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June 21, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:27
Edition 464 - Elaine Kelly & Craig Bryant
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is still Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Well, here we are entering, what is it, the third week of June, staring down the barrel of July.
And for many of us, we are still in lockdown.
But the signs that things may be changing are there.
We've gone down from level four in the UK, down to level three, whatever that may mean for all of us.
And things are slowly, they tell us, improving.
We're looking towards treatments and a vaccine and maybe getting back to something like normal life.
And I have to say, as a lot of people are saying to me, I've been through all of the emotions, the full gamut of them, the depressions, the elation, the thinking of all of the things that I'm going to do when this is over and the places I want to visit while I have time to go to them.
All of these things happen when you're alone in lockdown and staring at four walls.
But you may well know that.
Your emails and communications have been massively important to me during this period.
As many of you tell me, the show has been important to you too, which means an awful lot to me.
Thank you.
I'm a little behind on the emails.
I am seeing and reading all of them.
Those that need a reply, I am trying to make sure that they will get one.
And, you know, it really has meant so much.
I just want to mention, no shout-outs on this edition, but one person who emailed recently.
This is Liz on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands, a place that I've always wanted to visit.
Liz's email meant a lot to me, as many of the emails have done recently.
She says, I've been meaning to say these words for a very long time.
I've listened to your podcast for years, I've enjoyed them.
I like the varied content and the interviewing style.
And she says some other nice things.
And, you know, just to get an email like that periodically means a lot and is a boost for me here as I sit doing the shows, which you know that I massively enjoyed and have now been doing one version or another of The Unexplained for 16 years, 14 years online as an independent podcast.
And I remain very proud of that because whatever happens to other bits of work that I do, I will do my very best as long as I have breath in my body to continue with the podcast.
Thank you for your lovely response to it.
I always greatly appreciate your suggestions and your feedback.
Please go to my website, theunexplained.tv, designed, created, and honed by Adam.
And thank you very much to Haley for doing my guest booking for this.
You know, I love recording the shows.
I love doing the interviews and I love finding people.
Haley is excellent at actually booking guests, which is something that I've never been really good at doing, and she is.
Thank you, Haley.
Okay, now this edition is a couple of items from a recent radio show.
Catch-ups with some ghost investigators, Elaine Kelly in the northeast, and then across the Pennines in the northwest of England, Craig Bryant.
So, Elaine Kelly, Craig Bryant, the two guests on this edition.
Thank you very much for being part of my show.
Remember, you can always communicate with me through that website, theunexplained.tv.
And remember, there is also an official Facebook page, The Unexplained with Howard Hughes.
Please be part of that if you can.
I hope you're getting by, and I hope all is good in your world.
Okay, first then, Elaine Kelly in the Northeast from Spectre Detectors.
How are you doing, Elaine?
I'm not too bad.
How are you?
I'm all right.
I don't know.
Lockdown seems to be the third word I say in every sentence these days, because I'm now three months, as you must be, into lockdown.
And it seems to test different people in different ways, doesn't it?
You know, I've managed with it pretty well doing my work at home, but I'm only in the last fortnight or so starting to feel, one, unwell generally, and two, stir-crazy with it.
But, you know, getting by.
How have you been?
I'm starting like you.
I've had ups and downs.
I've enjoyed family time, to be honest with you, because we're so busy and hectic in the world.
Sometimes it's nice to get a little bit of time at home with your family.
But after three months, I have cabin fever now.
I'm completely stir-crazy.
I'm no good at homeschooling.
I've discovered that because it's so different.
I mean, it's 30 years since I was at school.
It's not the same.
So hats off to all the teachers.
And how old is your pupil?
He's 13.
So I've got the hormonal teenage boy who's what I'm having to teach is not good.
But never mind.
We're getting there.
Hopefully it won't be too much longer.
I know they're talking about schools go back in September and the thought of that just makes me cringe.
But never mind.
We will get there.
I was speaking to an MP on the show on Friday when I filled in for James Whale.
And I think the general plan is September.
So we'll see how that develops.
But I don't envy you schooling a 13-year-old at home.
Just give him a stack of books and tell him to ask you any questions if any arise.
I think that's maybe the way to do it.
Okay.
Ask Alexa if there's anything that you can understand.
That's what I've been saying.
It's the only way, you know, it makes sense.
Now, to the ghost investigating then, tell listeners who are new to you, Inspector Detectors in the Northeast, who you are and what you do.
Just to introduce yourself for the very, very few people who've never heard you before here.
We are a team of investigators.
We've been going for, I think it's nine years now.
2011 we started.
So a long, long time.
We just try to investigate anywhere.
It doesn't have to be castles or prisons or, you know, those kind of spooky things.
Anywhere that's got a past, that's got a history.
We like to delve in, speak to whoever wants to come forward, because everywhere people want to come forward and talk to you.
And we're just very respectful.
We don't use Ouija boards.
We don't provoke in any way.
We are very respectful, I like to think.
Basically, that's it, really.
I mean, we've just investigated.
We have done large places like Castles and Jedborough Jail and The Ripper.
We've been to London and all those, but we'll find us also at the local pub or a local community centre.
We just like to investigate anywhere that's got a brilliant history because everywhere's got a history.
It has.
And last year we talked about your Ripper investigation in London, which was fascinating, where you actually conversed, if that's the word, with some of the Rippers' victims.
So that was a great investigation to do.
But as you said, it isn't just the big names and the big venues that deliver spooky stories.
There are quite, you know, humdrum, modern, everyday kinds of places that also have weirdness associated with them.
And sadness, usually.
Somewhere always has a sad story.
I always come away thinking, oh, that's really sad.
But then, you know, they've got a story to tell.
And sometimes they just have to have somebody to tell it to.
I feel these spirits have been waiting and waiting, you know, for somebody to, please let my family know that I'm all right.
I might have died in a not very nice way, tragically, but please let them know I'm okay.
And that's what we do.
We just pass it on, pass that message on.
I have a feeling that in future years, there'll be knocking and banging and a disembodied voice heard in this flat, you know, when the next people inhabit this flat.
And it'll be my ghost in lockdown.
I'll be stuck here after three months of it.
Hey, now listen, Elaine.
