Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
Speaker 1: we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
Speaker 1: be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
Speaker 1: joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
Speaker 1: world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
Speaker 1: Scared to Death and many more live shows, meet and greets,
Speaker 1: Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
Speaker 1: but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Speaker 1: Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
Speaker 1: fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
Speaker 1: see you on board. What is it about water that
Speaker 1: haunts us? Perhaps it's the way that great bodies of it, locks,
Speaker 1: canals and ponds sit like amorphous entities beneath the moonlight, quiet, patient, indifferent.
Speaker 1: Perhaps is the thought of what they might conceal, their
Speaker 1: mirror like surfaces, offering the perfect metaphor and sometimes genuine
Speaker 1: hiding place for whatever unknown horrors might lurk within its depths.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's to do with waters awesome power to overwhelm
Speaker 1: and destroy we see footage on the news of tsunamis
Speaker 1: and extreme weather events. We know what it means when
Speaker 1: a region reports higher than average rainfall, and can almost
Speaker 1: feel the creak of the levee when a storm assaults
Speaker 1: the coastline. It's the ultimate irony that the most abundant
Speaker 1: element on Earth, the one thing other than air, which
Speaker 1: is non negotiable for survival, is also a deadly killer.
Speaker 1: Just as gods are granted the power to give and
Speaker 1: take life, we might do well to see water in
Speaker 1: just those same terms. In nineteen forty one, T. S.
Speaker 1: Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages that the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: was a strong brown god, unhonoured, unpropitiated by worshipers of
Speaker 1: the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting, and that in
Speaker 1: keeping his seasons and rages, the river was also a destroyer,
Speaker 1: reminder of what men choose to forget. It was Eliot's
Speaker 1: contention that attempts to outgrow the natural world would wreak
Speaker 1: havoc of the kind we see today as a result
Speaker 1: of global warming. It should therefore come as no surprise
Speaker 1: that in almost every culture around the world, from the
Speaker 1: Japanese kappa to the figure of Poseidon. In Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: water is depicted as a jealous and unforgiving supernatural force.
Speaker 1: We ignore it at our peril, and if we fail
Speaker 1: to pay it due deference, it has the power to
Speaker 1: claim us and our loved ones and drag them impassively
Speaker 1: to its depths. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
Speaker 1: McLean Smith. The English legends of Peg Powler and Ginny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth, from the northeast and northwest of England, respectively,
Speaker 1: might at first give the appearance of a more frivolous
Speaker 1: take on the subject of elemental destruction. Both are spirits
Speaker 1: or old crones, said to haunt inland waterways. Both prey
Speaker 1: on children and old people, using their elongated arms, talon
Speaker 1: like fingers, sharp teeth, long straggly hair, and green skin
Speaker 1: to petrify and insight ne'er anyone unlucky enough to encounter them.
Speaker 1: The presence of duckweed is usually an indication that either
Speaker 1: Ginny or Peg is close by, keeping their presence mostly
Speaker 1: to rivers and ponds, with occasional forays into haunting canals
Speaker 1: and sewer systems. In more industrialized urban landscapes like Liverpool
Speaker 1: and Newcastle. Both have been invoked to warn people away
Speaker 1: from dangerous bodies of water, and both can trace their
Speaker 1: origins within a long folkloric tradition stretching as far back
Speaker 1: as the thirteenth century. Some scholars, however, think that the
Speaker 1: legends date further, noting striking similarities between the figure of
Speaker 1: Grendel from the tenth century epic Beowulf and the Welsh
Speaker 1: myth of Haffron or Sabrina, who was drowned in Britain's
Speaker 1: longest river, the River Seven, and curse to haunt its
Speaker 1: waters forevermore. But not all stories to do with Ginny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth or peg Powler are quite so esoteric. On
Speaker 1: thirteenth of January eighteen sixty a recently constructed iron bridge
Speaker 1: over the River Tees near Yarm in North Yorkshire collapsed
Speaker 1: into the water, leading many locals to believe that the
Speaker 1: spirit of peg Powler had somehow been angered. A local
Speaker 1: paper wrote at the time the new bridge was built
Speaker 1: adjacent to the old one, but peg Powler, the mythical
Speaker 1: spirit of the River Tees, objected to the effrontery offered
Speaker 1: by these new fangled ideas, rose in her wrath and
Speaker 1: before the much vaunted new way was opened to the public.
Speaker 1: It collapsed at midnight on January twelfth, eighteen sixty. The implication,
Speaker 1: of course, is that, like T. S. Eliot's depiction of
Speaker 1: an ancient water got disturbed by modern industrial lifedzation, the
Speaker 1: figure of peg Powler rose up in anger to foil
Speaker 1: modern man's tampering with the order of the natural world.
