Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson & Classic Ghost Stories | Haunted Literature (Ep 186)

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ah hi hi why does two girls boring well because you've been running around europe for two weeks apart and we're used to being together multiple times a week wait we're wearing the same necklace oh my god this was from a fabfitfun box like yeah three years ago that's so funny and i haven't worn it in so long and then when i was going to europe i was like oh this is really cute and i i've been wearing it now ever since that is hilarious i must have just

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been channeling you or maybe it was like i saw you wearing it in pictures in europe and i just subconsciously missed you just went out where we just missed each other we missed each other and we're on the same wavelength and we always feel connected to each other we have fancy new headphones yeah look at these beauties hi i got these for free so we decided that uh should also get matching ones so that we can we can match as always as always this is two girls one ghost two girls one ghost and we are your ghostesses that is corinne and i am sabrina

Celebrating birthdays

and and happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear sabrina it's your birthday in six days from when this comes out right 26 yeah friday or does it come out the day after uh or the great question

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well it's the 26th so everyone has the opportunity to to hello can congratulate you on being 29 years old 29. congratulate me congratulations hurrah who's that honestly that's a big feat given that you've always thought you were just going to die in a car accident yeah but i don't think it was young i never said yeah i just know that i'm gonna yeah well we should celebrate every birthday yes absolutely i'm a big proponent of celebrating birthdays i basically just got off of an airplane so i want to give

Coffee and dark humor

everyone a heads up i will be consuming quite a bit of coffee during this episode so i will probably start here and who knows where i'll end up but well we're going to go on this journey together yeah this is our new asmr podcast where we just hear sabrina slurping bean water i made that louder so everyone could hear it but i'm usually quiet quiet i should have grabbed some too a quiet zipper the quiet sipper oh my gosh sabrina you

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should add that to like a book or show or something like that's the name of the serial killer the quiet zipper and it's very haul how do they kill the movie they poison tea at tea shops local tea shops and coffee shops and so all the baristas are are under scrutiny and all the police are looking at them but it's it it's not one of them so no one knows the serial killers sleep is slipping it's a quiet slipping sipper killer serial killer um they're slipping into coffee shops and tea houses late at night with their herbal remedies that are poisonous and toxic and slipping them into things that people will later sip right well here's the kicker it's that they actually are in charge of the packaging and so certain packages of coffee and tea they lace the packaging and so no one knows how it's actually getting into the tea and

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they're just slipping silently through the night wow uh yeah we just gave a serial killer some ideas and we are sorry to the world first get a job at a packaging manufacturer leia also will be a chatty gal today

Leia updates

because because she missed you she missed us yeah oh oh it was so cute though last night like whenever we get home from a long trip and we had a couple friends come by and stay with her while we were gone but whenever we get back from a trip she purrs for 24 hours like she doesn't stop so hurry up and it is so cute it makes me so happy so last night snuggles were had let me tell you snuggles were had well you've had her since college right you got her in college so she's really junior she's used to constantly being with you that is true that is true um well we mentioned this last week this was a hard pivot that was not a good transition because the coffee hasn't kicked in yet but i do leia's screaming in the background yeah

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it's like chaos what's happening welcome

New format announcement

back welcome back hello we are really excited because last week we announced our new format of two girls one ghost and we're so excited we hope you're excited it's gonna start after the next encounters so this episode's gonna come out and then i'm using my italian language hand gestures yes um jazz hands and then encounters will come out next week and after that we're gonna switch up the format so they're two well i guess three episodes a week but we're gonna have yeah a researched episode on sundays encounters on what do we say thursdays well no so we yes encounters on thursdays and then our campfire stories we record them live on tuesday but they will be posted on wednesday so you will get in your feed a sunday wednesday and thursday podcast episodes we're gonna be so annoying we're just like a new alert

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one goes new wow are you listening to us it's gonna be so fun um we're very excited brain spasm corinne i already told you this in the beginning of this before we started recording but your freaking gallery wall is sick

Gallery wall decoration

thank you i had a mental breakdown the other day and decided i hated everything in my apartment and spammed sabrina with a thousand photos and said what do you think if i do this or that and then i use canva our best friend for social media and i like literally mapped out like what everything would look like so i'm waiting on a few more frames and it looks like i ordered a bunch of people helped me i put on instagram like where should i find good prints and people recommended society6 and etsy and stuff like that so i actually shopped on etsy and i got quite a few spooky prints so that i can make this into more of like a halloweeny type of gallery wall i need to do that wait will you send me what you got and i'll try to match you yes okay okay i have a ton that are saved i wonder if you can make etsy oh my gosh what okay

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sorry there's cannons blasting into the ocean i was gonna say it did sound like there was someone bouncing a ball and i was like that's kind of creepy because it's like a little kid bouncing a ball but it's it's cannons i should take a picture i

Boston harbor noises

will take a picture right now so that i can oh no i'm missing it i'm missing it it's going too fast okay so the uss constitution is parked in charlestown in boston um very historic and sometimes they take it out for like a little a little peruse i really don't know why their cannons blasting today but every once in a while since i've lived in this apartment maybe like two or three times i've been sitting here and it will go by and just shoot off cannons i don't know if they're real cannons or if it's just like smoke and noise but i mean it's going by it sounds really cool and goodbye yeah my favorite part of them doing that is the cute little i love tugboats and there's always tugboats accompanying

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it so that's really the best part of of the canon blast i love that i love it so fun but yeah anywho i will i will send you all of those prints honestly maybe i'll just post them all on social media like in our stories or whatever so people can but that i either bought or considered off of etsy we can all match yeah so we can all be matching it's a really good idea it'll be great um but

Details on new format

going going back to our conversation about the new format just to remind everyone if you haven't listened to the encounters episode uh or if you did not see our uh social media post on our fifth year anniversary that we created um announcing the changes so in the new format not only are you getting three episodes a week now but we will also be doing our research episodes will have just me or just sabrina doing the researched part and the other person will be doing it encounters and the reason we're doing this is because there are so many stories honestly the story that i picked out today i was like oh i

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should have saved this but there's so many very much where we want to add way more details yeah we feel like we're cutting so much content out to give ourselves like keep ourselves into the the time that we've previously done for this podcast and now we'll be able to add more details in and we will also be able to more comfortably uh do multiple parts two partners two partners yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's gonna be the soothing sounds of sabrina's story uh last episode that we post after september first when we make the changes it's great upgrade excited upgrade um but

Mary Shelley story

that's coming soon for now we have i'm really excited about this topic because so for i don't know if we explain this but for our birthdays we both picked our own topic so corinne for her birthday picked cryptids i picked old-timey ghost stories and yes

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i am so thrilled by it because i've always had this obsession with the romantic age and like romanticism and the 1900s or earlier of ghost stories and it started with my fascination and love for mary shelley and for those of you who don't know where are you and welcome to my brain um she wrote frankenstein of course oh yes but of course of course we've heard her name a million times yes and so this era of ghosters like the victorian era of ghost stories opened up so many doors for female authors in literature and i just think that's so fascinating but i wrote a little bit i did some like basically i've been obsessed with mary shelley because when i first read about her i learned that she wrote frankenstein on like a stormy weekend retreat away with friends and they decided to have a competition who can

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write the best horror story really and she wrote the concept for frankenstein that weekend which i think is so romantic the idea of being in a cabin with friends and it's storming and they create horror stories like that is my dream coming right right well that's what you and i have talked about we're like let's just rent a little cabin or something in the woods yeah and just like hang out there for a week doing podcast stuff first talking whatever i love that and i love that such a successful book came out of it yes so and like as a writer just gives me life anyway it's the most beautiful story i wish that i lived in the 1800s and like could spend weekends away creating horror stories um and not looking at my phone but you know it is what it is yeah but we live in the time that we do i have so much information about mary shelley that i've been holding in my brain that is so perfect for this podcast that i wanted to share and i didn't know when and this felt like the most appropriate time so as a

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introduction into the old-timey ghost stories i wanted to tell you um some old-timey information about mary shelley that is spooky love it okay

Spooky Shelley facts

mary for sure would have been a phantom she's like a sad girl with a predilection towards like the dark disturbing creepy of the world um her favorite place to go was a cemetery and i'm pretty sure she uh lost her virginity in a cemetery [Laughter] how do you know this it's it's written like in history i either she wrote about it or someone wrote about gosh we would have one thousand percent been best friends with earthquakes yeah yeah i lost my virginity in a cemetery like if i were in a down in down a dark hall if i were one of the students i would really hope mary shelley was channeling through me oh yes i totally agree i also i mean we've always talked about how cemeteries seem to be

