Drury Lane Ghosts

This episode features several ghosts all associated with one place. And that place is a specific building with its own interesting history – the Theater Royal Drury Lane of London.

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  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

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  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. This episode was originally going to be another edition of Ghosts of the British Isles. It sort of still is.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  But it ended up being all about specifically theatrical ghosts. As Andrew Dixon wrote in an article for The Guardian in 2015, quote, "There is barely a theater in Britain that doesn't claim a resident spook. History is littered with stories of phantoms glimpsed in the orchestra stalls or onstage presences felt but unseen." And so this particular episode is about theatrical ghosts, but theatrical ghosts associated with one place. And that place is specific and it has its own interesting history. That is the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. This theatre is known by a lot of names. Theatre Royal Drury Lane is one, and perhaps its most accurate one, but it is more often called

• 3:13Speaker 02

  the Drury Lane Theatre, sometimes just the Drury, et cetera. I picked this one because it's considered the most haunted. But the thing is, the ghost stories that it has are many in number, but there's not a lot of documentation about these sightings. So I thought first we would talk about this theatre's history because it's really interesting. So this is one for the theatre kids in the crowd. And then we are going to talk about some of the ghosts that are associated with it, including one whose ghost is a previous podcast subject. And I don't think we talked about him being a haunting entity on that one. I went back and checked and heard nothing about it. So I don't think we did. We're like augmenting that story.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did mention this theatre a lot in it, which is why, as I was reading through that line, I kept being like, why, why is this familiar? Yeah. I kept looking back through stuff and then went, oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London is the oldest theatre of the city that's still in regular use. There have actually been multiple buildings on the site over the years, but they all operated under the same charter. Because of this theatre's age, it is home to a lot of ghost stories. The theatre is part of the City of Westminster, that's a borough of London, and part of the city's historic West End Theatre District.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  The name is actually a little confusing, because the theatre's address and main entrance are not on Drury Lane, they're on Catherine Street. Drury Lane is one street over at the back of the theatre. The name may have come from another building that was near the theatre in its first incarnation, or because of a renaming of the streets. One other theory is that the name came from a previous theatre run by the Drury's first proprietor, which was on Drury Lane. The original Theatre Royal Drury Lane opened on May 7, 1663. It was built by Thomas Kiligrew under a royal charter. That charter was part of a rebuilding of the arts

• 5:18Speaker 02

  in England that followed the Puritan interregnum, that period from 1649 to 1660, when England was a republic and not governed by a monarch. In the time preceding the interregnum, the theatre had been largely sponsored by the Stuart Court, and when we say "the theatre", we mean the theatre scene of London, not this theatre. After Charles I was executed, an event that could make a very good future episode, the Protestants sold his art collection and banned theatre, for a variety of reasons you will see summed up in different ways. When the executed king's son, Charles II, regained the throne in 1660, he was eager to re-establish the cultural institutions the Puritans had closed down.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  A charming contemporary account of the granting of this charter, and another reads, quote, "King Charles II, at his restoration, granted two patents, one to Sir William Davenant and the other to Thomas Kiligrew Esquire, and their several heirs and assigns forever for the forming of two distinct companies of comedians. The first were called the king's servants and acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, and the other the duke's company, who acted at the duke's theatre in Dorset Garden." About 10 of the King's Company were on the royal household establishment. Having each 10 yards of scarlet cloth with a proper quantity of lace allowed them for

• 6:47Speaker 02

  liveries, and in their warrants from the Lord Chamberlain were styled "Gentlemen of the Great Chamber." Whether the like appointments were extended to the Duke's Company, I am not certain. Can I just tell you how much I love the idea of having a job or title where they're like, "Here's your bolt of fabric, go have your clothes custom made." That sounds dreamy. But to go back to the theatre, Kiligrew was a dramatist. He wrote the plays The Parson's Wedding, The Prisoners, and Clarus Sylla. And the theatre company that Kiligrew founded was known as the King's Men in addition to the King's Servants, and the theatre opened with the nickname The King's Playhouse. That theatre, which Costa reported 2,400 pounds to build at the time, so that was pretty

