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S2 Ep. 3 | Ghost Stories | Strange Hauntings Hidden in History · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, welcome back to Stat Walking Sourdough.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Christina, and guys, tonight I'm excited because I'm going to bring you guys some ghost stories.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: It's goofy season, and there's nothing better, in my opinion, than a nice cozy ghost story.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna go through history this time, and I have found some gems.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So before we jump in, I just wanted to say welcome if you're new here.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you've been here for a while, you know that you can find me best on Instagram, uh, Sashwatch and Sourdough on Instagram.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: You can send me a DM, you can send me a comment.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: The last couple episodes, I've gotten so many comments and emails.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, guys, for reaching out.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love connecting with you, so please drop me a line.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: You can also send an email, sasquatchandsourdough at gmail.com, or check out the website sasquatchandsourdough.com.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't really have anything to catch up on housekeeping-wise, so let's jump in.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just need a good ghost story.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily being in one, or becoming a ghost for that matter.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: That's an entirely different situation.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: But hearing one somewhere warm, preferably when it's cold outside, around a fire, at the kitchen table, or under a blanket when the nights are getting longer.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes eventually somebody says, okay, I've got one, and everybody leans in.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: We've been doing this as people for a very long time.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: There are ghost stories tucked into the edges of history.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: They survive in old manuscripts, personal letters, and newspapers.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Some were written down by monks, some were investigated by people who weren't entirely sure what to make of them, others survived because somebody told somebody else and eventually somebody decided that story was worth keeping.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Some are frightening, some are sad, and some are actually kind of beautiful.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And some are just weird.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Tonight I've gathered a few of my favorites.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: They're stories involving real people, recognizable places, and strange things that somebody thought was worth writing down.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you exactly what happened in every one of them, but I can tell you the stories.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So get comfortable, put something warm on the stove, turn the lights down a little, because I've got some really good ghost stories for you.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, guys, so I think everybody has a particular image in mind when they think of a ghost.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for me, it's an old house, a staircase, candlelight, a woman dressed in black, or maybe a woman in white on a smoky highway somewhere.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: The Victorians really did nail that aesthetic.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: In 1882, a young woman named Rosina Despert was living with her family at Garden Reach in Chetlam, England.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: One evening, she heard what she thought was someone at her bedroom door.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: She assumed it was her mother.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: But when she opened the door, nobody was there.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: She stepped into the passage and saw a tall woman dressed in black near the staircase.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: The woman began descending the stairs, and Rosina followed her by candlelight.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Which is exactly the sort of decision I think I probably would have done myself.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: Right?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Because isn't it like a woman's dream to be like ascending a long staircase in a gown with a candle following a ghost?
4:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: So Instagram tells me.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Rosina's candle eventually went out, though.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: But that wasn't the end of the haunting.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: The woman was reportedly seen on other occasions, and other members of the household described experiences of their own.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Rosina became increasingly interested in testing what she saw happening.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the case attracted attention from investigators associated with the Society for Psychical Research.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's the one of those things I find really interesting about these old accounts.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Someone actually took the time to record the details, collect the testimony, and ask the questions, and actually do some of the legwork to figure out the answers.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: That didn't establish what Rosina saw, though.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: But it does leave us with the account of a young woman who followed a mysterious figure down a staircase and spent years trying to figure out and understand what had happened.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna go to that.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: So you can go, um, this is actually uh it's called the Shetlam Shetlam Ham Ghosts, the Society for Psychic Research.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: You can just go right to their website.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's a pretty cool account.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's definitely well documented.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it says here between 1882 and 1889, the figure of a tall woman dressed in black, habitually holding a handkerchief to her face, was reported to have been seen on a number of occasions by several people who sometimes also claimed to hear her footsteps as she passed.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, at the request of Frederick W.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: H.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Myers of the Society for Psychical Research, Desperd subsequently provided a written report.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: So she did write a report describing the frequent sightings of the figure.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, the house Golden Reach.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see here.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: It was built in 1860 and was occupied by a couple named Swinhoe.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: When the wife died, the husband took to drinking, as did his second wife, Imogen.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: This relationship was tumultuous.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Imogen left him shortly before he died in 1876 and herself died two years later.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: The apparition was tentatively identified by Desbard from a photograph as Imogen Swinhoe.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: So it might actually be his second wife, it looks like.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is her account.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: I had gone up to my room but was not yet in bed when I heard someone at the door and went to it, thinking it might be my mother.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: On opening the door, I saw no one.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: But on going to a few steps, a few steps along the passage, I saw a figure of a tall lady dressed in black standing at the head of the stairs.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: After a few moments, she descended the stairs and I followed for a short distance, feeling curious of what it could be.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: I had only a small piece of candle, and it was suddenly burnt itself out.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And being unable to see more, I went back to my room.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: The figure was that of a tall lady dressed in black of a soft woolen material, judging from the slight sound in moving.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: She heard the sound of the material moving.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: This is all I noticed then, but on the further occasions when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of the forehead and a little of the hair above.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: As she held it down, a portion of a widow's cuff was visible on both wrists, so that the whole impression was that of a lady in widow's weeds.