Lil
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Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And we have some epic tales in store for you tonight to celebrate. So, Fitz, what have we got coming up on today's episode?
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
That's a movie I'd quite like to see. Can somebody write that, please? Any film writers out there that want to take that project on?
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A couple of years ago, I had my one and only paranormal experience to that point, except it wasn't. I had started watching Doctor Who again from the beginning and remembered how much I loved the first season's theme music. So I loaded it as my ringtone because I'm a huge giant nerd. One night I was working on something on my laptop in my bedroom.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
After a while I needed to go into the next room for something and brought my phone along. And a few minutes later, I heard my ringtone. Odd, I thought. It's late. Who could be calling? I looked, and there was no except decline screen. No caller identified. No call. It was, as I said, late, so I was muzzly staring at my phone, trying to work it out, when the music stopped.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And suddenly, from my bedroom, I heard a weird, loud, really awful scraping, thumping sound. I froze. That went on for a couple of seconds. And just as I was starting to stop being paralysed and start on being truly scared, I heard a voice. A sort of female, but mostly demonic sort of voice say, Why do you come here now? If possible, I froze even frozener. I had no idea what to do. Do I answer?
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
What could I possibly say? I'd been in this apartment for a couple of years. I didn't just get here. Nothing's ever happened. Do I run? Where do I go? What on earth? And then I heard the Doctor reply, Who are you? We come in peace.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It just wouldn't be Hallow Birthday, William, without our tenuous Halloween news story competition. But I'm afraid I didn't do very well on this occasion. I found a total of one story, whereas Fitz, I believe you found quite a few.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And I realised that I must have accidentally reopened the BritBox tab on my laptop, and my not-speedy internet on my ten-year-old laptop must have just finished loading Episode 18 of Doctor Who Season 2, Escape to Danger. And that's when I truly knew that I am not cut out for paranormal experiences.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
You actually couldn't have set that up if you tried. And that is the horror of living with 60 megabytes per second.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
My mum was one of 11 children who grew up on a farm in Newfoundland, Canada. I believe they had about 400 acres and running down one side of the property is a river and in the river are three small islands. I'll come back to them. When mum was in her early 20s, she and a couple of my aunts and a friend all moved to the US and that included the youngest in the family, my aunt Rita.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
One day, when a bunch of them went to see a fortune teller, as Mum called her, the woman wouldn't let Aunt Rita in the room. She had too strong an aura, she said. I imagine that would have interfered with the readings. For a good chunk of her life, my aunt had vivid dreams, which came true. She had a dream predicting a car crash that she and my mother's twin had.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I think she also had a dream about their car being stolen. They were never clear enough to warn or prevent anything from happening but once the thing had happened it became very clear that they had been premonitions and they were never good things. One dream was of being at a friend's house to borrow black gloves.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
This was in the 60s or 70s when you still wore gloves to church and you still wore all black to a funeral. And a couple of days later, one of my uncles passed away. The wildest story, though, was about the letter from my grandmother.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
This was, again, in the 60s when long-distance calls were wildly expensive and people still wrote letters, telling them that cousins of hers had been out fishing on that river by the farm when a storm blew up and one of them was washed overboard and they couldn't find him. That night, Aunt Rita dreamed that the cousin's body had been washed up on one of the islands and
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
She wrote back to my grandmother to tell her exactly where, and her letter crossed with my grandmother's, which said that they had found the cousin, exactly where Aunt Rita dreamed.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It was. But also, I have to say, before we do anything else, nerd unite, Tracy. Nerd unite. Thank you for the paranormal blooper. And wear that nerdery with pride. Anyway, sorry, Fitz.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
yeah and i completely get the symbolism that's coming through in these dreams more so now i know we've talked about this on the show before when we've done um premonitions themed episodes and this episode is dream themed isn't it like all the stories today are kind of around the theme of dreams which is very clever yes they are all on a dream theme dream theme but i know in the past when we've talked about premonitions i've been i've said things like you know well
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
what's the point because you can't change anything but i kind of understand more now about this the kind of vague symbolism that comes through like she was saying about the black gloves in hindsight it makes perfect sense but to just have the symbol the symbolism of black gloves in a dream like you wouldn't make the connection to a funeral but some of the paranormal experiments and um
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
adventures we've been going on recently that hopefully we'll talk about in upcoming episodes has led me to understand the kind of scraps of symbolism that you get through those kind of things more and how you don't make the connections until later but yeah and there was also a little positive thing that i wanted to mention as well like you say that that all the things were always negative
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I see what you mean. So, yeah, I mean, the number of times I've woken up from a dream and I thought, oh, wow, that was incredible. Like, you know, I need to tell Fitz about that. And then by the time you've had your coffee, it's gone. All of it's gone.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But unfortunately, the way our brains are wired, and this isn't just in dreams, this is in waking life as well as a kind of evolutionary thing, is we're primed to remember messages that are of danger or warnings or things that are going to keep us alive. We're primed to remember those above everything else.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
So you're right, there may have been other elements to that dream. And they're unfortunately just the ones that kind of fall away as dreams do. And just the overarching messages, like the warning messages remained.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
me too and that does actually bring us on to another bit of the email that tracy sent us which i'll read with her permission because it was meaningful to us as well she says for years i planned to sit down with my mother and get recordings of her telling some of her stories but with one thing and another i just never did i lost her last april so now i never will i know there were so many more stories and i just don't remember the details and there's no one left to ask
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
So if you're listening and have planned to record talks with parents or grandparents or anyone, or even just ask questions you've always wanted the answers to, go do it. And I just wanted to read that because it's something that we've experienced ourselves. And I'm not just talking about paranormal stories.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Any stories, family stories, like she says, are answers to questions that you've always wanted to know about the family, about your history, about places that are, you know, those kind of vague, hazy memories from childhood that aren't quite fully formed yet.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Yeah, I know we always say in the show that your stories are the lifeblood of the show and how passionate we are about sharing people's stories and giving them the time and air and respect they deserve. But it's not just ghost stories. We really are just passionate about sharing people's stories in general, saving people's stories, recording them, retelling them.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I think in the past we would have been druidic bards. LAUGHTER I feel it's really important that it goes for ghost stories, folklore, family stories. It's so important to our culture that these don't live in a silo and that they do get to go on through the generations. But anyway, that's my little soapbox moment of passion over. Let's move on.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And thank you so much again to Tracy for sharing all of those stories with us and for the paranormal blooper, Nerds Unite. And it's time for another story now. And this one is from Kat.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Thank you so much to Kat for sharing that story with us. And it's absolutely lovely story, that one.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Yeah, and I definitely think that's quite an important message, especially around Halloween when, you know, not just content creators, but retailers and events organised, they're all trying to ramp up the fear factor and turning Halloween into this terrifying thing. But I think there's definitely space to be held for these kind of stories, these comforting stories.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And you're listening to Knock Once For Yes. Halloween has just rolled around again. And if you've been with us for a while, you know what that means. Hello, birthday ween. Yes, our podcast birthday is upon us again. And this means we've been on the air for eight years.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Paranormal can just be meaningful. It doesn't have to be scary, right?
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, before we move on to this episode's paranormal postcard, we have one more listener story for you. And this is a hello birthday ween treat for us because Kate has done a fantastic job of recording it herself, which means we get to sit back and listen. Take it away, Kate.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Absolutely. And the chills that went up on my arms when Bill said my sister was called Sally. Just an incredible, incredible story. All the stories on today's episode have just been amazing. And this, again, is such a beautiful one.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And some of them have us in tears, literally.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And I really enjoyed the fact that the scene they chose was the forest. The scene they chose to represent in the dream was playing in the forest. And I mean, that's just because I love the forest. I want to visit Epping Forest so badly. And I've always thought that it sounds like such a kind of magical, wonderful place.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I don't know if that's true because I've never visited, but there's certainly a lot of stories about Epping Forest. So I wonder if that was just... Probably just burned into their memory as a place of real joy, but also maybe a liminal place, maybe?