You know, lockdown is very serious if you're a ghost investigator because it means wherever in the world you are, you can't really do any ghost investigation, but you've been spending your time writing books, haven't you?
I have, yes.
Luckily, before all of this kicked off, you know, at the beginning of the year, we actually crammed a lot of investigations in.
So I had that footage to watch for the start of the lockdown.
That took watching catch up on EVPs and CCTV and all of that kind of thing.
And then when all that came to a standstill, I thought, right, what can I do now?
I know what I'll do.
I'll write about them because I always write about my investigations.
But I've realised that people like me to write about the places they are from.
So instead of cramming them all in a book and saying this is from the northeast, they like me to write about hauntings of Bishop Auckland or hauntings of Darlington or hauntings of Durham because that's where they're from.
They're not interested in other areas.
They just want to know the local pub that they go to.
I want to find out a history about that.
So that's what I've been doing.
I've been putting everything into a category.
And I've actually been writing five books, all on different areas.
Five all.
Yes, it's good, isn't it?
It's more than good.
I mean, I can't.
I think prolific is not even the word to cover it.
I know.
But obviously, with lockdown and not being able to investigate, I've been able to research.
And that is so hard.
It's so difficult because when spirit give you names, you don't get much more than that.
So then you have to start with the building, then try to link up the people, then try and link up what they've passed with.
And it's been fascinating.
I've found all sorts out.
So it's actually been good to be locked down because I don't normally get time to do that.
It's took months to do that.
And I haven't got months usually.
But listen, it's worthwhile in the middle of it all, even if you are snowed under teaching your 13-year-old and doing your other stuff.
And people will appreciate it.
As you say, people want to know stuff about the place that they live.
They want to know if this is a place that I can go and see, or maybe this might happen to me.
So, you know, I'm going to ask you to be specific then.
Where do you want to start then?
Give me a couple of stories from these books.
A couple of stories.
Well, do you want to know something really, really weird?
Oh, yes.
Always on this show.
Yeah, definitely.
It's very, very bizarre.
We have a local snooker club in Bishop Auckland, which is where I'm from.
And this snooker club isn't necessarily old.
It's been around since about the 50s, I think.
It wasn't always a snooker club.
It was a garage.
And it's always had a haunting.
They can hear the snooker balls clattering and things like that when it's closed.
You kidding.
Well, you can hear the clack of the balls.
Yeah, they can hear the clatter of the balls.
They can hear the footsteps.
So we've been a few times.
This time we went because it's new owners and they knew they'd had a spirit.
So we went along.
They invited us along.
It was great.
And as you know, we have a spirit box.
And I know not everybody believes in the spirit box because it's radio and it, you know, tunes itself in constantly and all of this and the other.
And what came through that spirit box, I didn't realize on the night until I'd come home and I started doing research and I put all of the names together and it was really bizarre.
Firstly, a lady came through and she said she was called Margaret and she worked on the door in a theater out the back.
They were the things that she came through the spirit box.
So then we were trying to talk to Margaret and saying, Margaret, you're going to have to tell us because I mean Bishop had a lot of theaters at the time.
You're going to have to tell us where you worked.
And we were trying to pinpoint it all down where she was from.
We never found out on the night, but they did say other names.
And all of these names related to Stan Laurel.
Because Stan Laurel's father had a theatre in Bishop Auckland.
And we didn't know that until I did the research.
And Stan Laurel's mother was called Margaret.
Okay.
It's weird, isn't it?
Well, no, we didn't know that.
More than weird.
So do you think that Margaret Stan Laurel's mother was kind of guiding you there?
Yeah, I think she was trying, you know, because they never make it easy.
You know, they can talk through a spirit box, but why can't they say, Elaine, I'm Margaret, I'm Stan's ma'am?
And I worked at the Eden Theatre out the back.
That would be so much easier, but they make you work.
They make you work and ask questions.
She said, Margaret, that was his mother.
She said, George, that was Stan's grandda.
She said, Robert and son.
Well, that was Stan Laurel's son.
He died.
He was nine days old.
Said, Arthur, well, it's Stanley Arthur Jefferson, Stan Laurel.
It said, Charlie.
Now, I couldn't really work out who Charlie was, but he did tour with Charlie Chaplin.
I don't know whether you knew that.
I didn't at the time.
And it said Sid.
I know.
Sid, my brother.
Now, Sid was Stan's brother and he died at five months old.
So all of these things I didn't have a clue about.
Now, hold on.
Because if I had no...
Sorry to interrupt.
Are all of these names coming to you from the spirit box as it goes up and down FM frequencies automatically?
Yeah, and they're all on YouTube for people to listen to if they want to.
That's the good thing about what we do.
I write about it, but you can listen to it.
Listen to it yourself.
Look under Bishop Auckland Snooker Club, Spectre Detectors, and it's there.
It's the whole conversation.
So there's other things as well, not just those snippets, because they came out with other things too.
And did you know, truly, you knew nothing about Stan Laurel or the people that he knew and worked with when you were doing this?
I knew that Stan Laurel was from Bishop Auckland because he went to the same school as me.
He went to the same school as King James.
I knew his father had a theatre because it's well known.
Even the local weatherspoons of Bishop is Called Stanley Arthur Jefferson after Stan Laurel.
So I knew that, but I didn't see he didn't say Stan.
He never said Stan once.
It was all the other bits.
And it was when I looked because I've done an investigation of Bishop before, and I'm pretty sure I had Stan Laurel there.
And I'm pretty sure I got a photograph of him and Ollie as well.
But you don't put that out there because you're just leaving yourself wide open for criticism.
I wasn't going to say, and I've been here and I've spoken to Stan Laurel because that's just putting yourself in the firing line.
But this, I didn't actually know this until I came home and researched it all.
Because believe me, if I had known that on the night, I would have been asking all kinds of questions if it was Stan Laurel.
But I didn't because we were trying to figure out who Margaret was.
It all started with Margaret.
I work on the door out the back.
Now, out of the back, really, of the snooker club would have been where the Eden Theatre was, but it's demolished now.
It's not there.
There's a Stan Laurel statue there now.
So that all makes sense, doesn't it?
If you put that together.
But what about the actual snooker hall itself?
You said that people were reporting, you know, weird bangs and crashes and the sound of the bowls clacking together and those sorts of things.
Yeah.