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thought of as the spookiest places but in reality oftentimes have the least amount of paranormal activity going on yeah like they're peaceful yes totally that for the few spirits that do remain and they're just like you know twiddling their thumbs looking around they're like yes when they see mary shelley having her her romantic first moment yeah yeah they're like you go girl okay and the part that i'm so excited to tell you is that when her husband percy died she kept his heart inside a love poem in her death [Laughter] was that allowed that was legal i don't think we can do that now i don't think you can do that now but let me tell you the story so okay

Frankenstein inspiration

percy shelley died on july 9th of 1822 and it was because his boat was caught in a storm and he drowned very sadly his body was recovered a week later and

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identified because he kept a certain book in one of his pockets and according to legend which is obviously now fact in my brain that during the cremation process percy's heart refused to burn which is already spooky that's very spooky a friend took his heart and then decided to give it to mary and rather than bury the heart with the rest of percy's ashes and remains mary decided to keep it in her desk and she wrapped it into in a love poem and it wasn't until mary died in 1851 30 years after percy died so that means his heart was sitting in her desk for 30 years she was petrified yeah at that point which but also so romantic imagine like mary doing her writing and her lover's heart is just in her destroy i just think that's it's disturbing but it's also very beautiful your face i mean sure

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i think you're replaceable it's almost more disturbing to me that it was just like thrown into the desk than being put in one of those liquidy jars where organs are preserved it wasn't just i like i just flopped it no it was wrapped very it's like you know when you go buy meat from the deli but i was just thinking like the meat market yeah that's weird but in a love poem that's beautiful okay okay nick give me your heart wait question and i don't know if if you'll know the answer to this but did he die before or after she wrote frankenstein um after because he was with her the weekend they did the competition okay yeah i was thinking that was probably good inspiration just keeping body parts no apparently i guess not so apparently it was i think it was four of them it was mary percy and two other friends who

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were at this weekend and they were talking about science and like the evolution of science and creation and mary was inspired after a conversation so they basically they were like okay let's this weekend let's all write a horror story and she had writer's block and one day they were just having i just love this idea of although she had writer's block they were having stimulating very int intellectual conversations about the world and like how in science and art and history and all this stuff anyway they were talking about how what if a scientist creates something that ends up becoming really dangerous and so that's where frankenstein she was inspired by by that to write

Heart in the drawer

frankenstein anyway 30 years after percy died and 30 years of having his heart in her drawer mary shelley dies in 1851 and it wasn't until then so for 30 years she has his heart in her desk it wasn't until she died that people discovered the heart in mary's drawer it was then moved to

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the family vault in 1889 which 1889 is 30 years after mary died so i don't know what happened to it for 30 years i don't know anyway clearly she had some good people around her because they took it and moved it into the family yeah i feel like a lot of people would have happened upon that and been like this is the most disturbing and dark thing i've ever seen i'm going to throw this out or hide this from everybody else like she hid from the world because i don't want people to think any thing poorly about mary think you are you i'm like this is romantic as heck give it to me like someone take my heart and put it in a poem i'm not against it i just am i am thinking of the smell yeah that is what i was thinking of i my biggest curiosity is after 30 years what does the decay of a heart look like like does it even still look like a heart

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it's probably just a little raisin right it's just shriveled up someone's like a snack a chestnut that's what i think it probably looks like mary was saving this for later but she's dead now oh it's just reminding me of all those videos of the poor people that bring their loved ones ashes to a park or a beach on disney world gets inhaled right back yeah i mean it goes back to our accidental cannibalism conversation doesn't it yep yeah but anyway so that was the mary shelley mary wollen's craft shelley is one of my favorite authors and i just think in terms of a female writer she's incredible and also spooky as heck and i love her so that was the inspiration or that's something that's always been in my heart and i was so excited to then use that to talk about old-timey ghost stories for this episode perfect topic the perfect i was a little nervous when you said that because i was like oh gosh what am i

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gonna find on the internet about this but it actually was such a fun topic to research okay your first which is great because i

The Body Snatcher story

have time to get caffeinated yes okay this is a good one it's it's one of those stories where i mean i said it before i was somewhat like damn it i wish i had saved this for a two-parter because it was one of those stories where when i initially started doing the research i was like this is really interesting this is really fascinating and more was uncovered as i did more research and i was like damn this could be someone else some other podcast out there could could make this we can always revisit yeah we could what if we did you know how like reddit have like the you know you have a original post and then you have like answers below it we could see our old episodes to be like hey we're responding to you oh i really like that idea i yeah that's a great idea and two we

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can revisit some old episodes that we think really deserved more time and attention and yes you know i think it's a good idea grab some some from our vault from our bunker redo underground bunker okay

Landlady inspiration

but so the this is the background to start behind the story the body snatcher by robert lewis stevenson do you know this one no but i like that but it sounds great right yeah he was a scottish writer from the 1800s and in 1881 stevenson's family spent the summer living in a small in a small scottish whoa i cannot this is like a tongue twister for me a small scottish village of pit lockery and i feel like people are going to tell me that i pronounced that incorrectly but i watched 1 000 youtube videos in practice before this so i never will okay

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so when his family was staying here in this little tiny scottish village his landlady just she was probably like mary shelley she just had this brain full of old ghost stories and urban legends from the area totally yeah she's like welcome to my airbnb do you want to hear a ghost story i think that's exactly who she was yeah but stevenson was like yeah i'm down this is super cool and i'm a writer like inspire me and so she he would sit around and she would just tell him stories all the time and it really set the mood for him to write and boy did he write because three of his best-known stories were written during his stay here so he was very inspired by his landlady's retelling of spooky stories i love that she's getting the credit now because i feel like everyone is inspired by especially writers like you're inspired by people around you and right deserve the credit you know yeah shout out shout out to this lady i did not write her

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name down uh but we know that she existed and yeah because of her three amazing stories were birthed from stevenson and one of these stories was the body snatcher which was published in 1884 in a christmas edition of the paul mall

Med school plot

gazette oh my gosh mine this is the best thing like i feel like mine is also published in was published in a christmas edition and that's the best is that ghost stories especially in this time were told traditionally around the holidays bring it back well it is it is very funny because i was like okay this isn't like the normal place for ghost stories to be but i kept thinking modern day and you're right back in the day like this is this is the point of ghost stories were for people around christmas and holidays to gather around and tell spooky tales oh my gosh for my third year i think for my 30th birthday i'm gonna do that where everyone has to come prepared with their best ghost story

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oh i love that that's so great you should and you should we should have we should write them all down and publish an actual christmas edition magazine from your 30th and by publishing we'll print it just for us and then email it to people if they want it email it to people yeah great idea okay so the body snatcher was written and in this story there is a group of people that are having a few drinks and the story's told by a narrator who's kind of witnessing this and giving background on the story one of the main characters wolf macfarlane walks in and macfarlane is a doctor a profession which is you know highly respected and regarded and so it surprises the group when another friend at the social gathering fett suddenly recognizes mcfarland and has a really angry outburst directed towards him the two of them turns out had worked together in med school and their job was

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under the management of anatomist dr k to receive bodies that would be used by the medical school and those students would then practice dissection on the bodies yeah so they these two guys fets and mcfarlane together in med school would pay these men to drop off the bodies and then would bring them into the like basically check them into the medical facility and give them to the proper students it was a student student job you know no big deal but the delivery men for these bodies were quite off and there was this suspicious air about them but what are mcfarland and fett's gonna do about this right like they're just two med students doing this little odd job and receiving the deliveries but then one day

Identifying the body

a woman's body is delivered and fetz recognizes her he says god almighty that's jane galbrath i know her i tell

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you she was alive and hardy yesterday and then the delivery men and i feel like i'm telling this like it actually happened but it just i mean the story is well written like it feels like it truly happens it feels like it does wait it reminds me so much of the wasn't there like a pair of serial killers who did this in history we'll get there on page seven okay yup i'll go back to drinking my coffee yeah okay so the delivery man after fetz is like what the hell i know this chick she was totally alive yesterday the delivery man i said before i know this trick from down the block uh you know so they give fats this really threatening and dark look and are like give me your money like you owe us for this delivery and they insist that he's mistaken that

