Alma Fielding and the Thornton Heath Haunting

In February 1938, thirty-four-year-old housewife Alma Fielding went to the press with an amazing story: her home in the London suburb of Croydon was haunted. According to Alma, objects would fly off the shelves without the aid of human hands, the family was constantly under assault from unseen forces, and on multiple occasions, they found a six-fingered handprint on a mirror. It was through a local clergyman that paranormal investigator Nandor Fodor learned of Alma’s haunting and he was immediately interested in the family. As a member of the International Institute for Psychical Research, Fodor had recently come under attack from the Spiritualist community, who saw him as nothing more than a cynic, and he was looking for precisely this kind of case to reestablish himself as a believer. However, after several months studying Alma and the haunting of the Fielding home, Fodor found himself at the center of a story far more complex than he’d ever expected.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:01Speaker 01

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• 1:44Speaker 02

  Hey weirdos, I'm Alina.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I'm Osh.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  This is Morbid.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Y'alls.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Y'alls.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Y'alls.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  What's more called?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  I don't know. That just came to me.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  I'm Osh.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  I'm Osh. I feel very silly today.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  I have been fucking up the Dunkin' drive-thru lately.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  You have.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I have been up in those streets of drive-thru. There's signi-- this is not sponsored. Dunkin' does sponsor us, but this is just like apparently out of value. I'm obsessed with, and it has to be the Signature Latte.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  The Signature Pumpkin Latte is my favorite pumpkin latte of all time. It's incredible.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  I like their frozen coffees too. And again, not an ad.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  No, I swear this is not an ad, but like, hey, maybe, you know, book some more spots, I guess.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's go Dunkin'.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I love Dunkin'. But um, but yeah, I'm fucking, I'm Ben Affleck in these streets.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  I love that. Yeah.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Which actually is like foreshadowing for a bonus episode that we're gonna be doing on Friday.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  That's true. Ben Affleck is not on the episode.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  No, that's.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  I should say that right away.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Definitely. Hey.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  But.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Ben Affleck.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Come on the show.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Boston boy.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Why haven't we thought of that?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  What would we do with Ben Affleck?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  No idea, but there's some, I'm sure there's things we could do.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Hey, that'd be fun.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  You guys want Ben Affleck on the show?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Let's get Ben Aff-- well, ever since we had Matthew Lillard on the show, we're like, this guy is the limit.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Like, let's get everyone cool.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  And it was really fun. I, I do think just a true few that love us and are like defensive over us, might think that like he was ribbing us too hard.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Like being too teasy?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  But we loved it.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  That's our love language.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  And I think, and it was only a few people, but, and they were being super kind about it. And we're just like thinking like, oh, I don't want somebody hurting your feelings. I promise you, it was all in good fun. And I think we all just recognized each other's energy and made fun of each other.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  A New England way of communicating.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  He does. And I think one of the best ways to see that is watch the visual.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  If you watch the visual, you can see that we're all just lolling.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like I, I promise you, you can see that it was all in good fun. So.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  But thank you so much for caring.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  I know.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  About us, the people who were like, are you, was that, did that hurt your feelings?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  He was mean to you. I was like, no, no, no.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Cause I promise you, there wasn't a mean bone in his body.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  No, not at all.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Adored him.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, again, New Englanders, being mean is a love language.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  If you're not mean to me, I don't think you like me.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. As soon as he started going hard at me, I was like, oh, we're best friends now. Like, I was like, this is, this is, we've cemented our relationship.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  We all became best friends instantly.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  So I felt gorgeous.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Right. We were, we were dancing through life. Dancing through life. I was a theater kid right there.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, now we're trying to get more cool people on, because you guys liked that one.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Ben Affleck, what the fuck is up?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  What the fuck is up?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Let's get them all.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Let's do this.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  It would be so perfectly random.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  It would be very random.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I would love it.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Cause we're gonna make it happen.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Is he a New Yorker?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Nah, he lives in LA.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Oh, he does?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It makes sense.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Well, cause we went to the Sirius Studios in New York, so we're like, who can we get from New York?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I feel like we can get a lot of people to come to New York.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, people love New York. It's the, it's an apple.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  It is. It's an apple.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  An apple a day.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  You know?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Makes you get to New York.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yep. That's the saying. It's super catchy.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I don't know. I have a lot of sugar in my system right now.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  From Dunkin'.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  What?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  From Dunkin'.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  From Dunkin', not sponsored, but like kind of sponsored.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I have a haunting for you today because it is October. And also, we're gonna, on Friday, our bonus episode is true crime, just so you know.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. So you're getting true crime.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  You get, you get it all.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  We're given, we'll give you it all.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  When you come to Morbid, you get it all and then some.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  We're all that and a bag of chips.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  That's right, because I do love chips.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I love that expression.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, it's like my favorite fat kid expression, as a fat kid. Anyways, here's a haunting for you.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Here's a haunting.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  It's Alma Fielding and the Thornton Heath haunting.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Let's go Alma.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  I'm taking it way back.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Take it back.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  To 1938.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I did that with 1838 and now I'm doing it with 1938. So in February 1938, 34-year-old Alma Fielding went to the press with an amazing story. Her London home was motherfucking haunted.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  According to Alma, objects would fly off the shelves without anybody actually throwing them. And the family was under constant assault from unseen forces. And on multiple occasions, they found a six-fingered handprint on a mirror.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  A six-fingered, six-fingered?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I might've said figured.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I, I think I did, but that is horrifying.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Six fingers.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Six fingers.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Typical.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  And the reason that's horrifying, I'm not saying if you have six fingers, you're horrifying. I'm saying if nobody in your house has six fingers and then you find a handprint with six fingers, that's horrifying.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  And that's the case.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's scary.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  But Alma knew that if she went to the police for help, they obviously weren't gonna believe a word of her story and they'd probably toss her in some kind of asylum.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Establishment.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  So a week earlier, on February 13th, 1938, she'd been visiting a friend in Thornton Heath, the neighborhood where she lived. And she was struck by a sharp pain in her pelvis. Now, she had suffered from kidney pain when she was younger, so she thought, you know, maybe this was related. And she was like, you know what, I'm gonna, this was lovely having tea with you, but my pelvis hurts, I'm gonna leave. Now, so she went back home and once she was there, she took some meds, she went to bed to lie down, just hoping it would pass. Now, she ended up staying in bed for the entire week, just like not really feeling much better.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  And about halfway through, she was joined by her husband, Leslie, who actually was having problems of his own. He had recently had a lot of his teeth pulled to make room for dentures. And his gums had started bleeding so badly that like he literally couldn't go out in public.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And he was losing a lot of blood, so he was exhausted. And obviously, that's also just very painful.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Or nor.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  So he said, I will lie in bed and rot with you doll.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Now, it was while the two were lying in bed that Alma first noticed that six-fingered handprint on the mirror above the fireplace in their bedroom. At first, she didn't really think much of it, because obviously it's pretty easy to smudge glass by accident. But the longer she stared at the glass, the more something about the handprint looked wrong. And that's when it hit her, that it had six fingers.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Like, ah.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  So she noticed like a handprint.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Which is already a little spooky.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if you have kids, you have handprints everywhere.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  If you have kids, you have handprints everywhere.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Hers, she only had one who was older, but the six finger really fucked with her. So by the time she spotted the handprint on the mirror though, she had been in bed for several days and she had also been in and out of a fever, actually. So she kinda just chalked up the six finger to her being so sick and just tried to push it out of her mind. She was like, maybe I didn't see what I saw, or maybe I'm hallucinating.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Which is valid.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  But later that night, as she and Les lie sleeping in bed, they were woken by the sound of a large crash in the room. And when Alma turned on the bedside light, she and Les just saw shards of broken glass on the floor. And it looked like the remnants of a tumber, a tumbler, excuse me, that just seemed to have like gotten knocked over somehow. So she turned the light off after they cleaned it up and went back to sleep. But as she turned off the light and like went to go lay back down again, another tumbler flew off the nightstand and nobody had thrown it. And it smashed against the wall.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  What?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Like right in front of them.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  I wanna see something like this happen.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  I wanna see something like this so badly.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Like not in my house? Like, I don't want it in my house.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say that. Not in my house. Wait, did I tell you what happened in my house? Did I say this on the pod yet?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I don't know if you did.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I don't think I did. I already told Alina.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Really quick side haunting. I was setting up.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Side haunting.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Side haunting. I was setting up my Halloween decorations, which like, perfect.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  But I was, I was standing somewhere. And then in the dining room, I saw like a head poke out. And I was home alone, so that fucked me up. I was immediately like, intruder. And I went to look in the dining room and there was nobody there. And then I told Drew this story and he goes, oh, and this was like a while back. He was like, when we were first moving in, I had like a weird experience that I didn't tell you about. And I was like, what, what the fuck? I was like, do you know who you married? And he told me that he went in to like, check on like work that was being done. And like, we again, hadn't moved in yet. And um, he heard somebody yell hello from upstairs.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  That happened in mom and Papa's house too.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  That happens at mom and Papa's house very frequently. Maybe they traveled with us.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  But he went upstairs because he thought like, oh, maybe like a worker is here. No one was at the house. Isn't that so weird?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  That's spooky.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  And we'll be sitting, very similarly, it like, sounds like I'm copy pasting, but very similar to you and John. We'll be sitting in the living room and then that like back area, I'll swear I see something out of the corner of my eye.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  That happens to us almost every night.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so weird.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  We always think it's a child walking into the kitchen and it never is.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I don't have any children in my house. It's just me and Drew, so when we're both sitting on the couch.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And like, all our animals are always with us.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Like, all the cats will sit with us. Dolores sits with us.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  The dogs are always with us when it happens. So we're like, oh, it's a child.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And I'll be like, hey, and they'll like, go in there and no, nobody's in there.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  See, we have no one else that it could be, aside from a ghost, which is super fun.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I kind of love it.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  I love our ghost.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I, if I have a ghost, I think I do, and I, I think they like us, so.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Well, that's, I think Nicholas is in our house.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Like, he resides here.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  So I assume that's Nicholas.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  I don't know who I have.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  But I want to know about yours.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I know. Because my house isn't even like, super old.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  We should bring the thing and ask the name. Ghostube. So it will tell us.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Imagine if it says Nicholas and he's like, I'm here too.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  What if he's twins?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Maybe. Both Nicholas.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Nikolai.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Nicholas and Nicholas.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Nicholas squared. I don't know. I had to tell you guys about my side haunting though. I was really fucking excited about it.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  I love your side haunting.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Also, another little side thing, so many people suggested that the next time we have Matthew Lillard on, because we're definitely having him back.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, duh.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Is to have Nicholas in the background of the episode.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  And I think that's the most genius thing I've ever heard.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  He'll either love that, or he'll tell us the entire time that it's not real.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  We'll see.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  It will see, I guess.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  I think both would be funny.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  I think it was a great idea.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  We need, we need to put him in a place of haunted.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  We didn't really get to ask him if he believes in ghosts.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I know, we didn't, didn't we?