Speaker 1: Not only do mortals in this story fail to show
Speaker 1: respect to the spirit of the river, they are punished
Speaker 1: for their transgressions through physical violence and economic sabotage. Thanks
Speaker 1: largely to more advanced public understanding of scientific natural processes,
Speaker 1: the prevalence of mythbusting on social and traditional media, and
Speaker 1: sustained government efforts to clean up and make safe dilapidated waterways,
Speaker 1: stories about Peg Powler and Ginny Green Teeth have mostly
Speaker 1: been forgotten, and yet many urban legends of this nature
Speaker 1: have not been completely consigned to history. Still whispers about
Speaker 1: malevolent beings ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims who stray
Speaker 1: too close to the water's edge. Many in Britain will,
Speaker 1: no doubt remember the brilliant and haunting public information films
Speaker 1: released by the suitably Orwellian sounding Central Office of Information
Speaker 1: that proliferated on British TV in the nineteen seventies. The
Speaker 1: drowning awareness film Lonely Water was perhaps the most haunting
Speaker 1: of them all.
Speaker 2: I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready
Speaker 2: to trap the unwary, the show off, the fall. And
Speaker 2: this is the kind of place you'll expect to find
Speaker 2: me that no one expects to find me. Here it
Speaker 2: seems too order me, but that call is deep. The
Speaker 2: boys showing off. The bank is slippery, The shops are easy,
Speaker 2: but the unwary ones are easiest too. This branch is weak, rotten.
Speaker 2: It will never take his way. Only a fool would
Speaker 2: ignore this. But there's one born every minute. Under the water.
Speaker 2: There are traps, old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's
Speaker 2: the perfect place for an accident. Oh I love the.
Speaker 1: Stamin wah, great you step big sticks came out?
Speaker 2: Since children, I have no power over them. Why am
Speaker 2: I that stupid cries to swim? Hi, go and get
Speaker 2: that thing to reckon me. You do have to call
Speaker 2: my own resum. I'll be back back back.
Speaker 1: The somber narrator was, of course, the Green Reaper himself
Speaker 1: forever lurking in the background, watching on patiently as one
Speaker 1: child after another fails to heed his warnings to stay
Speaker 1: away from the water. Perhaps the most chilling British urban
Speaker 1: legend of recent times concerns an alleged serial killer that
Speaker 1: some believe has been using the warren of isolated waterways
Speaker 1: that snake through much of England's northwest as a hunting
Speaker 1: ground for their victims. Police have dismissed this as a
Speaker 1: modern moral panic, though for those who believe it, this
Speaker 1: phantom figure is said to be responsible for upwards of
Speaker 1: eighty six deaths. For more than two hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: Manchester and its surrounds such as Salford, has been a
Speaker 1: Northern English powerhouse. In the nineteenth century. It was there
Speaker 1: that Friedrich Engels and Carl Marx studied the industrial working classes.
Speaker 1: So important was their labour for the manufacture and distribution
Speaker 1: of cotton and linen to international markets. The city's burgeoning
Speaker 1: textiles industry earned it the nickname Cottonopolis, and required the
Speaker 1: construction of a vast network of shipping canals, docks and
Speaker 1: fire ducts to bring raw materials from the New World overnight.
Speaker 1: It seemed the city was transformed from a sleepy market
Speaker 1: town into a kind of infernal red brick inversion of Venice.
Speaker 1: Instead of gondolas and churches, cobbled squares and famous art expositions,
Speaker 1: it was schooners and warehouses, dirty terraces, and row upon
Speaker 1: row of red bricked factories breathing hell fire into the
Speaker 1: choked streets. As the population exploded from just a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand at the start of the eighteenth century to
Speaker 1: more than three hundred and fifty thousand by eighteen sixs
Speaker 1: the canals were the arteries that fed the city's heart,
Speaker 1: though by the end of the nineteen seventies, with the
Speaker 1: decline of heavy industry cruelly accelerated by Margaret Thatcher's government
Speaker 1: of the day, Manchester began a steady decline into unemployment
Speaker 1: and deprivation. The disintegration of the city's literal and psychological
Speaker 1: horizons would later define much of Greater Manchester's local music scene,
Speaker 1: as exemplified in the timeless work of bands like Joy Division,
Speaker 1: The Smiths and The Four. Over time, the canals fell
Speaker 1: into disuse and disrepair, and what had once been vital
Speaker 1: transport lanes connecting the city to the rest of the
Speaker 1: world suddenly became something far less edifying and much closer
Speaker 1: to the kind of still water favoured by those dark
Speaker 1: legendary figures like Ginny Green Tea. By the early nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: a new Manchester was beginning to emerge, driven by the
Speaker 1: city's intrinsically indomitable spirit and blossoming out of the detritus
Speaker 1: of its former glories. From its resurgent music scene dubbed
Speaker 1: Manchester to the unrelenting success of the city's Manchester United
Speaker 1: football club, Manchester at once again established itself as one
Speaker 1: of the nation's most heralded cities. By two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: work was well underway to redevelop the Bridgewater and Manchester
Speaker 1: ship Canals to cater to what would eventually become Media
Speaker 1: City UK, a sprawling two hundred acre site in Salford
Speaker 1: that became home to much of the nations leading media organizations.