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And I bring quite a lot of the woods into our house on quite a regular basis.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, that is the end of the stories for today's episode. Some absolutely beautiful ones there. Thank you so much to everybody who shared their story with us today. They are the lifeblood of this show.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
it's time for us to return to Whitby for the last time, for now at least, as we conclude our Whitby series by moving away from Bram Stoker's Dracula and exploring some of the other stories to be found in the town's ancient winding streets, which are simply bursting with ghosts, myths and legends.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And for our first stop, we're going to briefly revisit the other book I've referred to a few times in this series, The Whitby Witches by Robin Jarvis, and track down a famous and rather grisly artefact of folklore and legend that I had waited 20 years to see.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
From the same car park up on West Cliff where we began our journey last episode, I walked away from the view over Whitby Harbour and East Cliff and headed away from Royal Crescent, down into the streets of West Cliff, along Crescent Avenue, up Gang Lane, crossing the road to St Hilda's Terrace to find a wrought iron gate set into a long stone wall over which the lush greenery of trees and bushes spilled forth.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The gate is painted blue, with gold accents picking out curlicues along the top, and a year, 1935, casts just above the latch. A blue plaque on one of the stone gate pillars reads Panet Park, home of Panet Art Gallery and Whitby Museum.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The park and gallery were the brainchild of Robert Elliot Panett, an alderman of Whitby, who wanted to create a place in the town where residents could enjoy fresh air, trees and flowers, whilst being sheltered from the often vicious sea winds that hold sway along the coast. He certainly succeeded.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The market garden land he purchased in 1902 was turned into a pretty oasis of calm, filled with a diverse array of plants, meandering footpaths and quaint archways. Just perfect for a mindful stroll, safe from the whipping coastal winds.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
He also established a gallery within the park to house his art collection and, after Panett's death, a museum building was added to accommodate the collection of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. Ambling along through the grounds, however, it was not the most clement day for a stroll.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
An icy drizzle chilled my bones and numbed my hands too much to even stop and take photographs, so I headed directly into the museum through its grand columned entrance at the top of a flight of steps and passed into the foggy warmth of the building, peeling off my sodden cagoule and imagining that I must be steaming, rather, like a hard galloped horse. I was excited for several reasons.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In all my previous trips to Whitby as a child and young adult, I had never managed to make it to this museum until now, and yet it formed such a vivid part of the story in Robin Jarvis's book, The Whitby Witches, that the desire to see it for myself had been bubbling away ferociously ever since. But also, I just love visiting museums, and I had high hopes for this one.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I don't know about you, but in recent years I've found some of the more modern museums a little... underwhelming in their ambience, to say the least. In fact, I visited a local one recently that I would be so bold as to describe as the pinnacle of soulless disappointment. A sterile, white, open space with fluorescent-lit interpretation boards squarely planted evenly along the walls.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
One case containing a scant handful of number-labelled artefacts laying lifelessly on a flat grey cloth. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Maybe I'm just idealistic. Maybe I like a bit more artistic chaos. But that isn't my idea of a museum. I want a museum to look like an explosion has occurred in the study of a slightly mad 18th century antiquarian.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And I'm in luck, because that's just about what Panic Park Museum delivers. In The Whitby Witches, the author describes the museum as jam-packed with curios and wonders. It was like some magnificent jumble sale of the imagination. And that description is spot on.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The lighting is soft, the dark wood of the cabinets in the parquet florm lends the whole building a warm, cosy glow, and the crowd of cases jammed tightly into every nook and cranny creates a maze of exhibits that one could happily get lost in for hours. Of course, there are fossils. So many fossils.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A whole corner of the museum is dedicated to fossils and geology, with case after case of Whitby's famous Jurassic ammonites, giant ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, frozen in stone, forever swimming motionlessly across the museum walls. There are cases full of exquisite, intricately carved black jet jewellery, Weird and wonderful implements and instruments whose purpose I would not like to guess.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A madcap selection of souvenirs collected by bygone explorers visiting exotic lands. The walls bristling with long hunting spears, machetes, sabres and bugles. To my delight, one cabinet containing an antique chest of drawers stuffed with small objects is simply labelled Cabinet of Miscellaneous Curiosities.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A model ship sits atop the chest, and on its edge purchase a frilly bonneted porcelain doll. I tried hard not to catch its creepily vacant stare as I passed by it, half expecting it to blink and swivel its head to look at me through those glazed blue eyes.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It would be remiss of me not to mention another miscellaneous curiosity that made it from the museum's collection right into the pages of Robin Jarvis's book, the most wonderfully named Dr Meriwether's Tempest Prognosticator.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Looking somewhere between a maypole, an Indian temple and a macabre Victorian merry-go-round, the prognosticator consists of a carousel of leeches in glass jars, with stoppers attached by long strings to an unnecessarily ornate and gilded circular frame topped with an orb, spire and bell.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The idea was that when a storm was on its way, the leeches would wriggle their way up to the top of the jars and dislodge the stoppers, which, attached by their long strings, would ring a bell and warn of the coming tempest. Apparently, it actually worked, and Dr Meriwether was sure that his invention would be employed by ships all over the world.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But sadly, the prognosticator just did not catch on. can't imagine why but of course i was itching to get to the main event and apparently so were many other visitors seeking gory treasure amongst the maze of display cases for it was the only object with its own signage a trail of posters leading the way to the museum's unlikely prize exhibit printed fingers pointing this way to the hand of glory
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
a name of much fanfare which rather belies the macabre reality. You might expect the famous object to have some kind of pride of place in the museum, but actually one of the museum's charms is that no one object can claim this accolade, all curios being equal in their cluttered distribution around the premises.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I was grateful for the signage, otherwise I think I could have circled around for ages just trying to find it, unassuming as it is. Just a small glass panelled box atop yet another antique cabinet, with a board behind it displaying a few information leaflets and postcards.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
At first glance, the object in the box could be mistaken for an appendage chipped off a stone statue and then dipped in mud that had dried to a dusty-looking brown crust. But look closer and it becomes clear that the hand has wrinkles around the knuckles. Tattered bits of skin fraying around pale smooth fingernails and nubby bones protruding from the wrist.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
This is a real disembodied hand with quite a legend attached to it. Having known what to expect, I didn't find myself too squeamish at first, taking in the leathery flesh sunken around the finger bones. But despite my preparation, I found my stomach giving a little lurch when I spotted the addition the museum have made to help visitors fully experience the artefact.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The hand is displayed on a circular glass or plastic stand, rather like a cake stand, and underneath there is a circular mirror reflecting the underside of the object, revealing grisly ribbons of shriveled muscle and tendon strung from wrist to palm to fingertips. What on earth could be the reason for the infamy of this gory object? Did it belong to someone famous? Someone revered, perhaps? Nope.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Very much the opposite. By its very nature, this hand likely belonged to a nameless criminal. And, in fact, it was criminals who made this object their tool of choice. as the protagonists Ben and Janet find out in The Whitby Witches from their indomitable carer, as the 92-year-old Aunt Alice tells them the tale behind the Hand of Glory.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Sorry. Any Hellier fans will get that one.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It was believed in those times that this charm, if used properly, could put to sleep an entire household, so that a thief could ransack the place without anyone stirring. which gives us a clue as to the nefarious deeds afoot when later on in Robin Jarvis's story, the hand mysteriously goes missing from the museum.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In real life, however, the hand is still safely ensconced in its little glass box, but Aunt Alice's telling of the legend is true enough.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
eight and with that in mind right here at the top of the show we want to say thank you thank you to everyone who's listened to our creation thank you to everyone who's entrusted us with sharing your paranormal stories thank you to everyone who's left a review a like a subscribe and to those of you who got in touch to tell us that our little show has been in some way meaningful to you you don't know how many times those letters have inspired me to get out of bed and fight another day
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
At first glance, it's the items on top of the cabinet that catch the eye when walking past the display, especially that porcelain doll. Legs crossed jauntily, and hands resting lightly in her lap, as though she might at any moment hop down from her perch and skitter off across the floor in a swish of skirts and tippy-tap of tiny feet. D'oh!
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But the main event of this display is what's inside the cabinet. A mahogany chest of dark, polished wood, intricately decorated with carvings and housing a set of wide, vertically stacked drawers. Some of the drawers are pulled open to varying degrees, showing inside a diverse collection of fascinating little objects.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Rocks, fossils, coins, jewellery, plaster casts, bits of plants, a pair of pince-nez glasses. I can only imagine what's inside the closed drawers.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The whole eccentric collection once belonged to a Dr Richard Ripley, a member of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, and who, according to Volume 7 of the Geological Curator, was in practice with his brother, the surgeon Mr John Ripley, in Whitby's Baxtergate in the first half of the 19th century.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Unfortunately, trying to dig up more information on Dr Ripley is difficult, because it seems that his unfortunate legacy is to be remembered not for his marvellous collection of curiosities and enthusiasm for geology and fossil collecting, but for his alleged association with a scoundrel named Flint Jack.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In the 19th century, geology and fossil collecting was all the rage, as was collecting prehistoric artefacts such as flint arrowheads and other tools napped or crafted by ancient hands. And professional men like the Doctors Ripley often purchased such items from local fossil and artefact hunters who knew all the best places to find such treasures.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Flint Jack seems to have started his career in the honest work of fossil collecting, and was apparently very good at it, until one of his customers asked him if he could reproduce a prehistoric flint arrowhead from his collection, and unfortunately, Flint Jack found that he could.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Seeing a surefire way to fund his developing drinking habit, Jack went on to become a prolific producer of fake ancient artefacts. passing them off as genuine relics all over the country and becoming known as the Prince of Counterfeiters.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The Times newspaper reported in 1867 that wherever geologists or archaeologists resided, or wherever a museum was established, there did Flint Jack assuredly pass off his forged fossils and antiquities. Of course, his name wasn't really Flint Jack.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
When he was finally arrested for his crimes and held in Bedford Prison, his name was reported as either Edward Jackson of Slights, or John Wilson of Burlington, or Gerry Taylor of Billerydale, in addition to going by the various aliases of Old Antiquarian, Fossil Willie, Bones, Shirtless and Cockney Bill. truly a man of many names and dubious repute.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And the dubious repute part, Flint Jack tried unsuccessfully to smooth over by claiming association with learned professional men, respected collectors and geologists such as Dr Richard Ripley and his brother John. Flint Jack caused quite a stir by claiming to have at one time been in the employment of the doctors.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
As you can imagine, in the 19th century, a man's word and good reputation was everything, and an association with the biggest historical fraudster in the country would have seriously tarnished that reputation. For their part, the doctor's Ripley claimed to have never directly employed Flint Jack.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Their only dealings with him to have been the occasional purchase of the odd fossil he'd collected, at the time when he was still making an honest living collecting genuine specimens, and would call at the Ripley's kitchen door to show off his finds after a day hunting along the shoreline and cliffs.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
An anonymous witness wrote to the Moulton Messenger newspaper in 1866 to back up the claims of the Ripleys, stating, These were the days when Jack pursued an honest calling in the petrifactions with which the Whitby strata abound, and of the exact whereabouts of the numerous varieties no one knew better than himself.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
There was certainly no evidence that the doctors had any dealings with Flint Jack's later fraudulent affairs, but as a man of science, having one's reputation called into question, however briefly, must have been extremely worrying and frustrating for Dr Ripley. And perhaps that could explain his rather extreme actions when his name hit the local headlines for a second time.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
This time for his haunted house.
Knock Once For Yes
The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, the month of October, I think, but goodness knows why.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
No, that's not something I've come across before either. It does seem like they're lashing out at something that they haven't quite said. But now I really want to watch this programme. What was it again?
