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Speaker 1: the I don't know stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Devin your host
Speaker 1: this week and every other third week, every other third week.
Speaker 1: It's every other week, every third week. Anyways, every other
Speaker 1: third week, wuld be six weeks. These two du faces
Speaker 1: are Joe and Steve Right and um. This week we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about out a mystery. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting one and we're going a little off the rails.
Speaker 1: We're going boogie, going a little uggy boogie and you
Speaker 1: know we're calling in a big old expert. Um. So
Speaker 1: this week we're going to talk about the Pluckily Ghosts,
Speaker 1: which is also the haunted village of Pluckily, or however
Speaker 1: you want to talk about it. Plucky and Kent Plucky
Speaker 1: and Kent, yes, in Kent in the UK. And this
Speaker 1: was a listeners suggestion by a listener named Chris. Thanks Chris,
Speaker 1: Thanks Chris. We're going to talk to you in a minute. Actually,
Speaker 1: and I will say that I said, with the thumping
Speaker 1: in the closet, is Joe, did you tie them up?
Speaker 1: You're not. That's my ghost. Actually, I've been researching this one,
Speaker 1: and apparently my ghost here in my house, which my
Speaker 1: house is over ninety years old, I got a ghost,
Speaker 1: and so I think my ghost is feeling a little jealous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not great. But I'll also say I had a
Speaker 1: little conversation with one of our mods on the mom team,
Speaker 1: and she said, I don't think you guys are going
Speaker 1: to do the Pluckily ghosts, but I would be even
Speaker 1: more in love with you if you did. And so
Speaker 1: I say, you're welcome. That makes me happy that she's
Speaker 1: going to be happy. Yeah, you guys, ready to let's
Speaker 1: talk about talk there are reported to be well, I
Speaker 1: guess a quick overview of the case and then we'll
Speaker 1: talk about Pluckily and then we'll get into something else.
Speaker 1: This whole thing really started. They're about eighteen individual entities,
Speaker 1: depending on where you go, some some say fifty. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it really varies, but they're up to eighteen individual
Speaker 1: entities in Pluckly, as well as a mysterious mist and
Speaker 1: weird screaming in the nights in the forest. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the mystery here is what's causing all of
Speaker 1: this phenomena and if it's real or not. And we
Speaker 1: didn't really want to do this by ourselves. So since
Speaker 1: Chris suggested this, it turns out he is kind of
Speaker 1: an expert at this stuff. He's got a pretty good
Speaker 1: background in it. So on this story, on this story
Speaker 1: pretty close. Yeah even today actually looks kind of close,
Speaker 1: and we trust his judgment don't make us look like idiots,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna let him introduce himself. Okay, Well, I'm
Speaker 1: Christopher Ripley. I'm an architect and author. I live in
Speaker 1: Kent in the UK, but I work all over And
Speaker 1: my background to this is that I used to live
Speaker 1: very nearby, and I went to high school in a
Speaker 1: town called Tenterdon, which is very very close to Bluckley,
Speaker 1: Um and being that I'm from originally from Ashford, which
Speaker 1: is lucky kind of on the way between Ashford and Tenterdon,
Speaker 1: and I've sort of traveled through it, visited it, dranking
Speaker 1: its pubs, and all sorts of things over the years.
Speaker 1: So I've been there hundreds of times. If you couldn't tell.
Speaker 1: We talked to Chris by Skype, So apologies in advance
Speaker 1: for some of the quality of the interview, but we're
Speaker 1: talking for a while. We talked stuff a long time,
Speaker 1: got a lot of good stuff out of You're gonna
Speaker 1: get to hear most of that, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a quick little rundown before that happens. Pluckily
Speaker 1: is part of the Ashford District of Kent in England.
Speaker 1: Kent is like the southeast part of the country by
Speaker 1: the Channel. Yeah, the Channel, yep. If you don't know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Really, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I know a lot about the UK, and then I
Speaker 1: like look it up and I'm like, oh, I actually
Speaker 1: had no idea about Yeah, So Pluckily as a small
Speaker 1: village set up kind of along some lanes. I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of scattered actually all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say it's kind of like a big old,
Speaker 1: like almost wagon wheel type. It's not an actual wagon wheel,
Speaker 1: but it's like a bunch of different offshoot lanes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that comprise it. And it's kind of just I think
Speaker 1: you kind of think you're out of it, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly you're still in it. And it's just kind of
Speaker 1: a defined little village. If you go to Google Maps
Speaker 1: and Google plu, you get this one corner of it.
Speaker 1: There's this one intersection where the Black Horse Pub is
Speaker 1: in the main church that's kind of like and a
Speaker 1: few other things. But then there's this other part that's
Speaker 1: about a mile and a half south where the railroad
Speaker 1: station is. But it's like, you know, and there's a
Speaker 1: pub there and a railroad station, some houses and a
Speaker 1: few things like that, but it's like there's all this
Speaker 1: countryside in between, but they're kind of considered the same town,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like, so it's a little confusing.
Speaker 1: Chris did mention that he even thought that Plucky was
Speaker 1: kind of an ill defined It's kind of up up
Speaker 1: to anybody's judgment where it starts and where it ends
Speaker 1: to quote Joe, is it a white spot in the road,
Speaker 1: kind of actually several several white spots in the road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's and there's a there's a triangle too, because like
Speaker 1: over to the west of the Darrington Arms Pub, there's
Speaker 1: yet another pub, the Blacksmith's Arms Pub, which again it
Speaker 1: took me a while to find because I think it's over.
Speaker 1: You think it's yeah, I think it's like this isn't in,
Speaker 1: it's way way outside. But now there's still more. Yeah, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's what attracts all the ghosts to this place.
Speaker 1: Maybe in fact there are no city limits. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: nothing keeping them in. Pluckily, for reference, has a population
Speaker 1: of just over one thousand fifty people total, lip living
Speaker 1: and then the eight teen dead. So we're gonna cut
Speaker 1: in and out of this interview that we did with Chris.
Speaker 1: Let's just go ahead and let him tell us what
Speaker 1: happened in Pluckly to kind of make it such a
Speaker 1: hotbed for activity. Yeah, it is. It used to be
Speaker 1: in the Guiness Book of Records. I believe it's not
Speaker 1: in there anymore, but it was the most haunted place
Speaker 1: in the UK. But taking your first point about the history,
Speaker 1: it has such a long history for such a small place.
Speaker 1: It's quite weird really. I mean it's been a settlement
Speaker 1: um since before the Romans, so there's been people living
Speaker 1: there in the main part of the village since then.
Speaker 1: From then on, it sort of became like a feudal system,
Speaker 1: so it had a family was originally the arch Bishop
Speaker 1: of Canterbury, but then it became the family. The Deering
Speaker 1: family sort of inherited the village and all of the
Speaker 1: houses everything within the village which was basically part of
Speaker 1: this family. And the deer In family, their sort of
Speaker 1: history starts I think sort of around the eleventh century
Speaker 1: and it sort of carries on all the way through
Speaker 1: to the twentieth century, mid twentieth century. And the deer
Speaker 1: In family themselves are kind of like, uh would have
Speaker 1: been celebrities of their era. They were famous captains and
Speaker 1: lieutenants and members of parliament, so they were widely respected,
Speaker 1: they were widely known, and everybody in the village and
Speaker 1: everybody locally sort of within in the County of Kent
Speaker 1: and wider would have been aware of the deer In family.