Speaker 1: With that came bars and artisanal restaurants, glass fronted hotels
Speaker 1: and the kind of sophistication that would have been unimaginable
Speaker 1: on the banks of the Manchester Shipping Canal just one
Speaker 1: hundred years previously. The redeveloped waterways with their newly installed
Speaker 1: towpaths became popular walking routes for everyone from young professionals
Speaker 1: on their way to work to joggers, and, most crucially
Speaker 1: for this story, drinkers and nightclub revelers making their way
Speaker 1: home after an evening on the town. Greater Manchester is
Speaker 1: home to over thirty six miles of criss crossing rivers
Speaker 1: and canals, many of which are lowered from street view
Speaker 1: to allow for the easy passage of a boat or
Speaker 1: transport vessel. It stands to reason that after a few drinks,
Speaker 1: straying too close to the water's edge could spell disaster.
Speaker 1: After only a few units of alcohol, your heart rate
Speaker 1: speeds up, your reaction time lessons, your inhibitions lower, and
Speaker 1: your hand to eye coordination becomes impaired. With increased consumption,
Speaker 1: performing even simple tasks like holding a conversation or walking
Speaker 1: in a straight line can become difficult, let alone the
Speaker 1: prospect of treading icy, treacle thick water having taken a
Speaker 1: tumble over the edge of an embankment. Add to that
Speaker 1: the precarious living situation many homeless people find themselves in,
Speaker 1: and it should come as little surprise that between two
Speaker 1: thousand and four and twenty eighteen, the bodies of at
Speaker 1: least eighty six people, most of them young men, were
Speaker 1: recovered from the water. Some had been out clubbing before
Speaker 1: they disappeared. Many were last seen walking near the canal,
Speaker 1: often after dark, sometimes intoxicated and always on their own.
Speaker 1: Nineteen year old engineering student Suvic Powell was one of them,
Speaker 1: having grown up in a strict Indian household before traveling
Speaker 1: to the UK to study at Manchester's Metropolitan University, Suvic
Speaker 1: Powell had never been much of a drinker, much less
Speaker 1: of regular fixture on the city's famous clubbing scene. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: according to his friend Charlotte Wilson, on New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, he found himself out celebrating at a club
Speaker 1: called Warehouse Project in the Trafford area of the city.
Speaker 1: CCTV footage showed Suvac's last movements with friends as they
Speaker 1: entered the venue before being escorted off the premises by
Speaker 1: a security guard, ostensibly for being too intoxicated. Three weeks later,
Speaker 1: the young student's body was pulled from Manchester's Bridgewater Canal,
Speaker 1: a thirty nine mile stretch of water running through Manchester.
Speaker 1: The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, no signs
Speaker 1: of injury caused by a third party, and no defensive
Speaker 1: wounds showing that he'd put up any kind of struggle.
Speaker 1: Suvic's death was ruled as an accidental drowning, but questions
Speaker 1: remained about the circumstances surrounding it. Why had it taken
Speaker 1: so long to find his body between the time of
Speaker 1: his disappearance and the likely time of his death, which
Speaker 1: coroners acknowledged had taken place much closer to the end
Speaker 1: of the three weeks, Where had he been for all
Speaker 1: that time? Suvic's parents made it clear that they didn't
Speaker 1: believe he'd simply fallen into the water. Members of his
Speaker 1: family even appealed to the Indian government to investigate the
Speaker 1: possibility of foul play, but with nothing more than a
Speaker 1: series of patchy CCTV images to go on, the young
Speaker 1: man's case quickly went cold. He was cremated in his
Speaker 1: hometown of Bangalore in January twenty thirteen. Nine years earlier,
Speaker 1: on seventeenth of April two thousand and four, twenty one
Speaker 1: year old David Plunkett had also been out in the
Speaker 1: Trafford area of the city. Like Suvic, he too, had
Speaker 1: been out with friends at Dayton of Racetrack in Trafford Park.