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this is not someone he knows that this is not someone who was alive and walking around yesterday and it's in this moment that fetts realizes these bodies are being delivered to the medical school probably not because they died organically but rather because they're being murdered with the purpose of selling them to the medical school yeah so fats is disturbed as if there weren't enough dead bodies during that time okay yeah well i'll tell you why they were struggling to in in a little bit why they couldn't have just easily acquired all the dead bodies that were okay all over the place at the time um but fetts wanted to report this murder because he was very disturbed by it but mcfarlane the guy that were being told by the narrator he got upset with yeah at the bar mcfarlane who was working with him basically convinces vets not to mcfarland is like uh yeah man like most of the bodies that come to

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us probably been murdered don't you think like how else would we get so many and he's saying if you report this now we probably will both be implicated in this crime because how would we not have raised any suspicion about all of this right uh so they're better bad guy gaslighting right exactly so it's easier for a mcfarland to deal with this because he very much views bodies as bodies not really the remains of people who once walked the same streets as him but vets he really struggles with this and he shifts his mindset uh to try to deal with this and instead of responding or or recalling this woman who just was delivered to them by the name jane who he knew her by in real life he starts to adjust and then the story starts to just call her the unfortunate girl so he's trying to kind of remove himself and dissociate and and essentially like dehumanize the people that are

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coming in on the slabs for them to dissect truly

The tavern debate

so after this incident in the story they go to the tavern to have some drinks and this other guy gray who knows mcfarland comes up to them and starts this huge debate really just roasting and bullying mcfarland and it's really pissing mcfarland off and he's ordering mcfarland around he's saying things like i'm a pretty bad fellow myself but mcfarlane and he's just really poking at mcfarland poking at mcfarland and fetz is seeing how upset mcfarland is with this random guy gray coming up to him and just like being mean uh yeah so vets tries to stick up for him responding to gray's comment about mcfarlane hating gray and wishing that because gray was like i bet mcfarland hates me and he just wants to stab me and oh so what's gonna happen i think i know pets is like we medicals have a better way than that when we dislike

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a dead friend of ours we dissect him so kind of you know yeah sending out threats trying to defend mcfarland but also clearly not so subtle implicating himself like yeah what they've been doing uh but in the end when they leave the bar if it's like that's life you know sometimes you're going to run into people that are mean to you that are rude to you yeah yeah there are good days there are bad days but you just keep chugging along so that's very much the perspective that pets has yeah so imagine fetz is the prize when the next day the man that was rude to mcfarland gray is now on the table at the moment ready to be dissected he is now a sample

Dissecting the bully

oh my gosh vets realizes this and with almost complete certainty that mcfarland must have murdered this guy yeah because he heard like the rude comments and killed him he basically is like what the hell

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mcfarland and mcfarland tells that's not to say a word about this to man up to just do his job and if he doesn't there's a good chance that he may find himself on the same table as gray so mcfarlane i know bad guy bad guy together they ensure gray's body is quickly and completely dissected by giving him to another medical student who had been waiting patiently for the chance to dissect ahead leaving no evidence of his identity and screwing up any for forensic evidence that could have linked mcfarlane and implicated fets in this crime so now these two men they're basically coming to terms with what's been happening and they just continue their work fetz basically gives up and he's like i guess i'm just this bad guy now like this is my job this is my life and then one day dr k who was the anonymous that they're working under he is feeling a bit low on inventory

Graveyard snatching

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so uh he asks vets and macfarlane to go to the graveyard and dig up the fresh body of a woman who recently died so be a body snatcher yeah and they agree to do it they drink a lot before doing it they're like if we are going to do this not that mcfarland had any problem murdering great but maybe a different thing liquid courage true i guess he you know murdering is different than digging up a body it doesn't do the same thing for mcca mcfarlane right and i guess the other thing is this woman is someone that wasn't known to them whereas gray was personally known to yeah so maybe he's like you know i had beef with this person and so i justified murdering them but this little lady in the grave is you know she's a stranger i feel bad like desecrating her grave that's where he draws the line

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that's where it's not okay too far too far and so they drink a bit too far uh get super drunk head to the graveyard dig up the casket and remove the body that is now in a dripping sack because it was a dark and stormy night and it was pouring rain oh the smell so i know i can smell it right now i just wish that it was 20 degrees out when they did this because that would help with the smell but if it were 20 degrees there is no way they would have been able to really dig up the ground would have been frozen the ground it's frozen totally yeah so they are removing the body that is now a dripping sack and they are carrying it to their carriage the sack was described as soaking wet and hitting them in the face as they carried the woman's body the dogs that were with for a second i forgot that this was just a ghost story i was like right real how horrible yeah how horrible but well everything's a little bit based in

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reality right yeah that's true i think i don't think anything hasn't happened before with stories like this you know there's gotta be someone out there at some point who did body snatch in pouring rain and was slapped in the face by decaying wet sack burlap bodies stuff yeah yeah yeah okay so they brought dogs with them as somewhat protection but also like to alert them if there were other people you know wandering around and they were potentially going to get caught so the dogs that were with them began to howl and so the men got really spooked so they get out of the graveyard towards the light of the buildings and they're able to see the body that they'd exhumed a little bit better

The terrible discovery

and i'm going to read you the last two pages of the story and this is public domain so yeah yeah uh the rain had molded the rough sacking to the outlines of the body underneath the

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head was distinct from the trunk the shoulders plainly modeled something at once spectral and human riveted their eyes upon the ghastly comrade of their drive for some time mcfarland stood motionless holding up the lamp a nameless dream was swathed like a wet sheet about the body and tightened the white skin upon the face of fett a fear that was meaningless a horror of what could not be kept mounting to his brain another beat of the watch and he had spoken but his comrade forestalled him that is not a woman said mcfarland in a hushed voice it was a woman when we put her in there whispered fetch hold that lamp i must see her face and as fitz took the lamp his companion untied the fastenings of the sack and drew down the cover from the head the light fell very clear upon the dark

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well-molded features and smooth shaven cheeks of a two familiar countenance often be held in dreams of both of these young men a wild yell rang out into the night each leapt from his own side into the roadway the lamp fell broke and was extinguished and the horse terrified by the unusual commotion bounded and went towards edenberg at a gallop bearing along with it the sole occupant of the gig the body of the dead and the long dissected gray so the body that macfarlane had murdered and that they together as a team made sure there was no evidence of and had given to students to dissect and basically make into nothing was now haunting had haunting them had been carried out in a burlap sack oh my gosh and all the evidence went away as the horse-drawn carriage left them in the pouring rain just

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shocked together

Real life inspiration

wow so here's what is even more wild which you alluded to earlier uh this author stevenson while he was very inspired by the the ghost stories and tales that this woman in the neighborhood village had told him he was also inspired to write the story uh because this is based on a real-life case of body snatching dr k the anatomist that these two guys worked for in the story was inspired by robert knox robert k who employed two men in real life william burke and william hare to bring him bodies for dissection and anatomy lectures the problem was there was a short supply of bodies because at the time and this is one of the things you brought up like why why would you have to snatch bodies there's so many dead people uh well at the time scottish law only allowed bodies used for medical research

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to belong to people who had died in prison who had died by suicide or who were orphans so people began body snatching and these body snatchers were referred to as resurrection men

Turning to murder

and so burke and hare they started out as resurrection men this was their that's a nice name compared to body snatchers resurrection men like again resurrection ideal of the idea of yeah suddenly you're jesus you're bringing people back to life yeah but you're actually just like taking their bodies from the grave and disturbing their peace to dissect them yeah yes uh not great no um they they move from being resurrection men and body snatchers to murderers after a man who was lodging at hare's house so hair was like basically the og airbnb like he had a few properties and he had people like short-term long-term rentals physically uh of course and there was a

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guy who died of dropsy which i had to look up what dropsy was yeah what is it and it's basically now it's a symptom now it's known to be a symptom of like kidney or liver disease or congenital heart uh disease but basically it's it's swelling like you your whole body retains water and liquid and you just get so incredibly swollen um drops so yeah so this guy died while staying at harris property and harrah's like what do i do here's the body just kind of happened to be here yeah free free game i guess so together totally he grabs burke um and together they decide to sell the body so they made a deal with a local anatomist and essentially snatched the body once it was ready in the coffin for burial so they still had to go through so that they wouldn't get caught they still had to like snatch it he was dead and yeah they still just snatch it um they get paid a

