Speaker 1: In April nineteen ninety nine. An auction room in Birmingham
Speaker 1: is packed with people. Tim Chiltern waits unexpectantly for the
Speaker 1: lot he wants to bid on. At the back of
Speaker 1: the room, a television camera crew were setting up. Tim
Speaker 1: wonders what on earth they're doing there. A man in
Speaker 1: his mid forties with graying hair, Tim had become despondent
Speaker 1: with a stressful career as a management consultant. Having quit
Speaker 1: his job and determined to stay out of the corporate world,
Speaker 1: he was looking for some other way to make a living.
Speaker 1: He loved small period buildings so decided to try and
Speaker 1: find one he could fix up. But after six months
Speaker 1: of looking for one in London, he hit a dead end.
Speaker 1: What he wanted was something stone built with a south
Speaker 1: facing garden, at least two bedrooms and a workshop. Then
Speaker 1: Tim came across Lot sixty, a two hundred year old
Speaker 1: former stonemason's residence called Lowe's Cottage near Birmingham in England.
Speaker 1: The description in the catalog included a ground floor sitting room,
Speaker 1: first floor kitchen, lobby, dining room and a bathroom. There
Speaker 1: were three bedrooms on the second floor and a large
Speaker 1: garden with two brick built workshops. It was everything he
Speaker 1: was looking for. Set in the small Derbyshire village of
Speaker 1: Upper Maybury in rural northern England, Lowe's Cottage was very
Speaker 1: much a fixer upper, but Tim was up for the challenge.
Speaker 1: The day before the auction, Tim Chiltern arrived in Derbyshire
Speaker 1: and met with the selling agent to view the cottage.
Speaker 1: As the agent drove him there, Tim couldn't help noticing
Speaker 1: that some of the names along the way seemed a
Speaker 1: little macabre, like Hanging Bridge and gallows Tree Lane. The
Speaker 1: house itself was named after a nearby iron age, burial Mount,
Speaker 1: according to the agent. Then finally they were there. Lowe's
Speaker 1: Cottage was located on the edge of the picturesque village,
Speaker 1: and when it came into view, Tim was delighted with it.
Speaker 1: It was almost too good to be true. He thought
Speaker 1: that such a character ful old property would come up
Speaker 1: for auction. Things only got better when he took a
Speaker 1: look inside. It was a little garishly decorated, but nothing
Speaker 1: a few licks of paint wouldn't fix. The delightful views
Speaker 1: of the Peak District hills from the kitchen window only
Speaker 1: added to the charm, only one thing had seemed slightly off.
Speaker 1: The agent asked him not to make a video of
Speaker 1: the interior of the cottage. In any case, Tim was sold,
Speaker 1: he would make a bid on it The following day.
Speaker 1: At the auction house, Tim notices a strange buzz go
Speaker 1: around the room as Lot sixty is called. The bidding
Speaker 1: goes quickly, and within minutes, Tim Chiltern is the new
Speaker 1: owner of Lowe's Cottage. As he leaves the auction room,
Speaker 1: still glowing with pleasure at his success, Chiltern is steered
Speaker 1: into an ante room where the television crew and a
Speaker 1: pack of journalists quickly descend on him. Tim barely has
Speaker 1: time to think before a microphone is thrust into his face.
Speaker 1: So says a voice from somewhere, what does it feel
Speaker 1: like to be the new owner of the most haunted
Speaker 1: cottage in England? You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
Speaker 1: mc lean smith. Despite a few misgivings in light of
Speaker 1: the ghostly revelation, Tim Chiltern soon moved into Lowe's cottage.