Now, I've not tied anything to the snooker club because it's quite new.
I did think there was a tragic event there, but I mean, I won't talk about that.
I believe somebody took their own life in there at some point.
But obviously, I've left that out of the book.
That's awful.
But where the area, the Snooker Club is, is Finkel Street.
Now, going back, I've also found this out since I've been researching.
Finkel Street, back in the 1800s, was so rough.
It was brothels.
It was murder.
It was everything, drunken things.
The police station was a bongered, which is just literally over the road.
There was a cell where Mary Ann Cotton was actually, which we'll talk about later.
She was arrested and taken there.
It was a really, really rough area.
I'm going to say that Mary Ann Cotton, famous serial killer, we'll talk about her in a bit, as you say.
So I don't think the building itself is haunted.
It's what it's built on.
I think it's the area.
And I don't know whether, because we've been a few times, and you know, when they talk about medium shining a light in the spirit world, know that they can come through and talk to them.
I don't know whether they know we're going.
So they think, I tell you what, we'll go at the snooker club tonight.
We've got nothing else to do.
We learned there.
We'll just go and talk, you know, talk to her for a little bit.
Because we found, we connected with a teddy boy who'd been murdered at Bishop.
Now, I haven't found him yet.
I'm still researching.
I haven't found him because I've got a little bit sidelined with this whole Stan Laurel thing because he's easier to research.
But yes, I think the Snooga Club is just like many, many other places, you know, when people say that they've got a haunted house, but it's brand new.
How can it be haunted?
And people tend to think, like you say, people tend to think that ghosts are things that happened in medieval times or hundreds of years ago.
But as you say, these are more recent things, Stan Laurel being the 1900s.
And for listeners in America who will be hearing this, a teddy boy, well, this is the 1950s, and it was the beginning of sort of gangs in this country.
So, you know, teddy boys would have leather jackets and slicked back hair.
And sadly, some of them carried weapons.
And that's how you got trouble.
And that's what we found.
And that's what we found out with this young lad.
Again, he wanted, I do need to find him because he wanted to let his family know he was okay.
He was stabbed in a fight, in a brawl.
So I need to find him.
But it's hard because if they don't really give you names or surnames, it's so difficult.
You know, you have to trip through the newspapers to see if there was a stabbing or a, you know, a murder.
And it's so hard.
But interesting as well, because you feel you need to find him.
This guy's come through to tell his family he's all right.
Maybe somebody will be listening to this show.
They'll notice any boy that was stabbed in Bishop.
And they don't need to come to me and give me details.
But as long as they know, he's okay.
There's going to be, listen, Elaine, there's going to be a record somewhere of that.
I don't know how far back the police records go.
And of course, forces since the 50s have all amalgamated a couple of times and changed.
So I don't know what your local police force is, but they might have some of the old records.
But as you say, newspapers, they also carry records.
And if you think about it, it's a tragic crime.
How many of those sorts of crimes would have happened in that one area?
You know, there's probably, you know, if there are two, I would be very surprised.
That's it.
Yeah.
It was apparently this guy, well, I'm saying apparently, because we have to take what they've told us, you know, we can't prove this.
It's through a spirit box.
He said he'd been out for a night out and he'd got jumped on his way home.
That's all I know.
And he was stabbed.
And the guy that stabbed him was riding a Vesper, you know, like a scooter.
And there was two of them on a scooter and he came along, jumped off, fight, stabbed.
That's all I know.
So I really have to look.
So if anybody's out there that knows anything and they want to get him in touch, please do.
Well, assuming this is all as it appears to be, then there's going to be a hell of a backstory to that.
You know, that is the kind of thing that will have been documented by somebody.
And if, you know, if these people got off a bike and attacked him, it makes it sound like it wasn't a random crime.
It might have been a motive.
He might have been targeted for something.
Maybe there was some kind of love dispute, money dispute, gang dispute, something like that.
So there's going to be more.
I do think it was gang related.
You know, the mods and the rockers and, you know, because they did fight back then, didn't they?
And I think it is.
But I'll just have to keep you posted if I find him.
And you're sure that his era was Teddy Boy.
That's like 1950s, because Mods and Rockers is 1960s.
Well, look, he had the slick back hair.
You know, they used to take time, you know, with all the brilli cream and all of that, making it.
So it could be 50s, 60s.
How long's a piece of string?
You know, when you're working with the spirit world, they make you work.
And like I say, it would be a lot easier if they just came through and told you everything.
You know, please let my ma'am know, okay?
And this is so-and-so, but they don't.
But unfortunately, never mind.
We will sort it.
I'm pretty sure.
What's going to complicate it more than anything else is the fact that if you think this happened in the 50s and he says, let my ma'am know about this, then his mother would now be, you know, if she's still with us, she'd be 80-odd.
Yeah, he wasn't very old.
He was only about 17, this guy.
He was just a kid.
But never mind.
That's what I was saying to you.
It's always got a tragic story.
There's always something and you think, oh, that's so sad.
And that's the kind of story, though.
I mean, you've intrigued me now.
I want to go and do some research about this.
So I think we can only say, as we come to the end of this segment, Elaine, that if anybody knows about that, that happened in Bishop Auckland, there was a guy, a young guy, approximate age, what?
Do you think 19, 20, whatever?
What do you say?
When you're looking at them, you have to kind of guess a date, don't you?
And one of the mediums was seeing him.
She said, he's not very old.
It must have been 17, 18.
So, you know, give her a little bit of due.
It could be between 17 and 20, maybe 21, depending if he looked young.
Okay, and we think this was not a fight.
This is a couple of people leaping off bikes to attack him.
So that is the equivalent in the 50s of a drive-by shooting.
Yeah, but we think that they'd fought before.
Right.
We think that there'd been something before, you know, a couple of brawls, a few scrapes, you know, you know, when you used to go on a nice out and well, I didn't because I'm a good girl.
And then, you know, the lads used to end up in a bit of a fight, a bit of chew.
And we think it's been that, and we think it's gone further than that.
And somebody on a bike, two lads on a bike, one on the back, jumped off, bit of kerfuffle and stabbing.
And that's what we believe.
Somewhere around about that, we believed it was about the marketplace area.
But Bishop, it's not that big anyway.
It's a main street and a market.
