.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  She has to be up there. Oh no, hold on. Let's not go just yet. Nuns. What other nuns?

• 56:17Speaker 00

  All I can think is, um, there's a nun horror film and I can picture the poster. It's really frightening. Yeah. Really scary.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Don't use that as a still.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's gonna be, that's gonna be the thumbnail of this video. Um.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Oh, Maria von Trapp was a nun. Was she, oh, she was a novice. She didn't quite get to a nun.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  She was a novice. Uh, well, the sister, the mother superior who.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Sorry, go ahead.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Who literally is like, who, how do you solve a problem like Maria? She's a massive pain in the ass. She is a queen.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Sister Mary Clarence. Sister Act.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Oh, never seen it.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  She's not real nun. But you've never seen Sister Act.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  Right. You have never seen Indiana Jones.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  I haven't. But, oh my God. Sister Mary Clarence, actually my favourite one. Sister, the one that never sat, oh my God, I was so, I, I was distraught by the fact.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  This has got off.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  The ginger nun doesn't sing. That's not her singing voice. Sister Mary something or other. Oh my God.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Please now sing the whole of Sister Act for us.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  I could, you know. I joined the gospel choir because, me, I joined the gospel choir because I was so obsessed with, with Sister Act.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Okay. Write in and tell us your favourite nuns. Um, but also if you want to hear any more ghost histories, I want to do some that don't piss me off. Um.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Give us a good ghost history.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Some that genuinely could be real. Send them in, please.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  That's a good challenge.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I really.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  A good one.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  I really am in need of this. Um, thank you for listening. Leave us a five star review. Five star only, please. Um, comment below. See you next time. Love you.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 58:04Speaker 02

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