• 12:30Speaker 01

  It was one of our questions, but I don't think we got to it.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Didn't get to ask.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  All right, well, we'll put it on the docket for next time.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Matthew, talk soon. So anyway, back to Alma's haunting in nineteen thirty eight. So fucking glasses are just, you know.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Fucking glasses.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Fucking glasses are just throwing everywhere, but the flying everywhere. And her and her husband wake up, they see this, and as the second glass smashes against the wall, they sat up in bed, obviously. And it seemed like a cold breeze crossed over the bed.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  So Alma went to turn the bedside light back on, because I don't even think she had a chance to turn it back on yet. And when she hit the switch, nothing happened. So panicked, she just started screaming for help.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Now, hearing his mother's cries for help, their sixteen year old son, Donald, jumped out of bed and ran down the hall to his parents' room.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Those are good kids.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Taking care of their parents.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Good kid. Now he crossed the threshold into the room and he quickly ducked so that he wouldn't be hit by the flying jar of his mother's cold cream.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  What the fuck?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Now, he was woken, another person in the house, the family's lodger was broke, was woken by all the noise. George Saunders, he ran into the room and he wasn't as lucky as Donald to duck in time. He got struck in the head by two coins. That had flown off the dresser.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Oh, that would hurt.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  The lights would not come on. The room was basically pitch black, so they couldn't see who or what was throwing these things. But whatever it was, it had a strong arm.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Apparently it was like a baseball pitcher.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Legit. So while George Alma and Les just sat stunned in the room, Dawn ran to the kitchen and grabbed a pack of matches. And when he returned to the room, he lit a match and found his way to the lamp by the bed. But when he went to check the bulb, he found that there was nothing there.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Now, remember, she had turned on the light and then turned it off earlier.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  So with the match still lit, Dawn searched around the room for the light bulb. And he just found it sitting on a nearby chair, completely unscathed and also still hot, like it had just been in use.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  That's scary.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Weird. And family and George waited like another half hour, all just trying to explain what had happened. When finally, it seemed like the activity was over for the night. So everybody kind of just went back to bed. Which personally, I'd be like, hello, holiday in, I'd like to book a room.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  That's the thing. Whenever people are like, so I just went back to sleep. I mean, at the same time, it's like.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  What do you do?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  What do you do?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I'm coming to your house, definitely. If that shit goes down in my house, like if my cute haunting escalates.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  You can come to our house.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I'll, I'll be skirting on over. I know your code. I won't even bother you.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  You just come in.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  So the next morning, Alma was feeling well enough to get out of bed finally. Maybe the adrenaline helped her sickness. And she decided to go down to the kitchen to make some breakfast. After setting out an egg on the counter, she turned to get a saucer from the cupboard. And as she did, the egg flew across the room and smashed against the wall.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  What the fuck?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And now still holding the saucer, she whirled around to see what had happened. And the saucer in her hand snapped into two pieces. But she's literally just holding it.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  That's also sort of dangerous.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, I mean, she got cut.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Not one to panic super easily, though. She set the broken saucer down and she started thinking about what the fuck to do. Again, she could call the police, but the whole thing seemed so unbelievable that she was like, they're just gonna think I'm pranking them.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what do I say to the police?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Hello, nine one one, I have a haunt emergency. Now, even if they did believe her, what were they gonna do about a ghost or?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  They can't arrest him.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now then she remembered the newspaper earlier that week and noticed how it appeared in the Sunday Pictorial. The Sunday edition of the day, of the Daily Mirror, asking readers to submit experiences to be included in this ongoing series that they were running on the supernatural. Alma didn't hesitate. She grabbed a note card and she simply wrote, come to my house, there are things going on here I cannot explain.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  That's to the point.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  She was one of more than a thousand readers who replied to this request from the newspaper. But a few days later, on February nineteenth, Victor Thompson and Lionel Crane from the Sunday Pictorial knocked on the Fielding's front door. She had the golden ticket. They had been sent on several other assignments for the series, so they knew to set their expectations low.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Because not everybody's telling the truth about the hauntings.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Of course not.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  But as soon as they were inside the house, they knew they were on to something entirely different this time. Literally as soon as Alma opened the door to invite them inside, an egg came flying down the hallway and out the door.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  And landed on the lawn. Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  They got egged immediately.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Just the.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  A flying egg is hilarious.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  You saying an egg went flying down the hallway and out the front door?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  It's, it's weird personification.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  I don't know why, that's so funny.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  And where did it come from?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Just slowly flying down the hallway.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Oh, see, I don't. I picture it just like whizzing through the hallway and out the front door.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  I picture it like flying, like flap, flap, like just flying.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  It's just like self sacrificing.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Out the door, I go.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  And just crack.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I don't want to be eaten. But, so they were like, okay, we'll come in, because that was wily. They walked down the hall to the kitchen, a pink China dog sitting on a shelf just started to rattle.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Then a can, a can opener flew by them and almost hit both of them in the head. And it's, they're just.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Poltergeist.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. So sitting in the living room, Alma told Thompson and Crane about how she and Les had seen the handprint appear on the mirror a few nights earlier.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  A diamond.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  She was mid-sentence when her story was interrupted by the sound of a loud crash from the direction of the stairs. And when they ran upstairs to see what happened, the newspaper men were shocked to see that a quote, "heavy bronze fireplace fender from an upstairs bedroom had been hurled down the stairs."