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great price for it which helped them justify what they would do next

The victims

two months later a woman who was lodging at hare's house had a fever and hair was concerned that her illness would result in others not wanting to stay there and interrupt his cash flow so he grabbed his buddy burke and together they killed her and then they sold her body to the anatomist robert knox they continued to murder people smothering and choking them for the next 10 months and this was in 1828 by the way yeah no and people don't want to stay at this airbnb because someone had a fever but now now that people are dying and disappearing right totally fine it it very much reminded me of the the story that was often told behind lavinia fisher and the reason why she was put in jail the yeah you know murdering the body sweeney todd hotel exactly

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um okay in one case there was a woman named mary patterson and she was with her friend friend and they were hanging out with broken hair drinking until they realized that these men were married and mary's friend left but mary kind of like stuck around you know she was just seeing what was up drinking having a good time and later birken hair they lock their own wives out of the room and they murder

Hiding the evidence

mary so burke's wife kept all of mary's clothes and skirts and petticoats and birkenhair quickly brought mary's body to knox so basically the wives were fully aware of what their husbands were doing and we're like stealing jewelry and clothes yes yeah knox's assistant asked where the body came from as it was still warm and he recognized the woman mary and so burke said the girl drank herself to death and her body was then stored in

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whiskey for three months before it was dissected which also i'm like okay i understand why they were putting it in whiskey because alcohol and you know i guess yeah it's like yeah a form of preservation but at the same time i was thinking when i first read that i was like and then what were they going to do with it i was totally thinking they drank there was some route yeah like where you know maybe you have the body seep into whiskey and then you sell it to people who want to have uh body infused whiskey infused whiskey yeah yeah i don't know i'm not a cannibal but i feel like that would be a market that would do well tm curtin's new side hustle like passive income just dunk bodies and whiskey no okay that was gross anyway so i'm sure they were [ __ ] themselves while the body just sat there for three months before the evidence was

42:00

essentially like taken away but then her friend comes and looks for her and burke and hare say the woman left mary left with a traveling salesman from glasgow so then they just they're like no one's catching us that was a great story totally so their wives have her clothes and it's totally fine oh my gosh yeah i talk about a trophy it's like the whole outfit the whole house is littered with the jedi the murdered people's items belongings yeah totally so they don't really care they continue murdering people at hare's lodge they murder a man who fell ill drunk lodgers disabled lodgers couples women men a grandmother and her grandson and the grandson expec expression and fear on his face before being murdered uh burke said haunted him until he died

The final victim

but did that make him stop probably not and no so the final victim was murdered

43:00

on halloween of 1828 margaret doherty docherty however you say it with an irish accent she was a middle-aged irish woman and she was lured back to the lodge by burke after a night of drinking but the only problem with his plan was that there were other lodgers staying there as well ann and james gray and their family so burke and hare were like oh oh my gosh we totally weren't expecting our family member margaret to pass through so we actually really need you to take this money and go find other lodging for tonight because margaret's going to stay here instead choose our family we can't say no so they try to kick these people out yeah we're staying in there in their place so this this family and in james gray's family they leave but they return at 9 00 pm to grab some of the clothing that they needed that night for their kids and when they get inside

44:00

burke hare their wives and margaret are all their drunk singing dancing having a whole party and then they leave and back of the house now with no other witnesses and just the murderers margaret is murdered she's placed on a pile of straw at the end of the bed and when the grays the gray family who had left they return the next day burke is floating around them he's being really suspicious really weird and he's telling them not to go into certain areas he's heading towards the bed where ann gray had hung her stockings the night before and like trying to skirt around her and make sure she didn't go to certain areas of her the room she's renting and so they were like uh okay and uh yeah the grace we're just

Police investigation

trying to like play it cool or whatever i like how the author used the gray's name in the yes story yeah right a callback to the actual and even dr k like yeah dr

45:00

knox dr k it's a lot of right i mean there was no sugar coating what happened he was like this is because from the news murderers yeah uh but the grays once burke had left they then searched that section of the house that they were burke was being really weird about and they find margaret's body and so they go to the police and burke's wife tried to bribe them before they could get there into not telling and offered a substantial weekly allowance to keep their money oh my gosh so the the wives are fully in fully supported this business yeah they want this to happen because they are because they're reaping the benefits yeah totally they're getting all this money new clothes they're you know having great parties with the people before their husbands murder them never worth it no no uh the gray is good people they're like

46:00

[ __ ] that we're not taking your money we're gonna tell yeah and so they they do they tell the police uh but again it's not like you can just bring my ring 9-1-1 they have to go venture out and leave finally find them bring them back so it gives birken hair some time so brick and hair they rushed to remove the body before police could get there uh but they didn't have enough time to dispose of the blood blood soaked clothing and other evidence but the body's not there which was the most important part right so the police

Trials and consequences

then instead of just being like where's the body they look for it guess where they go knocks is off they go in and guess who is on the dissecting room table margaret they're so dumb so dumb maybe they were hoping dr knox would dissect it too quick for right to be recognized or that the police take too long to know

47:00

where to go look uh but i can imagine that in that town there are only so many people doing dissections and with body snatchers you'd assume they would float in and out frequently the police would yeah i don't know so birken hair and their two wives are arrested hair was granted immunity for giving up burke which he did and burke and his wife were tried his wife was found not guilty but burke was guilty and sentenced to death by hanging public outcry from this case brought attention to the need for bodies for the use of medical research yeah and directly contributed to the passing of the anatomy act of 1832 and this basically allowed legal access for physicians surgeons and students to obtain unclaimed bodies that didn't necessarily meet those three criteria that were previously uh law and allowed people to also donate their bodies uh or donate the next their next of kin in exchange for the anatomy

48:00

school to pay for the burial oh so still going through like the

Burke's skeleton

religious or whatever certain burials people wanted for um just like the sake of of having something for their exchange yeah yes uh but their actual physical body wasn't buried it was donated to the school wow so as for burke he was executed and his body was dissected after his skeleton was put on display at the anatomical museum of inberg medical school why do they always do this oh it is still on display of course you can go look at it it is in a case a glass case it's standing upright so you can see every angle of his skeleton and the museum is open on the last saturday of every month if anyone is curious and wants to go

49:00

that's it that's the only time it's open once a month uh well it's a medical school oh so it's not like a normal operating museum yeah so i think they just open like certain parts of the museum to the past that's really cool yeah that's the real life story of the body snatchers wow

Listener story

i love that story i mean it's so disturbing but i think it is so fascinating right and also i have so many notes on like how like they anyway to to give the body that they're trying to hide to the person who they've been giving all the people they've been murdering to is so sorry frankly dumb dumb dumb plan i think they had just gotten away so many times with the bare minimum of lying that they just thought that they were funny they were invincible but yeah i mean you think you'd just go hide the body

50:00

somewhere else for a little while it seems pretty wild or if it were me your body snatchers do the opposite you already know how to like dig up bodies go put it into a grave that you've recently that's a good idea yeah that's a great idea sabrina you and i were in this situation together i don't think we would have been caught no we wouldn't we wouldn't have kept all the clothes no bury that in the grave too exactly burn it get rid of the evidence of course put it all in whiskey isn't that yeah the evidence right there alcohol burns everything off well no apparently it preserves it if the body was kept in there for three months i'm just thinking about like well and also let's be real back in the day they were they weren't fingerprinting anybody no that's the other they weren't doing dna evidence that's what i would like to use like get rid of the dna yeah that was me you don't need to you don't need to no um i heard a fact the other day that was i said something like you have like a one in four chance or a one in three chance of getting away with murder

51:00

still oh well i guess that makes sense there's so many cold cases yeah i think i'd be curious to know what type of murder yeah i feel like the ones that are always done by like the partners it's usually you get caught right someone turns on someone else yeah well well that's body snatching that's a body snatching and naturally not a romantic victorian ghost story that is a disturbing ghost story i can't believe i mean i can't believe just because of history but the fact that that was a christmas edition ghost story right yeah being haunted by the ghost of the man who you killed and dissected pretty much but also that makes sense if you murder someone i'd imagine that their spirit would haunt you yeah i am fairly certain and i'm going to talk about my butt