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: There was no cap on the head, but a general effect of blackness suggests a bonnet with long veil or a hood.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: She spoke to the figure on January 29th, 1884, and received recognition by no vocal response, just a slight gasp.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: On a subsequent occasion, she thought that the figure wanted to reply to her, but found itself unable to.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: The figure did not display um or displace light threads dispar.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: The figure did not displace light threads disbarred placed across its habitual path, nor was she able to touch it.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: On one occasion, she cornered it, but it vanished.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Deliberate attempts to watch out for the figure never succeeded.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Her attempts to photograph it also failed due to the need for long exposures in poor light.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, I know how that feels.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Over the years, the case had attracted considerable comment from investigators of haunting phenomena.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: JNM Tyrrell, author of the much-quoted analysis of such phenomena, viewed the Chetlin Hymn apparition as a brooding reminiscence playing out actions from the time when she was alive.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: The sounds of footsteps, he suggested, might involve poltergeist activity originated by living persons.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: And then it just goes on to say to protect the desmond's privacy, the report refers to them by the name Mortar or Morton, for which reason the episode is often referred to in literature as the Morton case.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: The original 1892 report by Rosina Desberd under the pseudonym R.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: C.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Morton may be found here.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: And then they link.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: This is really fascinating, guys.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: You definitely check that out.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, classic Victorian ghost.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, this next discovery might actually be my new favorite.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere around the year 1400, a monk at Byland Abbey in Yorkshire apparently decided the local ghost stories were worth preserving.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: He found blank pages in an existing manuscript and wrote them down, 12 of them.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere in the Yorkshire countryside, people have been telling stories about strange encounters on lonely roads and things wandering through the villages.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: And somebody at the abbey decides they ought to be recorded.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Thank you to the anonymous monk.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's really interesting: there aren't necessarily the quiet, transparent ghosts that we're accustomed to imagining.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Medieval ghosts are apparently built a little bit different.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: One account involves a traveler whose horse becomes injured while carrying beans.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: The man is left struggling with his load when a strange figure appears and offers assistance.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: Other stories involve the dead appearing along roads, taking unexpected forms and frightening travelers.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: These aren't grand legends about kings or distant imaginary kingdoms.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: They're local stories attached to places the monk and his neighbors would have recognized.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think about that manuscript sitting quietly for centuries, preserving these little pieces of Yorkshire life.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: All because somebody decided the stories were worth keeping.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is really cool.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a couple links to this.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: So the first one that I want you guys to check out, definitely on your own time.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: It's called 12 Medieval Ghost Stories.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: This is the English translation.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you can just kind of do a Google search for this and it'll come right up.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And it actually shows all of the 12.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go through uh all of them, but I want I want to find one that's really cool.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's the be it is the bean one.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it actually is the first translation of this um or the the first story rather.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: It says concerning the ghost of a certain laborer uh who helped a man to carry beans.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: A certain man was riding on his horse, carrying its back on its back a peck of beans.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: The horse stumbled on the road and broke its shin bone, which when the man saw, he took the beans onto his own back.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And a wh and a while he was walking on the road, he saw, as it were, a horse standing on its hind feet and holding it its its forefoot.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: In alarm, he forbade the horse in the name of Jesus Christ to do him any harm.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: Upon this, it went with him in the shape of a horse, and in a little while appeared to him in the likeness of a revolving haycock, which alight in the middle to which the man said, God forbid that you bring evil upon me.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: At these words, it appeared in the shape of a man, and the traveler, and the traveler conjured conjured him.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Then the spirit told him his name and the reason of his walking and the remedy, and he added, Permit me to carry your beans and to help you.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: And thus he did as far as the as the beck, but he could not or he was not willing to pass over it.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And the living man knew not how.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: The bag of beans was placed over on his back again, and afterwards he caused the ghost to be absolved and masses to be sung for him as he was as he was eased.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: That's just so wild.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: So this is the shape-shifting ghost, it appears.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: I just love these stories.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Like, the more that I dig into really kind of you know, not your classic ghost story, the more I'm impressed with what I find.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's actually an account of what is called a thing in the White House.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, check this out.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, so basically, this is a place where it's supposed to be very serious.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: It's the White House, and something very strange happened during William Taft's presidency.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so members of the domestic staff actually began talking about something that they called the thing.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, which is already an excellent name for a ghost, obviously.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: According to Major Archibald, I'm not kidding, but B-U-T-T, one of Taft's military aides, the staff believe the apparition resembled a boy of about 14 or 15.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: But what frightened them wasn't necessarily actually seeing him.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: It was the sensation of someone standing behind them, leaning over a shoulder to watch what they were doing.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: So imagine being at work, uh minding your own business and feeling that slight pressure, like that unease, where it feels like somebody's watching you.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Like that's creepy in itself.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: President Taft apparently was not amused.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, when the story reached him, he became angry and reportedly ordered staff members to stop spreading it.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyone continuing to talk about the ghosts risks losing their job, which might be my favorite presidential response to a haunting.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, you're just gonna get fired.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, I wonder if there's well, no, probably not because the FBI wasn't there.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Never mind, I digress.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Don't even pretend I never said that.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, wouldn't it be cool if there was like something in like an FBI file about that?