So it could have been any of those.
And there was lots of pubs as well.
And the real hallmark of a haunting is that somebody passed tragically and quickly.
And this guy, whoever he was, passed him exactly that way.
That's it.
But like I said, it doesn't matter where we go.
I mean, that guy had nothing to do with the snooker club.
It wasn't even, probably wasn't even, it won't have been.
It was a garage then.
So it was not even as if he'd gone there and played snooker and it was his local.
It wasn't that.
I think it's just when we go to an area, we never know who's going to come through.
And that just proves a point, doesn't it?
He just saw an opportunity to get his story across.
And maybe he wanted us to find him.
Maybe somebody needs to know that he's okay now.
Maybe you can solve a seven decades old mystery.
Who knows?
Elaine Kelly from the Northeast Spectre Detectors.
We're talking about ghosts.
It's been a while since we last spoke.
And you were talking about the five books that you've been writing and researching in lockdown, Elaine.
And before we get to the story of Mary Ann Cotton, the serial killer, and your researches and recordings about her, any other stories from the books that you can share just to sort of, you know, tease us with?
Just to tease you.
We've been to a few places.
The reason I started, before we get onto the Mary Ann Cotton, it's a build-up.
When we've been going to places, she's come through, not necessarily to talk a lot, but she has come through and said various things.
And earlier in the year, we went to the Duncow Pub.
Now, I don't know whether I've ever spoken to you about the Duncow Cow Pub at Durham.
You have.
We've briefly talked about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it gets called the Hangman's Pub because it was right opposite where they used to hang people at Durham Prison.
And we are the only group allowed access to the Duncow.
It's fabulous.
It's a 16th century pub.
It's amazing.
Even the toilets are out in the yard.
It's exactly as it was.
And Jill invites us back and we love to go.
And we did find out many, many visits ago that it was a brothel at one point.
So you can imagine.
And we get followed by prostitutes wherever we go.
It's great.
And then they always have a story to tell.
Anyway, this time, Mary came through again.
And I thought, oh, this is really weird because she's starting to follow us wherever we go.
So obviously she's ready to talk now.
Anyway, go back to the Duncow.
We communicated with one prostitute and she was talking about Mar Rutherford, Mar Rutherford.
And it came through the spirit box, Mar Rutherford.
And again, I never gave it any thought.
I have no idea who Mar Rutherford is.
So when I came to do research, there was a Margaret Rutherford that was in the prison in 1881 and she was a hawker.
So I found her.
One of the mediums that was with us, Mark, he said he kept getting the name Angeline.
Now, Angeline's a really unusual name.
And I was, you know, it's not a regular name.
It's not a local name, is it?
That's come from somewhere else, France, maybe.
So when I've done the research, there actually was an Angeline and she lived three doors down in Old Helvert.
So it's all of these pieces that we put together.
But Mary Ann came through the spirit box and she was saying financial, constable, vicar, bishop, Bill, John, mother, 11 and snore.
Now, that all seems like total gobbledygook, doesn't it?
Until I did the Mary Ann Cotton book and I researched it.
Financial, she killed people for money.
Constable, well, obviously she was arrested.
Vicar and Bishop, she found religion again while in prison and she had reverence going to visit her.
Bill was William Calcroft who hung her.
John was a relative.
I think it was a father.
Mother, well, she killed her mother, or she was supposed to have.
Eleven was how many children she'd killed.
And snore, the day that she was on trial, she was sent from Durham to Bishop in a very bad snowstorm.
So again, it's cherry-picking all of these things that the spirit box says to you.
And it's putting it together like a huge jigsaw puzzle.
And you have to, it's a tapestry almost.
You have to assemble the thing because it's not going to make sense to you initially.
But that's good because if it did make sense to you initially at the time, then you might say that you were putting your influence on it.
It was stuff that you already knew.
But if they were just random words to you at the scene on the particular time, that's a completely different thing.
It is.
I mean, it was a great investigation.
I bought some Victorian dolls.
I hate dolls, but I bought them because I thought, wherever I go and there's children, I'll put a doll up.
If they move the doll, the kids can keep the doll.
I'll leave it for them.
Thinking that's a great idea, apart from the people that own the buildings, they're like, no, you're not leaving a doll here.
They can move it, but don't leave the doll.
Anyway, I left the doll in the kitchen of the Duncow because Jill had said there's movement in the kitchen upstairs.
They know you're coming.
They always know You're coming because they move things, it's like they're preparing for you.
So, I put the doll in the kitchen.
Sure enough, about 20 minutes into the investigation, it got flung, it got knocked off the top.
Now, it had been there 20 minutes, nobody had been in.
You know, you would think I hadn't put that on right, it was a bit wobbly, it would fall.
Not when it's been in 20 minutes.
Luckily, we caught that on CC TV as well.
So, yeah, it was a really, really good because there's children there, the working girls had children.
So, while they were doing their business as prostitutes, the children were locked in a room to amuse themselves.
So, they always like to come along and talk.
It's very bizarre, my hobby.
Well, yeah, but listen, you're damn right there.
But look, you can't know, can you, whether whatever flung the doll, if something did, whether they were doing something in the time or dimension that they're currently in, or whether they were doing it to attract your attention?
I don't know.
Or maybe it's because I'm downstairs.
Bear in I, all of the group were downstairs in the bar.
The doll was upstairs in the living quarters in the kitchen.
We could see what was going on, but we don't monitor the Seise TV all the time.
It's as much of a shock for us as it is, you know, for people watching because we don't sit and look.
We just record it, let it do its thing, and we talk.
And I'm all the time saying, There's a doll in the kitchen.
It'd be really, really impressive if you could move it for us.
And they don't do it on demand.
You know, they're not performing monkeys.
But maybe 10 minutes later, the doll moves.
So, do they need to build up some kind of energy to do that?
I don't know.
It's very bizarre, but I love it because we did another investigation at the end of last year at an old school at Trimden.
And I put a doll on a chair.
And again, about 20, 25 minutes in, it knocked it off the chair.
And that was kids.
And it really impresses me.
It's great.
I love it.
You look, some of us would be scared.
Some of us would be impressed.
And you're one of the ones who would be impressed.
Elaine Kelly, we are talking with.
And let's get to Mary Ann Cotton because you've done a lot of research into Mary Ann Cotton.