Speaker 1: And of course, being that they were such a large family,
Speaker 1: lots of rumors, lots of gossip. You know, this isn't
Speaker 1: a twenty first century invention. You know, people talking about others.
Speaker 1: All these kind of rumors and legends and things that
Speaker 1: sort of sprouted up from sort of their families um
Speaker 1: doing and what whatever and then after the Fani to
Speaker 1: the family. There's been quite a number of sort of
Speaker 1: relatively sad and tragic events that have occurred from obviously
Speaker 1: the World War two and then sort of fires, suicides
Speaker 1: and all sorts of things. So a lot of that
Speaker 1: plays into the legend I think of the village. The
Speaker 1: village was did have the plague years ago and it
Speaker 1: suffered quite badly. A lot of people died from that,
Speaker 1: so there's that sort of ties into the local myth.
Speaker 1: There's been a number of sort of suicides and hangings
Speaker 1: and uh sort of deaf and disease over over the years.
Speaker 1: There was the loofwater dropped a bomb on Little Chart Church,
Speaker 1: which although Little Chart was just outside the boundaries of Pluckily,
Speaker 1: it was still part of the Deering estate. So that
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen forty four. That was quite a tragic event.
Speaker 1: And then there was also a meal that burnt down
Speaker 1: within the village around the similar sort of time. So,
Speaker 1: without getting into too many details, there has been a
Speaker 1: very long association with sort of tragic events, um deaths,
Speaker 1: even possible murders of suicides. I know another interesting fact
Speaker 1: which I'll explain a little later on there is there
Speaker 1: is this kind of mist that appears, and locally it
Speaker 1: is known that there is a lot of carp crashes
Speaker 1: that happen just geographically because of the area. I know
Speaker 1: working for a company years ago that had an arm
Speaker 1: that did deliver and it delivered in Pluckily, and about
Speaker 1: two or three times every year they would have a
Speaker 1: car crash. All right, Okay, so we we also asked
Speaker 1: Chris um about this thing that happens. When you google Pluckily,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of talk about the Pluckly massacre, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that if you've ever googled Pluckily or
Speaker 1: done any research on it, you've seen this talk about
Speaker 1: this huge massacre that happened. And so we asked Chris
Speaker 1: is there any validity to the massacre or when did
Speaker 1: that happen or anything like that, And this is what
Speaker 1: he had to say. No, No, that that is a
Speaker 1: recent Facebook poax. And of course, you know it should
Speaker 1: be said that maybe there was a massacre, because massacres
Speaker 1: can be metaphorical. Yeah, there's that, or maybe the Pluckily
Speaker 1: high school soccer team, you know, I slaughtered some other
Speaker 1: team from a nearby village and they called the massacre.
Speaker 1: I don't think that Pluckily is large enough to have
Speaker 1: a soccer team. Yeah, they have a soccer team member one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what twelve people to have a soccer team? They
Speaker 1: have a thousand people, they could have one, that's true. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, okay, or you can have you could add like,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how many people are a soccer team.
Speaker 1: I made that. I just a bunch of guys running around.
Speaker 1: But it's like girls. Yeah, when people humans live humans. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I've were way off track here. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: said that there were like eighteen an adolescent amount. That's
Speaker 1: um And so we asked Chris, you know, who are
Speaker 1: who are some of the more popular ones? What are
Speaker 1: the more reported sitings? And so here's what he said
Speaker 1: to us about that. Yeah. I think the most interesting one,
Speaker 1: which gets confused as being two different ghosts, is a
Speaker 1: lady which some people call the Gypsy Lady and other
Speaker 1: people call it the watercress Lady. That's the water Cressley
Speaker 1: be I know he could out in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: Some have her, as I've spoken to people that swear
Speaker 1: blind that they've seen her, particularly back in the Deering
Speaker 1: Arms pub again, the Hunting Lodge as it was. The
Speaker 1: local legend is that she would pick watercress down by
Speaker 1: the river um and then sell it. There's a big obviously,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know him too much about Kent,
Speaker 1: but it's called the Garden of England, and it produces
Speaker 1: a lot of produce often is sold locally and shipped
Speaker 1: up to London, or at least it used to be.
Speaker 1: Traditionally a lot of fruit and vege comes from abroad now.
Speaker 1: So she would pick watercress in the sea, in the
Speaker 1: in the river, sell it locally to be shipped up
Speaker 1: and then she would spend all of her money drinking gin.
Speaker 1: Uh and she would yeah, and she she lived under
Speaker 1: the bridge supposedly, you know, she was a poor lady
Speaker 1: and she survived just enough to fund her drinking habit,
Speaker 1: by all of accounts. And she was in the Deering
Speaker 1: Arms pub one in drinking her gin. Supposedly she tripped
Speaker 1: or and fell towards the fire. The spark came out
Speaker 1: of the fire and lit her an apron alive and
Speaker 1: then she just she just burned to death. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's the rumor. Yeah, that's that's the local legend. That's
Speaker 1: the one of all the ones probably life I've heard
Speaker 1: of people have spoke to me about. That's the one
Speaker 1: they've seen the most. And they usually see either sort
Speaker 1: of loitering around near the bridge going out of the village,
Speaker 1: or they've seen her actually sitting in the Deering Arms
Speaker 1: pub drinking gin. And I know at least two people
Speaker 1: who swear blind that when they've seen her in the
Speaker 1: pub drinking, they just think it's a little old lady
Speaker 1: sit in the corner drink gin. That's crazy. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, yeah, so are any other ones
Speaker 1: that are kind of interesting or you you know, have
Speaker 1: heard people talk about a lot. There's people get them
Speaker 1: sometimes confused. But there's a red lady and a white lady.
Speaker 1: People have seen, um, the white lady quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: She was supposedly, I think a mistress of the deer
Speaker 1: In family. Um that was a local girl in Plucky
Speaker 1: and was sort of spurned. The red lady, I believe
Speaker 1: was a family member of the deer In family. Again,
Speaker 1: that was buried in the St. Nicolas Church. I always
Speaker 1: thought it was quite funny that the church St. Nicholas,
Speaker 1: you know, named after Santa Claus. But hey, um, I
Speaker 1: have a question about the Red Lady. Now, I swear
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere that when she was buried, they put
Speaker 1: her in like several lead caskets or something something crazy
Speaker 1: like that. Is does that ring a bell? And is
Speaker 1: do you know anything about that? Yeah? That that's supposedly true.
Speaker 1: I believe there's been archaeological evidence to back that up.
Speaker 1: But there is a leadline coffin in this crypt and
Speaker 1: nobody knows for sure why. Some say it was to
Speaker 1: preserve she's meant to be very very good looking to
Speaker 1: Some say it was meant to be an ass es
Speaker 1: and an air tight seal to to preserve her looks.
Speaker 1: Others say that she was riddled with the plague. So
Speaker 1: I don't know that makes sense. And then yeah, and
Speaker 1: then the other there's another couple that people see quite often.
Speaker 1: One is a highwayman that's near the Screaming Woods, which
Speaker 1: we can talk about in a second. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and the highwoman. And the other one that gets confused
Speaker 1: with the hirewoman is is a coaching horses. And again
Speaker 1: I know at least one person who sent the coaching
Speaker 1: horses and thought it wasn't an actual coaching horses and
Speaker 1: to it literally evaporated in front of them. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: high woman is on his horse when you see him, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is the highwayman looks near the near the Screaming woods.