Speaker 1: On arrival, his collie dog, Scion, was uneasy entering the
Speaker 1: house and found it hard to settle over the next
Speaker 1: few days, lights apparently switched on and off by themselves,
Speaker 1: the temperature in certain rooms would suddenly drop for no
Speaker 1: obvious reason, and the TV repeatedly turned itself on. At night,
Speaker 1: Tim heard a gentle rustling sound coming from somewhere, and
Speaker 1: the landing light often refused to turn on. Even weirder,
Speaker 1: his flashlight that he checked was working every day, mysteriously
Speaker 1: failed to work whenever the lights gave out. Generally, Tim
Speaker 1: felt fine in the house, except for the ground floor stairs,
Speaker 1: where he later said something felt very off. It was
Speaker 1: as if the house had a mind of its own
Speaker 1: and was capable of changing moods. In time, his neighbours
Speaker 1: brought him up to speed on the cottage's considerable reputation
Speaker 1: according to local law. In the eighteen sixties, Lowe's Cottage
Speaker 1: had been home to a milkmaid named Elaine Harry and
Speaker 1: her boyfriend, Joseph Phillips. Elaine was employed by a local
Speaker 1: farmer who was rumored to have taken a fancy to her.
Speaker 1: When Elaine spurned his advances, the farmer strangled her in
Speaker 1: a fit of jealous rage, then buried her in the
Speaker 1: basement of what was now Tim's cottage. In another version,
Speaker 1: Elaine was locked in the cellar and left to die
Speaker 1: of thirst. When her boyfriend Joseph found out about what
Speaker 1: had happened, he was said to have hung himself in
Speaker 1: a fit of despair, right over the spot where his
Speaker 1: beloved had died. The history of the cottage after that
Speaker 1: is hazy, but in recent decades it had been owned
Speaker 1: by the same family. The only surviving members were two sisters,
Speaker 1: Susan Melbourne and Sondra Podmore. It had been their childhood
Speaker 1: residence and they returned to live there when their father
Speaker 1: passed away around nineteen seventy. Then in nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: they put the cottage up for sale. By then the
Speaker 1: property was in a dilapidated state and in need of
Speaker 1: considerable renovation, but it was quickly snapped up by a young,
Speaker 1: fresh faced couple, a nurse named Josie Smith and her
Speaker 1: husband Andrew, who was a builder. Together they moved in
Speaker 1: with their three children. Andrew began work immediately on the house,
Speaker 1: while Josie juggled her nursing with looking after the children.
Speaker 1: The couple were hoping to fix the house up then
Speaker 1: flip it quickly for a hefty profit. But not long
Speaker 1: after they moved in, they began to feel uncomfortable. Both
Speaker 1: Josie and Andrew were utterly convinced that there was something
Speaker 1: else living in the house with them. It was a
Speaker 1: few weeks after moving in that Josie first noticed the
Speaker 1: unusual cold spots that emerged in random places on hot days.
Speaker 1: Not long after, the couple apparently observed the strange haziness
Speaker 1: in the air for the first time. The peculiar mist
Speaker 1: was described as being about the size of a person
Speaker 1: and was even said to move around the house. Andrew
Speaker 1: claimed that one time he tried to walk through it,
Speaker 1: only to find it resisted him, as though it were
Speaker 1: made of some entirely different substance. He said it smelt
Speaker 1: like rotting flesh. Josie is said to have woken up
Speaker 1: with the distinct feeling that something was pressing against the bed,
Speaker 1: making it difficult for her to breathe. A friend who
Speaker 1: belonged to a spiritualist church arrived one morning to try
Speaker 1: and clear the air for them. With a bowl of
Speaker 1: water and a wooden cross, they moved through the house,
Speaker 1: sprinkling the rooms with water while reciting a prayer. According
Speaker 1: to Andrew, it did nothing but provoke a foul stench
Speaker 1: that made every one feel ill. Josie later told a
Speaker 1: TV documentary crew sent to investigate the house that a
Speaker 1: short time later she witnessed a figure she described as
Speaker 1: wearing a gathered blouse tucked into a floor length skirt.
Speaker 1: The figure walked across a room and disappeared into a wall.