And I found a paragraph about her online.
So let's just tell this story for people who've never heard of her.
Mary Ann Cotton, 1832 to 1873, was a serial killer, convicted and hanged for the murder by poisoning of her stepson, Charles Edward Cotton.
It's likely that she murdered three of her four husbands, apparently in order to collect on their insurance.
And many other people, she might have murdered as many as 21, they think, including 11 of her 13 children.
She mainly used arsenic, which caused rapid death.
What a calculating and dark person.
Well, you know, she's always been, because obviously I live only about five miles away from where she was, she lived at West Auckland.
And when we were kids, it was always fascinating.
You know, my dad would drive us past in the car and say, that's where Mary Ann Cotton lived.
And her house was always painted a different colour.
It always stood out and he'd tell us the story.
And there was a rhyme about her, you know, Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten.
She lies in a grave with her eyes wide open.
So all of that goes on.
It was like folklore.
And I actually got the, I got asked if I would investigate Mary Ann Cotton's house.
Well, you know, to a paranormal investigator, it's, you know, it's a dream come true.
So four years ago, because it's taken four years for me to write about it, a group of us, mostly mediums, went, not to investigate, but we went to help.
Because the people that lived there were having issues.
Stomping man's feet on the upstairs floor.
A child that would stand at the foot of the bed.
They had to put a draft excluder in front of the cupboard door because he used to rattle the door really violently.
You know, that kind of thing.
They wouldn't go upstairs.
They wouldn't go to the toilet without all the lights on.
They used to see a little boy sitting looking at them through the banisters on the stairs, you know, various things.
And they just, they were moving out.
They'd had enough, to be honest with you.
And they invited us along to see if we could work out what it was and just see if we could get some kind of proof.
So that's what we did.
And it was the most upsetting investigation that I've ever done because when it's children, it's it's and of course the way that they passed, it's it's nasty.
It's horrendous.
And if anything would leave a mark on a place, then that would.
I know.
But what a night it was.
You said that Mary Ann Cotton became a sort of, if you could be after killing 21 people, if you could become a reformed character.
You say that's what she became.
So do you think that is why Mary Ann Cotton is coming back to you?
Well, the thing is, I don't know at this point if she is sorry, because I haven't got to that point yet.
When I did the investigation and I could talk to you all night about what happened on that investigation, it was the most bizarre investigation.
Things moving, CCTV, cameras moving, doors open and people having symptoms of arsenic poisoning, dry mouth, lightheadedness, feeling sick, problems with their legs.
We caught recordings of stomping feet, which is great because that was one of the things that, you know, was reported the haunting of the house.
Stomping feet, EVPs, the EVPs I caught from there were amazing.
When I say amazing, awful as well because we caught children screaming on voice recorder.
And we didn't hear that on the night because we would have wondered who was getting murdered.
Excuse the pun.
If it was anybody outside screaming that loud, we'd have gone and had a look.
But it was only on the voice recordings.
Even to the point where, whether we were setting up, it said they're here on voice recording like they were expecting us.
It was bizarre.
And you say that you couldn't actually hear those things with your ears, but it was when you played back the electronic recordings, they were there.
Yeah, the only thing we heard on the night was we heard a cat.
We heard a cat meow.
That's the only thing.
And we actually said, did you hear that?
Did you hear that cat?
And they didn't have a cat.
And that's caught on recordings as well.
The cat's caught a few times, which is strange.
But I have caught animals before, including birds.
And that night, we picked up lots of things, lots of things that I didn't know associated with the trial.
Because I know for all Mary Ann Cotton, everybody knows her from the North East too, Mary Ann Cotton.
It's apart from if you're under 17 and you don't.
But I didn't look into the whole trial thing.
It's quite, it's awful.
I knew the bodies were exhumed.
I knew that's how she got convicted of Charles.
The bodies were exhumed.
And I know where those bodies are.
I know where they're buried.
And I'm one of the very few because my dad who's in his 80s.
His grandda was there when the bodies were exhumed.
So he told me where they are.
And I won't disclose that, obviously, because I don't want any kind of people just thinking they can go and visit.
No, I understand.
Are there houses and buildings there now where they were buried?
Yeah, the churchyard is still there.
The kids are still there.
They haven't got a headstone.
They're in unmarked graves, but I know where they are.
I know where they are because I've actually been.
That sounds really, really weird.
But before we did the investigation, I went along just to pay my respects, Lily, before I went, because I knew it was going to be awful.
So I knew where they were buried.
But when we went to the house, the children were so, they just, they were shy at first, but then they came around, you know, and it was just a very, very sad story.
They weren't threat great.
There was abuse.
You know, they came through the mediums and told us that.
Obviously, not everybody believes in mediums.
I just have to go on what people were picking up.
But the actual recordings that we caught were amazing.
I've been putting them on my page actually, because go back another step.
When we investigated the house, Mrs. Cotton, as I have to call it, visited me as I was going into a sleep state one night.
Now, this is where it gets even more bizarre.
And she said to me, don't you call me Mary Ann?
I'm Mrs. Cotton to you.
And that's all she said.
And I thought, oh, okay.
Okay.
I know where I stand.
And then things went quiet.
Now, Dark Angel came on the tele on ITV.
Now, that was a drama series about Mary Ann Cotton.
If anybody wants to watch it, it's very, very true.
Part of it's true, apart from where she was arrested at the house.
The house wasn't set out that way.
But the rest of it is quite true.
And the people who lived in the house were sick.
They were getting reporters bombarding because obviously people knocking at the door.
This is where she lived.
And she said to me, I'm sick of this.
I don't want anything releasing now.
So she'd invited us along and we did everything we did.
And then I couldn't do anything with it.
It just sat there.
So I'd kept all of the recordings, never really listened to them, left it.
Now, that lady doesn't live at that house anymore.
We're four years on.
And I thought, because Mrs. Cotton kept coming through to various investigations, including the Dun Cow, she popped into the snooker club only to say Mary Ann.
And I thought, you know, now, now, maybe is the time to release what happened that night.
Maybe she just, she's ready now.
Maybe it wasn't the right time then.
It was quite raw.
So when you say she's sorry, I'm not sure she's sorry.
I went with an open mind on the investigation.