Speaker 1: Are you aware of what a highwayman was? I heard
Speaker 1: the story he got run through with a sword because
Speaker 1: he was being overtaken by a bunch of enemies and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, well they were basically that. I mean
Speaker 1: most hime women were just local thieves like Dick Turpin
Speaker 1: and like with the black bandana. You know, your money
Speaker 1: or your life was their catchphrase, and he basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: basically he had a run in and was murdered somewhere
Speaker 1: near the Screaming Woods. Again local legend. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot to sort of substantiate that one at all, like
Speaker 1: most of these legends, but he's another one that with
Speaker 1: the coaching horses is sin you know, fairly frequently. I
Speaker 1: would say, Now there's just a circle back to the
Speaker 1: watercress lady. Um. I've also read that she burned to
Speaker 1: death on the bridge, maybe burned his death somewhere because
Speaker 1: she was drinking alcohol. She was trying to let a
Speaker 1: cigarette at the same time and it must have been
Speaker 1: some high octaened alcohol because she spilled it on herself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that that was on the bridge because
Speaker 1: people say, and that's why you see her under the bridge,
Speaker 1: because that's where she died, or you see her sitting
Speaker 1: on the ledge of the bridge smoking a pipe. She
Speaker 1: really was my kind of lady man lesson about about
Speaker 1: smoking and drinking at the same time. I guess she
Speaker 1: probably figures at this point, like what's going again? Probably
Speaker 1: not doesn't burn. Yeah. So there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: activity around the Black Horse in which Chris is familiar with.
Speaker 1: He's it's a pub now and then he said he
Speaker 1: told us a story about Halloween drinking there, but um,
Speaker 1: he didn't talk about paranormal activity there at all. But
Speaker 1: I will mention um that one of my favorite shows,
Speaker 1: Ghost Hunters inter National. I actually I liked Ghost Hunters
Speaker 1: like the early season's Ghost National is a little too
Speaker 1: stage for me. Yeah, a little a little too like
Speaker 1: uh silly for me. I guess, um, you're like your
Speaker 1: ghost hunting serious. Well, I mean the for those of
Speaker 1: you who aren't familiar with the show, this is not
Speaker 1: an actual plug for the show or anything. But they
Speaker 1: did at the least in the beginning of the Ghost
Speaker 1: Hunters series try to take a really similar to what
Speaker 1: we do, take a really skeptical approach to ghost hunting,
Speaker 1: where they would go in and literally try to like
Speaker 1: try anything they could think of to disprove or recreate
Speaker 1: any of the phenomena that people were experiencing, and then
Speaker 1: whatever was left over they would say was paranormal. But
Speaker 1: one of them was always like, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's ghosts. It just means I can't explain it to
Speaker 1: you right now, which I appreciate anyway. This is a
Speaker 1: kind of spinoff iteration that the guys are a little
Speaker 1: more prone to believe in like anything that somebody tells them,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of it's a little different. But Ghost
Speaker 1: Tanner's International went to the Black Horse in and they
Speaker 1: said that it was haunted or at least that there
Speaker 1: was some paranormal activity there. The two around like you know,
Speaker 1: like a thousand years right, It's yeah, it's an old
Speaker 1: building and so you can imagine that some weird things
Speaker 1: happened there. Yeah, you expect a little paranormal sounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the two main entities all called them are that are
Speaker 1: there are a little girl called Elizabeth, and then the baron,
Speaker 1: who's they always name as William, and um, you may
Speaker 1: not have figured guessed this, but they're pretty sure it
Speaker 1: would have been William Dearing that unknown family name. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I And I'm not totally convinced about the proof that
Speaker 1: this show had to provide, though it is the most
Speaker 1: scientific investigation I have seen of the claims. Most times
Speaker 1: people just go and they're like, I feel a funny
Speaker 1: aura over here or something like that. Um, so they did.
Speaker 1: They brought their tools and you know, did recording and
Speaker 1: things like that, and they their proof that they presented
Speaker 1: was some e m F activity and um electro magnetic
Speaker 1: field activity. The theory behind that is that if a ghost,
Speaker 1: if some some paranormal activity were manifesting, that it messes
Speaker 1: with the electro magnetic field in a given area, or
Speaker 1: that entities can mess with the electromagnetic field given that
Speaker 1: they are of kind of a different field. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of site.
Speaker 1: If this is something that interests you and you somehow
Speaker 1: don't know about e MS, go out and research that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's kind of fascinating the science or pseudoscience
Speaker 1: depending on what school of fire in behind it. This
Speaker 1: kind of actually makes me wonder too, just as a
Speaker 1: scientific thing, is is it possible to tasee a ghost?
Speaker 1: I mean, God is not going to have any effect
Speaker 1: on it. Maybe you can taste them? According to Ghostbusters,
Speaker 1: you can. Okay, you really, what do you think they
Speaker 1: were doing? That's good point. Yeah, actually that's a good point.
Speaker 1: It just has to be a kind of more sophisticated taser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just don't cross the streams and your fine. So this
Speaker 1: investigation also got what I personally think. I've heard some
Speaker 1: very convincing e vps, and I will tell you what
Speaker 1: an e VP is in a second. I have heard
Speaker 1: some very convincing e vps in my life that leave
Speaker 1: me totally open minded to the fact that that might
Speaker 1: be a real thing. This was not one of This
Speaker 1: was something totally different. An e v P is an
Speaker 1: electronic a voice phenomenon, which is basically, you like set
Speaker 1: a recorder, a tape recorder or a voice recorder of
Speaker 1: some kind on like on a table in a room
Speaker 1: where you think it's haunted, and you just have a
Speaker 1: conversation with nothing. You say, can you tell me your name.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why you're so mad? Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about you know, if you know their name?
Speaker 1: You say, like, can you tell me is your name William? Um? William?
Speaker 1: Why are you so mad all the time? You know?
Speaker 1: Why do you do this? Blah blah blah, basically just
Speaker 1: and then you leave a pause for an answer, and
Speaker 1: then you play the tape back and sometimes there will
Speaker 1: be what sounds like responses from voices static background noise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, I have heard a wide variety of
Speaker 1: convincing or not. Is this similar to that that pseudoscience
Speaker 1: phenomenal where they use the white noise that the static
Speaker 1: on the TV and then when they play it back
Speaker 1: they hear voices in it or so that's but that's uh.
Speaker 1: And that's why I say I've seen a wide variety
Speaker 1: because the one that they actually well, the one that
Speaker 1: they used in this one, literally sounds like it's just
Speaker 1: static boosted up really loud, and there's like kind of
Speaker 1: a weird variance, so it sounds like maybe somebody's maybe
Speaker 1: possibly saying something. So it's not as good as in
Speaker 1: that Kevin Bacon movie. Not as good, but I again
Speaker 1: I have heard so I mean not personally, I have
Speaker 1: not been there, but I've heard on TV people play
Speaker 1: back some e v P recordings that are it sounds
Speaker 1: like somebody's sitting right there talking and it's on TV.
Speaker 1: So I can't vouch for if they've faked it or
Speaker 1: they probably have, but um, I will say that the
Speaker 1: e v P recording that they that this particular investigation
Speaker 1: caught at the black Horse End did not convince me.
Speaker 1: But it does also seem like a super spooky place.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's that. Let's get back to Chris. Hey, Chris,
Speaker 1: he's been kind of waiting for a little bit. Sorry.