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Like, do they go back and look?
15:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: I know there's like research about Lincoln's ghost, because he definitely saw apparitions, and we've covered that here before, but I the Taft one definitely surprises me.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: All right, I'm gonna go to the account.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, I just love it because he like Taft was like, stop gossiping or you're gonna get fired.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is really cool.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: If you actually go to the White House Historical Uh Association website, there is an entire article called The Forgotten Ghosts of the White House.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's really great because it's not just the Taft one.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: There's several accounts that are really cool.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, so this one's really uh, this is how it's talked about in here uh in his article.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: So one of the most interesting ghost sightings may have been the thing that haunted the White House in 1911.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: President William Howard Taft's military aide, Major Archibald Butt, wrote to his sister Clara, quote, It seems that the White House is haunted.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: The ghost, it seems, is a young boy from its description.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: I should think about 14 or 15 years old.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: They say that the first knowledge of one has of the presence of the thing is a slight pressure on the shoulder, as if someone were leaning over your shoulder, leaning over your shoulder to see what you were doing.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: End quote.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: When Butt reported the staff's gossip about the thing to the president, Taft flew into a quote, towering rage.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: He thinks it will be a very serious thing to have the story get out among the people of the country.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Taft ordered Butt to tell the White House housekeeper that the first member of the staff to report stories about the thing was to be fired.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: He literally was covering his butt.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, moving on.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: All right, so this is really cool.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go through all of this.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: I found this book online.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: It's from uh the Gutenberg Press like Project Gutenberg.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a really great place to find old books that they've just kind of transcribed and put online.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so this book is called The Book of Dreams and Ghosts by Andrew Lang.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: And it was originally published in 1899.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, it says since the first edition of this book appeared in 1897, a considerable number of new and startling ghost stories, British, foreign, and colonial, not yes, not yet published, have reached me.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, second sight abounds.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Crystal gazing has also advanced in popularity.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: For a singular case series of such visions in which distance persons and places unknown to the gazer were correctly described by her.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I may refer to my book, The Making of Religion 1898.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: A memorial stone has been erected on the scene of the story called The Foul Fords, so that the tale is likely to endure in tradition.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is really cool.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: It's just um it's a really cool book of ghost stories and dreams and visions.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is the time where people are really getting into uh spirituality, spiritualism, um, and dabbling in a lot of, you know, kind of just they want to see more, they're looking into seances, stuff like that.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is really curious about the afterlife.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: And so this book is a great collection of kind of what was going on and accounts of the time.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to share one with you.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: This is um, there's so many that are cool.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Like it's just it's so worth it to check it out.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there, so there's there's two that I want to share.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: The first one is uh it's called The Pig in the Dining Room.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And it says, uh, Mrs.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: Attle, wife of late Bishop of Hereford, dreamed one night that there was a pig in the dining room of the palace.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: She came downstairs and in the hall to work told her governess and the children of the dream before family prayers.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: When these were over, nobody was told the story having left the hall in the interval.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: She went into the dining room and there was the pig.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: It was proved to have escaped from the sty after Mrs.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Attle got up.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Here, the dream is of the common grotesque type.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Millions of such things are dreamed.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: The event, the pig in the palace, is unusual, and the coincidence of a pig and dream is still more so.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: But unusual events must occur, and each has millions of dreams as targets to aim at, so to speak.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: It would be surprising if no such target were ever hit.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Here is another case.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it goes on, uh, but it's another like curious case of dreams.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: But uh just seriously, guys, check this out.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna share one more with you, and then I really encourage you to check it out on your own.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: It's just so, it's so cool.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: This one's called the Knot in the Shutter.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: It is said that a dream produced a powerful effect on Hone's mind.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: He dreamt that he was introduced into a room where he was an entire stranger and saw himself seated at a table.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: And ongoing the window, his attention was somehow or other attracted to the window shutter, and particularly to a knot in the wood, which was of singular appearance, and on waking the whole scene, and especially the knot in the shutter, left a most vivid impression on his mind.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Sometime afterwards, ongoing, I think, into the country, he was at the same house, shown into a chamber where he had never been, and which instantly struck him as being the identical chamber of his dream.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: He turned directly to the window where the same knot in the shutter caught his eye.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: This incident to his investigating spirit induced a train of reflection which overthrew his cherished theories of materialism.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: He resulted in conviction that there was a spiritual age that there were spiritual agencies as susceptible of proof as any facts of physical science.