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  So they ran upstairs to see who had thrown the heavy fender, but as far as they could tell, there was nobody there.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  What the fuck?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  So how did that happen?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Alma's just sitting right with them.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So they spent the rest of the day and well into that same evening at the Fielding home, just documenting all the strange happenings. According to the reporters during their time in the house, they witnessed, quote, "a saucer held in Mrs. Fielding's hands smashed into fragments, cutting her badly. A saucepan floating in the air, a wine glass apparently coming right through the door of a heavy oak sideboard."

• 18:53Speaker 02

  What?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  And it's like, this is the thirties.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  This is nineteen thirty eight.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Like, it's not like, this would be difficult to achieve.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when they asked her for comment, Alma said, "I feel some terrible climax is approaching. We shall stay up all night to see it through. I hope it comes soon. Our nerves cannot stand such more."

• 19:13Speaker 02

  She's like, can we please get to the crescendo, please?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  I would also.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  I'd be like, can we end this?

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Want to get there. But I'd also be terrified for what the fuck the crescendo is.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  This is already bad.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And it came out of like nowhere. So it's like, what do you want?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  You know? But obviously, it feels like whatever this is wants her attention.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Or somebody's attention.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  So when the Fielding story of a supernatural intruder in their home made the papers, it actually surprisingly wasn't met with a ton of mockery, but instead with just more curiosity. I mean, it is, it's almost too insane to mock. You know what I mean? Cause you're like, that's crazy. It's just for the times, it was shocked that people were like, yeah, that's weird. A few days after the article appeared in the Sunday Pictorial, Alma and Les were contacted by a reporter from the Norwood nudes, uh, nudes I just said. The Norwood nudes. It was actually news. It was very reputable. Good. It was the local paper in Croydon where they lived. In a brief interview with the paper, Alma kind of elaborated on the story that had originally appeared in the pictorial.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  And she told the reporter, during the seven years they have been living in the house, there have been, frequently been strange happenings, which no one took very seriously, which is funny. That like, they didn't really take it that serious and now it's escalated. And it's like, huh. According to Alma, she started to recognize a quote terribly cold feeling about the house right before one of the supernatural incidents occurred. And they even invited a quote psychic palmas to the house to find out how they could stop the activity. But the best he could offer was assurance that spiritual influences were at work. He's like, yeah. Yeah, we know. That's why we called you. You got ghosts. Literally. He was like, bye. Bye. That's it. Good luck. So within a few weeks, the Fieldings had actually become so accustomed to the,

• 21:01Speaker 01

  whatever this unseen thing in their house was, that they just started referring to it as Jimmy. That's so valid. That's so real of them. That's just Jimmy. I'm obsessed with that. I mean, we got, we got a Nicholas. That's our host, ghost Jimmy. I get it. I know. And his frequent appearances and tantrums kind of just lost their ability to shock them as much as they were in the past. I think it was still like surprising, but they were like, well, there's Jimmy again. Here's Jimmy. Alma, Les, Dawn and George had become so vigilant that a saucer flying across the room or a glass falling from a counter was just expected at that point. They could just catch it midair and be like, whatever. Got them. Got it. Now, they might've grown accustomed to the unseen presence in their home, even to the point of some kind of like boredom, I guess.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  But the rest of London was still interested to see the phenomenon, especially paranormal researcher, Nandor Fodor of the International Institute for Psychic, uh,

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Psychical? Psychical Research? Or cyclical? Cyclical? No, L. Psychical. Psychical. Yeah. Psychical Research. I was thinking of a different word entirely. Were you thinking of cyclical? Cyclical. Yeah. I think my mouth wanted to say cyclical. It makes sense. Anyway, he works there. He works there. So he had grown up really fascinated by stories of the supernatural, much like ourselves. Unlike us, he studied law at the Royal Hungarian University and graduated with a doctorate. But he never forgot his first love, the paranormal. In 1929, he moved to the US to work as a journalist and then traveled to England the following year,

• 22:34Speaker 01

  where he became a, uh, the American correspondent for the American Society of Psychical Research. Hell yeah. For several years, he researched and wrote about the supernatural. And he truly believed that humans contained far greater abilities than anyone realized and that they needed to be unlocked. Let's go. I kind of agree. I, I can see that. What the fuck do we know? What do we really know? What do we know? At the end of the day. We made it all up. It's all make believe. All make, made up. So we don't know shit. Yeah. You don't know shit. We don't know shit. And after years though of deep research, he just hadn't found that like irrefutable proof he'd been looking for. And it was kind of starting to show in his work.

• 23:26Speaker 01

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• 23:55Speaker 03

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• 23:57Speaker 01

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• 24:40Speaker 01

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• 25:20Speaker 01

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• 26:02Speaker 01

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• 26:44Speaker 01

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• 27:03Speaker 01

  In late 1937 and into early 1938, articles in the psychic press had accused him of quote, being cynical about the supernatural and unkind to mediums and suggested that he wasn't a real believer. Damn. So desperate to prove that he was still faithful to the cause, he was looking for a case that would, one, not only provide evidence of the supernatural, like cold hard evidence, but would also demonstrate his commitment. And when his friend showed him that article in the Sunday Pictorial in late February, he felt certain that he had found just what he was looking for. Once he learned about the Fieldings and their, I guess we'll call it a poltergeist, Fodor knew that he needed to act quickly. He was definitely not the only researcher or ghost hunter in London who was interested in this case.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Because poltergeist cases, at least, I mean, yeah, they're, they're pretty rare. Yeah. And at least back then, they were much more rare. Oh yeah, for sure. So he quickly wrote to Hugh Cudlip, the editor of the Sunday Pictorial, and asked if they would be willing to bring him on the case. And he promised to allow the pictorial to publish his findings. A few days later, Cudlip replied to Fodor's letter, providing the address of the house and urging him to get there ASAP. ASAP, if you will. Look at you. As soon as possible. Oh my, oh my God. I know. Definitions McGee over here. That's why I'm here. You're genius. The brains. Would you go to college or something? Fuck. So Fodor was shocked when he got the letter being like, hell yeah. But there was a problem. He had several appointments that day.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And he could not get to the house ASAP.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  He's booked and busy.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  ASAP Rocky as soon as possible.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  He's booked and busy.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  He is.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  That's how you know he's good.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's got shit to do.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  He couldn't get there until the next morning, but he's a smart guy.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Of course he is.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Went to law school.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's booked and busy.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Rather than miss the opportunity, he sent his assistant.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Lawrence Evans to the house and he figured.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  You know what? Evans could hold it down until he got there.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  We trust Evan.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  And he was like, also, this kind of works out because you can tell me if this is worth my time.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  And if it's not.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  It sounds like it is, but like, go find out.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  But I'm a busy guy.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  So the next morning Evans reported back to Fodor that in the handful of hours he had spent at the Fielding house, he had witnessed a shit ton of unbelievable things.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Including seeing a wine glass jump from Alma Fielding's hand, shattering in midair and falling to the wooden floor.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Just whoop.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Imagine you go there as the assistant and he's like, I don't know, just tell me if this is worth my time. And this is the shit you see?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Jackpot.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I'd be like, honey, you better get over here real soon.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I'd be like, thank you for sending me.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  It reminds me, I don't know why, it just reminds me of the, um, what's her name in Casper Carrington?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Carrigan?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Carrigan, I think.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Carrigan?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Isn't it Carrigan?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  I think it is Carrigan.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And what's her like right-hand man's name? I don't know why I'm thinking of them, but I just am.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I'll find these for you.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  I think that's such a cool name, if that is her name.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Carrigan?