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The frontage is of large, uneven sandstone blocks set with mullion windows, which are accompanied on the lower floor with sets of wooden shutters painted a tarry black.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Although there is a second story to the building, and one upper window under the steeply sloped pantile roof, the building's ground level is below the current level of the street, giving it the appearance of having sunk into the ground over the hundreds of years it's been standing there, which, according to the date painted on the gold-lettered front sign, is the year 1401.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Even taking into account the lower ground level, the building is still diminutive compared to its neighbours. The height of both its store is only just coming level with the top of the ground floor window of the shop next door, an effect only heightened by the old smuggler's precarious looking chimney, which has obviously been lengthened at some point to match the height of the abutting building.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
resulting in a comically long appendage that I am frankly astonished has survived several hundred years of storms and high winds. The far left of the building is cut right through the thick yellow sandstone in an archway leading to a gloomy passage.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It appears to go right through the front wall of the building, but in fact the passage goes all the way down one side of the old smuggler and onto a row of houses crammed in behind it, with the upper floor of the cafe extending above the dingy tunnel. There is a definite danger of banging your head here, if not on the low archway, then on one of the even lower beams supporting the building above.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
To help people avoid the danger, the arch and beams are highlighted in bright white paint and someone has helpfully painted duck or grouse above the arch. I can't help imagining that this has something to do with the name of the low alleyway, which is declared on a small street sign tucked just into the entrance that reads Loggerhead's Yard.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Next to the archway, the worn, carved figure of what looks to be a man is mounted on the wall. The wood is dark with age and centuries of soot, the details so softened by wear that the face is almost indistinguishable, although details of a tunic and knee-high boots can be made out.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The hands are clutching a curved blade, rather reminiscent of a pirate's cutlass, and the whole effect gives the impression of something one might find carved on an old wooden pirate ship. And that may not be too far off, as according to local law, the wooden figure is believed to have come from a captured French smuggling vessel.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But that's only the beginning of the old inn's association with the trade of illegally imported goods. Whitby and its neighbouring coastal town Robin Hood's Bay were well known for their deeply rooted connections with illicit contraband up to the 1800s, and the town's remoteness and inaccessibility helped the trade flourish from the early 17th century.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
At this time, heavy taxes were levered by the crown on goods such as rum, brandy, tobacco, tea and silk, and the only way many people could afford these luxuries was through the black market.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In Robin Hood's Bay, just a little further down the coast from Whitby, there was once a network of underground tunnels that burrowed under the town, supposedly connecting the shops, houses and inns and involving a good deal of the community in the very lucrative black market trade.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Legend has it that the tunnels were so extensive it was possible to leave the bay and reach the top of the village without ever seeing the light of day. Almost all of these tunnels are long gone, dismantled or blocked up, but it's still possible to see one of these underground routes in Robin Hood's Bay today.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A culvert called King's Beck Tunnel still runs some way under the town before re-emerging above ground, but be wary if you do visit, as the culvert does get cut off by the rising tide. Smuggling was a dangerous game.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A similar network of tunnels are rumoured to have run under Whitby, where the illegal import of goods did equally well, and, similarly, probably involved many members of the community.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who stayed in Whitby in 1859 and studied the town whilst writing her book Sylvia's Lovers, noted specifically that the black market was certainly not just the province of men, when she wrote... There was a clever way in which certain whippy women managed to bring in prohibited goods.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
When a woman did give her mind to smuggling, she was full of resources and tricks and impudence, and energy more so than any man. Apparently, housewives would wear loose-fitting clothes that they could stuff full of contraband, transporting illicit goods under their dresses right under the noses of tax collectors.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Not as much is known about the Whitby Tunnels, but the strongest local lore places one such smuggling tunnel right underneath the Smuggler's Cafe. Of course, it wasn't called the Old Smuggler back then. That would have been a bit of a giveaway to the authorities.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It used to be called the Old Ship Launch Inn, and legend tells that a tunnel runs from underneath this 15th century building to the Station Inn, just a few hundred metres away on Station Square, which runs almost parallel to Baxtergate and faces the harbour on the upstream side of the swing bridge.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Looking at a map, the location certainly fits, but the station inn looks much more modern than that of the old smuggler. The upper floors are modelled in a Tudor half-timber style, but the neat, clean red brick makes me suspicious of its age. Frustratingly, I can't even find a historic England record for the building to give me a clue as to when it might have been built,
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But of course, this doesn't mean that there hasn't been an inn on that exact site for many centuries. It's quite common to find inns that have been rebuilt several times over the years, always standing on the same spot, so I'm not ruling out the possibility of a secret smuggling tunnel just yet.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In fact, I found it quite difficult to find much information at all on the inns, which is most surprising for the old smuggler given its impressive age. But the one thing I did find was that it has a history of being haunted, and who could blame it when it's been hanging around for over 600 years? Unfortunately for us, though, the reference is tantalisingly brief.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It appears in the writings of Reverend George Young, another founding member of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, in his 1817 book, A History of Whitby and Strenshill Abbey. In it, he writes, "...it would be an endless task to detail all the absurd local traditions and all the haunted houses in the district."
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
An excellent house in Baxtergate stood long empty, as it had obtained the character of being visited by ghosts. It is now frequented by spirits of a different kind, having been converted into an inn. Local legend has long connected this reference to the Old Smuggler, although it's certainly not the only inn on Baxtergate.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It is, however, the only one that still seems to experience some ghostly activity today, But if the building was once so haunted that it was actually abandoned to stand empty, then the ghosts must have done a lot of mellowing in the intervening years, as the spooky activity that visitors most report these days is feeling a gentle push from an unseen hand.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Maybe the ghosts of the old smuggler realised that driving away patrons with poltergeisty temper tantrums, resulting in them being left alone for years, was just no fun at all, and decided to take a more relaxed approach to their hauntings in future. And it seems to have worked, because the old smuggler is still thriving after over half a millennia, resident ghosts and all.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
At the other public house, famously associated with Whitby's smuggling trade, however, the local law is a bit more dramatic.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It didn't take much to convince the landlord of the inn on Saltergate, at that time known as the Wagon and Horses, to help stage the salt smuggling operation.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Legend says that the salt was packed into the very walls of the inn to keep it dry and hidden, but they needed some way of letting the crew transporting the illicit goods know if they were safe to approach or warn them to stay away if the dreaded excise officers decided to visit.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
As the illegal trade was, of course, carried out under cover of darkness, this was simply achieved by the lighting of a lamp in one of the windows to warn smugglers of the presence of the excisemen. If there was no lamp in the window, then it was safe to approach.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, one night, a smuggling crew transporting salt across the moors from the harbour checked for the flickering of the warning light in the window of the whitewashed coaching inn and, happily, found that there was none to be seen.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Pleased that they wouldn't have to hide out on the dark, damp moorland awaiting the all-clear, and with the warming prospect of food and ale ahead of them, they bore their illicit cargo to the inn and safety. Or so they thought. But unbeknownst to them, unbeknownst to anyone in the inn either, an excise officer had, in fact, infiltrated the Salters Gate.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, to be honest, that's a bit of a relief after the vitriol of the first story.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
No candle was burning because no one was aware. But when the smugglers opened their precious cargo, the officer made himself known and the game was up. The crew were distraught. Getting caught smuggling came with a heavy penalty. The ultimate punishment, in fact. Death. Caught completely off guard, the crew thought their days were numbered until... Whack.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The landlord, feeling that there was nothing left to lose at this point, managed to creep up on the excise man and attack him from behind, felling him dead in one swift blow. But now they had to cover up their terrible crime, and they did so by interring the officer's body underneath the huge heavy slabs of the inn's fireplace.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Somewhere, they reckoned, nobody would think to look, especially if they always kept the fire burning. And so the landlord and the smugglers made a pact to carry the terrible deed to their own graves and to never, ever let the fire in the fireplace of the Saltersgate Inn go out.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But they believed that if they did, the ghost of the excise officer would rise up from his untimely grave and take revenge for his murder, cursing the inn and bringing ill fortune to the villages all around. Legend tells that they and generations of landlords that came after did exactly that, and that the fire in the Saltersgate Inn burned for over 200 years, keeping the vengeful ghost at bay.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But despite their work to keep that particular ghost contained, rumours of other hauntings within the inn have emerged over the years. In recent decades, staff have reported seeing objects inexplicably fly through the air, including one employee in the 1970s, who saw a bowl float right past her.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Doors were found to lock and unlock themselves when the building was empty except for a single perplexed member of staff and pub regulars told of seeing apparitions walk through the walls. Maybe the strangest sighting, though, came from a local who was surprised one day to see, out of the inn's window, a child alone on the moors.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The fact that they were all alone was a bit concerning in itself, but there was also something not quite right about the scene. The girl was wearing odd clothes, an old-fashioned crinoline dress, and she was crying. Concern at her distress overcame the witness and they started outside towards the obviously upset child, but as they reached the gate... The figure simply disappeared.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Years later, the witness happened to mention it to a landlady of the inn, and astonishingly she revealed that she had seen the exact same thing out on the moors some twenty years earlier. So, haunted the inn may be, but none of these ghosts seem like the vengeful spirit of a murdered exciseman.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
So, did the landlords of the Salters Gate successfully keep the angry spirit from returning with their 200-year fire? Well, although we have reports from staff as recently as 2001 that the landlords of the inn were still maintaining the tradition of the fire, in 2007 the inn fell on hard times and went out of business. Standing closed and empty for over a year, the legendary fire finally gone out.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The inn was bought by a local builder in 2008 who intended to refit and reopen the place, but from that point on, the building was beset by problem after problem. The recession hit and the new owner could no longer fund the project, so the inn stood empty. The protective fire reduced to nothing but cold ash.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It was sold again, this time with planning permission for a hotel and restaurant expansion, but this project too was doomed to financial ruin, and so the inn stood empty, by now looking very much worse for wear, whitewash peeling from the walls and the windows where the warning lantern may once have shone boarded shut.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The final attempt to save the inn was a purchase in 2016, but even this failed. And very sadly, in 2018, the shell of the by now derelict inn was demolished. The ghost of the murdered excise officer may not have come back to haunt the inn in the spectral form the smugglers expected, but the Salters Gate did seem to have a pall of ill fortune cast over it.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
ever since the premises closed and the fire went out. But there's actually more to this story, because go back a little further in history and we find that the much-hated exciseman wasn't the first evil to be reputedly trapped in the fireplace of the inn.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
We return to the corner of Victoria Square and Brunswick Street, where on one side of the slightly offset crossroads sits Dr Ripley's mysteriously truncated house, and on the other, where Victoria Square passes Spring Hill, sits Bagdale Hall.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
At first glance, the building seems strangely out of place, looking much like a country estate that had somehow lost its way and ended up in the centre of a town. I suppose that's simply because in urban areas we're used to the march of time and progress eventually flattening places like these.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But somehow, Bagdale Hall has managed to survive since being built in either 1516 or 1530, depending on whether you choose to believe the hall's website or the blue commemorative plaque attached to the front of the building.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Call me cynical, but I can't help wondering if any of that survey was at all weighted in favour of normalising the idea that it's OK and perfectly reasonable to spend £100 on Halloween instead of £20 by certain retailers, maybe?