Speaker 1: After conducting some research on the history of the house,
Speaker 1: the documentary team discovered that it was built by a
Speaker 1: local stonemason called William Frith in the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Local church records showed that at least two of his
Speaker 1: children had died there, Lucy at the age of eighteen
Speaker 1: and William at age eight. The smiths persisted with renovating
Speaker 1: the cottage, but even when there weren't ghostly sightings, electrical
Speaker 1: appliances would often break down, and household items apparently disappeared,
Speaker 1: only to reappear later in the most obvious places. On occasion,
Speaker 1: there were sudden, strange temperature drops in one part of
Speaker 1: these and water would suddenly appear and begin trickling down
Speaker 1: the walls. When a plumber was called in, they found
Speaker 1: no apparent cause, and there weren't even water pipes in
Speaker 1: the walls where the water had inexplicably appeared. On another night,
Speaker 1: for once, everything seemed calm in the cottage. The Smiths
Speaker 1: put their three children to bed, then a couple of
Speaker 1: hours later, went to bed themselves. A few hours later,
Speaker 1: according to Josie, she felt something cold touch her beneath
Speaker 1: her night dress. Then all of a sudden she was
Speaker 1: struggling to breathe, feeling as though someone had stuffed a
Speaker 1: cotton rag into her mouth and put their hands around
Speaker 1: her neck as she struggled and flailed her legs against
Speaker 1: her husband, Andrew woke up with a start to find
Speaker 1: his wife clutching at her neck, struggling and thrashing as
Speaker 1: though she were being throttled. It only stopped when I
Speaker 1: shouted no. Josie said. They were so spooped that they
Speaker 1: immediately woke up the children and fled the property. On
Speaker 1: returning to the cottage a few days later, the Smiths
Speaker 1: finally decided to seek help. Josie and Andrew turned to
Speaker 1: their local church for help. Thankfully, the Church of England
Speaker 1: had an exorcism committee, with a designated team in every
Speaker 1: diocese to deal with the kind of disturbances they were experiencing.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, Reverend Peter Mockford, the vicar of Blurton,
Speaker 1: a small parish near Stoke on Trent, arrived at the property.
Speaker 1: He began by interviewing the smiths about what exactly had happened.
Speaker 1: Mockford was keen to assess the story's veracity and interviewed
Speaker 1: the couple separately to see if their stories aligned. Much
Speaker 1: to his surprise, they did. Then he turned his attention
Speaker 1: to the cottage itself. Mockford reported noticing a pungent odor
Speaker 1: that seemed to follow him around, as well as a
Speaker 1: war that appeared to weep with a trickling dampness when
Speaker 1: he placed his hand on it. When he later performed
Speaker 1: a blessing on the house, the smith said that it
Speaker 1: seemed to them that the entire cottage got visibly brighter
Speaker 1: and the atmosphere felt suddenly lighter, but the effects were
Speaker 1: short lived. After only one quiet night, the creeping presence
Speaker 1: returned with a vengeance. The usual sudden pockets of cold
Speaker 1: air weeping walls, and the strange mist was said to return,
Speaker 1: and a tape player began turning itself on. It would
Speaker 1: only stop when it was unplugged from the wall. Then
Speaker 1: their immersion heater blew up. Reverend Mockford returned three more times,
Speaker 1: but despite seemingly bringing an end to the disturbances on
Speaker 1: each occasion, the Smiths said the ghostly effects always returned.
Speaker 1: During his last effort, the Smiths and the reverend gathered
Speaker 1: in the living room to begin another exorcism. As the
Speaker 1: minister started his prayers, Josie and Andrew played tapes of
Speaker 1: religious music to accompany him. No sooner had they started,
Speaker 1: a floorboard was said to have begun creaking loudly upstairs.
Speaker 1: This was followed by a rushing sensation that apparently came
Speaker 1: at the side of their heads, along with a feeling
Speaker 1: that smoke was spiraling up their noses. The couple claimed
Speaker 1: they tried other solutions, including consulting other religious practitioners, so
Speaker 1: called spirit mediums and paranormal experts. One such group was
Speaker 1: a combined team from the Tame Side and Oldham Paranormal
Speaker 1: Research Association and members of Manchester's Aerial Phenomena Investigation Team.
Speaker 1: The group arrived late one afternoon, but what they described
Speaker 1: was a small, gloomy cottage with dampness filling the air.
Speaker 1: They also began by interviewing Josie and Andrew again. After
Speaker 1: finding the couple credible, the team conducted a quick tour
Speaker 1: of the house and garden but found nothing unusual. As
Speaker 1: night fell, they set up video cameras downstairs and upstairs,
Speaker 1: equipped with voice activated audio recorders, as well as passive
Speaker 1: infrared detectors and temperature monit. Then they began their watch.