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Carrigan.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  It is, right?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  I'm looking.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Are you looking for me?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  We're just sitting here questioning it while I'm looking. Carrigan, yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Carrigan. I thought her character, like, I know she was like a biatch, but I thought she was the most gorgeous lady.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  She, I mean, it's Cathy Moriarty.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  She is a gorgeous lady.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  I don't know anything else about her, so.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  So just take that with a grain of salt.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  But I love her character. Um, it just gives me that, like, because she has a right-hand man that like does everything for her.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  I don't know why, I just thought of it.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  According to Evans, this happened several more times that night, all without any apparent cause. Like, he was like, I don't think she's throwing these things in the air. They're legit flying out of her hands.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And as for whether it could have been a hoax, he, again, he didn't think so. As far as he could tell, Alma was just as shocked by each occurrence and was shaking violently with her heart racing. He even put his fingers to her wrist at one point to check her pulse and her pulse was really got one.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  So she was scared.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  During that first visit, the family shared stories.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Or she, and I'm just gonna be an asshole here.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  She's scared or she's nervous because she knows she's fraudulent.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And I get, I'm just saying it from a point of view of a.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  I wasn't saying, hey, like, hey, stop it. I was saying, hey, like, hey, good point.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Hey. You could be right.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Or it could be the other thing.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Or it's really scary.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, keep an open mind.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  So during that first vis- visit. The family shared stories with Evans about their experiences with Jimmy. In one incident, a heavy wardrobe had been thrown onto Dawn's bed in the middle of the night.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  But fortunately, he was at a friend's house that evening.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Now, and he was at a friend's house because the house was just like such a fucking ruckus that he was like, I gotta get out of here.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  This is a lot. And I'll childproof those big pieces of furniture.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you really have to actually arm those to the wall.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, make sure you do that.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Anchor them to the wall.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, anchor them to the wall.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've seen way too many videos of like.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Fucking.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  It's really dangerous.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Dressers falling on toddlers.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Especially like dressers and bookshelves.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  It's a little PSA, anchor them over the wall.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, smart. I remember when you had to baby-proof your whole house, that was a lot.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  You know, you can like hire agencies to do that?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's no way I could hire an agency.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  No, I would need to do it all myself too. I get that.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no, it was like, I wouldn't be able to because I couldn't trust anyone and I couldn't afford it. I'm sure those are expensive.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Valid.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Now, while he was listening to them describe their experiences, they actually heard a loud smash come from the hall outside of Dawn's room. And when they went to check, Evans found pieces of a small china vase laying on the floor near her grandfather clock.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  They're breaking so much shit.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  A lot of shit is breaking. And he assured Fodor that nobody was on the second floor at the time and the vase had very clearly been thrown from Dawn's bedroom. But no one was up there.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, like what the fuck?

• 32:43Speaker 01

  He told Fodor, I unhesitatingly label it supernatural.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Ooh, unhesitatingly.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I love it. So Fodor got the, uh, got to the Fielding house early on the morning of February 24th, eager to see for himself what his assistant had described. Given that the first place Alma, uh, Alma went with their story was the newspaper, he obviously questioned whether they were just seeking attention.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  But from what he could tell, the family genuinely wanted the haunting to stop. They'd already engaged a psychic and held a seance, but that did nothing to stop the incidents.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I feel like it usually doesn't.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Actually, the best the psychic could do was tell them that, quote, this is awful. There might be murdered babies in the well in their back garden and they should plant marigolds over the site.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  What?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  He said, hey.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  I just like, hey, there might be murdered babies in the well.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Perhaps.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Maybe, I'm not.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Who am I to say?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Who can say?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  As a psychic, not sure.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Here's the, there's always a possibility that there's murdered babies in a well.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  That is a possibility.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  So I guess them saying that, I mean.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  You could say that about any well.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  You could.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  It is.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Might be small, but there's always, the possibility is not usually zero.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Unless you check.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  I like that the solution is just planting marigolds over it.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  And then they were like, hey, instead of doing anything about that.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Well, you're doing something.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Let's not find those murdered babies' bones or anything. Like, we don't want to do that.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  No, excavators are expensive.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  No justice, no closure. Uh, let's just use that and plant a garden.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. It'll put their souls at rest.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  I would love to have sat there and just been like, can you tell me the thought behind that? Like, can you just like give me, give me, I, talk to me like I am a child.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Walk me through it.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  How'd you get from A to B there?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  How did you get from murdered babies in a well to marigolds?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I don't know, but that's what he did.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Tell me. I like that a lot.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  It's something.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  As well.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I like it and I hate it too.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a concept for sure.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  I just like the broad stroke that that was because again, any well could have a murdered baby in it.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  So that is a very valid thing to just throw out. Like, that's like throwing spaghetti against a wall. It's like, might stick.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  I just think about introducing that concept to a family.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Well, I know this shit's been going down in your house.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  It's been scary.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  I think possibly it's the, the possible murdered babies in the well.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know you guys are really scared and I'm here to try to help you out. Maybe somebody murdered a bunch of babies here.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And put them in your backyard.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Put them in the well.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  And what you can do.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Sleep tight.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Is plant.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good night, everybody.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  I love it. Have fun gardening.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So they didn't really like that answer.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Good for them.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  There was also, they were like, yeah, we feel like that's not it.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  That's weird.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  They said, thank you so much for coming. Please go. Then there were all the other people constantly coming by and peering into the windows now that the article had gone out, trying to get a look at anything going on.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  It was all extremely disruptive and intrusive and Les particularly Alma's husband found it very overwhelming.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  He did not like it.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  So that was interesting. Like, it's, it seemed like they weren't going out of their way for the attention.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  At least Fodor thought so. As promised, he spent several days in the Fielding house and by the end of the week, he submitted his final report, or excuse me, his first report to Cudlip for publication in the pictorial. He told reporter Lionel Crane, my assistant, Mr. L.A. Evans, and I have spent most of the week at the house. There is certainly no fraud. We are satisfied there is something supernatural at work there and we are going on with the investigations.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Damn, he just laid it. He said, no fraud.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  To him, the activity in the house obviously seemed genuine, but at the same time, it also wasn't like any other usual case that he'd investigated. Again, the family didn't seem to want the attention that the story brought them. They also hadn't brought up the subject of payment for the story at all. So it wasn't a matter of financial gain either. And others from outside the home had seen the activity firsthand and verified themselves what they saw.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  All right.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  All of that left Fodor to wonder, what exactly was Jimmy after?