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Apparently, the appearance of the hall has changed significantly over the years, particularly after extensive renovations in 1882, but you still get a sense of its Tudor roots, from the great rounded and worn sandstone blocks of its walls, the stone dormer windows in a steeply pitched roof with an impressive array of chimneys and the massive joists protruding from the end walls.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The day we visit is a gloomy one, and the leaded glass of the windows seem to absorb the darkness of the overcast skies to make it look as though it's pitch dark inside. The tiny diamond-shaped panes scatter the lights from the headlamps of passing cars, making the windows along the side of the building spark and glitter momentarily.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
and in a lower front window, the warm yellow shapes of some lamps manage to glow through the darkness. But otherwise, the odd reflections of the mullion windows avert any clear glimpses into the interior, instead casting odd shapes and shadows within the glass.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
If the hall looks impressive from the front, then it looks even more the classic country pile upon rounding the corner of Spring Hill, where it becomes evident that one wing of the T-shaped building sprawls off halfway up the street.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In fact, this was only a fraction of the property's original extent, as at the time of building it was surrounded by acres of green fields at least half a mile upriver that formed the hall's estate. and much of the town grew up around the building over the preceding centuries.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
An orb-topped stone gateway into a courtyard in the right angle of the building offers a tantalising peek into what may lay beyond, with at least a dozen rooms apparent from the windows just on this side of the wing alone, whilst behind the crook of the front wall is a curious feature that wouldn't look out of place on Disney's Haunted Mansion ride.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It's hard to tell if the lichen-encrusted stonework is actually part of the gabled-end wall, or if it is simply resting up against it. But the carved double arch, standing about the height of two gravestones side by side, and not looking a million miles away from such a thing...
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
bears two intricately carved heads, leering from the stone in full 3D, their necks craning right out of a picture-frame-like oval in the stone, their faces set in stern grimaces. On one hand, I half expect them to jerk to life and start singing a jaunty song, and on the other, they rather remind me of Dr Ripley's ghost, poking its head out the window and leering down at passers-by.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
I can't help but wonder what the story is behind these two carvings. But then Bagdale Hall is a place full of mystery, swashbuckling stories and, of course, ghosts. Stories about the hauntings within the walls of Bagdale Hall have been emerging for decades, if not centuries.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Staff and servants over the years have related hearing disembodied footsteps all over the house, but especially on the wide wooden central staircase, where the creak of ghostly footsteps tread with some regularity.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The chilling sounds of children playing has been reported just after midnight, emanating from dark, empty rooms, as well as unexplained noises from the kitchen and the sounds of crashing coming from the china cabinet. Over the years, the hall changed ownership and eventually went out of private residence and into service as a hotel. But the noises continued.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
the sound of bells ringing in the kitchen long after things like servants' bells had ceased being used, the phantom crashing from the china cabinet, apparently continuing even after the cabinet itself had been moved to a different location. Many of the reports from staff were related to an owner who took over the hall in 1914, a retired headmaster called Percy Shaw Jeffery.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
During his ownership, one visiting local photographer had the fright of his life when he witnessed a piece of crockery inexplicably fly from a cabinet and, turning to look in the direction of the stairs, saw the ephemeral figure of a woman in white dissolve right before his eyes.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
When a maid of Shaw Jefferies told him that a duster had flown out of her hand towards the kitchen while she had been cleaning the library, he simply replied, that things like that happen quite often at Bagdale Hall. And if that sounds rather nonchalant, then it's probably because Shaw Jeffery was no stranger to the world of the strange and supernatural.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Not only did he actually write a book on it, penning the title Whitby Law and Legend in 1923, but he also had a connection to a very famous paranormal case indeed, the haunting of Borley Rectory.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Long before he retired from his career as a headmaster and took up residence in Whitby, Percy Shaw Geoffrey became among the first of the witnesses of the strange happenings at Borley Rectory, during visits there to stay with his college friend Harry, or Henry as he was better known, who was the son of Reverend Ball, rector of the parish of Borley.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Percy and his friend the Rector's son both reportedly had a multitude of inexplicable experiences at the home. In an article titled The Mysteries of Borley Rectory that he wrote for the Cape Times in later years, Percy wrote...
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The rectory was a comparatively new building, but it was generally believed that it was built on the foundations of an old convent, which accounted for the ghostly nun, who or which I saw several times. The ghostly coach and four I heard sweep down the much too narrow lane beside the rectory so often that I used to sleep through the noise, and a variety of disconcerting incidents happened.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And Percy went into even more detail about his visits in a letter to investigator Harry Price after reading Price's book about the supernatural happenings at the rectory. Dear Mr Price, I have just been reading your book about Borley Rectory. I'm very interested because Harry Bull and I were born in the same year, 1862.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
We went to Oxford together and in the long vacations I used to go and stay with him at Borley. I had lots of small adventures at the rectory, stones falling about, my boots found on top of the wardrobe, etc., and I saw the nun several times and often heard the coach go clattering by.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And a huge, huge thank you to all of our Patreon and Ko-fi supporters, the wonderful souls who fund this show and make it possible. The travel, the tickets, the petrol, the research materials, the equipment, the hosting fees, all the many and varied costs of making these episodes in the admittedly rather in-depth and slightly awkward way that we go about making them.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
But the big adventure that would have been worth your while recording was one time when I missed a big French dictionary which I had been regularly using for some days. Nobody could find it. But one night, I was awakened by a big bump on the floor, and there was the dictionary, with its back a good deal knocked about, sprawling on the floor. My bedroom door was locked.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
With all these paranormal adventures occurring in his youth, maybe it's no wonder Percy Shaw Jeffrey was a little nonchalant about a mysteriously animated duster. But Percy wasn't the only owner of Bagdale Hall to experience the unexplained, and the reports of strange activity continued even into the post-war years when the hall became a hotel.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
A waitress working at Bagdale was surprised one night when the chef asked her why no one was attending to a gentleman in the dining room. Perplexed, the waitress asked the chef, ''What gentleman?'' Looking again, the chef was shocked to discover that she was correct. The dining room where he was certain he had seen a man seated only moments before was empty.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
In recent years, another maid had quite the scare whilst changing the sheets in one of the hotel's bedrooms. Hearing noise behind her, she jumped around, startled, only to come face to face with a ghostly figure in old-fashioned clothes.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
So frightened that she had to look away from the figure, yet more shock awaited her, as she looked back to the bed to discover that the sheets she had just laid out there had mysteriously vanished.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
According to Paul McDermott's book Whitby Ghosts and Legends, the then current caretakers of Bagdale Hall not only accepted the poltergeist activity occurred, but shared with the author that they named the poltergeist Geoffrey.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Now, nowhere in his book does McDermott mention the intriguing former owner of Percy Shaw Jeffery, but surely the caretakers choosing the same name as the former owner for their poltergeist is too much of a coincidence. Sadly, we are not enlightened as to whether they plucked the name out of thin air, or whether they attribute the odd events to the spirit of the former owner.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
After all, having had such an interest in the paranormal in life, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that he might enjoy coming back to haunt his old home. Percy Shaw Jeffrey isn't the most famous resident of Bagdale Hall, nor is he the most popular contender for the cause of the hauntings.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
No, that title goes to a much earlier resident, to whom the sightings of another apparition is attributed, a rather grisly apparition whose headless form is seen roaming around the upper floors and perambulating the stairs. And this spectre is thought to belong to the swashbuckling adventurer, Brown Bushel.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
It is perhaps no wonder that a man as indomitable in life as Brown Bushel wouldn't let a little thing like death get in his way, and it seems to have taken the lack of a corporeal body for Brown to have finally settled down and returned to a life, well, existence anyway, rooted in one spot, his ancestral home of Bagdale Hall.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
And despite his years away from the place, and his many adventures over land and sea, it turns out there was something anchoring him to the hall after all, that just may have called his spirit back there. And rather wonderfully, it was our old friend Percy Short Geoffrey that found it. In 1916, only a couple of years after he took ownership of Bagdale Hall,
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Percy found six oak panels in the roof loft that, when reassembled and cleaned, revealed the painted portraits of a young man and his bride, dated on the back to 1663, along with the subject's ages. From the age and dates, Percy was certain that these were the portraits of Brown Bushel and his wife. Could this be what ties Bushel's ghost to the hall?
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
With the paintings having been expertly restored, these days Bushell's likeness is in the care of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society at Panit Park Museum, rather neatly landing us right back where we started our journey today, and hopefully providing Brown Bushell...
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
never one to cool his heels in one spot for too long, with another grand new adventure in a different place, even if it is from beyond the grave.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
The fact that we're heading towards a decade on the air is down to every single one of you. And we couldn't be more grateful, not to mention proud of the wonderful, caring community that you have all built around this little podcast. Tonight, we raise a glass to all of you folks out there, our supporters, and bid you a very happy Hello Birthdayween.
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The Gory Hand of Glory & The Swashbuckling Ghost
Well, these estate agents, they clearly know more than us paranormal people.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
for high EMF like we literally ran around and tested every area the place where Fitz was sitting basically in the behind the front door there's no EMF there there's not even anything electrical there's no electrical sockets or anything like that where he was sitting
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Yeah. And I'm really sorry that you had to deal with that for your entire childhood. That must have been terrifying. Fitz was terrified when he saw it. So I can only imagine what that must have been like as a child.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Understandably so. Well, thank you so much again to Kat for sharing their experience with us. And it's time now to move on to our next story. And this one was kindly shared with us by Rob from the How Haunted podcast.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
So from the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful that you wonderful people have given me the incredible opportunity to create it. Thank you so, so much for making this happen. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we have loved making it. But now let's get stuck into the episode. And Fitz, what have you got for us on the Paranormal Radar?