Speaker 1: It was around midnight that the Smiths went to bed.
Speaker 1: As they slept, the investigation team inspected the walls but
Speaker 1: found no evidence of the strange water said to spontaneously
Speaker 1: weep from certain spots. They checked their equipment every hour,
Speaker 1: but detected no unusual temperature readings, bad odors, strange sights
Speaker 1: or sounds. At five am, some of the team headed
Speaker 1: into the cellar, where they quickly spotted beads of water
Speaker 1: on a back wall. When they wiped them away, the
Speaker 1: beads came straight back. However, the team concluded that this
Speaker 1: was simply caused by the warmer damp cellar air condensing
Speaker 1: on the cold surface of the wall. It was just
Speaker 1: after seven when the Smiths got up and came downstairs.
Speaker 1: Josie was disappointed to learn that the team hadn't found anything,
Speaker 1: telling them that perhaps the ghosts had stayed away to
Speaker 1: make them look stupid. But what the team had found
Speaker 1: and didn't mention then was a large pile of letters
Speaker 1: and newspaper cuttings that the Smiths had collected lying on
Speaker 1: the dining room table. It included dozens of letters from newspapers, magazines,
Speaker 1: and TV producers or offering to pay the Smiths handsomely
Speaker 1: for their story. As it turned out, having invested so
Speaker 1: much in renovating the property, the Smiths were struggling to
Speaker 1: meet their mortgage payments. Though their initial claims that the
Speaker 1: house was haunted might have been genuine, it was clear
Speaker 1: that much of what they sae set had most likely
Speaker 1: been made up in an effort to help pay for
Speaker 1: it all. Far from attracting buyers, however, unsurprisingly, all the
Speaker 1: talk of ghosts trying to strangle them in their beds
Speaker 1: had the complete opposite effect. Having bought the house for
Speaker 1: around forty thousand pounds, the property's valuation had sunk to
Speaker 1: only twenty five thousand. Left with no option, the Smiths
Speaker 1: tried to refinance the mortgage on the home, but the
Speaker 1: bank turned down their request. At their wits end. The
Speaker 1: couple then did something radical. They sued the previous owners
Speaker 1: for failing to disclose that their house was haunted. The sellers, sisters,
Speaker 1: Sandra Podmore and Sandra Melbourne, both asserted that they had
Speaker 1: never in over twenty years of living at the property,
Speaker 1: experienced anything out of the ordinary. In response, they countersued
Speaker 1: the Smiths for a sum of three and a half
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, an outstanding amount they were still owed for
Speaker 1: the property. There was an unusual case, the first lawsuit
Speaker 1: in England regarding the claimed existence of supernatural forces since
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. It was going to be very difficult
Speaker 1: to prove. At Darby County Court in January nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Judge Peter Stretton sat down to rule on the case,
Speaker 1: despite being unfamiliar with court procedures. Andrew Smith represented himself
Speaker 1: and his wife at the hearing. Both he and Josie
Speaker 1: described the various events they had experienced. Then they called
Speaker 1: on Reverend Mockford, who'd performed the banishment prayers, to give evidence.
Speaker 1: The vicar told the court that in his opinion, there
Speaker 1: really was paranormal activity at Lowe's cottage, but Judge Stretton
Speaker 1: wasn't convinced. The Smith's case wasn't helped when Thomas Dillon,
Speaker 1: the council for the former owners, got the smith to
Speaker 1: admit they'd read about similar hauntings in the novel The
Speaker 1: Amateurville Horror, implying that the Smiths had used this to
Speaker 1: help them make things up. Dylan also claimed that the
Speaker 1: couple had a record of running away from their financial problems.
Speaker 1: Mister Smith, he said, had been declared bankrupt after a
Speaker 1: failed business partnership and had five previous county court judgments
Speaker 1: against him for his part. In his final statement, Andrew
Speaker 1: Smith told the court, There's simply no way I would
Speaker 1: put my family through all this just for three and
Speaker 1: a half thousand pounds. In the end, Judge Stretton dismissed
Speaker 1: the claims of ghosts, stinking mists, and weeping walls as
Speaker 1: hysteria and lies, refusing to believe that the house was haunted.