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  expensive, staged The Humorous Lieutenant, a tragicomedy by John Fletcher, as its opening play. The theatre actually closed for a couple of years for 1665 and 1666, but once it reopened, it had a lot of success for several years. But then that success was halted on January 25, 1672, when the theatre burned to the ground. The theatre was rebuilt in 1674, though its footprint changed as it was expanded considerably. It is believed, although not conclusively documented, that Sir Christopher Wren may have been the architect responsible for its construction.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  When the new 4,000-pound facility opened on March 26, 1674, Kiligrew stayed on as master of the rebels. In 1682, the two companies that had been formed in the 1662 charters were merged into one, and Kiligrew was still involved with this newly-formed group until his death. That was on March 19, 1683. One of Kiligrew's most significant contributions to the theater was the use of women actors instead of troops consisting exclusively of men. Samuel Peeps noted in a diary entry from before the opening of the Drury Theater play staged by Kiligrew, of which he says, quote, "And here, the first time that ever I saw women

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  come upon the stage," Kiligrew continued this practice at Drury Lane. Yeah, that was not common practice yet. From 1710 to 1733, the Drury Lane Theater was wildly successful, and it was home to the earliest productions of a lot of famous plays. The credit for this success is often given to the way it was run, which was the work of three men, Robert Wilkes, Colly Sibber, and Thomas Doggett. It was actually Sibber's autobiography that we read from in the account of how the two charters were granted earlier. These men had all been very closely tied to the theater for some time. Early publications of the manuscript for the humorous lieutenant Liz Sibber is one of the performers.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  And in 1713, Barton Booth joined the three-man management team when Thomas Doggett retired. But then in the 1730s, when Sibber's retired, the theater was taken over by Charles Fleetwood. Unlike his predecessors, Fleetwood was not a good manager. Under his leadership, a series of events that came to be known as the Drury Lane Riots took place. A letter from Horace Walpole, who we've talked about on the show before, to Horace Mann, who I don't think we've talked about on the show before, mentions being at one of these riots. Quote, "The town has been trying all this winter to beat pantomimes off the stage.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them as they support his house. About 10 days ago, he let into the pit great numbers of bear garden bruisers," that is the term, "to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out. I was sitting very quietly in the side boxes contemplating all this. On a sudden, the curtain flew up and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards armed with bludgeons and clubs to menace the audience." This raised the greatest uproar and among the rest who flew into a passion, but your friend, the philosopher. In short, one of the actors advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  He had scarcely begun to say, Mr. Fleetwood, when your friend with the most audible voice and dignity of anger called out, he is an impudent rascal. The whole pit hazzard and repeated the words, only think of my being a popular orator. I just think that's adorable. I really loved reading a lot of Horace Woldall's stuff when I was working on that. I stood up and yelled. It's just so charming. The cause of the riots is often chalked up to rising ticket prices, but modern scholarship makes the case that it was really much more complex than that.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Part of it, the inclusion of pantomimes instead of higher grade of theater, which not everybody liked. Fleetwood had been steadily losing public trust for years. And in the year before the riots, the actors had a conflict with Fleetwood when he refused to guarantee their wages for the season. The actors had staged a walkout over treatment 10 years earlier in 1733, but in 1744, when this was going on, their only recourse was to file a legal action. They were no longer legally allowed to form their own theater if they left this one. Although the actors did lose their legal filing against Fleetwood, the whole thing left Fleetwood's already weak reputation with the public just completely ruined.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  After the 1744 riots, he sold his stake in the theater and left the country, settling in France. We'll continue to discuss the many people who managed the theater Royal Drury Lane, but we will first take a quick sponsor break.

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  In 1747, the theater changed hands yet again to run under the management of David Garrick. This was another period of incredible success and critical praise. Garrick's Drury Lane run lasted three decades, and he appeared in many of the venue's productions during that time. Before he retired in 1776, he gave a farewell performance in a play called The Wonder. And this last show for the beloved actor and manager was so anticipated that it seemed that all of London showed up. There was not enough space in the theater to accommodate the crowd. Accounts note that the staging was changed that night so that Garrick was alone onstage during his final lines as he bid farewell to his life on the stage.