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Thank you so much to Rob for sharing that experience with us. It's a really interesting one. But even more interestingly and kind of weirdly, we literally just the other day had something quite similar happen here at Coffee HQ.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Yeah. And I'd actually been down there quite a while. So it had been a long time since I'd been upstairs. Oh, no, that was it.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Yeah, but that never happened because I never came upstairs.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
That's right. You were trying not to interrupt what I was doing.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Never came upstairs. Don't know what you heard. And now, you know, the thing is, Fitz does often quite often hear things going on in our bedroom and in the office. And, you know, I have to be in there like all day alone with whatever's making these noises.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But thank you again to Rob. And please go and check out How Haunted podcast. We only recently discovered this. Thank you to listener Laura for introducing us to How Haunted. And we're loving it. And I'm pretty sure that if you like our podcast, you're going to like the How Haunted podcast as well.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
If you want my personal recommendation for something to go and kick off spooky season with, go and check out Rob's episode on Highgate Cemetery. It's absolutely fascinating and I think you'll love it.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Way back in the mists of time, I grew up in the northeast of England, where the ancient cobbled streets are steeped in history and strange folklore. It must have been around 1997 when I was playing in the garden of our old family home with one of my school friends. Back then, our garden overlooked acres of farmland, stretching off into the distance.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In the field beyond our garden fence, the crops grew tall and would have been at least waist high if a tall adult walked through them. My school friend and I were attempting to build a tree house in the corner of the garden when something caught our eye. With its arms outstretched, a figure was moving rapidly across the adjacent field, clothed in a very bizarre outfit.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
a long-sleeved brown tunic with a large hood pulled over their face. It looked as if they were wearing a strange fancy dress costume. Stranger still, they were skimming along the top of the cropline rather than walking through it. They looked as if they were running at an unearthly speed, almost as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button on a videotape. We had never seen anything like it.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Hi, I'm Lil. And I'm Fitz. And you're listening to Knock Once For Yes. Well, our living room may still be strewn with signs of the end of summer, looking rather like a second-hand camping shop with the yet-to-be-unpacked chaos of our last research road trip to the coast.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Terrified, my friend and I fled back into the house. Inside, my mum grew alarmed when she saw how frightened we were. Our garden led out to a road and she assumed the worst, thinking that a passerby had perhaps tried to enter the garden when we were playing or done something else to frighten us.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Imagine her confusion when we garbled our explanation to her about the strange tall figure in the crop field. We refused to go back outside until she checked that the coast was clear, which she gallantly agreed to do, only to see an empty pasture beyond the garden fence. There was nobody there. Years later, we learned that the field behind our old house had a story of its own to tell.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In 875 AD, when St Cuthbert's monks were fleeing from Viking raids, they carried his body and holy relics across the northeast of England in a desperate search for sanctuary. With their bounty of undefended treasures, monasteries had become easy targets for the Danish invaders, and Lindisfarne Monastery was no exception.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
On their escape from Lindisfarne, the monks faced months of hardship, the brutal northern weather and the constant threat of Viking raiders. After a long, exhausting journey, they finally buried Cuthbert on the Durham Peninsula. Its location was deemed a suitable and safe final resting place for their beloved saint, offering protection from invaders.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The street we lived on was named St Cuthbert's Road and had been named as such because the monks had apparently camped out on the land next to the road itself on their way to Durham. Delving far back into our area's history, we also learned that the level of the ground would have been significantly higher in centuries gone by.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Over the years, it had been dug away to unveil fresher soil for the farmland. Was the figure in the field a glimpse back into the past? They say that ghosts are an imprint of heightened emotion or a retelling of a person's trauma.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Perhaps we saw one of Cuthbert's monks fleeing in fear across the pasture with his monk's habit pulled over his head in a bid to hide from the Viking invaders or protect his weary head from the incessant northern downpours. It's a sight that I'll never forget.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We have. But I have to say, I do a lot of walking around the countryside near where we live, a lot of which is crop fields, and that image is going to live with me forever. So thanks for that, Katie. Every time I'm out on my own having a good old jaunt through the countryside and I come across a field of crops, that ghostly monk skimming over the top of the crops is just going to pop into my head.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But I also now really want to visit St. Cuthbert's Road. Oh, I love these stories. When you find the history that goes with the witness experience, that is incredible. And yes, I mean, the monks fleeing from the Viking raiders would have been an incredibly heightened emotional time. They would have been terrified. It really was a race for their lives.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
So I can completely understand how some of that history would continue to reverberate through the centuries. Yeah.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I have been, but it was many years ago. And it's definitely on our list of places that we really need to visit for the podcast at some point.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It's only just a little bit further up the coast, though, and maybe next year or the year after we could get that little bit further and visit Lindisfarne. I would love to visit, and I think you'd really enjoy it, Fitz.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Thank you so much to everybody who shared their stories with us today. Your ghostly experiences are, as you know, the lifeblood of the show. So if you have a story to share with us, we would absolutely love to hear it.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We wake to glowering skies and rain. Looking out of the French doors of our holiday cottage towards the coast, the grey sea is indistinguishable from the blurry horizon of the equally grey sky.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The dull weather casts the heather and gorse-covered moorland into muted shades of brown as we drive towards Whitby along an undulating road that rises and falls like a fairground ride, causing us some trepidation, us Midlanders being far more used to the pancake-flat expanses of the fens.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
A particularly steep incline that has me clutching the dashboard takes us down into Whitby Town, only to abruptly start another climb up to the top of the West Cliff where our day's adventures will begin. Today, we are on the trail of Dracula to explore the parts of Whitby that feature in Bram Stoker's legendary book and discover their history, folklore, ghosts and legends.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And what better place to start than the Royal Crescent, the location the author himself staged during the visits to Whitby that so inspired his famous work. We head for the pavilion car park, just opposite the Royal Crescent, and right on the cliff edge with views across to the abbey over on the east side.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We manage to get one of the parking spots directly overlooking the sea, and as wet and miserable of a day as it is, it's quite tempting to stay for a while, cosied up in the van, watching the steel-coloured waves crash below, and imagining the silhouettes of full-masted ships gliding across the hazy horizon. But we have so much to see.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And if nothing else, the dreary weather sets the perfect backdrop for a gothic horror pilgrimage and ghost tour. But we're not only following the trail of Dracula today, but also the trail of Whitby's ghost stories. Stories that don't always get the attention they deserve from the standard tourist trail maps.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Thousands of people visit Whitby each year and explore the town via one of the many available Dracula trail guides. But what many don't realise is that in the very footsteps of Bram Stoker's fictional story, another layer can be found. A deep layer of Whitby's own ghosts and legends. And today, we're going to be taking on both in tandem. And, of course, dipping into some history along the way.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And we'll start by looking behind us, away from the sea, at the row of tall four and five storey Victorian townhouses that played a part in the most famous vampire story of all time.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The clock was striking one as I was in the crescent, and there was not a soul in sight. I ran along the north terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which I expected. At the edge of the west cliff above the pier, I looked out over the harbour to the east cliff, in the hope, or fear, I don't know which, of seeing Lucy in our favourite seat.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There was a bright full moon with heavy black driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across. For a moment or two, I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St Mary's Church and all around it.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Then, as the cloud passed, I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view, and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed. But there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately. But it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
From this passage, and Mina's description of the landscape she passes through, it's generally agreed that the lodging house of his fictional characters was in fact the very same as his real holiday accommodation at Sixth Royal Crescent.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And we can follow Mina's flight along North Terrace, past the modern car park, to the corner of the cliff that overlooks the west pier and harbour below, where Mina looks for her friend.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The view that she describes here is one of the most famous and most photographed in all of Whitby, and also the place where two famous monuments stand testament to the town's history, the Captain Cook statue and the Whalebone Arch, two quintessentially Whitby photo opportunities that can't be missed, but that also reflect a darker side of the town's history.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Both structures, perched on the cliff edge above the steep drop to the harbour below, face the wave-filled expanse of the harbour mouth and the east cliff on the opposite side of town.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And anyone with a photographic eye can appreciate how the tall, imposing Cook Monument, with the stony-faced captain forever gazing determinedly out to sea, creates the perfect foreground to the ruins of the ancient abbey far off in the distance, the cluster of red pantiled roofs crowded together along the face of East Cliff, completing a scene that crushes together a thousand years of history in one shot.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Monuments, plaques and even a museum dedicated to the 18th century explorer Captain Cook, who apprenticed here in Whitby, thread throughout the town. But, as with most early explorers, who so often left trails of native ruin in their wake, I don't know that it's a legacy to be celebrated.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Not one to be forgotten either, though, if only for bearing witness to the past and hopefully learning from the errors of our forebears. But however you feel about the explorer, his statue marks the spot of our first ghost story and serves as a landmark for where witnesses have spotted Whitby's White Wraith.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The arch is formed by the lower jaw of a bowhead whale, a testament to Whitby Harbour's days of whale hunting industry.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The whaling that took place here in the 18th and early 19th century wasn't subsistence whaling, it was commercial, and sadly contributed to the population decline of those giants of the sea, evidenced by the end of the industry in Whitby in 1837, when the last whaling vessel returned empty of its quarry. Crewing the whaling vessels of the 18th and early 19th centuries was a treacherous career.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Doubtless, many of the men, and often quite young boys in the enterprise's employ, wouldn't have had a lot of choice in how they earned a living. They would have had to find work wherever work was offered, and many of them probably knew that it was a job they may never come home from.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It's said that it was from the point where the arch stands, high on the west cliff overlooking the harbour and out to the expanse of the North Sea, that wives and children would wait, watching for their sons and husbands to return from the icy waters of Greenland. But often, they didn't return. In fact, sometimes entire ships were lost to the crushing ice fields, never to be seen again.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And our next ghost... may just be connected with this sad history. Over the years, many similar whalebone arches stood throughout the town, and even up to recent decades, one such arch stood in the pretty gardens of Panit Park, home to the town's art gallery and museum. But the park's resident ghost seemed determined to remind visitors of the less attractive history attached to the monument.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Witnesses reported the heartbreaking sight of a young boy who would appear next to the whalebone arch, looking distressed and sometimes even crying uncontrollably. Nobody knew who he was or why he haunted this spot, but understandably, many wondered if his proximity to the whale jaw indicated that his fate involved some terrible tragedy connected to Whitby's whaling days.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