Speaker 1: At some point, David's friend Michael realized that David was
Speaker 1: no longer with the group. Unknown to him, David had
Speaker 1: been ejected by the event organizers for being too drunk.
Speaker 1: When Michael was unable to reach him on the phone,
Speaker 1: he contacted the young man's parents and and Mike Plunkett. They,
Speaker 1: in turn then attempted to contact David. In the quiet
Speaker 1: of the night, the deeply concerned Anne and Mike sat
Speaker 1: in their home trying to call their son. It took
Speaker 1: and three attempts before the call was finally answered, but
Speaker 1: her son didn't speak, seemingly unaware that his phone had
Speaker 1: picked up the call. What struck her first and foremost
Speaker 1: was the strange quietness of where he seemed to be.
Speaker 1: No sounds of revelry or traffic, no sound of anything
Speaker 1: much at all. All she could hear was the sound
Speaker 1: of him walking and his breathing. David, she repeated into
Speaker 1: the phone, to no reply, Can you hear me? Do
Speaker 1: you know where you are? Are you in Manchester? Do
Speaker 1: you recognize anything? About seven or eight minutes into the call,
Speaker 1: David's mother heard a series of ghastly screams. Horrified, Anne
Speaker 1: started crying and handed the phone to her husband, Mike,
Speaker 1: then quickly called nine ninety nine on a separate phone,
Speaker 1: hoping that some one could get to David wherever he was.
Speaker 1: As she talked to an officer on the other line,
Speaker 1: David's screams continued until finally, a short time later, David's
Speaker 1: phone went dead. The screams and plunkets spoke about were
Speaker 1: also heard by the police officer on the other line,
Speaker 1: though they weren't picked up on tape the recorder had
Speaker 1: failed to work. The officer in question would go on
Speaker 1: to describe the noises as distressing. She later resigned from
Speaker 1: her post, speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, who ran
Speaker 1: an early piece on the possibility of a serial killer
Speaker 1: operating on the Manchester Canal network. The incident still haunts
Speaker 1: me to this day. With every death I see reported
Speaker 1: in the news, more and more convinced that these are
Speaker 1: murders and not accidents. As David's father, Mike also put it,
Speaker 1: the screaming I heard made me feel like David had
Speaker 1: seen something that terrified him. Like Suvic. It was a
Speaker 1: long time before David's body was found eventually washing up
Speaker 1: two weeks later in the Manchester Ship Canal. The coroner
Speaker 1: ruled it as drowning, and like Suvic, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of alcohol in David's bloodstream, so much so that
Speaker 1: the coroner publicly admonished the organizers of the event for
Speaker 1: ejecting someone in his vulnerable state when it was known
Speaker 1: that he would not have had the coordination to look
Speaker 1: after himself. The third, and one of the most high
Speaker 1: profile cases for amateur sleuths on the hunt for what
Speaker 1: many have taken to calling the Manchester Pusher is that
Speaker 1: of Nathan Tomlinson. Nathan was a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: student student who disappeared after a Christmas party on seventeenth
Speaker 1: of December twenty ten. His last confirmed sighting was at
Speaker 1: the Mita Hotel near Manchester Cathedral. Anecdotal evidence picks up
Speaker 1: his whereabouts on Victoria Street in the center of the city,
Speaker 1: where he is said to have hopped a war before
Speaker 1: making his way toward Chapel Street in Salford to the west.
Speaker 1: A man fitting his description was seen asking a passing
Speaker 1: bus driver how he might get home to Stockport, about
Speaker 1: five miles away to the south, A figure also matching
Speaker 1: his description was spotted by CCTV walking toward the River Irwell.
Speaker 1: At that point, no more sightings were picked up of Nathan,
Speaker 1: speculative or otherwise, after which he is said to have
Speaker 1: disappeared completely. An agonizing three month search followed, during which
Speaker 1: time police focused their efforts on the area around the
Speaker 1: University of Salford, nearby Peel Park and Salford Crescent Railway station.
Speaker 1: His body was recovered from the River Irwell three months later,
Speaker 1: washing up at a bridge near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton.
