Listen Now: Audible True Crime – Ghost Story

Audible True Crime is a dedicated podcast feed where we bring you the best podcasts in true crime, with episodes dropping every single week. Just in time for spooky season, we’re releasing a show called Ghost Story, a series about a hidden family secret, unexplainable events and jaw-dropping coincidences. Tristan Redman doesn’t believe in ghosts. But weird things happened in his teenage bedroom. And when he discovers later that occupants of his family home have seen the ghost of a faceless woman, he’s intrigued. Because it just so happens that his wife’s great grandmother, Naomi Dancy, was murdered in the house next door…killed by two gunshots to the face. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes on Audible True Crime early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible App or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Listen Now: HERE https://link.pscrb.fm/6438e/fdaudibletruecrimeghoststory-6e3a7 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi listeners, this is Alison Vermeulen, the host of the Audible True Crime Podcast. We're releasing a show right now that I think you'll love, just in time for spooky season. It's called Ghost Story. Growing up, weird things would happen in journalist Tristan Redman's bedroom. Objects moving around with no explanation, lights switching themselves on and off. He ultimately shrugged it all off, until he discovered that he wasn't alone, that everyone who lived in the house after him also had bizarre experiences they couldn't explain. So when he finds out that his wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door, like the actual room that shared a wall with his childhood bedroom, he uses his journalistic

• 0:41Speaker 00

  chops to pose the insane question: Is my wife's great-grandmother haunting my old bedroom to try and tell me something about her murder? Well, you can imagine the awkwardness when all of this leads to Tristan basically accusing his in-laws' beloved patriarch of murder. Not the guy, by the way, who was blamed for her death. This is a series about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence, and the things that come back to haunt us. I'm about to play a clip of Ghost Story. While you're listening, follow the Audible True Crime Podcast for the best bingeable series. Listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I want to tell you a story. Well, it's really three stories, all wrapped around each other. It's a ghost story, it's a murder mystery, and it's a family drama. By which I mean, it's about my wife's family, her family's history, and there's a chance they'll disown me for doing this.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer, then I will be sorry that we ever said we would contribute to it.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  But before we get into any of that, let's start at the beginning, with the thing that set all of this in motion.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  When I was 16, back in the 90s, my family moved to an old Victorian house in London, on a street called Queen's Road. I slept in a bedroom tucked into the creaky top floor, and weird things would happen up there. I'd wake up, and objects would have moved across the room, specifically this one vase. When I'd go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece, and then in the morning, I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back, and the next morning, I'd find it somewhere else. Lights would flash on and off on their own, and I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling whenever I was alone in the house.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  It freaked me out at the time, but the truth is, I didn't really think much of it. I was a teenager, I had other things on my mind. Every now and then, I'd ask my sister if she was messing with me, but she always swore she wasn't. I grew up, left home, and became a journalist for Al Jazeera. I cover things like French labour strikes and the war in Ukraine. I don't believe in ghosts. So when my family moved out of the house on Queen's Road, I completely forgot about the weird stuff that happened in there. Until, that is, a few years ago, a man reached out, an old neighbour of ours, with a story about that very room.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  I mean, it's quite a story.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  His name is Charles Pennelis, and he knows everything about this neighbourhood. You could say he's a bit of a gossip, but you probably shouldn't.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Slandrous, gives completely the wrong impression.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Anyway, this is what he told me. Charles was walking around my old neighbourhood one day, going door to door, collecting donations for the local museum.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I was there rattling a tin.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  And definitely not gossiping.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it was just sensei's still there, and sensei's moved out, and they've had a divorce, and all that sort of business.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Eventually, he gets to my old house and knocks on the door. A woman answers, she's the mother of the house. After chatting for a bit, she invites him inside, and she tells him a story unlike anything he's ever heard before.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  The story goes, the American swans up with a hello and...

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Here's what she tells him. One day, the woman is at home at my old house. She looks out of the window, and she sees a man standing on the driveway.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  So the mother of the house opens the door.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  It's someone who used to live in the house, an American man who'd lived there with his wife and two children. The American says to her, "I'm so sorry to bother you, but I just have to know."

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Do you still have that ghost in the top bedroom? Straight, like that.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  What the American man proceeds to tell her, the things his family experienced on the top floor, it makes her go completely white, because this isn't the first time she's heard of something going on up there. She just never believed it before.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  This struck a chord, since the daughter had always insisted that there was a ghost in her bedroom, which would manifest itself on occasions and sit on her bed.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10, began complaining about a ghost visiting her room at night, specifically the ghost of a faceless woman.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  She said to me, "Oh, yes, my daughter told me about some goings-on, some sort of faceless woman who comes and sits on my bed." And she said, "I always batted them away on the basis that we don't believe in that sort of thing. So I rang your father, and he said, 'That was Tristan's room.' So I imagine he phoned you, and the cat was out of the bag."

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I promise you, and I hope you believe me, that I don't normally find myself having conversations like this, or even entertaining these sorts of ideas. But it's kind of weird, right?

• 6:29Speaker 02

  You now have three completely unconnected families who have had some sort of strange, inexplicable experience on the top floor of that house. I think it's wonderful.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  It was definitely intriguing, but it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a story I'd tell my friends in the pub. Except I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless woman. And that's because there's another coincidence, something I hadn't thought about in years.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  So I guess Tris and I had just started going out, and they invited my parents round to his house to come and say hi.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  I first learned about it when my wife, Kate, and I had just started dating about 20 years ago. My family still lived in the house on Queen's Road, the one with the supposed ghost, and Kate was staying with us.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  And my grandad was in London, so they invited him over too.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  She was very close to her grandfather, so my folks asked if he'd join us.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  So grandad arrived. He's got nice rosy cheeks, grandad, like all the men in my family. He wore a beret every day to keep his bald head warm. And then my grandad walked into the house, and before he said anything else, he said, "My mother was murdered in the house next door."

• 7:59Speaker 03

  And I don't think we had ever put two and two together between where Tris lived and this big murder that happened in the family.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  To be clear, I'd never heard about this murder before. In fact, Kate didn't know a lot about it either, just that her great-grandmother had been killed decades before. She had no idea that it happened here. Neither of us had any clue at the time that my new girlfriend's family had any connection to this neighbourhood, let alone the house next door.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  But the details of the murder make the coincidence even stranger, because just next door to my house, the house supposedly haunted by a faceless woman, Kate's great-grandmother was killed by two gunshots to the face.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  For the best bingeable series like Ghost Story, listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can get all episodes on Audible True Crime early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.