and this seems to have been borne out when the archway was removed from the park in recent years and the young apparition immediately stopped his mysterious appearances. We stand in the rain, slightly mesmerised by the view across to St Mary's Church and the Abbey, both buildings that have stood on the headland in some form since the 12th century, a view that's heady in its timelessness.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I have no doubt that Stoker felt the same and we know that he spent a lot of time gazing out at it from his favourite spot on a small rise where today a commemorative bench bears his name. I squint through the mizzle that's rapidly plastering the hood of my cagoule to my cheeks and forehead and try and imagine spotting a night robe clad figure in the churchyard on the east cliff as Mina did.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
From this distance, the grand edifices look doll's house sized, and even in bright moonlight, I'm not sure that I could pick out a tiny figure between the shadows of that graveyard. But I guess Mina must have had better eyesight than me, which, to be fair, doesn't take much.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And, as we're about to find out, she must have been an awful lot fitter than me as well, as she proceeded to run full pelt from one side of the town to the other and up the 199 steps that snake up the side of the East Cliff. But first, it's time to descend the West Cliff, making our way, as Mina did, down Khyber Pass.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But we need to make a quick stop on our way to check out a feature that is marked on every Dracula trail map. The Screaming Tunnel.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Mina describes that she flew down the steep steps to the pier, indicating that she probably didn't traverse the Screaming Tunnel, but took the main route down Khyber Pass, as we do now, passing delicious-smelling chippies and coffee shops on the way and emerging onto Battery Parade, where a battery of protective cannon was erected in the 18th century and the pier that Mina mentions.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Whitby actually has four piers, and although visitors can promenade along them, none are the kind of wide leisure piers full of donut booths, candy floss and helter-skelters such as you might find at Brighton, Bournemouth or Cromer. These are principally functional piers, constructed to provide safe harbour and ease of passage for Whitby's fishing and shipping fleet and any seaborne visitors.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The furthest back into the River Mau is a stubby pier behind which now sits the lifeboat station. It's called Fish Pier and it's aptly named. Even today, it's stacked with worn-looking crab and lobster pots in a timeless scene familiar to every fishing town.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Downstream of this and nearer the harbour mouth is thought to be the oldest pier, which has existed since at least the 1500s according to written records, but was probably around even earlier than that. A little sandy beach has formed in the crook between this pier and the East Cliff, known interchangeably as Tate Hill Sands and Collier's Hope.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And this will become important later in our story, but for now we turn our attention to the more modern western east piers, relatively modern that is, as they would have certainly been in situ by Bram Stoker's time, albeit without the extra pier extenders we see today, popularly compared to the mandibles of some giant insect that sweep out into the sea, guiding ships into the great mouth of the river Esk.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Also present during the time of the author's visits were the two lighthouses that capped the ends of both piers, the 73-foot-tall West Pier Lighthouse, having been built in 1831, and the shorter 55-foot East Pier Lighthouse, which was completed in 1855.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
since which time the pair have stood sentinel over Whitby's harbour, providing safe passage for seafarers, with, of course, the hard work of the town's lighthouse keepers, one of whom, it seems, may have never left. I imagine Mina and Lucy strolling along the pier after one of their days exploring, and wonder if it looks much different than it would have in Bram Stoker's time.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
the white-painted wrought iron railing and black and gold-gilded lampposts wouldn't look out of place in a Victorian landscape. Apparently, during the summer months and warmer weather, visitors can go into the lighthouse at the end of the pier, ascending clockwise up the 81 steps to the octagonal white lantern room, just as the then-princess Victoria did in 1834 on a royal visit to Whitby.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But outside, summer is definitely over, and chill, misty mornings and autumn winds are declaring that spooky season is in full swing. So what better time to take you on a journey to track down ghosts, mythical beasts and even vampires in the second installment of our Whitby series. So Fitz, what have we got coming up on today's episode?
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But today is not a warmer weather day and the door to the tower looks firmly closed. I'm not sure I would have fancied experiencing the balcony outside the lantern room in today's inclemencies anyway. The waves whip a white foam around the sandstone base of the pier and the wind tries relentlessly to snatch away the now very crumpled map that I have clutched tightly in my hand.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Against the brooding sky, the lighthouse looks ripe for a haunting. And a haunting it does indeed have.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It's impossible to know just how long there has been a bridge on this spot at Whitby. The earliest written records date to the 14th century. But as these records mention trying to raise funds for bridge repairs, that could very well mean that by this time the existing structure was already quite old.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It's certainly likely there's been a bridge here or in the vicinity for as long as Whitby has been settled, as for centuries there was no other way to cross between the west and east cliffs without taking to the water.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It was only as recently as 1980 that an alternative bridge further up river was constructed that meant people and traffic could cross from one side of the harbour to the other without detouring all the way over into the next town.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I mean, having a haunted island is pretty much the dream. So, you know, if anybody wants to chip in, I think we could raise 30 million on it.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
For many years, at least since the 18th century but probably as early as the 16th, a drawbridge spanned the river here, raising and lowering its leaves each time a ship required entrance to the upper harbour. These drawbridges caused a few problems and seemed to sustain persistent damage from ships passing through them.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Vessels would collide with the raised leaves and counterweights when passing through, and it was common practice to tie boats up to the bridge supports, which put the whole structure under strain.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The drawbridge design was also too narrow to allow bigger vessels to pass through, including some ships that had been built in Whitby's Upper Harbour only for their first voyage to be cut short upon discovering that their shipbuilders had made them too wide to ever leave.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In 1746, shipbuilder Benjamin Coates constructed a vessel in the upper harbour that ended up being several inches too wide to pass through the gap in the raised drawbridge. Incredibly, in realising this, he actually petitioned to be allowed to chip away at the bridge supports to create a gap wide enough for the ship to pass through. We can only hope that his request was denied.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But by the time Bram Stoker and therefore Mina visited the town, a new swing bridge had been installed. And although today we will walk across a slightly wider and electric-powered swing bridge than the one Stoker walked across, it doesn't look too terribly different to the one the author would recognise from his visits.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Even in today's modern times, the vehicle and foot traffic of Whitby are at the mercy of the sea and its vessels. And as we approach the cheerfully red-painted bridge, a crowd and queue of traffic waits patiently at its foot as the leaves swing open gently and slowly to allow a small fishing boat to pass through.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I imagine that for residents needing to cross this way regularly, this must get somewhat annoying. And I can see with my own eyes why there are reports of severe bottlenecks at the bridge in high summer when the tourist season is in full swing, as it's a very narrow point to funnel all the traffic and pedestrians of Whitby from one side to the other.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But, not being local, or here in high season, I'm lucky enough in my blissful ignorance to be able to relish watching the little boat chug through, wondering how the crew feel about the assembled crowd gawking at their passage, and imagining Stoker standing right here on this spot.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Maybe. Definitely. Well, the photo is a bit odd. Basically, it's a person in a fairly dark area of the island in a building, I think. And to start with, it looks like one of those photos you take in low light where the exposure ends up being quite long because of the low lighting conditions.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Perhaps he was writing Lucy and Mina's adventures in his head while he waited for the swinging arms of the bridge to come slowly, inchingly, together once more. It seems odd to think I'm standing here watching the same scene as so many people before me. A very distinctly Whitby activity that's been repeated over and over again for hundreds and hundreds of years. And then the boat is through.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The assembled crowd is released to go on their way and the spell is broken. Crossing at last, we find ourselves in what many think of as the old part of Whitby, the cliff where locals continued to live and work and ply their trade whilst the wealthy Victorian tourists and their upmarket lodging houses rapidly spread over the west cliff.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The streets here are narrow and run warren-like down to the water in the old pier on one side and up to the base of the cliff and the abbey steps on the other. Shops, cafes, pubs, houses and museums are crammed cheek by jowl into what's actually quite a small space at the foot of the East Cliff.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But you could easily lose hours, even days, exploring all the nooks and crannies and alleys, not to mention the fascinating array of shops. Their vibrant and eclectic scents and window displays doing an excellent job of distracting me from my task. But I pull my attention back to the map and Mina's journey.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
She doesn't describe the route she took to reach the abbey steps, but the most direct way would either be along Church Street with its many jet shops, or the narrower Sandgate. Either route would have taken our heroine past the market square and old town hall, where we must pause to meet another of Whitby's ghosts.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And it looked like the person was moving and they'd left like a trail in their wake that you get, like I say, with the long exposures because the shutter is open on the camera for so long. But then I looked at it again and realised that if that was the case, the smear of movement would be the same colour as the person.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And that can happen with long exposures. Although, yeah, you would expect more of a smear of movement. But the figure behind the person is quite bright white, actually, isn't it?