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  In 1776, Richard "Brenzly" Sheridan took the helm of the Drury Theater, and he continued its run of excellence. It was during his tenure there that he wrote and premiered "The School for Scandal." But though the quality of the plays was good, the quality of the building was not. Over the years, a lot of problems had cropped up in the theater, and its age eventually surpassed management's ability to keep up. In 1791, the theater closed temporarily, and the building, this was, as you recall, the second one, was demolished. For the next several years, the company continued to stage plays, but they were performed a little less than a mile away at Theater Royal Haymarket

• 17:53Speaker 02

  while the new building was erected at the Drury Lane location. The third building for the Drury was designed by architect Henry Hollen, and his project started right after the second was torn down. When it opened in April 1794, it had this beautiful blue and white interior color scheme described as just being very richly decorated. And this new theater was once again bigger and could hold 3,611 audience members. This theater was built with the latest in safety materials and was touted as being fireproof. It even had a water tank series mounted above the curtain to rapidly douse

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  any flames onstage. But all those fireproof claims were inaccurate, which is a sad theme in supposedly fireproof theaters. It burned down in 1809, and the troupe once again had to relocate to the Haymarket, then the Lyceum Theater, while the Drury was rebuilt for the fourth time. One of the most delightful aspects, in my opinion, of the fourth construction project was that the architect, Benjamin Dean Wyatt, published a book about its design titled "Observations on the Design for the Theatre Royal Drury Lane as Executed in 1812, Accompanied by Plans, Elevation, and Sections of the Same." And the reason it's delightful is that this book is available online.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  It is something anybody can look at, and we'll link it in the show notes. It walks through the whole process, from the formation of a joint stock company and subscription sales to fund the project, and Wyatt is very clear about the challenge of this building project, noting, quote, "The pecuniary embarrassments of the property were, at that time, so great that considerable doubts were entertained whether it would ever be practicable to surmount those embarrassments." But they did get the money together, and this fourth theatre is often referred to as the modern theatre. It's the one that is still standing today. It took several years for the fourth theatre to be erected, but in 1812, the Drury opened

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  again. This marked the start of a really exciting time in the theatre, as the new facility was built to handle large sets and could achieve more stunning visual effects. Five years after the modern theatre opened, the stage was lit by gas lamps, making it the first theatre in Britain to do so. This new era headlined Edmund Keane as its lead actor, and it did quite well for a while. Keane's death is very closely tied to the theatre, as he was in the middle of a performance of Othello in 1833 when he collapsed onstage. And at that point, his son, Charles, who was playing Iago, caught his father as he crumpled. Edmund reportedly said there onstage,

• 20:40Speaker 02

  "Oh, God, I am dying. Speak to them, Charles." He never recovered, and he died a few weeks later. After this, the theater again went through a rough phase. For the four decades after Keane's frightening collapse onstage, the theater really didn't have a real success. In 1819, it had been leased by Stephen Price, a theater impresario from New York. And after he gave it up in 1830, the lease kind of had a revolving door of managers. Yeah, I was like, I'm not going to go through this whole list of the episode because it's literally like, from April of this year to November of this year, this guy tried it, got scared and left. And then the next guy just tried to make a quick buck and then he was out.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  And then the next guy wanted to do something big, but didn't have, like, it was, it's a very sad, quick list of no accomplishments. In 1879, Augustus Harris assumed management of the Drury, and he really invigorated the lagging space. Under Harris, melodrama reigned supreme, and it became one of the most popular entertainments of London. After Harris, the Drury once again had a successful leader at the helm in Arthur Collins. And Collins did not reinvent the theater's image. He continued more or less in the vein of Harris. He basically was like, we have a successful blueprint, I just need to keep executing it. Musicals debuted at the Drury in the 1920s.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Prior to this, it was considered the home of dramatic theatrical performance, but it opened its stage to musical theater to meet the demands of London's theatergoers. Yeah, it's funny because now a lot of plays that end up on Broadway start in London and like musicals are super big. But at the time, it was like, should we do this? Our reputation. During World War II, the theater became the home of the Entertainment National Service Association. You'll see that listed as ENSA. This organization was started to provide entertainment to Britain's troops during the war, and its first large-scale production was a variety concert that was broadcast by the BBC at the same time it was being performed before an audience at the Drury.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  The theater did sustain minor damage from bombing during the war, but was able to repair and reopen in 1946. Pacific 1860, a play written by Noel Coward, was its first production after World War II. The theater was given status as a Grade One Site of Historical Significance in 1958. At the close of the 20th century, the theater was purchased by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita, among others. This was part of a $145 million bid that included nine other theaters in London. In a press interview, Webber stated that this bold move was about keeping room