52:00

right now without any evidence but i feel like harvard and other really big schools like that were more recently in trouble for uh murders no illegally obtaining bodies from medical school i swear that's like recently i feel like i read that in the news a few years ago boston interesting i'll look it up okay yeah let me know because that sounds fascinating we'd love to know more

The old nurse story

all right birthday girl okay let's see what you picked okay my ghost story is called the old nurses story by elizabeth gasco and it was originally published in december of 1852 also in a christmas edition wow but before it feels very angel of death already that's the vibes i'm getting just by saying oh nurse oh it's not your reaction okay so we'll just be surprised here yeah we'll be surprised i actually had never heard of this story and it made me because these stories are

53:00

technically short stories right but they are they're kind of lengthy when you read them and it made me want to read just all of the old ghost stories that were published i wonder yeah i wonder if there's a book there should be a book that's like here's a collection of them yes like a coffee table book where it's just like here's a collection of from this decade all of the christmas edition ghost stories that were published i want the original newsletters though like i want the original ones i'm sure they exist my collection that's probably a expensive collection that seems like a great collector's item i will need to murder and sell bodies in order to afford this this hobby collection of mine uh also i looked it up very briefly and yes yeah harvard medical school was totally in hot water for were they they were grave robbing someone were they having

54:00

my question is who was doing the grave rapping and how was everyone on board with it or perhaps they weren't because it clearly came out yeah i i don't know i i'll have to do more okay for all i know this is like a recent article that was actually about like 200 years ago but we'll see okay yeah okay so before i go into my ghost story and tell you the story i wanted to give elizabeth a moment of recognition because she is so incredible and i'm just like i said with mary shelley i'm so fascinated by the women from the victorian era especially those who publish their work and dip their toes into the creepier side of storytelling because i feel like it was very difficult for them you know and and even like when i was looking into elizabeth i saw that a lot of people criticized her especially men so when she had died someone had actually

55:00

written that gaskell was all woman and makes a credible effort to overcome her natural deficiencies but

Elizabeth Gaskell biography

all in vain that her natural natural deficiencies just was that she was a woman yes that she tried to overcome being a woman in her writing but she didn't succeed and i was like okay okay all right anyway this is why because so many people have made pen names where they never say like you know where they call themselves like alex or charlie or something that can be right you know i wrote as men yeah right and it's sad makes me sad anyway it made me very mad and that that people were undermining her and saying because she was a woman she couldn't do much of anything but she actually paved the way for vocal feminism in the future which i think is so cool elizabeth was born on september 29th of 1810 in chelsea

56:00

london england and was a novelist biographer and short story writer she was one out of she was one of two out of eight children so there were eight children and only two of them survived infancy and then her mother died when she was very young her father felt ill-equipped to take care of her and so sent her to live with relatives which naturally would fill her childhood with confusion and distance between her and her direct family elizabeth then went on to marry a minister who together they wrote poems which i think is really beautiful and then she wrote based on life experiences so she had a son who had died in infancy and she wrote this book called mary barton which was said to have obvious depth and feeling with greatest descriptions since jane austen which is

Nurse story begins

high quality oh high regards yeah yeah and she communicated often with charles dickens who championed her success and

57:00

encouraged her to write short stories and gothic ghost stories and so charles dickens is actually the one who published the old nurse's story which is amazing i feel like she was clearly extremely talented especially given yeah many people were around her who were you know big big names for their time as well she was she got connected because she was all she sure did just as talented yes um she emphasized the role of women with complex narratives of women which was a kind of a first like she wrote stories of women in the way that men were writing stories about men like they had complexities and were be more than just you know the housewife or whatever it was they had depth and emotion and needs and wants um love her um i wrote this but it has to be wrong i i think i was thinking about my mom's birthday she just so i wrote that she

58:00

died on november 12 1965 which is my mom's birthday but that is not possible because she was born in 1810 vampire she's a vampire um but i believe the first part of that is right i just don't know the year um her collection lives on as does her legacy um if anyone's interested there are tons of books that she wrote and i just think we should support her love her love her love her love you love her love her okay so today i'm gonna share a story with you that is called the old nurses story and it was part of the christmas edition of charles dickens

Manor house move

household words in 1852 and i want the original copy of that or an original i imagine there are multiple we should look on ebay after this and see if there's oh gosh i wonder how much it is it is the perfect story to tell around

59:00

christmas because it is set on the snowy desert of northumberland fells in an isolated haunted house and leia is very excited about it of course yeah i'm scared she's like mommy come stop you were gone for so long and now you're scaring me oh i think she uh lost some weight while i was gone did she she wasn't feeding herself as much as she needed look at how cute oh my god precious she's still just so loafy she is a little loaf i love her okay this is the old nurse's story it begins and i'll do similar to what you did where i'm going to read some direct quotations and then i'll summarize the story but it begins you know my dears that your mother was an orphan and an only child and i dare

1:00:00

say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in westmoreland where i come from i was just a girl in the village school when one day your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nursemaid mighty proud i was i can tell ye when the mistress came and called me up and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle and a steady honest girl and one whose parents were very respectable though they might be poor i thought i should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young lady who was blushing as deep as i was as she spoke as she spoke of the coming baby and what i should have to do with it however i see you don't care so much for this part of my story as for what you think is to come so i'll tell you at once i was engaged and settled at the parsonage before miss rosamund that was the baby who is now your mother was born and just as some context so this is told from the perspective of the old nurse and she's telling the grandchildren

Tragic backstory

1:01:00

of rey of how she was the nurse to their mother okay okay got it so it's like a bedtime story so say like i'm the nurse who raised your mother corinne and now i'm telling you about the time i was brought into your mother's life yeah which seems so sweet it is gentle but knowing that this is a ghost story i know it's not gonna be not gonna end that way it is sweet but it is an interesting story like i imagine it a bedtime story and then as you will learn it feels like it will instill nightmares into children to be sure i had little enough to do with her when she came for she was never out of her mother's arms and slept by her all night long and was proud enough was i sometimes when the mistress trusted her to me there never was such a baby before or since though you've all been fine enough in your turns but for sweet winning ways

1:02:00

you've none of you come up to your mother which is such a slap in the face [Laughter] your mother your mother if i heard that well i guess it's like oh wow my mom's so special i don't know your mother took after her mother who was a real lady born a miss fernaval a granddaughter of lord furnivals in northumberland i believe she had neither brother nor sister and had been brought up in my lord's family till she had married your grandfather he was just a curate son to a shopkeeper in castle isle in carlisle but a clever fine gentleman as ever was one and who was a right down hard worker in his parish which was very wide and scattered all aboard over the westmoreland fells when your mother little miss roseman was about four or five years old both her parents died in a fortnight after the other ah that was a sad time

1:03:00

my pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby when my master came home from one of his long rides wet and tired and took the fever he died of and then she never held up her head again but just lived to see her dead baby and have it laid on her breast before she sighed away her own life my mistress had asked me on her deathbed never to leave miss rosamond but if she had never spoken a word i would have gone with the little child to the end of the world

Haunted manor details

so basically miss rosamund is the children's mother and when miss roseman was four or five her parents had both died one night after each other the father died from a fever after like a night out on a on a cold stormy night on you know you know an unprotected carriage and then the next night her mother died giving birth to a baby who did not survive oh it's tragic

1:04:00

so now miss roseman's an orphan alone in the world left to be cared for by her nurse and miss roseman's mother had declared in her will that together miss rosamond and the nurse hester which is the narrator of the story would live in a live with a maternal relative it was the great aunt of the current lord friend of all and they would go live in the fernaval manor house at the foot of cumberland fells but this manor had pretty much been isolated for 50 years or so there were two residents who were very old and melancholy women miss freneval whose name is grace and mrs stark so these two women live there but this manor which is out in the middle of the woods has not really been taken care of very much oh hello okay so together hester the nurse who's not even 18 years

1:05:00

old is has to move with a four-year-old miss rosemond pack their things and leave for this manor in the middle of nowhere basically they left all signs of a town or even a village and then inside the gates they saw a large wild park with rocks the noise of running water and gnarled thorn trees and old oaks all white and peeled with age like it sounds really mystical and beautiful and they're they're kind of stunned by it yeah the road went up so the road into the manor is two miles long and then they see a great stately house with many trees close around it this is such a dream but also the beginning of every yeah horror movie and ghost story it's like the beautiful

The secret portrait

castle that you have to live in on the edge of town where no one else is there and you just get to live your your best life and your child is gonna