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Putting the bustling market square behind us, it's time to head back into the pages of Dracula. We walk along Church Street in the direction of the famous 199 Steps,
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But before we begin our climb to catch up with Mina on her quest to rescue Lucy, we must take a short detour to Tate Hill Sands and a different chapter of Dracula in which Stoker's story weaves together real-life events with his own imagination and a healthy dollop of local folklore.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Nearing the end of Church Street, the cobbled road veers to the right and begins to slope upwards as it begins the ascent up East Cliff. But we carry on straight ahead, squeezing down a narrow gaff between a pub called the Broad Inn and the Whitby Jet Heritage Centre, emerging at the top of a short flight of stone steps that take us down onto Tate Hill Pier.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
This pier is much shorter and plainer than the newer East and West Piers, a nod to its much older and more humble beginnings.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There are no wrought iron lamps, railings or lighthouses here, just a broad, sturdy stone pier jutting out into the harbour, a pile of lobster pots at one end and a small sandy beach known as Collier's Hope nestled in the elbow-like crook where it joins the base of East Cliff. The name Collier's Hope hails from the days when coal-carrying vessels known as Colliers would offload their cargo here.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
definitely so i don't on second glance i don't think it is the movement of the first person because yeah the colors would be the same as what they were wearing and they're definitely not the person is wearing like a red top and this figure is yeah just all bright white having said that is it you know something else in the building that we can't see because we're not there i don't know but yeah i'd be really interested to get everybody's thoughts on it go and give it a look
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
but it's also served as a safe haven for many a ship seeking refuge from raging storms over the centuries, including one that made it from the front page of the Whitby Gazette newspaper straight into the pages of Dracula, the Dimitri of Narva, or, as Bram Stoker calls it in his novel, the Dimita of Varna.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Through journal entries and cuttings of the fictional Daily Graph newspaper, Stoker paints an atmosphere of expectant tension, as at the end of a sultry summer's day, a great storm starts to brew.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In a clever juxtaposition, we have the lightness and innocence of happy holidaymakers making day trips to nearby tourist attractions such as Mulgrave Woods and Robin Hood's Bay, whilst off the coast, dark clouds begin to gather. Old salts squint at the horizon from their favourite weather-watching spots on the East Cliff and warn of something vicious rolling in.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And, as readers, we understand that those gathering storm clouds signal something even more vicious than they know, because Dracula is about to arrive at Whitby.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Tensions suitably built, the tempest breaks with terrifying speed, sending small fishing boats hurtling for harbour before a growing fury of spume-topped waves. Onlookers watch in horror as a schooner just off the coast, still in full sail, and having apparently ignored all warning signs of the coming danger, careers towards a treacherous reef that lays between it and the port.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
With the tide high, gale force winds in her sails and mountainous waves lashing the vessel, no one can see how the ship could possibly make entrance to the harbour without being dashed to bits on the reef. But then, in a rush of dank sea fog and a crash of thunder, the schooner sweeps between the piers and into the harbour to the relief of the onlookers.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But the celebrations are short-lived because the vessel does not pause, instead hurtling on towards Tate Hill Pier. And as the ship crashes into the sand and gravel bank of Collier's Hope, the onlookers realise that the steersman, who had seemed to so skilfully guide the ship's perilous entry, is actually a dead man, whose lolling corpse is lashed to the ship's wheel.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
As the schooner rams into Tate Hill Beach and parts of the rigging come crashing down, a huge black dog appears from below decks and leaps onto the sand, pelting away towards the cliff and the churchyard of St Mary's. Dracula has arrived.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I grew up in a 1930s semi-detached council house. My parents eventually bought it and my mother still lives there. My sister and I were moved from a bedroom at the back of the house to a practically pointless box bedroom at the front of the house, and I hated it. I was around five years old when we moved into the room, and from day one, I felt weird about it.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
This event was immortalised by pioneering local photographer Frank Meadows Sutcliffe, who became famous for branching out from the Victorian trend of posed portrait photography and made a name for himself, capturing candid shots of Whitby life.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Featuring working class residents going about their daily chores, children playing, scenes of the town's picturesque landscape, a glimpse into the real Whitby of the 19th century and a chronicle of the events that affected its residents, including the wreck of the Dimitri.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I purchased a print of the scene a long time ago on one of my younger visits to Whitby and it's a photograph that I can stare at for hours. Sutcliffe's candid photographic style that tells a story with every shot is so unexpected for the era that I almost feel like if I look hard enough at the scene I'll be able to see the characters moving and the story will play out in front of my eyes.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The sepia photograph conveys the aftermath of the destructive power of the storm. A ship rests tilted at an angle on the beach beneath a shelf of the East Cliff, with the tombstones of St Mary's Church are just visible above.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Its masts and rigging lay in a broken pile in front of it like so many snapped twigs, while the small figures of people swarm around it, clambering on and over the broken timber. The figures are slightly blurred.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
They were likely moving during the relatively long exposure time required for Victorian plate photography, and the movement evokes a sense of frenetic energy and a frisson of excitement that would have doubtless accompanied the unexpected event.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I can't help but feel that the photograph helps to blur the line between fact and fiction, as this feels like something that could have come straight out of Mina's collection of newspaper cuttings pasted in her journal. I'm almost disappointed not to spot a large black dog in the photo, scampering off up the cliff. And what of that great black dog?
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I can't say that I definitely saw what I saw from that first night, but I remember seeing a black, solid shadow figure. My older sister would sometimes sleep at her friend's house. I always dreaded it when she did this. I remember the feeling of terror igniting in my bones whenever she announced she was staying out. I'd cry and beg for her to stay.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Well, that brings us to another chunk of Whitby's lore and legend that Stoker cleverly worked into his story.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I didn't want to be left alone in that room with that thing. The shadow man would appear whether my sister was there or not, but it wouldn't leave the corner if I had someone in the room with me. Every night, I'd climb the squeaky bunk bed ladder, get into my bed, and my sister would give me ten minutes of light because she couldn't sleep with the light on.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The name Kettleness likely comes from the Old Norse language, kettle meaning pot or cauldron, and thought to refer to the cauldron of water around the point, whilst ness means headland, or more literally, nose, very appropriate for the rocky, jutting nose of Kettleness Nab.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
This reminds us of the Danish invaders we encountered in our first episode of the series, who landed at Whitby and sacked the Abbey. But before that, the shore was at risk of invasion from Saxons, and we touched on this too when we explored the possibility of Whitby's East Cliff once being the site of a Roman signal station.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Sturdy, defensive lighthouses built in chains along the sections of the English coastline exposed by the North Sea to raiders as well as traders.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We may never know if one of these signal stations existed at Whitby, but we do know that a Roman signal station did stand at Kettle Ness, just inland between the Knab and the small hamlet of Goldsborough, likely surviving due to its more inland location having saved it from disappearing off the cliff edge and into the sea via coastal erosion, as may have happened at Whitby.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
From discoveries at nearby Ravenscar in the 18th century, antiquarians realised that there was probably a string of these forklets all up the Yorkshire coast. And in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, historians and early archaeologists set about hunting them down.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I'd pray that she'd fall asleep and it would be left on. To my disappointment, the light would switch off. I would immediately look into that right-hand corner of the room and it would appear. It started as a sort of thick black splodge, and it would grow taller until it fully formed into a long, hooded black figure.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
After a systematic search of likely sites, the antiquarians William Hornsby and John Laverick discovered the ruins of a fortlet on Goldsboro Pasture in 1918. And, thankfully for us, they wrote about their discoveries in the Antiquaries Journal in 1932.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Interestingly though, even in these academic pursuits, it seems that the darkness of the area's legends somehow managed to seep through, as this quote from the write-up in the Antiquaries journal hints. The impression left from the outset by the loveliness of the situation is unforgettable. In front extends the ever-changing sea. To the left lies Runzik with its glorious bay.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
To the right is Whitby with Abbey and Harbour, while behind stretches the moorland, black and lonesome, still reputed the abode of evil spirits. But it gets really interesting when the men explain the findings of their excavations within the fort, as they made a truly extraordinary discovery. It's not unusual, of course, for archaeologists to find human remains during excavations.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Uncovering burials and cremations is quite common, and they can often tell us a story about the lives of people that once lived on the site being examined. But the bodies that were found on this excavation were somewhat of a rarer find. And what a story they told, as this quote from the journal demonstrates.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In the southeast corner, we made discoveries which can only be described as sensational discoveries. A short, thick-set man had fallen across the smouldering fire of an open hearth, probably after having been stabbed in the back. His skeleton lay face downwards, the left hand on which was a bronze ring behind the back, the right touching the south wall.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Another skeleton, that of a taller man, lay also face downwards near the feet of the first, his head pointing south-west. Beneath him was the skeleton of a large and powerful dog, its head against the man's throat, its paws across his shoulders. Surely a grim record of a thrilling drama. Perhaps the dog one of the defenders, the man an intruder.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
However exciting a discovery as this must have been for the excavators, it's just as exciting for us. To find a record of a skeleton of a large, powerful dog in such a remarkable context, right in the area of the bar guest sightings, is incredible.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
This excavation took place in 1918, and Reverend Omond, who was born in 1903, grew up hearing about apparitions of a large black dog in the area of Cattle Ness, finally seeing the spectre for himself in the 1950s. Did the excavations of the Roman signal station awaken the spirit of the great dog who died there when its remains were uncovered?