I didn't go thinking, she just did this for the money.
was thinking did she have mental issues you know was there was there something under was Was somebody that bad that they could murder 11 of the 13 children?
Well, of course, in history, if you look back at American history and our history, there have been people who've been like that.
And psychologists have wondered for forever how it can be that people are motivated to do such things.
And, you know, these were crimes with a motive, supposedly, collecting on the insurance policies.
But even so, you have to be a particular kind of person with a particular kind of brain to be able to contemplate and do these things.
I know.
And I just knew it was going to be one of those nights.
Now, we did, when we went, cut a long story short, the guy that was haunting upstairs was Joseph Natris.
Now, Joseph Natris was Mary Ann's lover.
So she killed one of her husbands, but she had the lodger in, who was a lover as well.
So she killed the husband, and then she killed the lodger.
And he was really angry.
What he was so angry.
He didn't like us being there because we were women.
I caught his stomping feet on the voice recordings, which was great.
And he came round to us in the end.
Now, I've told you before, Howard, I don't get involved in house cleansing or moving things on.
I think that's something that the spiritualist church needs to tackle.
It's way above my league.
I'm not responsible for, you know, that kind of thing.
Because if things go wrong and the house is still haunted, they'll say, well, you were rubbish.
You said you could do this and you didn't.
Anyway, this night, we actually moved him on.
It was no big candle seance and opened a window and everything went dark and all that.
It was none of that.
It was literally talking to him and saying, why are you here?
You're so angry.
It's awful what happened to you.
But why are you here?
Why would you not move from this house?
And in the end, which sounds terrible, he said he hadn't seen his mum for a long time because he was obviously grounded.
He was so wallowing in a self-pity as well.
It wore to the world.
His mum came and collected him and he went.
Now that was lovely.
The energy in the room lifted.
I'm not saying it went bright, but you could just tell.
The energy was so dense and dark in there and it was oppressive.
And it lifted.
And it just felt like a normal house.
It felt lovely.
But what was lovely was Joseph took the children with him.
So the little boy that was stood at the foot of the bed and all of this and the other, he took them as well.
Now I know that them kids come back to that house.
They're not grounded there.
They come back.
Because after they'd gone and they told us little Charles wanted a bike, he'd never had a bike and this and the other.
And he said, oh, I've got a bike now.
It's red, you know, and this and the other, which sounds bizarre.
When we were gone, he actually said on the EVP on the recordings, bye.
And I thought, oh no, it's it.
It's lovely.
You know, I'm not saying, you know, we haven't advertised it.
We haven't been in the paper saying we've cleansed Mary Ann Cotton's house.
It's just this guy was so annoyed with life.
He hated women and he was what had done to him.
And if he's gone off to a better place, lovely.
We didn't go to say that we would cleanse the house.
We didn't promise to cleanse the house.
We went to see if we could get to the bottom of what was happening, catch evidence Of you know a haunting, but the lady before she moved said she messaged me and said, I can go upstairs now.
I don't feel oppressive anymore.
So maybe, you know, because the house has been up for still and new people live there, maybe they can just put up with the little boy who likes to sit on the stairs and watch.
He's harmless, but at least there's not the stomping feet in the bedroom and, you know, Mr. Angry upstairs anymore.
Well, it's interesting we say this and we're coming to the end now, so we can't go into it too deeply.
But on a recent podcast, I talked to an American ghost investigator who was involved in freeing souls, was the way that they put it.
Basically opening up the door so that souls who were stuck here, maybe they were anguished, maybe they didn't realize why they were here, but they were still stuck here.
But there was a way to talk them to getting the door opened to whatever comes next, if you believe this, and connecting with the relatives and other people on the other side waiting for them.
So it's really weird that you talked about that because you are not the first person this week to talk to me about precisely that phenomenon.
How about that?
That's great.
I mean, to be honest with you, there was not, well, saying there was nothing to it.
It was about the way that you were talking.
No, he didn't like us when we first went in.
It was Effing and Jeffin.
He did not like us.
We got off on a bit of a bad start.
And I had to say to him, look, we're not like her.
We're just normal people.
Come and talk to us.
And then he came round and he told us we were the best of a bad bunch.
And then we kind of coaxed him and then had a lovely chat and said, why?
Why are you stuck here in this house?
There's so many lovely places to go to.
You've got family members.
You know, why would you just choose to stay here?
I just can't think of anything worse.
And to think he's been there from 1880, whatever it was he was killed, no, 1870, something it was.
That's a long time to be stuck in a house.
Well, if time means anything where he is, what a fascinating story.
We can talk for Britain, you and me.
We'll have to talk again.
So we'll talk about the end of the creation of the five books because I know they're not finished yet.
And we'll talk about investigations when you're able to get out, hopefully that soon and do them again.
Good to know that you're keeping well, though, and you're literally keeping your spirits up, Elaine Kelly.
Nice to talk with you.
If people want to read about the Spectre Detectors, where do they go?
Well, I have, to be honest with you, Howard, I've scrapped my website.
Oh.
I never, I forgot to upload loaded all the time and nobody used to check it.
They used to just check on my Facebook and message me on there.
So to be honest with you, via Facebook or on Instagram and we have a YouTube channel where you can listen to all, even the screams of the kids at Mary Ann Cotton's are on there, if you want to listen to that.
And we have to say, as we have to on radio, listener and viewer discretion advised.
In other words, not one for the kids and know what you're going into, know what you're going to see and hear before you check that out.
And if you're easily scared, don't do it.
Had to say that.
Elaine, lovely to speak with you again.
And to you.
Thanks for having me on again.
The effervescent Elaine Kelly will check back with her very soon.
Keeping very busy despite lockdown.
Same story, I suspect, for my friend Craig Bryant in the northwest of England, not far from the place of my birth in Liverpool.
He's more towards the Penn Ines.
Let's get to Craig now.
Craig, how are you doing?
I'm very well, Howard.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on again.
It's my pleasure.
I was asking Elaine Kelly just a moment ago, how is lockdown treating you?
Well, I've been working from home in my normal day job now for about three months.
And we're quite fortunate, really, that where I live, it's fairly out in the countryside.
And we have a nice garden.
So although it's been difficult, it could have been a lot more difficult.
Right.