• 23:30Speaker 02

  for fresh, unique material on the stage, noting, quote, "It is vital that the theater be in the hands of people who know and love the theater. Otherwise, our lifeblood is taken away from us, and there's no room anymore for the old fashioned producer who will back shows that take risks. I would like to think that we will be more sympathetic to shows that deserve a break to survive. There are lots of shows that don't look good on paper and appear not to be good business, where we'll say, let's get behind this and hope it pays off." I love that. Incidentally, while I was researching this, I discovered that if you have a double last name, you have to hyphenate it

• 24:15Speaker 02

  in English standard writing. That's how I found it out. So I don't know when we call him Webber, if we should call him Lloyd Webber or not. But Andrew Lloyd Webber has really followed through on his promise. He spent or reported £60 million to refurbish the theater, restoring it back to its 1812 design, while also modernizing it to include new cafes and bars to make it like a destination for your entire day. You could hang out there. It added disability access. It added more comfortable seating, as well as a lot of various technical additions that enable really state of the art production values. And this renovation won the 2022 Theater Building of the Year Award, which I did not know about until I was working on this,

• 24:58Speaker 02

  but it is given out by the Stage Awards each year. Okay, time for ghosts. But before we dig into the spectral inhabitants of Druryland, we will hear from sponsors that keep the show going.

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• 28:02Speaker 02

  Because of its long history, the theater in Drury Lane has long been rumored to be haunted. And some of these ghosts have great stories of their own. So first up is kind of a short one. It's Charles Keane, the son of actor Edmund Keane, who we mentioned earlier. As you'll recall, Edmund collapsed into Charles's arms on stage. Charles, like his father, became an actor and he also became a theater manager. And his ghost is said to frequently take a seat in the front row and wait for plays to begin. And when the curtain rises and the stage lights come up, Charles vanishes. And then there's Charles Macklin. Macklin's ghost has a good bit of documented backstory on why it might be lurking in the theater, and that is related to guilt.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  This story is often summed up as Charles Macklin murdered another actor by stabbing him in the eye with his cane, and that is technically correct. But the actual events, as they played out, are more tragic. This is a case where some petty bickering escalated in a way, but a line was crossed accidentally, and it all began with a wig. In 1735, when Macklin, who was a popular Irish actor, who was at the height of his fame at the Drury, had prepared to go onstage by dressing and applying his makeup, but he could not find the wig that went with his outfit. He then saw that actor Thomas Hallam was wearing it. Hallam was a low ranking actor in the troupe,

• 29:31Speaker 02

  kind of one of those people that filled a lot of small extras type roles. And seeing him in his wig incensed Macklin. Hallam was persuaded to give up the wig and he went to the props room to get another and switch out and that might have resolved things. But when Hallam then came back with his new wig, he threw the original wig at Macklin, said something kind of, you know, incendiary. And after a brief moment where it still seemed like things might be okay, Macklin reportedly said to Hallam, quote, "God damn you for a blackguard scrub rascal. How durst you have the impudence to take this wig?" Hallam replied by saying that Macklin was also a rascal and Macklin picked up his cane

• 30:16Speaker 02

  and thrust it in Hallam's face. It seems like this was intended like as an admonishment and a threat. He was not trying to strike him in the eye. But then Hallam was bleeding profusely from his eye. Macklin later described his own shock at the scene. Quote, "Good God, said I, what have I done? And I threw the stick into the chimney. He sat down and said to Mr. Ames' son, who was dressed in woman's clothes, whip up your clothes, you little bee, and urine in my eye." But he could not, so I did. As we know, sometimes people have used urine to treat wounds, thinking it was sterile.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't do it. Don't pee on wounds. And especially not eye wounds. But Macklin really thought he was being a good guy by doing so. But at this point, this seemed like a gross, but minor injury. Hallam was taken into a room to lie down where he could be treated. One of the women in the troupe was looking after him. And meanwhile, the play started and Macklin went on and did his role. But then when the show was over, Macklin was informed that the wound was actually quite serious and that it was very likely going to prove fatal. And at that point, he fled the theater. Hallam. Died the following day and Macklin surrendered himself to the police after a willful murder indictment was issued.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Macklin was tried at the Old Bailey and represented himself. In the end, after many character witnesses passed through to support Macklin's story that the death had been accidental and that he had been shocked and upset when he realized what had happened, the actor was found guilty not of murder, but of manslaughter. His sentence was that he was, quote, "to be branded on the hand and discharged." It seems like he may not have ever even been branded, though, and when he went back to the stage, he was applauded by the audience in attendance, although there were protesters who wanted him fired permanently. Yeah, he actually sued the organizer of those protests and won.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  It kind of dragged out for a long time where he tried to kind of regain his reputation. And it dragged out because Macklin lived a long time after this incident. He died in 1797 at the age of 97. He appeared to have always carried guilt with him, though, regarding what had happened. And he is now said to be seen walking near the spot where he accidentally stabbed Hallam. We actually did a whole episode on the life of the next ghost. That episode came out in 2023, although we did not talk about his afterlife. This is Joseph Grimaldi. Here's the very short version of his life.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Joseph Grimaldi, who went by Joe, was born December 18th, 1778 into a theater family. His father Giuseppe was known to be harsh and abusive. And when the elder Grimaldi died, Joe became famous. He really eclipsed his father's reputation. Grimaldi's fame came from just how far he was willing to push himself physically in the interest of comedic entertainment. He would perform tumbling tricks, pratfalls, and all kinds of slapstick. And he painted himself stark white, which is why he is sometimes called the first modern clown. Eventually, his physically demanding act wore down his health. He retired in 1828. There are some aspects of Grimaldi's haunting story that evidence a bit of confusion