Speaker 1: We asked if he could tell us if if he
Speaker 1: had ever had any firsthand experiences in Pluckly or any
Speaker 1: anybody he knew had firsthand experiences. I mean, we already
Speaker 1: kind of heard that he knows some people that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, swear up and down that they've seen the
Speaker 1: Watercrest lady in the bar. Um. Although, well, the Watercrest
Speaker 1: lady is the one that hangs out in the bar.
Speaker 1: That's a different one right now. She's the one who
Speaker 1: hangs out in the bar drinking gin. She's the lady. Okay,
Speaker 1: But isn't that somebody else that hangs out at the
Speaker 1: Daring Arms or is that crist too. I can't keep
Speaker 1: it all straight. There's pubs, and it seems like every
Speaker 1: one of them has a different Yeah, they all have
Speaker 1: a token ghost. So let's let Chris tell us about
Speaker 1: the experiences he had. He had three that he wanted
Speaker 1: to share with us. Okay, well I've had three different things.
Speaker 1: I'll start up with the least interesting. Work my way up.
Speaker 1: The least interesting was I had a girlfriend who was Earlie.
Speaker 1: Was a short relationship, but she was working as a
Speaker 1: barmaid in the Deering Arms and every Wednesday, I remember
Speaker 1: this clearly, it was her job to lock up. And
Speaker 1: it was recently, I say recently he was. Back then
Speaker 1: they had just changed the law that you can stay
Speaker 1: open in a British pub if there's no objection up
Speaker 1: until midnight. Yeah, it used to always be eleven o'clock
Speaker 1: unless you lived, unless it was a city, and then
Speaker 1: a certain later anyway, on this Wednesday when she had
Speaker 1: to lock up. So the theory in Arms is quite
Speaker 1: a large part of It's like an old guesthouse. It's
Speaker 1: got lots of rooms upstairs, it's got quite a few rooms. Downstairs,
Speaker 1: there's it looks like Norman bates Is parlor, you know,
Speaker 1: there's loads of stuffed animals. There's a big log fire,
Speaker 1: it's creepy. And this is the one where this lady
Speaker 1: with the gin is supposedly drinks in. So anyway, every Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and this went off for quite a few weeks, she
Speaker 1: would ask me to come in around sort of half
Speaker 1: ten eleven o'clock. She'd give me a drink cocacola or whatever,
Speaker 1: and she wanted me to wait with her to look
Speaker 1: at that. Basically, so every Wednesday I used to go
Speaker 1: down there, and almost every Wednesday we would the locals
Speaker 1: will be gone home by now, they'll be drunk. So
Speaker 1: it would be about half a leven we're getting everything
Speaker 1: closed up, getting shut all the doors, turn all the
Speaker 1: lights off. And then around midnight when we left, every
Speaker 1: every single evening, we would walk out to our cars
Speaker 1: and there was this mist. And I touched on it earlier.
Speaker 1: This mist was always waist height. It was always really
Speaker 1: really thick. I mean it looked like the Riller music video,
Speaker 1: you know, Michael Jackson. Yeah, And there was always this
Speaker 1: quiet stillness every time. So I think there's an environmental
Speaker 1: reason behind a lot of these legends. But that was
Speaker 1: my first sort of creepy experience was seeing this physical
Speaker 1: thick fog that was sort of waiste hike, And you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything like that anywhere else in this
Speaker 1: country other than yeah, that sounds kind of fun. Actually,
Speaker 1: don't need to wear pants. That's the upside of the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Upside. Yeah, there's a silver line in every
Speaker 1: cloud or oh gosh, okay. Next one second experience, which
Speaker 1: was incredibly weird. Um was about ten years ago and
Speaker 1: me and my friend Anthony, we're driving back from our
Speaker 1: a party that had been in Tenterdon and we was
Speaker 1: using a short cut which sort of shortcut not right
Speaker 1: through the village but sort asserted to the side of
Speaker 1: the village. And it's a well known shortcut that a
Speaker 1: lot of us use when we live in Ashford and
Speaker 1: we're commuting to Tenerton because there's sort of one road
Speaker 1: between ash and tens and often gets congested, but as
Speaker 1: kind of force of habit, kind of quickness, we would
Speaker 1: always take the short cut. It was a bit tristy
Speaker 1: and turning, but you know, you could put your foot
Speaker 1: down and we were going down this road. It was
Speaker 1: about midnight. We were both completely sober. I will say
Speaker 1: that now I was driving and Anstey had to be
Speaker 1: up reasonably early because he had this thing to do
Speaker 1: with the cars in the morning. And we were driving
Speaker 1: down this road. And this road is a lane, so
Speaker 1: it's only a single carriage. I mean, it's very very small.
Speaker 1: If you have if you met another car, you'd have
Speaker 1: to slow right down. And either side of the lane
Speaker 1: is just filled open open fields for miles, complete darkness
Speaker 1: apart from the moonlight. And as this couple man and
Speaker 1: a woman walking sort of down this lane, uh, sort
Speaker 1: of towards us, facing us, and they look like the
Speaker 1: best way of describing them was they look like have
Speaker 1: you seen the movie Beetle Juice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: you know at the end with Alec Bording and Gina
Speaker 1: Davis doing that marriage thing and they're sort of slow.
Speaker 1: Bill just got the spell on them and they're sort
Speaker 1: of getting decrepit and falling apart. Remember that it become
Speaker 1: all gault looking. Yeah, for this couple of walking there,
Speaker 1: their faces are like that. It looks like they've got
Speaker 1: a heavy makeup on and they were wearing these old
Speaker 1: fashioned costumes that are all torn and dusty, and I
Speaker 1: look like something at the sort of seventeenth century. And
Speaker 1: I turned to Anthony and I'm quite you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just I've been at a party or I'm doing a
Speaker 1: good mood. I'm like, dude, look at these two. I mean,
Speaker 1: they must have won the best fancy dress costume ever.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. No, it was sort of it was winter,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. It wasn't hall aween. So I said
Speaker 1: to answering, you know they they must have won some
Speaker 1: kind of fancy dress costume. I don't know how the
Speaker 1: hell they're walking in the middle of nowhere like this,
Speaker 1: dressed like that. And he turned to me and he
Speaker 1: was like, dude, like that, that's just terrifying. I just
Speaker 1: think that is the most scariest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, it's just two people in costumes.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's it's I think it
Speaker 1: was a Saturday night or on Friday night or something.
Speaker 1: There's one way that's just if you step on the
Speaker 1: gas and drive through them. You either run them over
Speaker 1: or you pass right through them like they're like they're
Speaker 1: a mess. Well, well, the thing is just in case
Speaker 1: they were real, and because you know anthon these sensitivities,
Speaker 1: I turned the car around sound and drove back again.
Speaker 1: So we went past them and I saw slowed down
Speaker 1: looking at them, and they didn't look at us. They
Speaker 1: just carried on walking and they looked like literally like
Speaker 1: two people pull in fancy dress. We drove past them
Speaker 1: slightly around the corner. I turned the car around, I
Speaker 1: came back and they had gone huh. And to this
Speaker 1: day we still argue over it. He says that ghosts.