And you're in, I remember this because, you know, I'm from the northwest, as you know, you're in Chatburn, which is sort of near Clitheroe.
Yeah, it's in between, it's right on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border.
I can actually see the border from my house.
And we are in between sort of Clitheroe and a town just over the border called Skipton.
Right.
And obviously you haven't, we're talking about lockdown.
You haven't been able to get out anywhere into Yorkshire or Lancashire for the last three months because it just hasn't been possible.
So how have you been able to carry on doing your stuff?
Well, away from my normal day job, which I've been able to do online and keeping touch with work colleagues through various different online apps like Teams and that sort of thing.
I've been just basically doing quite a bit of research online into the local area and also talking to people that I know in the village who have lived in Chathburn all of their life.
And I actually started speaking to people about a cotton mill that used to be in the village, which was demolished in the year 2000 and it's now the site is now housing.
But I was quite interested in the local history and the history of the cotton mill in particular.
And it was when I started talking to people in the village, obviously we were socially distanced in when I was speaking to them.
But it soon became apparent that there was actually quite a bit of paranormal activity that was going on on the site.
And I spoke to several people who told me various different stories.
And, you know, I was quite surprised really at how much activity people have seen over the years, especially in that area.
And it is literally just a two-minute walk away from where I live.
So it's fascinating.
Okay, what's the name of the cotton mill?
The cotton mill was called Victoria Mill and it was demolished in the year 2000.
Right, okay.
And, you know, look, Cotton Mill, Lancashire, we know that they were powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution.
I mean, that is where all of the, you know, that is where the cotton was produced, the cloth was produced.
But we know that people were brought in, they were worked hard, and, you know, it wasn't exactly a picnic to be there.
So I would guess if there were stories about ghosts, you would get them in a place like that.
Well, just to give you some sort of idea about how big it was, it was actually two buildings which straddled the road, which now goes down towards where the River Ribble is.
It's called Ribble Lane.
And there was 812 looms in 1891.
So It was a fairly big concern, and it was situated.
There is quite a large water source which runs through the centre of the village.
That's basically how it grew up around this water source, which runs down from Pendle Hill and then goes down and meets the River Ribble.
And so, initially, when the cotton mill was built, there was a water wheel.
There is the remnants of an old lodge where they used to store the water.
And there's a story around that, which I've been told by a couple of people.
And then, of course, they went to coal power sometime in the mid-19th century.
But the area where the old water wheel was still there.
Right.
Okay.
So, what sorts of stories then?
Bearing in mind, that place was there for a long time.
It was a busy place.
It was an important place, but it was a place where people worked hard.
What sort of stories have you heard?
Well, there's two stories that I've been told about the cotton mill.
There's also another story which I've been told about a bridge, which is just further down, but we could come to that later if you liked.
The cotton mill is really interesting.
I was speaking to a local lady who'd lived in the village all her life, and she remembered her parents in the 1950s and the 1960s working at the mill.
And she actually now lives in one of the houses, which is on the site where the mill was demolished.
She told me a very interesting story.
She said that she was coming home one evening.
It was actually the early hours of the morning.
She said it was about one o'clock in the morning.
And she remembers it was a very, very still but foggy night.
And as she parked a car and got out of her car, she was looking down the road towards where she said she remembered the site of the entrance to where the cotton mill was.
And she said, all of a sudden, she saw a group of people standing in the middle of the road.
She said there was probably about a dozen or so people.
And she said, although it was quite foggy, she could see them quite clearly.
They were only about 20, 30 yards down the road from where she stood.
And she said, as she looked at them, she sort of thought to herself, they look like my parents.
So they were wearing the same sort of clothes that she remembers her parents used to wear when they worked in the mill.
And she said, they were just literally stood there.
And they weren't in a line.
They were just in a group.
They were milling around.
They were obviously talking to each other.
And she said she kept them in sight for probably 20, 30 seconds.
And then they suddenly just disappeared.
And she said it was almost like she was looking back in time to when she was a little girl.
And there were all these people waiting to go into the mill.
So it was partly a kind of ghostly experience, but also a sort of time slip.
It could have been.
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought, Howard, to be honest with you.
It sounds like a time slip.
I've mentioned it to other people who've lived in the village for a long time, and several of them have said that they have heard stories about people being seen around about that area on quite a regular basis.
So if it is a time slip phenomenon, then it's obviously centered on where the entrance to the cotton mill used to be.
And look, we know from stories, and certainly if you're brought up in the Northwest, you will have heard stories about the mills being sometimes run by benevolent owners who were kind to the workforce, looked after them because they realized it was in their interest.
Sometimes times were hard, but always there were accidents in mills.
People died in tragic circumstances.
And where people die in tragic circumstances, sometimes they leave a little bit of themselves behind, you know, that presence of themselves behind.
They do.
And there's another story which another gentleman in the village told me about.
And in fact, this was corroborated by yet again a second gentleman that I spoke to who said that he had seen this particular ghost when he was a child.
And I'll try and explain whereabouts it is.
Where the old mill was situated, there was a weir where the water wheel was.
And just upstream of the weir, there was a big lodge built.
So it was a big stone-encased area where they used to store the water in case the stream dried up or the flow of the stream became so weak that it wouldn't turn the water wheel for the mill.
So they would store the water in there.
And there was, in fact, it's still there.
I've been up to have a look at it.
There is a huge metal contraption which is like a weir gate.
And it's like a huge wheel, basically, that they would obviously open and close when they needed to.
And the story that I was told was that sometime in the late 19th century, I couldn't get an exact date.
And I have done some research on this, but unfortunately, I've not been able to get an exact date.
But there was a body of one of the mill workers was found in the early hours of the morning.
And he was actually slumped over the Weir gate, dead.
And I've been told that his ghost has been seen on numerous occasions.
The whole area around there now is wooded.
And it's quite a dark and eerie place.
I've been for a walk through it many a time.
And local children play around there and they always dare each other to go up into the woods because it is so typically dark and foreboding and spooky.
But I was talking, as I said, to two different gentlemen who live in the village, and they both had the same experience of actually seeing this apparition of this man, who people in the village believe is the ghost of the man who died there, just walking through the trees.
And I spoke to one gentleman, he said he saw him as a child, and he said he was absolutely terrified.