1:06:00

run through the meadows just so carefree and it's like well then what keep that in mind corinne um so they they describe so this beautiful manner it has um a kind of like a main area that's very windowed and beautiful and then there are wings projected on either sides of the front of the house so there's like a main house and then the east and west wing and they say it's beautiful but there are all these old trees kind of not really well taken care of around the house and they have broken branches that kind of like scratch against the windows and while it looks kind of fairytale-esque it is a little bit creepy then the inside of the manor is even more stunning it's there's a great fireplace a chandelier of all bronze like they had never seen before and an organ built into the wall so large it filled up the best part of that end of the manor

1:07:00

hester and miss rosamond are led through the halls and passages to meet miss burnival and the little girl is very scared holding on to her nurse because she's just like you know she's four or five just lost her parents doesn't know where she's going doesn't recognize this place or these people and it's a little unsettling but miss stark and miss brennavale who are the old ladies who live in this manner love little miss roseman they are just thrilled to have the life of a child in

Haunting noises

their home and you know but as they're introduced they warn hester and little miss rosamond to never enter the east wing of the house it is shocking well now it's tempting it's like now i need this in the west east wing of the house it's very like beauty and the beast never go up to the tower you know right totally they're told they can explore the rest of the house just fine but never to go into the east wing

1:08:00

so they go and explore the rest of the house and raptured by the trees beyond the windows the books and all these portraits and i guess there's this room full of portraits and one day they're going through the room and the woman mrs stark who's kind of the caretaker and housekeeper of miss fernaval is showing the portraits to hester and miss rosamond and there's one portrait that mrs stark says i will show you but you must promise to never tell it is the portrait of miss fernival's elder sister maude she turns a picture so basically there's this like portrait that's leaned up against the wall with the portrait side facing the wall and she turns it towards them and they're kind of both mesmerized by it because it looks very similar to grace miss fernaval but that's kind of creepy yes but the question is what happened to mod

1:09:00

where is maude and miss vernoval or and then mrs stark who's showing the picture gets all panicky and strange and is like i made a mistake i shouldn't have showed you this please please don't don't look at it and she turns the photo back again and just never wants to talk about it again so that's already a little weird this is and very haunted mansion to me it is but if there's no eddie murphy for comedic relief it's just all spooky there's no comedic relief no and winter is starting to come it's drawing on the days were growing shorter and hester sometimes was always certain that she heard a noise as if someone was playing the great organ in the hall she kept asking if someone was playing the organ and everyone told her it was just the wind did you just hear an organ no i heard brian's footsteps but then i turned and he wasn't there i think he was just creeping back to the office

1:10:00

to his lair

Disappearing child

to the lair to the lair so hester is hearing these noises but everyone is telling her it's just the wind but she had picked up that they were uncomfortable with her question they were dodging the answer like they didn't want to tell her something but then the kitchen maid tells hester folks do say that it was the old lord old lord playing on the organ in the hall just as he used to do when he was alive so then hester goes and looks into the room with the organ and sees that it has fallen into ruin like no one has taken care of it although it looked impressive from the outside but it looks like it wouldn't play properly is what she is establishing organs are massive massive yeah and this one it sounds like it was you know took up the whole room the winter grew colder and darker and one dinner as they all ate in silence

1:11:00

miss freneval lifted her sad and heavy eyes and said i am afraid we shall have a terrible winter in a kind of ominous and strange way oh yeah i'm getting the chills right now i have to keep reminding myself that this is a written story that's not real it's not real so you know mrs stark and all the other people kind of pretend not to hear her and hester's like that was weird um and sure enough the days grew shorter and shorter and it grew colder and colder and the old lord if it was him continued to play more and more stormly and sadly on the great organ one day hester goes to church leaving miss rosamond with miss fernaval and mrs stark but when she returns little miss rosamund is missing so the nurse panics and starts looking

1:12:00

for her trying to find her and miss fernival and mrs stark basically like look at hester with a cold look and are like we don't know anything it's like what i left her with you and to go to church where is she so then my heart is in my stomach right now i'm like where is she you watch her i'm feeling the panic okay i'm gonna read directly from the story what's the matter hester said mrs stark sharply i don't know if miss fernival had seen me for as i told you she was very deaf and she sat quite still idly

The phantom child

staring into the fire with her hopeless face i said i'm only looking for my little rosy posie still thinking that the child was there and near me though i could not see her see her miss roseman does not hear said mrs stark she went away more than an hour ago to find dorothy and she too turned and went looking into the fire so like these two women who have grown fond of little miss roseman are just coldly acting right they could care less like they

1:13:00

could care less are you not concerned with the fact that the child that you were looking after has now disappeared right so hester goes looking for miss rosemond but at first she's not terribly frightened because the two love to play hide and seek so she's maybe like oh maybe she's playing a game with me and then after searching all over the house hester thinks to look outside and sees footprints in the snow going across the court and out onto the fells and remember this is a very cold cold winter oh no hester tries to follow the footprints and thinks that maybe little miss roseman went into the east wing but all of the doors are locked to the east wing so there's no way just then an old shepherd comes carrying little miss rosamund who is in his arms without a jacket like cold and asleep in his arms and the shepherd says that he had found her under a holly tree in and this is in quotes in the terrible

1:14:00

sleep which is frost begotten basically she was she's succumbing to hypothermia right yeah very close to death yes so they put little miss roseman to bed and the next morning miss roseman tells them that she was looking at the snow through a window when she saw a little girl out in the snow beckoning her to come out but hester said she only saw one set of footprints and so she was like there's no way that there was another little girl outside but little miss roseman is weeping and is like i promise i'm telling you the truth there was another little girl who told me to come out there and that the little girl took her by the hand and her hand was very very cold and this little girl led her up to the holly trees on the fell and there there was a lady weeping and crying but when she saw little miss rosamund

The sisters' feud

1:15:00

she hushed her weeping so basically the appearance of rosamund made the woman stop crying and the woman started smiling very proud and grand and took her on to her knee and began to lull her to sleep okay is this the lady friend that looks like her from the portrait we will find out you're very uh very smart karin so one day not long before christmas rosamund and the nurse hester are playing in the great hall as it's growing dark sun is setting outside and all of a sudden little roseman cries out look hester look there is my poor little girl out in the snow hester turns to look and sure enough there is a little girl dressed all unfit to be out of doors such a bitter night crying and the little girls beating against the window panes as if she wanted to be let in ooh ooh she was literally right there i was

1:16:00

picturing her on the edge of the yard like a tree line or something but she is right there yeah that is it's very spooky e okay [Laughter] so this little girl is banging on the widow window panes as if to be let in and she seemed to be crying and the little miss roseman could not baron bear it anymore and so she all of a sudden like goes runs to the door opens the door and is about to like go run out to this little girl when all of a sudden the great organ starts to thunder through the house oh i'm picturing it yes just very cool phantom of the opera yeah and then it is in this moment that hester has this realization that as she can hear the organ she has never heard the sound of the pounding she only saw the physic like the little girl going like this but there was no sound coming from her and she's like this phantom child was putting through

1:17:00

all this force but there was no sound coming from the child right so the realization is that this is indeed a spirit and not actually a little girl just trapped outside in the snow so hester runs and grabs little miss roseman but miss roseman is like panicking and crying and wants to help this little girl but hester's like i will not let you go out to this little girl like i do not believe this is safe this is dangerous ugh what darkness and and so she becomes convinced that this ghost spirit little girl was trying to lure rosamund out into the

The fatal night

the woods and into the snow to her death i mean that sounds spot on i don't know if that's like do i need to even be convinced of that that seems genuinely 100 facts yes that was the the intent behind this little ghost child imagine hester like hester's not even 18 years old this is the this is the this is on par with when when a stranger calls in terms of like

1:18:00

babysitting horrible experiences and now i'm i'm not even fully convinced that the two older women who are so fond of this her daughter are even real okay well they are and at this point hester is now she's convinced that mrs stark and miss friend of all are hiding something from her so she basically forces their hand and is like you need to tell me what's going on so mrs stark finally admits that the old lord who plays the orkan is miss grace and miss maud's father and that that the old lord was too proud to ever allow anyone to marry his daughters but then he invited a foreigner to come play music in their home and both maude and grace fell in love with this man and the foreigner brought the organ for the old lord to learn to play and while their father was distracted this musician flirted with both maude and grace