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like what's going on here?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, at the time, there wasn't really a universally understood or, I guess, shared definition of a poltergeist, which is what Fodor thought was happening in the Fielding home. But the phenomenon was widely believed by paranormal researchers to result from like, unbridled psychic energy typically originating from a teenager. We've talked about this before.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Alma and Les did have a teenage son, Donald, and some of the activities focused on or around him, but not that much more than lesser George or like either of the other guys. And actually, based on everything that he heard, Fodor concluded that if the poltergeist was actually really harnessing its energy on one particular member of the Fielding house, it seemed to be Alma, actually.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  During his initial interviews with Alma, Fodor started cataloging the numerous injuries that she sustained since the activity had started. There were cuts on her hands from all the broken saucers and glasses, bruises on her head from a time she was pushed down the stairs.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Various other bruises all over her body from all the time she'd been struck by flying objects, just like this poor woman was going through it. But despite those injuries, Alma seemed at first unwilling or really unable to acknowledge that among the people living in the house, she was the one taking the brunt of everything. She said, I don't think these bruises were intentional. I think it just happened that we were in the way.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  That's a very nice way of looking at it.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  That's very sweet.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Like, it's not that they're mean.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  It's very like, I don't know, they lived here first.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Which is always my approach.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Since the majority of the activity did appear to focus on her, though, Fodor actually started to come up with this theory or question, like, he was wondering if Alma Fielding was psychic and, like, wasn't realizing it.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  And perhaps because of that, maybe she was the cause of the activity in the house. Now, under normal circumstances, that question would seem absurd.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  But to Alma, it actually seemed like something she might have already considered. She told Fodor, "I am told I'm psychic because sometimes I tell people things that come to pass." And she went on to describe several dreams or visions that she'd had, like one where her son was in a bike accident that ended up happening a few days later.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Oh, shit.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  And she insists-

• 39:07Speaker 02

  That's like real.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  That shit happens.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  That happens to me.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  John does that, and my mom does that.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  And it's happened like several times.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  I don't have any control over it.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  No, none of them do.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And it happens like sometimes and then just like won't happen for a long time.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  And it's legit. Like, I'm, again, I'm like, I'm like a whimsical skeptic where, like, I want to prove things wrong just for my brain.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  It, because it's weird. But I am also a whimsical bitch and I want to believe in everything. So I'm like a weird straddling the line person.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I think it's because you're an earth, um, sun and a water moon.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Maybe that is it.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  That makes sense. So I'm like a whimsical skeptic. And so I would tell you if this was not, I'd be like, no, like, they don't really feel that way, like, that this hasn't really happened. It's really happened, but like, all three of them in my life have told me something or been like, I had a dream or I have a feeling. Like, you get feelings all the time that-

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I do.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  -straight up happen. Like, you'll be like, I don't know, I feel like something weird is gonna happen.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And then it does.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  And then something weird will happen.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  And John will do it, where he'll, like, he's, like, predicted a car accident before.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  The other day, he was walking the dogs and he said he got a weird feeling, like something bad was gonna happen and it, like, overwhelmed him. And, like, someone was gonna get sick or something like that, and something did happen. Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  It does happen a lot.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And I don't know how to explain, like, the feeling. And so, honestly, sometimes they're wrong. Like, I will say, they're not always spot on, but-

• 40:35Speaker 02

  A lot of times, they're right.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ma is super witchy, so I think we get it from her. And then John had, like, an aunt, right?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Who was, like, psychic?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Who, yeah, was like, straight up psychic and, like-

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Like, born with a veil, right?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, that's supposed to be, like, the thing, is they're born with, like, a veil over their face, kind of thing. It's like, uh, and that's like the spooky version of it, but, like, she used to, like, work with the police sometimes.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  To, like, find missing people.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I don't know a lot about my birth, but I don't think I was born with a veil.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I don't really have anybody to ask, so-

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I don't, I think that's like a mythical thing, but whatever.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Mythical?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  I like it, though.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I wonder if Ma was-

• 41:09Speaker 02

  It's just spooky as fuck, so I love it.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Ma was born with a veil.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  I bet she was, too.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  That bitch is so psychic. But anyways, so she insisted that she'd never really given the subject much thought because she said, "There are things which we are not meant to know." Which, that answer would drive you crazy. I'm surprised you like that.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  No, I like that. I like it in this story.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  I don't like that in life. Because there is nothing I'm not meant to know.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  It is true. I, I do agree with that sentiment, though. I think there are just things that we, we don't know and we're not meant to.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  And I'm like, I, I feel like we're gonna.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  We're gonna know.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Maybe. I don't think we'll know all things.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Damn it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  All in his, like, let's fistfight, put him on. So the more Fodor got to know Alma, the more convinced he became that whatever was happening in the house, it did have something to do with her. In fact, he soon learned that the night the glasses were thrown around the bedroom was actually not the first time something strange or disturbing had happened. Alma told him several months earlier, she started hearing things in the house that she couldn't explain. There was an incident in late 1937 when she was home alone, but she heard a voice in the dining room, which I said, same sister. And the voice was whispering, "Hurry up, hurry up."

• 42:19Speaker 02

  What?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Which would fuck me up. I saw something, I didn't hear shit.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I don't like that.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  For some reason, seeing something ain't shit to me. Like, I'm just like, okay, that was freaky.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  I know, because I feel like I see things all the time.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Hearing something?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  That'll fuck me up.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  That would fuck me up. Because I've heard things that might on purpose before and been like, "Anybody else hear that?"

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, that's-

• 42:39Speaker 01

  It's a weird feeling for it to infiltrate that sense.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  You know?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  I don't like that.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  That happens to me a lot in that, and it might just be like mom paranoia that, like, I'll be like, wait a minute, and I'll, like, make John turn down the TV and I'm like, did someone just- Say mama? Or, like, did someone just say something? And nobody has, but I've heard it. Like, I know I've heard mama or something like that. Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Or I hate, like, when you'll wake up from a dream and you, you heard something in the dream that, like, almost felt like it was the thing that woke you up.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  That happens to me so often, and it fucks me up because then I don't know if it's actually a sound that I heard in the house.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  And then I can't go back to sleep because I think someone's in the house.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot about dreams that we don't know.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  I think dreams are almost like a parallel universe kind of thing.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I think for sure there is. And that happens to me so fucking often that I will wake up to us with the sound being half in a dream, half, I don't know if it's the sound that woke me up or not.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  And then my heart's going like a thousand miles an hour, so I feel like I'm having a heart attack in the middle of the night and I can't calm down. Hate that.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  It's so weird.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Hate that.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Well, this wasn't the only thing for Alma that was weird, because, like, so she heard that voice, she went to look, nobody was there. Then a few days before Christmas, things escalated, she said. One afternoon, when she was out of the house, she was, or when everybody else was out of the house, sorry, so she was by herself, Alma was carrying some dishes down the stairs, and she felt a large hand just firmly grip her shoulder.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Which I would poop my pants.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  No. Getting touched is not, not fun.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Getting touched is no way, no. The shock caused her to drop the dishes and she actually fainted. She was so scared.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  And when she came to, she was lying at the floor at the bottom of the stairs with broken dishes all around her.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  They need to start taking up decoupage. Is that what it is? Where you, like, put pieces of glass and make a-