Speaker 1: An inquest into the search for Nathan found that police
Speaker 1: had failed to do basic investigative work to ensure that
Speaker 1: his body was uncovered more quickly. Pathologist Naomi Carter said
Speaker 1: that although Nathan had water in his lungs, she couldn't
Speaker 1: determine whether he'd died before going into the river or
Speaker 1: whether he'd drowned. Nathan was found with its phone and wallet,
Speaker 1: though his coat was missing, and his mother even suggested
Speaker 1: at one point that she thought the discovery scene might
Speaker 1: have been staged to make it look as though Nathan
Speaker 1: had gone into the water of his own accord. Behind
Speaker 1: each of these high profile cases. The men's families insists
Speaker 1: there is more to the story, and perhaps there is.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until twenty fifteen, when a newspaper published an
Speaker 1: article featuring criminal psychologist Professor Craig Jackson from the University
Speaker 1: of Birmingham that whispers began about the deaths of Nathan,
Speaker 1: David and Souvic, and possibly scores of others being connected.
Speaker 1: The professor was quoted as saying that it was extremely
Speaker 1: unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in
Speaker 1: the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides,
Speaker 1: and that it was entirely possible a serial killer was
Speaker 1: responsible for at least some of the deaths. A theory
Speaker 1: arose that because Manchester's waterways had been used over the
Speaker 1: decades as a cruising area for gay men, an elusive
Speaker 1: murderer may have been targeting the gay community and catching
Speaker 1: potential cruisers unaware. In twenty sixteen, British TV station Channel
Speaker 1: four commissioned a documentary called Manchester's Serial Killer, which featured
Speaker 1: a more cautious, though no less intrigued Professor Craig Jackson
Speaker 1: expounding on his theory. Once again, forums exploded with hypotheses
Speaker 1: and innuendos, and Detective Chief Inspector Pete Marsh of the
Speaker 1: Greater Manchester Police was even instructed to reopen investigations into
Speaker 1: all the deaths linked to the theory. Marsh reported that
Speaker 1: he did not believe young men or those that were
Speaker 1: gay made up the majority of the deaths, and added
Speaker 1: that it was his belief that many of the individuals
Speaker 1: who died on Manchester's waterways had died accidentally. Skepticism remained, however,
Speaker 1: Almost all victims identified were young men aged between eighteen
Speaker 1: to thirty. Last scene after dark, walking alone, found in
Speaker 1: or near one of the city's rivers or canals, with
Speaker 1: no witnesses, no clear cause of death, and no sign
Speaker 1: of struggle against their likely impending doom. Rumors of the
Speaker 1: so called Manchester Pusher might have eventually died out were
Speaker 1: it not for the number of supposed survivors who claimed
Speaker 1: to have had near brushes with the elusive serial killer.
Speaker 1: One anonymous source calling himself Tom, a thirty four year
Speaker 1: old cyclist who regularly frequented Bridgewater Canal, felt an arm
Speaker 1: knock him off his bike and into the water one
Speaker 1: April evening in twenty eighteen. As he struggled to get out,
Speaker 1: found that someone was waiting at the edge of the
Speaker 1: water for him, kicking his hand away repeatedly as he
Speaker 1: struggled to clamber over the embankment. By the time he
Speaker 1: eventually managed to haul himself out of the water, all
Speaker 1: signs of an attacker had disappeared. He'd heard rumors about
Speaker 1: the apparent pusher and had likely been on his guard,
Speaker 1: especially given that there were no lights where the attack
Speaker 1: was alleged to have occurred. With all that said, Tom
Speaker 1: freely admitted that he'd heard about the pusher rumors before
Speaker 1: his near drowning, and with the shock of going into
Speaker 1: the water, he may have been in a state of
Speaker 1: mind suggestible enough for his unconscious to invent a dark
Speaker 1: figure that was responsible. With no new evidence to go on,
Speaker 1: and with Greater Manchester Police having effectively shelled their investigation
Speaker 1: into all searches for a murderer, its likely will never
Speaker 1: know whether someone or something was responsible. Was it murder,
Speaker 1: misadventure or something older, colder and harder to explain. Either way,
Speaker 1: the water doesn't care. Perhaps only one thing is for
Speaker 1: certain that wherever water lies, the grim Reaper is never
Speaker 1: far away, just watching, waiting, I Will be. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard
Speaker 1: McLean Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His
Speaker 1: debut collection of poems titled Bandit, exploring the Hinterland between
Speaker 1: the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two t S Eliot Prize and is out
Speaker 1: now to buy, so do check it out. Thank you
Speaker 1: as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now
Speaker 1: available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes
Speaker 1: and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and
Speaker 1: rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation or a story of your own you'd
Speaker 1: like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
Speaker 1: podcast dot com and reaches online through x and Blue
Speaker 1: Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
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