• 33:54Speaker 02

  or even some willful obfuscation of reality to just bolster the stories of a ghost. One that comes up a lot is that he requested to be beheaded before being buried because he wanted to make sure he was not buried alive. So this detail is usually used to explain stories that people have of Grimaldi's clown painted head hovering in some of the theater's audience boxes, but it was actually his father who made that request in his will. That is an order that's said to have been carried out by Joseph's sister Margaret. The stories of Grimaldi's theatrical hauntings are usually pretty tame, although depending on your point of view, they could be considered assaultive.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Uh, he is known to kick people in the rear. Often this is to get a hesitant actor to go out on stage or just his prankish behavior behind the scenes. But there have also been actors who stated that they could feel him moving them on the stage, sort of placing their limbs in a certain way, or shifting the direction their body was facing, and that the result was always a better reaction from the audience than they were getting before Grimaldi's ghostly guidance. Grimaldi is also alleged to haunt Joseph Grimaldi Park. That was once a cemetery and it is where the clown is buried. Dan Leno, who was born George Wild Galvin in 1860, is another well-known ghost of the drury.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  His too is a story that's largely charming, but then has a rather tragic end. He was born into performing. His entire family was made up of traveling actors and comedians, and he started on the stage as a toddler at age three. Leno quickly rose to fame as a young adult and became famous as a pantomime performer. He often appeared in drag and was famous for a stage version of Mother Goose with a title role written expressly for him. Leno was dedicated to charitable works and took particular interest in causes that helped other performers. Sometimes he is touted as the highest paid performer of his day. He performed for King Edward VII and was nicknamed the King's Jester after the monarch

• 36:04Speaker 02

  gifted him an elegant tie pin in the early 1900s. But also in the early 1900s, Leno started misusing alcohol. This is apparently a problem that ran in his family. In 1903, he had a mental breakdown and he was institutionalized for several months at London's Camberwell House asylum. After his convalescence there, he did return to the stage, but only briefly. He gave a performance on October 31, 1904, and he died that same night. His cause of death is reported differently from source to source, citing everything from heart trouble to overwork. Most modern historians think he had some medical problem that was the result of alcohol misuse.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Comedian Stanley Lupino described his encounter with Dan Leno's ghost to the press. In 1923, the following account from Lupino ran in The Register, a newspaper in Adelaide, Australia. Quote, "He stated that while asleep in his dressing room, he was awakened by curtains moving and saw a form flit across the room and disappear through a locked door. Later, he saw the face of Dan Leno. He rushed out of the theater and spent the rest of the night at a hotel. The next evening, he said, a lady well-known in the theatrical world who had come to visit me and my wife was alone in my dressing room while I was performing on the stage. She fainted and afterwards, although she had heard nothing of my experience, declared

• 37:31Speaker 02

  she had seen the ghost of Dan Leno." Leno's ghost is said to be heard clogging throughout the theater. And if you catch a whiff of lavender, that is also attributed to him, as he reportedly wore the scent when he was alive. Sometimes it is Dan that gets the credit for assisting performers with their staging and body position instead of Grimaldi. He has even been reported to pat actors on the back after a good show. Jury Theater's most famous ghost, though, is the man in gray. He's the one who's been spotted the most, but he's also the one we know the least about. According to legend, this man appears in the upper circle and he's dressed in 18th century clothing.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  He wears a tricorn hat and a riding cloak and carries a sword. And the man in gray is a very welcome spirit. It has become one of those theater superstitions that his appearance blesses a play's run. If you don't get the man in gray to stop by during your pre-production and rehearsals, your show might be doomed to flop. But who is he? This is one that has a very compelling but awfully difficult to corroborate detail that's sometimes offered as the explanation of his identity. Many accounts of the jury say that during renovations in the 19th century, a skeleton was discovered. A 1939 article about the theater, written by John Shan of The Guardian,