Speaker 1: I said that they probably just jumped in a ditch,
Speaker 1: or they were scared that you were something You were
Speaker 1: scared or something, or they were scared they were maybe
Speaker 1: they just weren't sure about your intentions. And yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: But to this day, I don't know why those two
Speaker 1: people were walking in down that road at that hour,
Speaker 1: dressed like they were in the middle of nowhere, walking
Speaker 1: too God those where Yeah, that's a weird one. And
Speaker 1: then the third weird one, which I still can't um,
Speaker 1: I still can't explain, And you're welcome to laugh at
Speaker 1: me on this one if you haven't already been laughing
Speaker 1: all the way through this going along, Well, the third
Speaker 1: one is um. We were me and my father. This
Speaker 1: was about up I think this was sort of uh now,
Speaker 1: sort of mid nineties, late nineties. We were driving back
Speaker 1: from the city of Brighton and this again, this was
Speaker 1: almost the exact same stretch of roads, sort of two
Speaker 1: miles down it. We were driving back towards Ashford and
Speaker 1: this creature ran out in front of us and we
Speaker 1: slammed the brakes on. This was nighttime again, um, probably
Speaker 1: about winter, but probably about seven or eight o'clock in
Speaker 1: the evening, and it was yeah, it was remember being
Speaker 1: very very cold outside and would stand the brakes on
Speaker 1: and it was what looked to me as a panther.
Speaker 1: And I looked at him and I said, always in
Speaker 1: the same thing here And we were just both staring
Speaker 1: at this thing that was staring at us. Stare standing
Speaker 1: in the middle of the road. And then he flashed
Speaker 1: his lights and within a second the thing just darted
Speaker 1: off into the forest, which was literally to the side
Speaker 1: of the roads. It was black, um, its eyes sort
Speaker 1: of shoe as we as we as our sort of
Speaker 1: headlights lit the thing up, and it was long. It
Speaker 1: was very close to the ground. I mean, I've grown
Speaker 1: up with dogs as to this day, I've still got
Speaker 1: different sort of dogs, and I know people that have
Speaker 1: got sort of large dogs without the stations and greyhounds
Speaker 1: and things like that, So I know what it isn't
Speaker 1: and what it isn't. But this thing, I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was. The bosest thing I could tell you
Speaker 1: that it looked like was a panther, but as quick
Speaker 1: as I saw it, that stood there for one or
Speaker 1: two seconds then dotted off. I don't know. Well, hasn't
Speaker 1: there been in the UK for god a couple of
Speaker 1: decades now, a lot of talk of sightings of large cats.
Speaker 1: This that seems like something that I've read quite a
Speaker 1: few times. Yeah, well, and for context, right means itself
Speaker 1: officially there are not large cats. They're just you know,
Speaker 1: for clarification, right, although there are actually there's people around
Speaker 1: here that have large cats in their own private that
Speaker 1: you can some people can't privately own large cats, but
Speaker 1: officially they're up in Scotland, there's some native sort of
Speaker 1: bobcats longer had things that are quite rare. But officially
Speaker 1: what happened, I mean, you could do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on big cats in the UK, because it's a huge
Speaker 1: phenomena over here. But officially what happened was in the
Speaker 1: seventies they brought a Laura out banning people from owning
Speaker 1: them unless they had a license, which meant had to
Speaker 1: get a big pen and a big sanctuary to store
Speaker 1: their animals in, because I think in the sixties some
Speaker 1: of the pop stars had things like leopards and tigers
Speaker 1: and things in their houses, and it became this giant
Speaker 1: fad to have exotic animals. I mean, going back to
Speaker 1: the Victorian times. I mean, I know one of my
Speaker 1: ancestors out a pet monkey, you know, So it was
Speaker 1: the rules were the rules were very very you know, lacks.
Speaker 1: But in the seventies they brought it's very hard ruling
Speaker 1: and then a lot of people that did have these big,
Speaker 1: large animals, they either donated them to zoos and circuses
Speaker 1: or and we know this for a fact, some of
Speaker 1: the people did let their animals just go into the wild.
Speaker 1: That's not unheard of forty years on, right, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how long these things live for, but
Speaker 1: probably not an additional forty years, but you know, I
Speaker 1: could be well, if there's more than one, though, they
Speaker 1: can propagate unheard of you could. I still think it's
Speaker 1: weird that you would have seen a creature like that.
Speaker 1: That's a little weird, super weird, and it just happened
Speaker 1: to be on the outskirts bluckly well, of course it was.
Speaker 1: Uh So, one thing that Chris didn't really talk about
Speaker 1: yet but we wanted to ask him about was the
Speaker 1: Screaming Woods, because you'll see a lot about the Screaming
Speaker 1: Woods and he kind of just glassed right over it.
Speaker 1: So we asked him to talk more about the Screaming Woods.
Speaker 1: The Screaming Woods, there's not a there's not a huge
Speaker 1: amount of information on them. Inasmuch as there was supposedly
Speaker 1: a suicide that happened in the Screaming Woods. There's also
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anywhere online, I haven't seen anywhere in
Speaker 1: any textbooks, but locals have told me that there was
Speaker 1: back in the sort of the Tutor era, that was
Speaker 1: a number of hangings in the woods when the local
Speaker 1: courts in Ashford or attended to maybe got overrun with
Speaker 1: people that have done bad the deeds and had to
Speaker 1: be hung, that they did use the screaming wooks to
Speaker 1: hang some of these people, sort of you know, thieves
Speaker 1: and murderers and things. Um, So I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's strictly true, but that's that's kind of the legend
Speaker 1: that some of the locals have told me. On that one.
Speaker 1: I also heard a story of a guy who fell
Speaker 1: into a clay like a pit of clay bricks or
Speaker 1: something like that. You heard that the brick works one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard of that one. Wasn't that also in the woods? Yeah?
Speaker 1: There wasn't in the woods. That was in a mason's
Speaker 1: yard that sort of almost adjacent to the woods where
Speaker 1: they were making in bricks and pots and different things
Speaker 1: out of clay. Supposedly a young apprentice was working and
Speaker 1: a wall of clay pots and a news clay fell
Speaker 1: onto him and killed him. Um. It's one of these
Speaker 1: ones that there's no sort of substantiation anywhere in any
Speaker 1: of the text books or any of the history books.
Speaker 1: That seems to be sort of word of mouth and
Speaker 1: things that found their way on the internet. You know that.
Speaker 1: Actually that brings up a question for me, which is,
Speaker 1: of all of these ghosts that are there, how many
Speaker 1: of them are based on things that are just local
Speaker 1: stories and legends versus you know, do you do you have?
Speaker 1: Is it like a fifty fifty. These ones we know
Speaker 1: are real events, These ones we don't. Do you have
Speaker 1: a sense on that probably, I'd say half because a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that happened to the Daring family,
Speaker 1: being that they were quite a grandiose family, a lot
Speaker 1: of the events that happened in their lives through the
Speaker 1: generations because they lived in the village for so long,
Speaker 1: is actually quite well documented. Things like mistresses, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the partner dying, illegitimate children. You know, the fire
Speaker 1: for example, the windmill burning down, stuff like that. There's
Speaker 1: quite a lot of those things that you can find
Speaker 1: facts on in the history books in as as much
Speaker 1: as their factual written at the time by by someone
Speaker 1: that's recording it. Where you know, it's like all history,
Speaker 1: whether it's atually true or not, you don't really know.
Speaker 1: But a lot of those local legends, a lot of
Speaker 1: those ghosts could be spawned from things that were happening
Speaker 1: because of this very famous family that we're living there.
Speaker 1: And so in the town of Barckley, I assume you
Speaker 1: know some of the people they're their partisans of a
Speaker 1: particular ghost or another. I mean, people argue about which
Speaker 1: ghost is better or which ghost is more likely to
Speaker 1: be real based on the number of sightings that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Well, there are always seems to be the village.