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Decoupage, I think it is.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  They need to do that, because they, you gotta do something with all this broken glass.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Okay, everybody-

• 44:37Speaker 01

  That's a fun word to say, decoupage.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Decoupage.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  It's also like, damn, back then, shit was expensive to replace. A lot of broken glass.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  So decoupage and start selling it.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it was like Jimmy, quote unquote, wanted Alma's attention specifically, and he was willing to do anything to get it.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Jimmy, you're being pushy as fuck.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  He's literally pushing.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Given everything that he was learning about Alma and the activity in the house, Fodor wanted to kind of do an experiment. He wanted to remove her from the home environment and test her in a more neutral space, which I actually find really fascinating.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  I think that is smart.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  So on February 26, he traveled with Alma to the Insta, uh, International Institute for Psychical Research in Kensington, where she was to be tested for psychic abilities. Just before the test started, she was led down a hallway by a female member of the research team who asked her to undress for a thorough search, during which all loose items were taken from her. And after the search, they walked down, uh, or they walked towards a small room, but before they made it to the door, a brass-bound hairbrush came flying at Alma, quote, "apparently from nowhere," and hit her in the head. She reached down and she picked up the brush, and to everybody's shock and horror, it was her own hairbrush that she had left behind at home that morning.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  What the?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  And she had just been searched.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. For Fodor, the discovery of Alma was akin to finding a goldmine, and his enthusiasm could barely be contained. But for Alma and everybody in the house, the entire experience was really overwhelming for them, and it was starting to prevent them from living a normal day-to-day life.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  But soon, the investigation was taking, uh, place more outside of the home than in. And that's when his, uh, focus shifted from the Fielding family to Alma alone. At that point, she was making regular visits to the institute to be tested. During one of those meetings, she sat with a psychic medium, Countess Nora Wydenbruck, one of the mediums who Fodor had been working with for years, Countess.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Uh, Alma was asked to sit inside the medium's cabinet with the curtains drawn behind her back, so that she could still be seen by those sitting in front of her. As she sat idly in the cabinet, the researchers watched the fabric of the curtains swaying lightly as she was breathing, which is interesting because she's not facing them.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Then, after a few minutes, she spoke and said, "Something is moving behind me underneath the chair."

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  They all sat still for a moment, listening for noises, until Alma spoke again and said, "Something is still there. I feel as if I were sitting on it. I think it's something solid."

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Ew.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Something about the situation made the medium feel a sense of sick dread, she said.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I think everything about it should.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Fodor went over the cabinet, went over to the cabinet and reached inside, and he reached to the small space behind the chair, and his hand hit something solid. When he pulled the object out, it was a glass dome about two inches in diameter, and Alma recognized the object immediately. It was an ornamental dust cover from her son's room.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  What the fuck did it get there?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Because that's the thing, remember, she was not at home.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  How the fuck did that happen?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  What?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Same thing as the hairbrush. By March, Fodor started reporting his results, uh, to not just the Sunday Pictorial, but also to various spiritualist magazines and newspapers, which were huge at the time. We just talked about it. Especially those who criticized him publicly and questioned his belief.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, bitch.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  "I'm a believer. Look what I, look what I found." He told the Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research, "There has not been greater or truer ghost story than this one for many years. I always wanted to meet a poltergeist. Now I have met one, a poltergeist which is certainly destructive, yet not malevolent. In fact, to a certain degree, amendable to experimental suggestions."

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Interesting, right?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 01

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• 51:06Speaker 01

  So within a few weeks, when there was nothing new or compelling to report, the public's interest in the Thornton Heath Poltergeist did start to fade. Meanwhile, though, Fodor's interest in, it sounded like I said Hodor, Fodor's interest in Alma couldn't have been stronger. For decades, he had been searching for this irrefutable proof of the supernatural, and now it felt like he had finally find it after all those years. He found it. Find it, too. He find it, he found it, he feinted it, all of the above. But if Alma was psychic, and she was the cause of the disturbances in the family home, then where was her power coming from and why all of a sudden? Like, why had it just emerged now? Yeah. Now, when asked by Fodor to think back to her first experience with the supernatural,

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Alma described a pretty strange incident that had occurred in 1930. She and Les had been playing cards with some friends when she started to not feel well, and she excused herself to lie down on the sofa. Now, this seems to be a running theme. I was gonna say theme, and then I said thing, so I just said thing. But it seems to be a running theme, like she doesn't feel well right before these really strange things happen. So she went to go lay down, and a short time later, her friends started to worry about her, and they tried to wake her up. And as she came to, she said she was deeply confused by what was happening. On one side of her was her husband Les, tugging at her arm, but on the other side was her father, who had died from tuberculosis a few years earlier. Oh, that's weird.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  And she said, "My father leant across and drew across with his fingers on my left breast," which is pretty disturbing.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  I took a sip of my drink during that. Yeah, wrong timing, babe. A few seconds later, though, when she was finally awake, her father was gone and everything was back to normal. Right. The next morning, she looked at herself in the mirror, and there was a large cross-shaped bruise where her father had made the sign. The following day, the bruise was gone, and in its place was a thick scar. So she was concerned, because obviously, that's not the natural progression of how a bruise heals. No. So she made it. Can confirm. Yeah, can confirm. You should definitely call someone. So she called her doctor and was referred to a specialist. And after conducting a few tests, they discovered a cancerous mass under the exact same spot. Whoa. Isn't that bananas? That's weird.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Now, luckily, they detected the problem early enough, and they were able to remove the mass. Damn. A few years later, she experienced yet another health crisis. One day, without warning, she fucking lost her sight completely. Huh. Hysterical blindness. Oh, shit. She said, "I told nobody," because I think it's actually called something else now. She said, "I told nobody because I could walk about, ride my bicycle, and carry on." When asked by Fodor how it was she was able to navigate the world without her sight, she was kind of vague. She said, "I cannot explain. It seemed to me as if it were a sense given to me. I knew everything that, I knew everything that was coming near me. I knew by the sound of the train, whether it was from London or from Thornton Heath, I could get on the right one."

• 54:14Speaker 01

  What the fuck? So she just lost her sight for a little. But could still just go everywhere. But was like, not really affected by it. It's like she gained another sense. Yeah, which does happen, but it's usually, like, it takes some time to harness that other sense, I think. That's wild. So with all this new information, Fodor started putting the pieces together. Her first experience occurred the night that she had the vision of her father, it seemed, and subsequently found out that she had the cancerous mass. Then she obtained what she kind of described as like a second sight, when she had temporarily lost her vision. And then, most recently, the Poltergeist activity in the house, don't forget, started when Alma started having those really bad pelvic pains and was confined to bed for

• 54:55Speaker 01

  over a week. Each burst of paranormal activity seemed to coincide with the onset of a mild to serious illness. Damn. And Alma had been struggling with mild to severe illness since she was a young girl. Yeah. So Fodor concluded, Alma's bodily failings seemed to trigger a special capacity, as if she were trading physical for psychic power. Oh. Isn't that fascinating? That is, I've never heard of something like this. Neither have I. This is very interesting. So by the end of March, as Alma became more engaged with the research at the institute, the activity in the fielding house actually started to slow down until it eventually stopped altogether. But the deeper Alma, Fodor, and the rest of the researchers dug into Alma's supposed supernatural abilities, the more serious of a toll it started to