• 38:57Speaker 02

  states of the man in gray, quote, "This friendly apparition has been seen coming out of the upper circle bar and vanishing through what was once a passage to the stage by persons who know nothing of the odd discovery made by workmen about 80 years ago, while making alterations a wall where is now the upper circle bar was pulled down. Behind it was a small room. It contained a table and a chair, and in the chair sat a skeleton with a dagger in its breast. You may laugh at the ghost, but the skeleton is a fact. An inquest was held on it." But I never managed to turn up any mention of the skeleton or an inquest in any newspapers you would think that would have been written about.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Additionally, there's a wild, and I mean wild, range of dates given by various sources for the renovation that uncovered this skeleton. You'll see them that run from 1840 all the way into the late 1870s. I searched throughout all of those time periods with a variety of different search chains, and I did not turn up a single newspaper mention. To that end, Holly also wanted to include another quote from that 2015 Guardian article that we mentioned at the top of the show. The writer Andrew Dixon conferred with a woman named Aoife Monks, who's a theater professor at Queen Mary University of London,

• 40:23Speaker 02

  about the theater and why the theater community seems so prone to see ghosts. Her answer was delightful, quote, "Theater is a ghostly experience, if you think about it. It's concerned with the unearthing of texts that, in the case of the Greek tragedies, might be 2,000 years old, and an experience that comes back night after night, but which also disappears in front of your eyes as it does so, sounds pretty ghostly to me." I love that take. Yeah. That's what makes live theater so great, right? It's, you're the only people experiencing that moment in history together, which I love. Yeah. Those are the Drury Lane ghosts. A little lighter on the ghosts than I would have liked, but we just don't have that much info. Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  I really wish I could have unearthed some magical mention of the body or skeleton allegedly found in the wall. Not a peep. If there is one out there, I'd love to see it. Uh, but I do have listener mail from our listener Amanda who writes, hello there Holly and Tracy. This is my first time writing, but I just listened to your weekend classic on the Bell Witch and I couldn't have been more excited. Growing up in Kentucky, everyone would hear tales of the Bell Witch around Halloween, but my first recollection of hearing this story was from our lunchroom monitor at our Catholic elementary school. During October, she would read any and all ghost stories to us during lunch, but the Bell Witch always indicated the start of ghost story lunches for the school.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  If you walked past our cafeteria, you would have seen 200 kids as quiet as mice, waiting for the next scare scene. Fast forward 30 years to your Saturday classic and I was back in that black and white tiled cafeteria. But I really appreciate how toward the end, both of you discussed all the permutations of the legend. I was listening, waiting for things to be said that weren't because obviously each ghost story has their own embellishments. I want to say our Catholic elementary school's version had a burned down house and I would love to hear all of the local variations. Thank you both for such a wonderful show. You bring so much joy and reverence to all the topics you share, which makes listening each week a true pleasure. Attached is my pet tax, our German Shepherd guardian angel Bear, who would listen with

• 42:35Speaker 02

  me on our walks, as well as our senior chunky orange boy Chewie, 14 years old, and crazy baby girl Kenny, who's an October baby like me. All our babies are rescues, although Kenny came to us via the cat distribution system and we couldn't be happier. Keep up the incredible work and know the three of us are always excited for the next episode. Bear is so beautiful and these cats, listen, I'm telling you, I love a goofy orange cat. I just love them. And Kenny is also incredibly cute. So thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this with us. I, um, I love the Bell Witch story. And I love that that was part of their. Elementary school tradition. That to me Yeah. Sounds great. I wonder if they included the looking for her tooth part.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  And I kind of spawned an assortment of like local folklore as a local ghost stories often do. Yeah, it's the best. It's one of the things that makes Halloween great. It unites us. We all want to hear the stories and it's a good way to share stories of our history, even if they sometimes get a bit embellished. If you would like to write to us, you could do that at [email protected]. You can also subscribe on the iHeart Radio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships

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