Speaker 1: In the village, I don't want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: or they don't think anything it's true at all, they've
Speaker 1: never said anything. They think it's all rubbish. And then
Speaker 1: the other usually the ones that are in the pubs,
Speaker 1: I will I will say as well, yeah, are the
Speaker 1: ones that know all the legends. They've seen all of them,
Speaker 1: they know all of them, you know. And it's people
Speaker 1: like me that's kind of an outsider because I don't
Speaker 1: live in the village. It's people like me that sort
Speaker 1: of picking through and looking at what people are saying
Speaker 1: and trying to put it all together. But you know,
Speaker 1: it is it definitely a fifty fifty split when it
Speaker 1: comes to actual people that lived there. Now, all right,
Speaker 1: So the three things we kind of have to tackle
Speaker 1: are the mist the ghosts, and the screaming woods. So
Speaker 1: that's the theory section. Yeah, those are kind of the
Speaker 1: I guess we have to talk about theories about what
Speaker 1: those might be, right, So it will be theory section.
Speaker 1: But first I think we should probably take a little
Speaker 1: boo break we're going to see the specter. Yeah, all right,
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Speaker 1: was half hearted, that's do. Re Materializing takes a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. I don't know if you know that. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you guys hear that thump? What? I think it
Speaker 1: was a ghost? It was your cat? Oh no, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, hint in my cord. Okay, all right, so
Speaker 1: let's first let's talk about the missed. There it was
Speaker 1: again the missed, which is weird? Is not so weird?
Speaker 1: That just depends on local meteorological conditions. It does. And
Speaker 1: actually I found a agriculture journel. Did I say that
Speaker 1: word weird? Agriculture? Agricultural Agricultural Journal. That Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: from eighty three, so pretty new. Yeah, that's that's fresh
Speaker 1: off the press. Yeah uh, and it actually outlined what
Speaker 1: that missed meant, like apparently that missed serves to predict
Speaker 1: the weather for the next couple of days. But it's
Speaker 1: been around. I mean, I think it's just a normal phenomena.
Speaker 1: Well missed and fog are created when a cold front
Speaker 1: encounters a warm air front, and as long as one
Speaker 1: of them is laden with moisture, it's it's likely that
Speaker 1: it will create a fox. Based on the geography the area,
Speaker 1: it can funnel it into places and go and low
Speaker 1: and behold there near the channel. So there's going to
Speaker 1: be cold, they're coming out of there, that's going to
Speaker 1: be moist So it makes total sense why get missed
Speaker 1: all the time. And I will say I do understand
Speaker 1: it's pretty It is kind of creepy if you're you know,
Speaker 1: coming out and it's this waste hime missed just constantly,
Speaker 1: Like that's pretty creepy. And I don't have a good
Speaker 1: I'm not a meteorologist. I don't understand whether well enough
Speaker 1: to understand if there's a reason for specifically placed missed
Speaker 1: like the pressure actually assumption. I mean I've been a
Speaker 1: miss like where it's like, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, knee high like that. Yeah, yeah, I've been.
Speaker 1: I've never been exactly a waste high. Well, for me,
Speaker 1: it's not the the exact height, it's the frequency with
Speaker 1: which the mist appears at that height. Although on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I will say that if it is every
Speaker 1: night that it's at that same height, I would just
Speaker 1: presume that it's some kind of geographical impact on geographical Yeah,
Speaker 1: geographical impact on the way that missed settles into that area. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm pretty sure that I know why.
Speaker 1: Nobody and pluckly has been able to scientifically prove that
Speaker 1: it is just a difference in air temperature. Because at night,
Speaker 1: when you hold the one thermometer up in the air
Speaker 1: above your head, you can read it, but the one
Speaker 1: that you stick down in the mist, you can't read
Speaker 1: because it's in the mist, so they can't figure it out.
Speaker 1: Your clutch gum both in your hot level hands. That
Speaker 1: doesn't help either. True. True, So I mean missed, No,
Speaker 1: the mist is this is not the only place where
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff happens. Actually, I get missed at
Speaker 1: my house. Sometimes it's usually not waste time, but you know,
Speaker 1: when you get it, mostly just because you don't clean
Speaker 1: those Yeah, I mean outside, that's his burning bitter it. Okay,
Speaker 1: well what about Okay, so much for the mist what
Speaker 1: about the screaming woods. But by the way, I like
Speaker 1: the screaming woods. I like the sound of it. I
Speaker 1: like the screaming woods too, not the deering woods of
Speaker 1: screaming woods. I have a theory about what's going on
Speaker 1: in the screaming woods. Yeah, foxes, well, vixens, female foxes.
Speaker 1: Have you heard them call? Oh? Yeah, they have a
Speaker 1: really disturbing it literally sounds like screaming. Ya, literally sounds
Speaker 1: like screaming. And yes, what there are lots of down
Speaker 1: in buckets. Yeah, of foxes there you go. Okay, that
Speaker 1: settles that for the screaming woods. Well, no, that doesn't
Speaker 1: settle it for the screaming woods, because the foxes are
Speaker 1: not the only thing. There are a lot of things
Speaker 1: that it can be. In the modern era. I really
Speaker 1: have a feeling that it is locals screwing with tourists
Speaker 1: and drunken tour is having a heyday in the woods,
Speaker 1: and high school kids and all kinds of stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I will say is weird, is I have
Speaker 1: I watched a couple documentaries of people walking through Plucky
Speaker 1: Woods at night. Documentaries they're technically documents documentaries or is
Speaker 1: it ghost slash spook slash haunted, Hunters, slash Finders, slash
Speaker 1: investigators TV shows? No, mostly just like people with like cameras. Okay,
Speaker 1: so not the guys with the reality crew following them.
Speaker 1: I mean I watched the one right. Oh, I tried
Speaker 1: to watch a bunch of them. I watched the Ghost
Speaker 1: Tenner National and then I just watched a bunch of
Speaker 1: footage that people individuals had just uploaded. And I will say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: YouTube stuff. And I will say one thing I did
Speaker 1: notice about Pluckily is it does seem like the birds
Speaker 1: sing really late there. Like birds don't usually sing in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. It's kind of weird. But
Speaker 1: there are birds singing in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: So I don't really know what's going on there. That
Speaker 1: could have been weird. It could have been shot in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, but they did not use your camera's people
Speaker 1: can't You can't easily manipulate, yeah, your video to make
Speaker 1: it look like it's super creepy and dark. How many
Speaker 1: TV shows have we watched where they're out at night
Speaker 1: but you can tell it's daylight, but they've turned the
Speaker 1: blue up really high. It's very obvious. So I will
Speaker 1: say that's a bit. It's just the consistency with which
Speaker 1: that happens is kind of odd. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's I don't think there's anything paranormal about birds singing
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night necessarily. Yeah, one phenomena
Speaker 1: that I want to talk about a little bit as
Speaker 1: a phenomena of people shooting video while holding their their
Speaker 1: camera vertical instead of in portrait mode, instead of in
Speaker 1: in landscape mode. I think that's an entire different episode
Speaker 1: it is, But I just want to talk about how
Speaker 1: annoying I find out. Yeah, you know, I think it
Speaker 1: is a that's an episode in Yeah, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So before war next week, we'll talk about that. Listen.
Speaker 1: I have friends who were confused by the fact that
Speaker 1: they went from portrait to landscape back to portrait while
Speaker 1: shooting a continuous video with their phone and it didn't
Speaker 1: auto rotate when they played it back. People. It's it's
Speaker 1: mind bottling to some Oh, yeah, that is my Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so do you want to know there anything more?