• 55:40Speaker 01

  take on her. Things at home were calm, but she was still going through it. Yeah. She started having really strange experiences, like sudden chunks of time were missing, or she felt like she was experiencing the future while her body was still in the present. Ooh. On one occasion, when they were taking the tram from Kensington back to Croydon, she felt like something cold was touching her neck. And she said it wasn't anything unpleasant, and within a few moments, the sensation was gone. But when she got home, she wasn't feeling well. So she said hi to her husband, and she was like, "Listen, I'm gonna go upstairs and lay down for a little bit." As she undressed to get into the bed, a cold feeling of metal touching her skin came back, and this time, it was much stronger, and she actually lost consciousness. What?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  A short time later, her husband found her lying on the floor at the top of the stairs. And as he helped her to her feet, he noticed a heavy silver chain necklace around her neck that she wasn't wearing earlier. What the fuck? When asked where it came from, she was still in a daze, and she said, "The Asian man gave it to me. It's a present, a sort of souvenir. It's very old. I don't think I like it, but I didn't want to offend him." What the fuck? So Les was confused. Concerned. To say the least. Alma had only gone to see Fodor and the others at the institute, and there was no Asian man there as far as he knew. So he pressed Alma for more information, but her reply did little to clarify anything. She said, "I was at West Croydon Railway

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Station. I remember being there. I saw this bleached stone arch. I went through it. There was a man at my side, and he told me I was in Asia. It was very hot and dry. I don't remember to have been there before, but he said I used to live there." What? Like, did you go through Platform 9 in different quarters? I was gonna say, is this like another realm? Like, hello? You've crossed over into a different plane of existence? Yeah, but things just kept getting weirder. Just a few days after the silver chain incident, Alma was out with Fodor and his assistant Lawrence Evans, and Fodor noticed Alma admiring a display of a hand-carved marble animal in like, a store window. And he told her he wanted to buy her a present to thank her for all of her cooperation in this ongoing research.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Well, that was nice. It was. So he, she picked out the small hand-carved elephant. But before they could buy the item, the assistant, Evans, pointed out that the lowered trunk on the animal was a sign of bad luck, so they shouldn't buy it. Interesting. To which I say, fuck you, don't come for elephants. Yeah, what the hell is that? But the mention of bad luck seemed to really kind of mess with Alma. And by the time they were back in the car and on the road, she put the incident behind her. Like, but she was very clearly like, freaked out while they were still at the store. Then, as they drove, she reached into her purse for a handkerchief, and Fodor all of a sudden heard like this pronounced gasp, like, oh my god, what was that? And as he looked

• 58:31Speaker 01

  over, he saw in Alma's hand the small marble elephant that they had not purchased. She stole the elephant? Probably. This one I can explain, guys. This one I can also explain. Listen, this is where it starts to get, starts to get interesting. I'm like, okay. But the thing was, he had never seen her pick it up in the store, but here it was in her purse. And she looked up at him and said, "Take it away, please." Wow. He was like, because remember, obviously, his go-to is not like she stole it. No, of course not. His go-to is like, all these weird things are happening around this woman. Weird shit's been happening. And now this, like, what? So now, this is the other thing. This is where it gets fucking ludicrous. And I love that word, luda. Luda.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  The objects that Alma seemed capable of producing were not always inanimate objects. There were also times that living creatures would appear around her, too. No.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  When I tell you Luda, Luda, baby. During one car ride, she was sitting with Fodor and the others, like his assistant and whoever else. When she suddenly realized, oh, there's something on my lap. And when she looked down, she found a motherfucking live turtle.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  On her lap. What? It's like a terrapin. It's a kind of turtle. What? Just chilling on her lap.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  What? Like, how does that? And that's on a car ride? On a car ride. All of a sudden, there's a- Also, what's the meaning of this? That would be my thing. I'd be like, why did you, why, why? What do- Why is there a live turtle on my lap? Represent? Let's see. When they appear on your lap? Longevity, protect them, uh, protect them. Protection, wisdom and patience. Protect them and love them and keep them. Yeah, keep the turtle. That's what you do with a live turtle. But like, no one had seen her pick it up or put it there. And there was no obvious explanation for how a living animal such as a turtle just appeared inside the moving car on this woman's lap. I mean, that one's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. And it was bizarre enough on its own, like you just said, that's fucking crazy.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  But the turtle was only one of several living things that seemed to materialize around Alma. Other times beetles appeared from underneath her gloves, like beetles would just crawl out from her gloves. Stop, Alma. And white mice and birds appeared out of nowhere, like inside space, like in inside spaces.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  They would just materialize. That's insane. Yeah. I'd be like, someone needs to post up at the local pet store. For real. And see if Alma is sneaking on in there. How do you sneak a turtle into a car though? No idea. And then produce it on your lap without like, everyone seeing that you've reached somewhere to get said turtle and put it on your lap? I have no idea, cause I myself have never tried to sneak a turtle into a car. No? I, that would fuck me up. Like, how do you explain that? And the beetles and, eh. Yeah, just coming out from her gloves, like, eh. I mean, I guess that one's pretty simple, like you just put gloves on the beetles, but who the fuck would willingly do that? Yeah, you're, oof. Homegirl's just on Fear Factor. Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  So the more extraordinary the manifestations became, the harder it was for Fodor to simply accept everything as evidence of Yeah. a psychic unknown force. And he was starting to wonder if there was something much more earthly going on. Oh. At first, he wondered if Alma had simply found a way to outsmart the researchers. And eventually he did suspect that she was concealing objects, and apparently turtles, on or inside her body somehow. That's wild. He, so, here's the thing, she had demonstrated that she was remarkably agile at a certain points throughout this. And he couldn't help but wonder, much like Carrie Brownshaw, if she was using that ability to hide small objects and then retrieve them once like a seance or investigation was underway. Damn. Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  So in an attempt to finally catch her in the act, he arranged for her to be x-rayed before one of their sessions. Or nor. And he told her the x-ray was simply another way of investigating her supposed psychic abilities. Yeah. And she was hesitant at first. She kinda said like, it reminded her of being sick. She didn't like it. She would have to talk to her husband about it. Yeah. But then she finally agreed. Unfortunately, when the images came back, he saw exactly what he had been looking for. There were two small objects visible against her body, including a heart shaped object and another that was like a small pin or brooch kind of thing that she later produced during seances or investigations. Oh, Alma.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  So, it proved that at least some of her supernatural quote unquote manifestations were being accomplished through deception. Yeah. But rather than simply expose her as a fraud and end the investigation, he actually became even more fascinated by the question of why she was going to all this trouble? And if she herself even fully understood what she was doing. And was it all a fraud? That's the thing, was it all a fraud? By this point, it was becoming clear that whatever was happening to Alma, the investigation was having a serious toll on her mental and physical health. And when he first met Alma, he was thrilled to find a case so rich with evidence of the supernatural. But now after months of working with her and mounting evidence that at least some of the phenomena might have been deliberately staged,