1:19:00

miss maude triumphed over her sister and secretly married the musician and later gave birth to a daughter but jealousy grew between the sisters as the musician continued to flirt with both of them and eventually he abandoned both of them and his daughter so then these two sisters who have been torn apart by this man retreat to their own ends of the manor maude in the east wing grace in the west wing oh wow and miss maud loved her daughter and decided to have her live secretly in the east wing with her rumor had it that miss maud one day revealed to her sister that she had won and married the foreigner and married the foreigner in secret which led miss grace and miss stark to spy on the east wing and discover the little girl so basically maude had married and had a child with this musician in secret and was keeping

1:20:00

the girl secretly in her wing of the home right that seems i mean so she truly was kept away from her entire family because i don't know how that would be possible to not show the pregnancy or hear the sounds of a child unless this place is so incredibly large yeah and your family so incredibly disinterested in ever spending time with you that they just fully ignore anything and everything that comes from that side

Ghost reenactment

of the mansion and it gets worse so miss grace was so jealous and angry at her sister for marrying the musician that she had loved that she then told their father who was furious and the father threw maude and the little girl out into the snow oh and grace did nothing so sad as the old lord ordered the staff not to

1:21:00

help them and ultimately maude and the little girl froze to death outside on the north umberland fells but then the lord never played his organ again and died within the year so hester is now hearing this story and is understanding that that is why miss frinival who's this like old grumpy lady is she's like oh i know why she's so miserable and cold but it's clear that she has not been able to accept the past and has caused the manor and this family to be haunted by the vengeful ghosts of the past so hester is like i need to take little miss roseman out and away from here otherwise she's in danger of being lured out by these ghosts who want to have revenge on graves but then a snowstorm falls on the house that night making it impossible to venture outside the winds rage and the snow flies and roseman seems to become possessed by

1:22:00

the elements pounding and screaming and raging to let this little girl inside and all of a sudden miss fernival groans miserably as the walls rumble and the windows shake and she says i hear terrible screams i hear my father's voice they all hurry out into the great hall hearing the screams coming from the east wing and suddenly the east wing door which has been locked slams open and the ghost of the old lord drives the ghosts of miss mod and the little girl through it they watch as the ghosts reenact the night that maude and the little girl died oh god i thought they're gonna be like victory we're loose but they're like watch us die again yes the old lord strikes the little girl with his crutch and present day miss friend of all grace is begging with his spirit to spare the child but then the phantom of young grace appears

1:23:00

and as she had done all those years ago young grace stands there and watches everything happen very very coldly it doesn't help and at that moment the lights dim the fire goes out all by themselves

The death of Grace

and all of a sudden miss friend of all lays stricken down by all of this that had happened the whole commotion so all of the so this whole fantasmic thing is happening all the lights and the fires and everything go out and when it comes back they see old miss vernoval laying near death on the ground oh wow she was carried to her bed that night never to rise again she lay with her face to the wall muttering low but muttering away alas alas what is done in youth can never be undone in age what is done in youth can never be undone in age what is done in use can

1:24:00

never be undone in age and that is how the old nurse's story ends and imagine hearing that before you fall asleep no way you're like all right tuck in kids we're gonna have a great snowy adventurous day tomorrow but first let me read you the story for my christmas magazine no oh my gosh i do wonder when she was passing away in the story was it because she couldn't take seeing again what she had done or were the spirits able to somehow within the emotion murder her take maybe a combination of those they took the energy from her her own life and light to recreate her what she had taken from them well it's interesting too because if you think about it until this point kind of towards the end of the story no one had ever talked about what had happened it

1:25:00

had been like repressed and no one's talking about it and these ghosts are trying really hard to come back up which is like you know the past trying to come up if you don't deal with your demons they haunt you and finally she's forced to come to term or not come to terms she's first forced to face it

Story reflections

and she can't she dies yeah it makes me really sad to think of the spirits the the mother who had been cast out in the snow with her child than seeing this now living child not really maybe understanding all the time that they themselves are dead and passed away and was trying to comfort like basically seeing the same thing yeah about to happen to this child that happened to you and your own child and trying to comfort the child and i understand like from a ghost perspective maybe trying to lull the child to sleep so that

1:26:00

it will the the kid will go more peacefully maybe it's so evil to take the life of another child right yeah to lure the child out yeah if that was really the intention maybe it was just that the energy in the home was at the right point for them to come forward and just their haunting energy like made their presences more known right maybe they didn't know they were dead really right or the presence of another young child was brought them back almost because right that energy is very similar to the energy of having this child in the home before yeah i don't know all i do know cats spooky yes christmas spooky merry spooky christmas merry spooky christmas everybody

1:27:00

okay listener stories listener stories so because it's your birthday episode i didn't necessarily i didn't either

Listener story: Guardian

okay i just chose something that you enjoy which is a victorian era ghost i love it that's basically what i did oh perfect i mean we had victoria era ghost stories before so mine is my listener story isn't even victorian era it's just like a ghost story i like [Laughter] great that works i mean who we make up no rules sometimes we try to bind ourselves and then we break them every other time so you can't bind me no good luck this is car i'm houdini anyway sorry yes unleash the kraken this is from caitlin and it is called not so imaginary friend okay ladies

1:28:00

so i grew up with spirits being very relevant in my life due to my mother being haunted i feel like that's gonna be us and our kids opening sentences to every email they ever write yeah my mom's kinda haunted they're even it's like a work email than it starts with before i get into the assignment we had to do today my mother was haunted my mother was haunted every email yeah i grew up seeing spirits all around us and have experienced a lot my whole family experienced the same five very active entities in the house and we're kind of used to them the story i'm sharing with you is one that had attached to me the way i grew up was very unique due to the odd custody agreement my parents made when they divorced when i was two years old from then on until i got to high school i switched between two states every year wow oh my god every other year

1:29:00

that's tough yeah i lived one year with my mom in tennessee slash kentucky and then with my dad in utah everything about my life was very inconsistent and i literally had a new life every year oh my gosh i started seeing an imaginary friend when i was around six years old she was a

The black veil

woman in a very unique and distinct victorian laced dress she was black and she also wore a black veil you would think that this would be scary to see her but it was actually very calming and she was very beautiful and to this day i can't find a dress that looks like the one that she had she never i wonder if it's i i'm trying to figure out what time period but like when women lost their husbands they would wear black um i mean it's like the funeral custom you know yeah right yeah i had no idea i mean maybe maybe it was just a normal funeral gown yeah she chose to show up at maybe she died of a

1:30:00

broken heart oh and and kept that heart in wrapped in a poet poem in her desk right exactly spooky oh imagine just the sound of a beating heart coming from somewhere in your house and you're going around and you're trying to look for it and it's in your desk drawer yes and then you're very shelley in the background that's our halloween haunted terry prank classic mary she never spoke to me she just stood and watched me from a distance as i got older each year her distance got closer and closer to me i would always look at her and she would acknowledge me with a nod and i would continue throughout my day she followed me from state to state and i constantly saw her when i got around 12 to 13 years old i stopped seeing her and so i thought maybe i just dreamt her and i never told anybody about her not that i was embarrassed but more that i wondered if it was really happening

1:31:00

so fast forward to 18 i had moved out the day after i turned 18 into my friend's house her mom is a medium and i never paid much attention to it nor spoke to her much about it in general i used i was used to seeing spirits and fine with talking about them but we just never really casually spoke to each other one night i came downstairs for a glass of water and she was in the kitchen she often couldn't sleep because of the spirits trying to contact her oh my god that's tough wow that's sad insomnia at its worst yeah truly i don't remember how we started talking about it but she asked me you know how i can see and speak to spirits right and i told her yes and we began talking about it she shared a lot of her experiences with me and she ended on saying well you do have a spirit attached to you

Medium revelation

i didn't think much about it until she said she's here right now standing behind you oh my god oh my gosh oh

1:32:00

remember it's the middle of the night like yeah probably in dark darkness also the way that she was saying that it got closer and closer to her as years passed on like the fact that it's now like physically right behind her right yeah it's she can't see it anymore either because she aged out of it or because she's it's just fully behind her at all on her back yeah i didn't think too much of it oh i already read that okay i kind of just stared at her not that i didn't believe her but i was more so but more so i was in anticipation as to what she was going to tell me about the spirit she began describing her and the very lace pattern of the dress and what she looked like i have never told anybody about the woman i had seen and so it was impossible for her to describe everything to describe everything so perfectly she then began to say she has been protecting you since you were born and could see that you were important and needed to be looked after she could have moved on to the other realm a long time ago but knew that she