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about the Well, I'm done
Speaker 1: with the woods. I know they've been talked about. They
Speaker 1: talked about other stands of woods that have been chopped down,
Speaker 1: but the screaming woods is still there, correct, Yes, the
Speaker 1: only Okay. So I actually I have a question about
Speaker 1: the woods that I didn't think to ask at the
Speaker 1: time when we were doing the interview, and I didn't
Speaker 1: really see it anywhere in my reading before the modern era.
Speaker 1: At what frequency were these screams heard in the woods?
Speaker 1: Was just an hourly, a nightly, a monthly or a year.
Speaker 1: I think it's an occasional kind of thing, Okay, which
Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to know, Devon or you understanding, Okay,
Speaker 1: I kind of had the same idea, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm inclined to though Devon always says it's fox it's
Speaker 1: this time to agree that it's Foxes. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that it was happening like every day. I think the
Speaker 1: locals would have cut the woods down a long time ago. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: m yeah, probably more Yea burned him, yeah, with pitchforks.
Speaker 1: So then the last one is ghosts. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got all these ghosts. We got the care I
Speaker 1: like the aage. Yeah, the carriage is cool, that's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that. That would be damn creepy
Speaker 1: to run across that one, for sure. Yeah. Or a highwayman,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know anything that's out of place that
Speaker 1: you just see. It's kind of like, what but it's creepy.
Speaker 1: The colonel, I'm not so sure about the how you
Speaker 1: recognize that it was a colonel or not explain what
Speaker 1: the colinl is? Again? The colonel was the one that
Speaker 1: hung himself, right, Um that was afterwards? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I don't have a good theory for what the
Speaker 1: ghosts could be except one. But it's not going to
Speaker 1: make a lot of people happy. Well there's okay, there's
Speaker 1: two theories. Actually, I guess I should I should be Well,
Speaker 1: there's two mantes. I mean there there is a possibility
Speaker 1: that they are real, and that's end of that theory. Right,
Speaker 1: If they're real, then they're real. There's there needs no explanation.
Speaker 1: But if they're not real, why aren't they real? And
Speaker 1: one is actually Chris talked about this a little bit,
Speaker 1: and we're just going to play a really quick clip
Speaker 1: of his in a minute. But it could all be
Speaker 1: a Victorian lie. Yeah, So let's listen to Chris talk
Speaker 1: about this for a second and then we can keep
Speaker 1: talking about it. But the interesting thing um in regards
Speaker 1: to the Victorian society was it was around that time
Speaker 1: when they had a train station built in the village
Speaker 1: and not not every village has a train station. I
Speaker 1: mean that's quite rare, you know, as it goes for
Speaker 1: villages in Kent. And this train station was connected to London.
Speaker 1: So there is this idea that Victorian society, within the
Speaker 1: newspaper and periodicals at the time, picked up on this
Speaker 1: local legend, picked up on the different things that were happening,
Speaker 1: kind of like sensationalized a lot of stuff in the
Speaker 1: Victorian era, and then that sort of intrigued visitors to
Speaker 1: come down from London and they could just come straight
Speaker 1: down on the trend. So it kind of seems that
Speaker 1: there's an explosion and a lot of this stuff around
Speaker 1: that time. Well you know, you know it might be
Speaker 1: a Scooby Doo conspiracy. You know, I would have got
Speaker 1: away with them, damn meddling kids. If you look at
Speaker 1: the Deerings. Well, if you look at the deering Arm
Speaker 1: and the Deerings, um when there was a census done,
Speaker 1: there were so many different sort of trades and stores
Speaker 1: and outlets and things within the village trying to make
Speaker 1: a living. I mean, no less the watercress lady, for
Speaker 1: heaven's sakes, um. So there may have been at a
Speaker 1: village conspiracy, all the people selling and making stuff to
Speaker 1: bring wealthy Londoners down, you know. So, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: pretty that's pretty solid. My my, my problem with this
Speaker 1: is that it's it's easy to say that that's what
Speaker 1: they were doing because that was what their obsession was.
Speaker 1: But I feel like some of this was happening before
Speaker 1: and and I'll be very honest as usual, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in this. I think that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: very simple answers going on. And I mean, because if
Speaker 1: if this place was such a thin spot, such a
Speaker 1: magnet for people who died under bad circumstances to to
Speaker 1: materialize again or showback up as a ghost, why well,
Speaker 1: I mean, what makes it such a special place. It's
Speaker 1: like that that when we talk to Gosh, this was
Speaker 1: way back in the beginning that the dog Bridge the
Speaker 1: bridge where they like people said, well, that was a
Speaker 1: thin spot. But yet nobody ever says what makes these
Speaker 1: things what they are? It's just oh, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it must be a thin spot. Well, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't understand that stuff, so hey, who said it? It's
Speaker 1: not I mean, didn't you watch Fringe. Yes, there was
Speaker 1: no real explanation for why there were those certain thin spots.
Speaker 1: But but thin spots is a total made up term. Mean,
Speaker 1: it's like somebody said, there's a bunch of stuff going
Speaker 1: on here, I don't know why. I'm just gonna say
Speaker 1: it's a thin spot, and we all follow that like
Speaker 1: it just I think a thin spot is a is
Speaker 1: a term for it's like a placeholder to term, right,
Speaker 1: because they think there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are genuinely trying to do scientific research into paranormal stuff, right,
Speaker 1: and we obviously don't understand, Like nobody knows what happens
Speaker 1: after death, nobody knows if ghosts are real, like, like
Speaker 1: genuinely knows, right, there are people who believe deeply, but
Speaker 1: because we don't know, we don't have good evidence to
Speaker 1: back that up. We don't know what a thin spot
Speaker 1: might be, right, so I think it's that kind of
Speaker 1: placeholder term where it's like, it's what we are referring
Speaker 1: to as a thin spot until we can figure out
Speaker 1: what it is, because they don't know. And I know
Speaker 1: that like skives you out like you hate it when
Speaker 1: somebody says, like, here's an explanation, but I don't know why.
Speaker 1: But it's a similar thing with you know, before quantum
Speaker 1: physics was really kind of expanded, you know, let's see,
Speaker 1: let's look at it this way too. It could be
Speaker 1: that the actual concentration of ghosts, assuming that they're real,
Speaker 1: which I'm not, come down one side or the other.
Speaker 1: It could be the concentration of the number of ghosts
Speaker 1: and plucky are actually no greater than anywhere else. But
Speaker 1: it could be because let's not forget people who have
Speaker 1: been living in the same village for centuries, so pretty
Speaker 1: much most of the people in that village share a
Speaker 1: lot of jeans, and so there might be if you're
Speaker 1: a certain person who's a receiver that which is said,
Speaker 1: you can receive thoughts from other people, you'll probably be
Speaker 1: more likely to see the ghosts. Also, alternately, since it
Speaker 1: is such a close knit group of people and it's
Speaker 1: a smaller community, people may be more likely to actually
Speaker 1: talk about and believe the people who are talking about
Speaker 1: their experiences. Right, I mean, if you are living in Portland,
Speaker 1: it's a cultural it's not a cultural taboo anymore. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not even just a taboo like Okay,
Speaker 1: So I guess to frame it like, we're we live
Speaker 1: in Portland. It's not like huge, but it's not tiny. Right.