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  he was starting to wonder if doing this investigation continuing on was doing more harm than good for both of them. Cause like, Yeah. she's not doing any better and he took this on to kind of like, prove to everybody that he was a believer, but now he's found evidence that, you know, makes him rightfully skeptical. Yeah. So he's unsure how to move forward. So he contacted his friend Elizabeth Severn, who was a psychoanalyst he had worked with in the US. After hearing about Alma's experiences, Severn suggested that these strange occurrences might be connected to unresolved psychological trauma from Alma's past. And rather than being haunted by an outside force, maybe she was struggling with something deep buried inside of her psyche.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  It was a possibility that he hadn't really considered when the investigation started, but the more he did start to learn about Alma's life, the more interested Fodor got that idea. It kind of felt like, Yeah. that was the path to go down. In time, in the time that he got to know her, he did learn that Alma had experienced considerable, considerable grief throughout her life. Like I said, she had struggled with a lot of illnesses and personal hardships. Yeah. So he wondered if those experiences were somehow connected to the strange things happening now. Valid. Hoping to understand that connection, Fodor and his colleague, uh, Henry Freworth decided to attempt hypnosis one more time. So they arrived at the fielding home. And Alma was actually unusually calm and relaxed when they got there.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Les was at work, Dawn was visiting a friend, and for once the house was quiet. So it was really perfect timing to go into this like regressive state with her. Yeah. Which was something that they had done throughout their investigations. She must have been like, kinda fucked up. What's that? I must have felt fucked up, you know? To like, to hypnotize her? Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine. And to like, you're, you're pressing to kind of get somebody's trauma. Thing like that, I feel like that's scary. Yeah, it would freak me out. Yeah. Now, well, as he guided her into a hypnotic state, he asked whether she could hear his voice and she said, yes, but there are others as well, many voices. Ooh. And later she described hearing a mixture of voices, some belonging to children, some belonging to adults.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  She said that some whispered while others shouted or screamed and none of it made sense. Oh. It reminds me of the episode that we just watched of True Blood, where they get into Marnie's head and there's just like a shit ton of voices. Shenanigans. When she's saying like some were shouting or screaming, like that's, Yeah. I hate that. Some were whispering, some were shouting. It's weird. No. As the session continued, she recalled some of her earliest experiences with the supernatural though. She talked about a terrifying figure that she had once seen emerging from a locked cupboard in their old home. And she also described strange occurrences from her childhood. And a lot of them, uh, connected back to men. And that led Fodor to believe

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  that whatever was happening to Alma maybe didn't necessarily start in their Thornton Heath home. Okay. By the end of the investigation, he had developed a theory. He believed that her experiences might be connected to past traumas, like the illnesses and losses that she'd gone through in her life. And he suspected that some of the incidents she reported could have actually been produced unconsciously without her fully understanding why. Yeah. Like, she might have been doing things like, you know,

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  like getting the hairbrush, smuggling the hairbrush in and not even realizing that she did it or why she did it. Yeah. You know? That makes sense. But the issue was that while he continued searching for answers, his colleagues at the institute were actually becoming increasingly concerned about the effect that the investigation was having on Alma. And they're not trying to get sued out here in these streets. Yeah. So they gave him an ultimatum. He could end his work with Alma or he could leave his job. Like, full blown ultimatum. A gnarly ultimatum. Yeah, so he chose wisely and decided to, uh, end the investigation. That's valid. Now, in February nineteen thirty-nine, he sent Alma and Les a copy of his final report. But rather than finding answers or reassuring, any kind of reassurance on its pages,

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Alma was very deeply upset by what she read because he was basically saying like, Yeah. I don't think you mean to be a fraud, but you're a little bit of a fraud. From her experience though, she was struggling with terrifying experiences that she couldn't explain. And now the one man that she trusted to investigate those experiences was portraying her as somebody responsible for creating them one way or the other, like consciously or unconsciously. Yeah. Which sucks. That does suck. So they actually, Alma and Les went to the institute to protest Fodor's plans to publish the report as a book because he was planning to do that. The institute couldn't prevent him from publishing it, but a friend eventually did persuade him to abandon the project. He was like, this is a fucking mess.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like this is not gonna be good. Now meanwhile, his investigation really also didn't do much to improve his standing among fellow psychical researchers. Yeah. Many spiritualists were disappointed and actually pissed off by his reliance on these psychological explanations. And his professional disputes only continued from then on. Oh, man. One of those disputes actually brought him to court in a libel case in, uh, involving the psychic news. Oh, no. Which was not good. Or nor. And it was during those proceedings that Fodor and Alma would see each other one final time. Alma never testified in the case, but she and Les did attend the trial. And at the end of it, while leaving the courthouse, she walked over to him

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  and told him, you'll never publish that book. Like, Whoa. I don't know if it was like threatening or angry or, but she was like, you're not gonna fucking do it. Eek. And that was the last time they ever saw each other. So it ended on a

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  What a sour note to end on.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Two days later, he boarded a steamship with his wife and daughter and returned to New York City.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Straight up left.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  He just said bye.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Cause you remember, he went to London like for that. Now, as for Alma, life went on. During World War II, she volunteered as a nurse while Les served as a constable with the Royal Marine Police. After the war, they retired to Devon, where Alma continued to take interest in the paranormal and occasionally hosted seances in their home.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Which is interesting.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  She passed away in 1976, and that's kind of where her story leaves us.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  After months of investigations, countless witnesses, all these extraordinary claims, nobody ever really managed to explain everything that happened.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Some of the phenomena, obviously she was exposed for.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  It was staged.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Some of the other stuff, you're like, how'd you make that happen?

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. Other parts of the story baffled even the people who were standing right there witnessing them. So here we sit 90 years later, almost still left with the same question that brought investigators to her doorstep in the first place. What exactly happened to Alma Fielding?

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  And I don't think we'll ever know.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  I don't think we will either. It's in the 30s.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  It makes, I, I almost wonder if like, cause I believe in the paranormal. So I think she had some, some paranormal experiences to start with.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  And then I don't know if it was like an attention thing or, or what was the motivation, but I, I think she liked the experiences and that's why maybe she continued trying to.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  To up the ante every time.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  And I think maybe that was what it was. It was like, maybe some of the less compelling stuff was real. And then the more it got crazier and crazier, the more attention and like spotlight got put on it. And she got brought into the institute and people were like, you know, impressed by her abilities. So she just kept pushing the envelope.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Cause she knew those other things weren't going to keep the attention.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Exactly. And obviously she enjoyed the paranormal. So I do wonder if, cause that was Fodor's thing. I don't, he didn't really think that she was like a fraud necessarily.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  I think he was like, some of the, she's obviously staging, but.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Caught around some of this.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Why is she doing it? And does she even realize to the extent that she's going?

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  What's going on here?

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  That's the thing. So I don't know.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  That's fascinating.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  It is interesting, but I do think some of it was real.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Cause some of it.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  It's hard to explain away all of it.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  How do you produce a turtle?

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  That one, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  I don't get that.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  And just the stuff like in the house, like flying in front of people and stuff.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like the egg flying down the hallway.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  How did that happen?

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  She's at the front door.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  No, I don't know if anybody else was home at that point.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  And you would think that like, if Don was in on it, he'd be like, yeah, I threw the egg down the hallway.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Like I threw that egg.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Eventually. So I don't know. I, I, I like to think that some of it was supernatural and that it just kind of snowballed and she couldn't get a handle on it.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Very interesting story though.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  So with that, we hope you keep listening.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  And we hope you.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Keep it weird. But not so weird that

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  you, I don't know. I kind of want to tell you to keep it so weird that a turtle just fucking materializes on your lap.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  But don't like fraud people.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Don't fraud anyone with a turtle.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Specifically.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Don't do that.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Fraud them with eggs.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Fraud them with eggs all you want, but not a turtle.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Not live animals.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:14:54Speaker 04

  Creators, the idea shows up on a walk. The script gets written at a desk three days later, if at all. Whisperflow is a voice-to-text app. You talk, it types, the hook, the script, the caption, the reply to a comment, and any app. It cleans up the ums and the rambling, so what comes out is a real draft. Four times faster than typing. Whisperflow is free. Get it at whisperflow.ai. That's W-I-S-P-R-flow.ai.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

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• 1:16:05Speaker 05

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