He said he just scared the absolute living daylights out of him.
And he said he could still remember it to this day, just how scary it was.
Right.
So do you think there's, you know, do you think that this place, this site could be a gift that keeps on giving?
It sounds like if there are a couple of stories there, there will be a couple more.
Well, I certainly think it's a site of quite high paranormal activity.
You know, There are quite a few houses on there now, and the whole area does seem to be quite high in paranormal activity.
I spoke to another gentleman in the village who said that he could, when he was a child, he remembered that there was a coal yard there where they used to store the coal before they obviously moved it into the steam room to power the looms.
And he said that he could always smell, he said it wasn't burning coal, he said there's a difference between burning coal and coal dust.
And he said when he lived in one of the houses on the site, even though they had gas fires and central heating, they didn't have a coal fire or anything like that.
He said he could always smell coal dust in the air.
And he said it used to be quite strong sometimes and less strong at others.
So again, that is almost like something from the past trying to come through and imprint itself on today.
And it's something that we don't understand, but we know that it happens an awful lot where things that have happened or played out in a previous time, in a previous existence, somehow penetrate through to here.
And that's why people say sometimes they smell lavender or sometimes, like you say, they smell coal dust or they smell something that is reminiscent of trains when there's no train line anymore.
You know, these things happen so much that it's hard to say that they would be coincidence.
I know that also, and this is just a quick catch-up, really, we're going to do a longer podcast quite soon, Craig.
You've been investigating some local pubs, and I think there's a pub that used to be a mortuary.
Talk to me about that.
Yeah, there's two pubs in the village.
There's the brown cow and the black bull.
Both are very sort of bovine in their names.
The black bull, apparently, used to have a mortuary in the cellar.
It's the older of the two pubs in the village.
And there are a number of stories that I'm only picking up bits and pieces at the minute.
I haven't done a proper investigation into this.
And in fact, I'd like to try and talk to the landlord, who I know quite well, but I've not spoken to him about this because this is something that I've undiscovered recently.
And obviously, you know, the pubs are closed at the minute.
We're in lockdown and everything else.
But when things open up, I'm going to try and chat to him because apparently there have been a number of paranormal activity going on in the pub.
Certainly the other pub in the village, which is the brown cow, has the ghost of a small Victorian stableboy because parts of that pub used to be stables.
And apparently there's a little boy seen running around on the ground floor who is allegedly sort of dressed in quite old Victorian clothes and he looks like a stable boy.
And I've spoken to one of the previous landladies of the pub and she said she'd seen him on numerous occasions.
And there's also, I know that you're gathering stuff and this is some of it for your upcoming second book, possible, upcoming second book.
Story about a house that's haunted again by a little boy and the cleaner of that house, the daughter of the cleaner of the house, have I got this right, plays with the ghost of the little boy, which sounds bizarre.
Well, this is interesting.
There's a couple of stories in the book which are actually quite similar where children seem to be able to see or sense ghosts much easier than adults do.
And in fact, I've come across a couple of stories where young children have said they are playing with other children who are quite clearly ghosts, they're quite clearly some sort of paranormal phenomena.
There's a house in the village which, again, is a very old house.
I was speaking to again two people.
One was the lady who goes in and does the cleaning in the house.
And she used to take her very young daughter, who was only a toddler at the time.
She just started walking and just started speaking.
And she said that she used to tell her mummy that she was playing with a little boy.
And this little boy used to be in the room with her, she used to play with her.
But I was also speaking to another gentleman in the village who actually, he's a washing machine repairman, actually.
He lives in the village.
And he was asked to go around to this particular house and do some repairs on a washer.
And he said, whilst he was in the house, the lady who's the cleaner was also there with her daughter.
And her daughter started saying, oh, you know, the little boy's here.
And the washing machine guy, who's a guy called Phil, said he could suddenly hear running around footsteps, really, really quite light, but audible footsteps running around in the room above him.
And he went upstairs to have a look in the room to see what was there, if there was anybody up there.
And he said there was nobody in the room.
But he could hear, and he said to me, he said, I don't believe in this sort of thing.
But he said it sounded like a child running around in the house.
And he said that this little girl was absolutely adamant.
She kept saying, mummy, mummy, there he is.
He's running across the floor and he wants me to play with him.
So, yeah, quite strange, that one.
So he's clearly trapped in time, isn't he?
And he's seeking out, if you believe this kind of thing from the other side, he's seeking out a playmate.
It would seem so.
And I've come across this, as I say, on a number of occasions.
I know of two other stories that I actually wrote about in the book where the ghosts of children are involved.
And being a parent myself, I do find it a little bit sad.
You know, if the ghost of a child is trapped and can't move on, perhaps it's because they don't realize that they're dead.
And I do find it a little bit sad if they are still trapped here.
And I think it would be nice if they could move on to wherever you go when you pass on.
It would be nice to know a little bit more about the backstory there, if we could find that out.
And, you know, maybe somebody, if again, if you believe these things, maybe somebody could help that little boy who's trapped to gently make the transition, which I am told by people who know about these things can be done.
Craig, listen, lovely to talk with you.
Now, the second book, is that a definite now?
You're definitely doing that second book.
I am definitely going to write it.
It's going to be, there's going to be some paranormal stories in there, but there's also going to be more stuff on UFOs in this next book because I'm extremely interested in UFOs.
And the more research I do, the more I find that Lancashire and East Lancashire and around the area of Pendle Hill especially is an absolute hotbed of UFO activity.
It's just the Pendle witches, the UFO stuff that has gone on there.
It's not just the Alan Godfrey case that we talked about on my podcast.
It is much, much more than that.
Craig Bryant, what is your website so people can go check you out?
It's www.theshadowmanofacrinton.co.uk.
Easiest to find me just by putting my name into the search function on Amazon and the book will come up.
The book's called The Shadowman of Accrington.
We'll talk again soon.
Certainly on the podcast, Craig Bryant.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
And my grateful thanks to Elaine Kelly and Craig Bryant for being part of my show.
You'll hear more from both of them.
Of course, you will.
Thank you very much for everything you've done for me, for the nice emails and contributions to the show in one way or another.
It all means a lot to me.
Thank you very, very much.
We will all get through this.
So until next, we meet here on The Unexplained Online.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and please, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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