Speaker 1: And you go and you sit down at a bar
Speaker 1: and there's this guy that you don't really know, and
Speaker 1: he starts talking about ghosts versus you live in a
Speaker 1: place you know everybody, you know most of the people,
Speaker 1: you've respect for them and their intelligence, you've known them
Speaker 1: their whole life. And they start telling you about how
Speaker 1: they saw a ghost. You're probably going to give it
Speaker 1: at least a little bit more pause. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little bit more credit there than some random like
Speaker 1: Joe off the streett random dude off the street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true because I know people. I I know at
Speaker 1: least one person that I know who used to work
Speaker 1: on a bar that I used to frequent who said
Speaker 1: there was a ghost there, and other people said there
Speaker 1: was a ghost there, and she told me a couple
Speaker 1: of stories that were truly kind of hanky. I can
Speaker 1: think of an explanation orchieth for them, but they were
Speaker 1: still kind of creepy as hell. And that's that's my
Speaker 1: problem with this is I feel like somebody told the
Speaker 1: story once and other people are are retelling the story
Speaker 1: in their own version because something that they noticed after
Speaker 1: the fact made them think that that thing wasn't there
Speaker 1: before and now it's there. But I mean, one of
Speaker 1: those one of those silly ghost finder ghost facer shows
Speaker 1: that I was watching the guy was in this place
Speaker 1: and he's and he's talking into the camera, and it was.
Speaker 1: And this is how I feel about most people who
Speaker 1: say they have the encounters, because I don't find it
Speaker 1: to be genuine. I'm not saying that people are lying
Speaker 1: this guy. I do is I watched him and he's
Speaker 1: talking into the camera and then he does this this
Speaker 1: really dramatic pause and he points, oh my gosh, did
Speaker 1: you see it? It was there? And he runs over
Speaker 1: and he's he's giving this such a dead pan, trying
Speaker 1: to sound sincere I saw this thing happened here, And
Speaker 1: from the accountings that I've read, like the thing that
Speaker 1: he described wasn't in any of the lore, so he
Speaker 1: was literally making guano up on the spot. It was
Speaker 1: in this isn't Plucky was in one of the churches.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's why I have such a difficulty,
Speaker 1: because you watch these things, you're like, it's it seems
Speaker 1: very clear that this is being made up for entertainment,
Speaker 1: and I feel like a lot of times the entertainment
Speaker 1: value has gained so much steam, but it's gone on
Speaker 1: so long that the joke and the gag stopped two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, and everybody else is just telling the
Speaker 1: same thing, thinking that it was meant to be real.
Speaker 1: Well I don't think, yeah, I don't think that. Probably
Speaker 1: Pluckily does not have actually did not have until fairly recently,
Speaker 1: and more than this fair share of ghost stories because
Speaker 1: every place you go to the somebody will say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ghost and not necessarily taking it to crypto seriously.
Speaker 1: But then there was a BBC personality named Desmond Carrington,
Speaker 1: you guys may have heard of, who did both radio
Speaker 1: and TV for the BBC, and apparently he was like
Speaker 1: being interviewed for an article for TV Times, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like the version of the TV guys sometime
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, and he was sort of from east,
Speaker 1: from Kent, and I don't know how the topic came up,
Speaker 1: but he decided to like be you know, Pluckily already
Speaker 1: had a ghost story or two, and he decided to
Speaker 1: just make up a bunch more honest and and and
Speaker 1: just basically that's what he did. He made up a
Speaker 1: lot of these characters on the spot. And and that's
Speaker 1: one way they might have made their way sort of
Speaker 1: into the popular conte They were written record before that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were not. I don't think there was much of
Speaker 1: a written record really of Pluckley's ghost. There was sort
Speaker 1: of a vague fireside tradition, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: thing that somebody else wrote a book. A guy named
Speaker 1: Francis sanders In published a book called Pluckley Was My Playground,
Speaker 1: which I think sold about two copies. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't know how many people are really interested
Speaker 1: in hearing about somebody's childhood and Pluckily, I know I'm not.
Speaker 1: But apparently he recounted some of these stories too. But
Speaker 1: I looked for a copy online of Plucky Was My Playground,
Speaker 1: couldn't find one. So it was not even find out
Speaker 1: exactly how many ghost he talked about. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's an interesting story. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know really where I fall. I feel like
Speaker 1: I fall more in the believing camp than than Steve
Speaker 1: for sure. All the time. Yeah I am, I am
Speaker 1: holding down the entire camp on this other side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I also am not willing to totally discredit what
Speaker 1: people say they've said and experienced. So I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting one. I think it's worth a stop on
Speaker 1: our trip over to the UK sometime in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like five years, so that I would be sooner than that,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Actually, I just saw some great different rates. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go and we'll go in the off season. So
Speaker 1: do you guys have anything else you want to contribute
Speaker 1: to this? I know, I think I've probably said my
Speaker 1: piece and more. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, enough
Speaker 1: said Steve. Steve's the worst one. Last little thing. Chris
Speaker 1: has podcast. Actually it's two podcasts and they are relevant
Speaker 1: to your interests. So we're gonna let him tell you
Speaker 1: about them real quick. So I host a co host
Speaker 1: the podcast scare Zone, which you can be found a
Speaker 1: scar Zone dot com. It's a podcast about Halloween Horror Knights,
Speaker 1: which is a Halloween themed event that happens at Universal
Speaker 1: Studios in Orlando, Florida and in Hollywood, California. I also
Speaker 1: write about that and do a lot of the history
Speaker 1: behind Universal Studios. You can look me up on Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's Christopher Ripley and I've got five books at the moment,
Speaker 1: and I'm working on my six at the moment, and
Speaker 1: then now we're going to wrap up. So if you
Speaker 1: want to if you live in plug if you are
Speaker 1: a ghosts plucky and you want to tell us your
Speaker 1: story and are able to operate a computer and mobile
Speaker 1: device or something, or you can just you know, think
Speaker 1: it really hard at us. I guess you could actually
Speaker 1: just come over here and piece a visit. But if
Speaker 1: you're an angry ghost, visit Devon, not me. No visit Steve.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to understand their accent. That's okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can. You can communicate to us via our email address.
Speaker 1: That email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to see some of the links to
Speaker 1: some of the research we did, um you can find
Speaker 1: that online on our website. Which is Thinking Sideways podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. On that you can also find links to
Speaker 1: our merch stores if you won't and also, um, on
Speaker 1: the sidebar, there's an episode list, which is a fully
Speaker 1: inclusive list of every single episode that we have done,
Speaker 1: every two hundred plus episodes that we've done. So if
Speaker 1: you're wondering, if you're if you're thinking that you might
Speaker 1: write to to suggest something, Hey, maybe we've already done it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible. That's the best place to go. It is.
Speaker 1: I actually use it all the time when people suggests,
Speaker 1: although I will say, um, hopping over. We do have
Speaker 1: a Facebook and on the group, one of our moths
Speaker 1: did a really cool thing and put a note that
Speaker 1: also wasn't all inclusive list of our episodes, so you
Speaker 1: can find that there. Um, we've got a group and
Speaker 1: a page, so you can like the page and follow
Speaker 1: the group. Right, that's how joined the group. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: those two things. You can find us on Twitter. We're
Speaker 1: thinking Sideways. We've got to subreddit as well for those
Speaker 1: of you who are redditors, and that is just thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: All that having been said, I think I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: I don't poof on out of here. The ghost, I've
Speaker 1: been spirited away. I'm just gonna say bye bye, guys,