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
If so, this paints a very different picture to the ominous hellhound that Oman felt the need to exercise. The antiquarians wrap up their report with the following words, elaborating on what they think may have happened at the fort on that final, fateful day. The life of the station would seem to have been short, approximately 370 to 395 AD.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
and there were many indications that its end had been sudden and violent. If conjecture be necessary, it would appear likely that the destruction was wrought by intruding angles, whose numbers and the swiftness of their attack enabled them to overwhelm the garrison.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It didn't have a face, and I don't remember seeing any extremities like arms, hands or feet. It was just there, tall and looming. It felt like it was staring at me.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Usually these marauders arrived when they were least expected, often no doubt in the dead of night, or in the din of storm, or perhaps during a fret, one of those thick mists from the sea which are so prevalent in the area.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The completeness of the destruction, when it did come, seems to us to be shown by the position and excellent condition of the skeletons found in the southeast corner of the tower. the covering necessary for their preservation would be most simply provided by the early and entire collapse of the structure. If the excavators were correct, then the skeleton of the dog was a protector.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
A faithful hound struck down in the line of duty and buried where he fell under the collapsed tower, telling the story of his last desperate attempt to protect the station and his people.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
With such a dramatic ending, and no doubt some unfinished business with the invaders, it isn't a stretch to imagine this faithful dog continuing his guard duties along the shoreline of Kettle Ness, even in the afterlife. So, did the Reverend Omand exercise a terrifying hellhound, or did he encounter the goodest boy of Kettle Ness? Just a faithful doggo doing a heckin' protec,
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I would hide under my covers every night, and I remember sweating profusely because I was so afraid, and probably also being roasting under the covers, but I was too terrified of the shadow man to dare sleep without the covers over my head. I'd mentioned it to my sister and my mum in my childhood and was told, you were dreaming.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I can assure you that I was wide awake for most of my childhood and to this day at 36, I struggle to sleep without some form of light.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I huff and puff my way up the steps. I didn't exactly think I would fly up them with Mina's speed and grace, but there does seem to be something about these steps beyond their sheer number that makes them quite exhausting. Whether it's their height or depth, Or the ratio of the incline, I don't know. Maybe it's simply my lack of fitness.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Or maybe Mina had superb cardio endurance from repeatedly climbing these steps in a corset. Who knows? But I do understand why it's said that these stairs were constructed to test the faith and commitment of the parishioners as they made the arduous climb to church every Sunday. I plop down on a handy-looking bench, a simple plank of wood set into the nook of the iron railing.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There are several of these and some people hover around them, looking longingly at the much-needed seat but hesitating to sit down. I can guess why, for it's quite well known that these are not actually seats for weary climbers, but coffin rests.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
As we heard earlier, parishioners from not just Whitby, but villages all around, would have had to attend St Mary's for their biggest life ceremonies, including their final one, where they would be carried in their coffin up these very steps. The coffin bearers must have had muscles of steel, and I can imagine how well needed these coffin rests would have been.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I have no compunction about resting on one to get my breath back though, as I'm sure that the spirits of Whitby won't mind a bit of respectful company as I admire the view and reflect on my lack of stamina.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But I don't linger too long and push on to the top, where the ground flattens out and the square tower of St Mary's Church comes into view with the abbey ruins rearing up dramatically in the distance. At the very edge of the graveyard, the tall, carved St Cadman's Stone Cross perches on the cliff edge like a sentinel standing watch over the town below.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Down in the harbour, the waves glisten and glitter in the sun, and small, colourful boats bob cheerfully, safe in the encircling arms of the long, curving piers. Clusters of red-roofed houses spread out like a sweeping toy town diorama, and seagulls swoop across the water, shrieking their laughing cries.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We have reached Mina's destination, the place she described in her diary as the nicest spot in Whitby, and where her and Lucy spent many happy hours enjoying the sea breeze and the incredible views across the town and harbour from their favourite seat in the graveyard near the edge of the cliff.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It was also here, however, that Mina spotted the pale white figure of Lucy in a brief window of moonlight from her viewpoint near the whalebone arch, and behind the seat she saw a dark, menacing figure looming over her friend. The graveyard stretches out along the headland and all around the church.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Hundreds of headstones, leaning and worn, pitted by harsh salt winds and blackened by centuries of coal smoke, bear testament to the residents of Whitby's past. Many of the names of them have been scrubbed blank by time, wind and weather. Others, as we know from Mina's conversations in Dracula with Whitby elder Mr. Swales, bear dedications that belie the emptiness of the graves below.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Mr. Swales describes the leaning gravestones as tumbling down with the weight of lies written on them. And he's referring to the very real fact that a number of the headstones in St Mary's churchyard stand in memoriam of sailors and fishermen who were lost at sea. Their bodies never recovered and their headstones in the graveyard simply a memorial over an empty grave.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But the ghost story that we find in this churchyard concerns the bodies of seamen who do lie beneath their gravestones. a legend that would indicate either that the sailors and fishermen of Whitby felt it unbefitting for a man of the sea to have his body buried on dry land, or that the spirits of the ocean itself felt they had a claim over the souls who had made a living from its briny depths.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
That's exactly it. I was sitting here reading it thinking, this is exactly what Fitz described to me when we did the radio experiment in our house. It was a weird experiment involving a radio and a black mirror. But what Fitz saw at the top of our stairs, just outside where we're recording right now. Yeah.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
For it's said that any men of the sea whose bodies were buried in St Mary's Churchyard would soon be visited by the Bargeist coach. No, not the Barghest, the Large Black Hellhound, or possibly the Goodest Boy of Kettle Nest, depending on how you look at it, but the Bargh Geist.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Although, in actual fact, these are just the two most common ways of spelling the different phenomena that I've found in use today. but really they're the same word and according to my research were both originally pronounced bogost simply meaning town ghost and over the years the spelling and pronunciation has changed and evolved
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There doesn't seem to be a fixed pronunciation or spelling today, but for ease of telling the legends apart, for this story, I've gone with a spelling used in the Whitby Repository magazine, in which the spooky legend was recorded in 1831.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Although all our stories and legends today are in the graveyard and not the church itself, I can't resist a peek inside St Mary's. You might think that the place is most marvelled at for its great age, but in fact people are fascinated by its much more modern interior.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Anyone used to English churches is familiar with the typical rows of hard wooden pews standing in linear fashion either side of a long isle of the nave, facing a pulpit or lectern with the altar beyond. So St Mary's Church is rather a surprise, with its higgledy-piggledy jumble of pews and gallery boxes that look more like theatre stalls than the neat, orderly seating of a church.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In the centre, thick, grand columns soar up to a high ceiling, but further back, shorter columns, some squat, and some, like slender barley sugar twists, support a gallery that meanders around the walls. Instead of the orderly rows that we're used to, pews facing in different directions are crammed in like the blocks of a puzzle.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And it takes me a while to realise that this haphazard-seeming arrangement is actually all designed to face a central pulpit. A precarious-looking, three-tiered affair decked in red velvet in the middle of the church. I'm not sure what the designer was going for here, but at first glance it has the endearing look of a lopsided, slightly drunken attempt at an aerial bandstand.
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Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
In fact, the whole place has a rather dizzying, surreal effect, and I can understand why author Andrew White described the feel and proportion of the interior in his book A History of Whitby as like being between decks in a ship.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
I can see what he means, and, as he points out, this may not be so far from the truth, because it's quite likely that any woodworkers in Whitby capable of building the galleries could well have spent much of their lives in the business of shipbuilding.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There is a very practical reason for this jumbled-looking layout, though, and that is simply that by the end of the 17th century, the church had run out of room for the rapidly increasing number of parishioners, and so galleries, pews and extensions were added during the 16th, 17th and 1800s.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The accumulation of seating in various styles over the centuries, and the fact that many of the box pews were privately owned and designed and decorated according to the tastes of the owner, creates the somewhat chaotic but unique effect.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
It was loathed by many of the prim and proper Victorians, including one Reverend W. Keane, who described it as perhaps the most depraved sacred building in the kingdom. But others loved it for its eccentricities, as, I must admit, do I. As I make to leave, a sign in the porch catches my eye.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
pinned up on the notice board by weary church wardens, apparently tired of fielding endless requests from Taurus who, just like me, are on the trail of Dracula, it sternly requests, please do not ask staff where Dracula's grave is, as there isn't one. I chuckle to myself as I head back into the graveyard. They're right, of course, in a way,
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Despite the impact that the character has had on the town, Dracula didn't actually dwell too long in Whitby, moving swiftly on to London and eventually being chased by our intrepid gang of Victorian vampire hunters through the landscape of the Carpathian Mountains, where the book reaches its conclusion.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But avid fans of Dracula probably aren't referring to where Dracula was buried, but where he hid after leaving the wreck of the Demeter in the form of a huge black dog, in a grave directly under Lucy and Mina's favourite clifftop seat.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The witness got in touch with the Visit Whitby blog to relate what happened to him one April day when he was visiting Whitby for the first time. He'd been strolling through the churchyard on his way from the abbey, heading towards the top of the 199 steps, when he noticed a man and a woman with a coat draped over her right arm, sitting on one of the churchyard benches.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
They smiled at him as the visitor and his partner approached, so he called ahead to his partner, who was walking in front of him, and suggested that they should join the friendly couple on the bench. but she turned, surprised, and asked him, what couple? A confused witness turned his gaze from his partner back towards the bench, but it had gone.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
There was no bench, there was no man, and there was no woman holding a coat. Perplexed, he looked around and was struck to see that there were marks on the ground indicating that a bench had in fact once stood in that position, but it would be another seven years before he got any answers to this strange experience.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
On the next visit, seven years later, the witness ventured into St Mary's Church to explore the Looking around, he was shocked to see a black and white photo hung on the wall picturing several people. Because amongst them, he recognised the man and the woman he'd seen in the graveyard on that April day in 1995.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
The woman even had her coat draped over her arm in the photo, just the same as she had when he'd seen her, sitting on the bench. Of course, he was desperate to find out who the couple were, and a staff member was able to reveal that the people in the photo used to be church bell ringers.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Whether or not either of them were still alive was not revealed, but it soon became clear that he was not the first person to see them in the churchyard, and in fact, the witness's experience was a sighting familiar to some local inhabitants. So...
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
If you're ever walking through St Mary's Churchyard and you pass a friendly couple smiling at you from a bench, maybe just take a second look back over your shoulder and see if they're still there moments later. This witness's story reminds me of so many people's experiences of Whitby, including my own.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
From the very first visit, the place draws you into its inexplicable mysteries, and further visits only build layers of intrigue and fascination.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Before heading back down the 199 steps, across the east side, the swing bridge, and back up to the top of West Cliff and our waiting car, I take one last look at the spectacular view across the town and harbour and out to sea, as a thick mist reminiscent of the Demeter's dramatic arrival starts to drift in, and wonder what surprises and stories Whitby has in store for future visits.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We have explored so much, but I imagine there are many more wonders to discover yet, and I already can't wait to return.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
He was freaking out, listeners. And rightly so. I think you did actually ask me at one point to stick my head around the door and see if I could see it with my own eyes. I could not. It was only appearing in the mirror. The one thing I will say, and we never really know...
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
We watch these ghost hunting shows and they use all this equipment and, you know, it kind of sounds scientific, but really we don't know what we're measuring. But we do have an EMF detector in the house. It's actually like a business, like a workman's EMF. It's not a ghost hunting EMF detector. It's what you'd use as a builder to literally detect EMF in a house for...
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
you know if you're doing renovations or something for reasons but you know it's a professional one I should say it's not one that's made for a ghost hunting market so we literally have previously gone all around our house just out of interest when we got it to see if there were any areas of our house that had particularly high EMF it's not a particularly it's not an especially old house so most things were fine they weren't giving off any high readings that I would need to be worried about except the top of the stairs
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
yeah that was i mean obviously we're talking electromagnetic waves and they they're not necessarily bound by floors or walls oh no and there's a very practical reason why there's high emf at the top of the stairs is because the the top of the stairs is directly above our um fuse cabinet and the fuse cabinet is the only place in the house that gives up any significant emf and it's actually quite high because it's an old fuse board
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
But because that landing is directly above the fuse board, I've always assumed that that's why there would be high EMF there. I mean, I don't know how EMF travels, but it just makes sense. It's literally directly above it. So is that, you know, then you ask the question, it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Is the EMF causing weird activity at the top of our stairs?
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
And as always, we want to say a massive thank you to all of our patrons and coffee supporters, old and new. I know this episode has been a long time coming and this whole series, including the third instalment, which we still have coming up, has been a labour of love. But it's something I've wanted and needed to create for basically 20 years.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Is it the other way around? Is it just a complete coincidence? Yeah.
Knock Once For Yes
Whitby: On the trail of Dracula
Yeah. As in this situation, you weren't at the top of the stairs. We were elsewhere looking up and having, again, in a kind of nerdy way, tested our entire house. Yeah.