Speaker 1: He ruled in favor of the former owners and ordered
Speaker 1: the Smiths to pay the outstanding amount owed on Lowe's
Speaker 1: Cottage to the sisters, along with a thousand pounds interest
Speaker 1: and legal costs of twelve thousand pounds plunged into negative equity.
Speaker 1: The family were forced to vacate the property and were
Speaker 1: later rehoused by Staffordshire Council in a nearby town. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, after a few months to let
Speaker 1: the press coverage die down, the cottage was put up
Speaker 1: for auction when it was snapped up by one Tim Chiltern.
Speaker 1: Chiltern was a deeply spiritual man who for a while
Speaker 1: had considered training to become a church minister. As time
Speaker 1: went by, he and his colleague Scion seemed to make
Speaker 1: peace with the house. The unexplained incidents dwindled, until finally
Speaker 1: he claimed they ceased altogether. Tim spent a happy four
Speaker 1: years at the cottage before renting it out. In late
Speaker 1: January of two thousand and five, the Sheffield Paranormal Investigators,
Speaker 1: a group for people who believed in psychic phenomena, decided
Speaker 1: to spend a night at the cottage. According to their reports,
Speaker 1: it was an eventful one. The six person team, which
Speaker 1: included self described mediums and parapsychologists, arrived at the cottage
Speaker 1: a little before ten pm. They were met by Tim Chiltern,
Speaker 1: who showed them round the house and filled them in
Speaker 1: on some of its history. When he left. The investigators
Speaker 1: split into two teams. In Team one were Mick, Brenda
Speaker 1: and Richard, while in Team two were Mikey Gaz and Steve.
Speaker 1: Team one was soon reporting strange readings on their e
Speaker 1: m F meter, designed to measure electromagnetic force in a
Speaker 1: downstairs room used as an office. The meter swung too
Speaker 1: wildly they set for the low amount of electrical wiring
Speaker 1: present in the room. When they switched on their video camera,
Speaker 1: they claimed then to see orbs in the view finder.
Speaker 1: Richard described sensing a boy of around thirteen, as well
Speaker 1: as a woman of around sixty with gray hair arranged
Speaker 1: in a French platte wearing a high collared dress. Brenda
Speaker 1: said she saw several small children dressed in pinafores, while
Speaker 1: at the same time experiencing strange fluctuations in air temperature.
Speaker 1: Around eleven p m, Team one moved to the main bedroom, where,
Speaker 1: like Josie Smith had described, Brenda claimed to feel something
Speaker 1: pushing down on her face and neck as she sat
Speaker 1: on the edge of the bed while the EMF meter
Speaker 1: continued to fluctuate wildly. None of the Sheffield paranormal investigators
Speaker 1: saw the strange stinking mist, but claimed to sense a
Speaker 1: number of other presences at the property, including a young
Speaker 1: boy from the seventeen hundreds and a violently angry man
Speaker 1: from the early nineteen hundreds. Sadly, however, none of this
Speaker 1: was caught on camera. To this day, Tim Chiltern stands
Speaker 1: by everything he claimed took place at the cottage while
Speaker 1: he lived there. As he described it in one article
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, it felt almost if Lowe's Cottage
Speaker 1: had a personality and was testing him in some way.
Speaker 1: Looking back on it all now, however, he has nothing
Speaker 1: but fondness for the place. A few weeks before the auction,
Speaker 1: Tim's father encouraged him to buy the property, believing it
Speaker 1: could be the answer to getting his life back on track.
Speaker 1: A short time after that, he died. Unexpectedly, Lowe's Hall
Speaker 1: proved to be the first of many period properties that
Speaker 1: Tim would go on to redevelop in what has turned
Speaker 1: out to be a long and fruitful second life, just
Speaker 1: as his father had seemingly prophesied. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Diane and Hope Unexplained as an AV Club Productions
Speaker 1: podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of
Speaker 1: the podcast, including the music are also produced by me
Speaker 1: Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories
Speaker 1: never before featured on the show, is now available to
Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the
Speaker 1: show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
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