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And this appears to have been one of the links in that mysterious chain of events, which, according to the inscrupable purposes of the divine will, man is sometimes compelled to bow to an unseen and divine power and ultimately to believe and live.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: And then it goes on to say another of the Christian friends from whom in his later years William Hone received so much kindness, he also furnished recollections of him.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: It says, two or three anecdotes which he related are all I can contribute towards a piece of mental history, which, if preserved, would have been highly interesting.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: The first in point of time, as to his taste of mind, was a circumstance which shook his confidence in materialism, though it did not lead to his conversion.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: It was one of those mental phenomena which he saw to be inexplainable by the doctrines he had.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Then held.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: In 1765, Mary Ricketts and her family moved into Hinton Amter, a country house in Hampshire, England.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Her husband spent long periods away on business, and Mary began experiencing things she couldn't explain.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: She heard noises in the night, particularly the violent sound of doors being shut.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And the disturbances continued.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: What's especially interesting is that Mary wrote about what she was experiencing.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna go right to the source of this because this is just really cool.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: This is actually the history of Hinton Amter from the National Trust.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So again, like some if you dig into like historical societies and things like that, you can definitely find amazing archival material.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so this is oh my gosh, cookies policy.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And when you look at the picture, oh my gosh, it's just a beautiful, like classic um, you know, English countryside manor.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: It's got like ivy all over it, which is like bad for the building, but whatever.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm gonna go on to the ghost story.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's a whole section on ghosts.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh it says, Whilst William was away for several years on business in Jamaica, Mary experienced a series of events or hauntings in the house.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: She wrote to her husband soon after we were settled at Hinton.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I frequently heard noises in the night as if people were shuttling or shuffling, rather slapping doors with vehemence.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: A version of these events, based on Mary's letters and written accounts, was published as a Hampshire ghost story by the Gentleman's Magazine in 1872.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: It proved a popular story, and Hinton Ampter became known as one of the most haunted houses in Georgian England.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Henry James' gothic novel, The Turn of the Screw, 1898, is thought to have been partly inspired by this story.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: There's one more account that I want to leave you with, and it's a really old one.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: A man describes being awake during the night in that strange hour when everything is quiet and your thoughts can become louder than anything happening around you.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Something happens.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: He feels fear come over him, his bones shake, the hair on his body stands up.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: Then something passes before his face.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: He can sense a presence, but he can't make out exactly what he's looking at.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: A form stands behind him.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: There's silence, and then a voice.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: That's the account.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: We aren't given a convenient description of the figure, no name, no clear appearance, no tidy explanation.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: But this is the most interesting part.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: This account is found in the Bible.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Job chapter 4.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: It's Eliphaz telling Job about an experience he says happened to him during the night.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna really tell you what it was because the passage doesn't give us enough to settle that.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: I just think it's fascinating that among all of these accounts of strange nighttime encounters, there's one sitting right in scripture that we don't usually hear about.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Now a word was brought to me stealth stealthily, my ear received the whisper of it.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones shake, a spirit glided past my face, the hair on my flesh stood up.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: A form was before my eyes.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: There was silence, and then I heard a voice.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: afternoon.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Probably.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: There are thousands more.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: They're sitting in old newspapers and diaries and letters and monastery manuscripts.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: They're being told over sleepovers and around campfires, and probably whatever you're doing on Halloween night, you're gonna be telling a ghost story.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Maybe don't encounter that you actually experienced yourself.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear about that.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And somewhere tonight, somebody is probably telling one that happened last week.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to make of all of them.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't really think that that's altogether important.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: I love that somebody took the time to write all these accounts down, though.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: A monk in Yorkshire, a woman writing letters about a str about strange things happening in her home.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: A military aide Admiral Butt telling his sister about a ghost the president didn't want anyone hearing.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: They're all gone now, but the stories are still here.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something rather wonderful.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's enough to sit somewhere warm while it's getting cold outside and hear a strange story.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's part of why we keep telling them.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: The houses change, the clothing changes, the world outside changes.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: But eventually somebody looks around the room and says, okay, I've got one.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: And everybody gets a little quieter and gets a little closer.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of exciting, especially in this dark, dark world.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So leave a light on.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, the truth is out there.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen, but it's a little bit more than a lot of people.