1:33:00

had a greater purpose that she needed to wait for and that purpose was you my if you're in your stomach and chills oh my gosh part of me was almost like i shouldn't read this one for your birthday because you like scary but i was like no but this is so it's so good right yes uh

Letting the spirit move on

if you feel that you are willing to let her move on i can do that i started to tear up because i was in shock i agreed for her to help the spirit move on and when she did i felt this insane energy pulled from me almost like shedding a leg oh my god all at once i began to cry i haven't seen her since but continue to have many experiences with the paranormal i just moved into a new apartment with my best friend and we're already experiencing clear signs of spiritual activity i love your podcast and enjoy hearing other people's experiences thank you for reading mine caitlyn caitlin that's so beautiful oh yeah

1:34:00

what it's like her guardian and the fact that the spirit especially that the fact that she's victorian era or around that time stayed on this plane

Reflections on guardian

for as long as she did knowing she had a greater purpose but not knowing what it was until she saw caitlyn right it does make me wonder too like i'm almost thinking that the spirit was destined to be a spirit guide or a guardian yeah guardian and i wonder if in spirit form this woman knew that she was needed but had a fear that if she let herself be like reincarnated or come back to to a different realm that she might miss the opportunity to be with her like she might time it wrong and so that's why she chose to stay for as long as she did for you know 200 years well what if now at some point in caitlyn's future she the spirit is going to be reborn and brought into caitlyn's life in a different way in like a true like now physical form person right way

1:35:00

yeah katelyn's featured children a pet freaking love best friend's child wow it's very interesting so special yeah i love yeah i love that she stuck around and i know i just love that caitlyn given i'm sure how difficult it was to basically have a new life and move yeah from states and leave friends behind every single year i'm very glad that there was this loving and dedicated spirit who was there to be with her and to make sure that everything was okay me too

Final listener story

oh i'd love that thank you for picking that one corinne that's your wife very heartwarming i feel like mary shelley would have liked that one too oh definitely mary shelley approves she's channeling through me right now mary shelley is my victorian era ghost behind me i wish oh hi mary love you hi mary

1:36:00

just like the name i'm gonna manifest that i'm gonna manifest that mary shelley becomes my guardian angel oh that would be awesome yeah medium anyone who listens i want to know like is is mary accessible in spirit form now there's all those people that talk to the spirit of elvis and houdini and everyone that's true is mary around or am i mary i'd love to be i'm not i know i'm not because i'm not nearly as talented me i'm not i'm not that cool i wish i love it uh okay my story is from our listener madison and it is called the demon or alien that tried to steal my mom's twin brother in a shared dream experience oh god this is the most you title i've ever heard happy birthday to me okay hello beautiful ghouls and leia of

1:37:00

course my name is maddie my pronouns are she and her and i'm from toronto canada i am absolutely obsessed with your podcast and catch myself talking about it constantly i also have severe anxiety so i'm grateful for your familiar voices that join me on busy morning commutes the toronto subway is my literal hell lol i work at a shelter for people who are experiencing homelessness so i do lots of overnight shifts and even you two scare the crap out of me when i'm by myself at 3 am and all the clients are asleep you still get me through the night i've always wanted to email but i personally haven't had any spooky experiences which i am thankful for and now have probably jinxed myself it never occurred to me however that my

Inconsolable baby

family is haunted as [ __ ] so my first story is about my mom's twin brother devin when devin was a baby he would wake up every single night at 3 a.m like clockwork my grandpa said he would go in and check

1:38:00

on my uncle but devon was inconsolable my grandpa says that my uncle devin never cried like this before they moved into their old farmhouse which was a few hours north of toronto nor did he ever wake up at 3am every single night before moving into this house my grandpa's final straw was the night that he heard devin screaming as per usual but this time when he opened the door to my uncle's room devin was not in his crib he was lying on the floor in the middle of the room oh no oh no poor baby nobody else had been in that room my grandpa was home alone with my mom and her twin and because of how old the house was the floors and doors were extremely creaky so my grandpa who was sitting in his room directly next to devin's would have heard if somebody had gone in it and devin who was a six-month-old baby would not have been able to get out of the crib on his own

1:39:00

there's no way and you would yeah you would have heard it yes you would have heard the commotion you would have heard and also i feel like devon would have been very injured whoa if he had gotten out by himself yeah by himself rather than being lifted by some unseen force and placed and it's not it's the middle of the room it's not

Grandpa banishes spirit

like right next to the crib it's the middle of the room right so now for the craziest part after my grandpa picked up devin from the floor he screamed at the top of his lungs whatever you are leave my son alone and immediately devin stopped crying and this never happened again oh my god okay part of me does feel slightly bad for that spirit because what if it was a loved one who was just like oh i'm gonna play with my great-great-grandchild and like puts them in the middle and and then realizes what you're doing is so scary to the child and then you're basically like

1:40:00

banished from the house and from ever seeing yeah but i don't buy it i don't buy it corinne because never happened until i moved to the old farmhouse and devon was inconsolable like screaming that is not true like we've heard stories of little babies looking up like cooing at something in the corner but screaming and coming yeah always talking to someone because you're a creepy kid okay one more story which is happy

Shared dream dream

my fiance recently told me this story and i was honestly shocked taylor was about 16 and he was living at his grandpa's house with his mom and brothers he told me that this house had a large front lawn that leads to a small porch the front door off of the porch is directly in front of the stairs so when you walk in you can see the staircase right away which is important later taylor told me he had a dream around the time he was living in the house that went like this he was on his po-po's front lawn and he began walking towards the front door

1:41:00

when he got to the porch and stood in front of the door it swung open completely by itself as the door opened taylor noticed that the staircase was gone and instead there was a glowing orangish light engulfing the space where the stairs would normally be taylor says he had a feeling and deep knowing that it was his great-grandma visiting but the craziest part is that about a week later my fiancee's mom had the exact same dream ooh

Great grandma visit

his mom had passed away of an overdose last year and taylor and i are both in recovery from addiction so i have some other stories about loved ones that we've lost to addiction but i'll save those for another email love you both so much stay spooktacular and see you on the other side um p.s please come to toronto for a live show i don't live in the states so i have major fomo and i could tell you lots of about a lot of spooky places to visit while you're here

1:42:00

from madison wow madison hat is just collecting ghost stories from everyone and anyone the toy story collector bless you bless you oh my gosh my soul almost left my body there we can't lose it no stay with us i do wonder with the dream if it's just because if it's sort of like a shared experience with addiction and losing people from addiction or if there was something else connecting the two of them psychically i mean it also just sounds like the great grandma was visiting her loved ones and chose the same way to do it yeah that's a nice that's a nice encounter after the first that's a one that we heard yeah that's terrifying this is this is something where

1:43:00

if you saw this on a baby monitor today where someone uploads on facebook or whatever and yes here's the footage i caught can you explain it everyone would say that's not real that's like no way doctored no one would believe it yeah but it happened it happened

Wrap up and goodbye

your face right now it happened it happened wow i love ghost stories i love old-timey ghost stories this was a great birthday episode and i'm grateful for all of you joining us on this journey thank you everybody thank you we will see you again next week and then the week after that we'll see you three times we'll see you every day basically just every day showing up in your feed non-stop here we are do you forget about it hey here i am here i am hey hi hello hello hi hello it's about us hello hello anyway there are so many ways to

1:44:00

support us you can write and review us on itunes you can join the pyramid screen whoa screen scream we do scream sometimes in the screen scheme uh pyramid scheme the tgog triangle which is our patreon and we have lots of extra bonus content on there ad free episodes paranormal news um live streams it's great so much fun joining us and then we have merch we have new merch and it's so cute and i love it and i own half of it we own all of it basically ordering the rest very very soon because spooky season is all year round and also so soon we officially consider a spooky season right now so yes gotta wear your i'm wearing my fall autumnal clothing color perfect a lovely color together you and i are very like we make a pumpkin spice latte i am the

1:45:00

cream on top and you are the pumpkin i like pumpkin and we both have our matching necklaces vibrant vibes fall vibes all vibes vibes spooky fall vibes well we do hope that we get to see this fall and and on this side but if we do not we will see you on the other side thank you for joining us on that one lay