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Jan. 8, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:03:56

Edition 691 - Oliver Cromwell/Tom Reilly

Author/researcher Tom Reilly in Drogheda, Ireland with paranormal tales about - and his own take on - the life of Oliver Cromwell - Weird happenings discussed include the haunting of Cromwell's house in Ely, the story of Malahide Castle and the "Eavesdropping Cavalier" in Hull...

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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 Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
	Thank you very much for all of the messages that have come to me over the New Year period.
	Very kind and some good guest suggestions and other things that have come in.
	Please know that I do get to see each and every email as it comes in here.
	And you can contact me if you want to by going to the website theunexplained.tv following the link for messages and you can email me from there.
	And if your message requires a reply, then please put in the email response required.
	And then I will get back to you.
	And if I don't, please remind me.
	I'm quite happy to hear from you reminding me that I sent you an email three weeks ago and maybe it slipped my mind.
	You know, my mind is a very flexible place at the moment and I'm trying to keep a lot of balls in the air at this moment.
	As we go into this brand new year, who knows what this year will portend?
	Is that the word?
	Who knows?
	It's all a blank canvas, isn't it?
	Looking out the window now, my window is spattered with rain.
	It's grey, but it is mild.
	It's almost like a spring day here.
	What is going on?
	Question we've asked a thousand times here, and I've just gone and asked it again.
	But I hope all is good with you.
	Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, for taking me into another brand new year.
	And above all else, thank you to you for being part of this show.
	And if you made a donation to it recently, thank you very much.
	You know who you are.
	Now, we're going to do something slightly different here.
	We're going to talk about some of the ghostly stories and strange happenings around the life and times of a controversial figure from history in England, Oliver Cromwell.
	Now, I've got to go into this conversation by being honest with you.
	My education from 11 to 14 severely failed me.
	We used to have an examination at the age of 11 in this country called the 11 Plus.
	And if you passed it, you went to a grammar school.
	If you failed it, you went to a secondary modern school.
	And the original aim of those, I think, was to equip people more for trades and crafts and those kind of things, which are great things for people who can do them.
	Unfortunately, I failed the exam and I was hopeless at engineering and hopeless at woodwork and lousy at sport.
	And in this particular school that I went to, that marked me down completely.
	I was interested in radio and reading things.
	And so, you know, it was not a popular state to be in.
	I remember the headmaster of the school, whose name I won't use here, but I'm going to put it in the book for sure, stopped me in the corridor once and said, you've got the gift of the gab you have used.
	In other words, shut up.
	You've got too much to say for yourself.
	So that was my life from 11 to 14.
	I was bullied at that school.
	Some of the teachers were fine, were great, and some of them definitely were not.
	It was an awful experience for me.
	Your experience of that school, if you went to that school with me, may be different.
	My experience was absolutely terrible, and I was very pleased when they knocked it down.
	In fact, they knocked it down, they knocked the building down, I think about 15, 20 years ago, and I went up to Liverpool to make sure it was gone.
	That's how I felt about it.
	But my life changed, and I've told this story in other places before.
	At the age of 14, when that school merged with the girls' grammar school, we had a brand new building.
	We had teachers from the grammar school, some new teachers, and they took an interest in me and encouraged me to take exams and ultimately to go to university, which nobody from my family, my background, had ever done.
	And I owe a lot of the things that I achieved to them.
	But 11 to 14, when I should have been learning about Oliver Cromwell and British history, English history, it's just a blank.
	I don't think I learned anything very much.
	The things that I did learn in those 11 to 14 years, I learned from listening to the BBC World Service and Radio 4 in England in those days.
	Certainly, I can't honestly think of many things that that particular school taught me.
	But things improved enormously when we became a comprehensive and my life turned round.
	And so I will be eternally grateful to them.
	So look, that's the reason why we're talking about Oliver Cromwell, a controversial figure, for a whole variety of reasons that you will hear.
	That I don't know as much as I should about this period in history.
	But maybe I'll learn something.
	Tom Riley takes a controversial view of Oliver Cromwell, who is widely disliked in Ireland for reasons that you will hear, and that I understand.
	He was a controversial character, and we're going to be talking about some of that, but also talking a lot about the paranormality around this man.
	So that's what we're going to do.
	Tom Riley here, author of The Protector, The Fall and Rise of Oliver Cromwell.
	A very different conversation.
	Tom Riley, based at Drocida in Ireland, which is north of Dublin, where I once worked for a short period, long, long ago, on a station called Radio Nova.
	And I was very warmly welcomed and enjoyed that short time there.
	But that's another story for another time.
	That's enough talking from me.
	Let's get to the guest now, Tom Riley in Ireland.
	Tom, thank you very much for coming on my show.
	No problem.
	You're very welcome.
	Now, Tom, you're in Drocada.
	And apart from the Thornbirds, my listeners know that I did work in Ireland, but I was the bit closest to England in Dublin for all of it, really.
	So I don't know Drocada at all.
	All I know about Drocada is the Thornbirds on the telly.
	What's Drocada like?
	Well, firstly, you're showing your age big time though, Howard, because the Thornborns is a long time ago.
	30 odd years.
	Yeah, Ralph de Bricasar.
	I remember him well.
	Richard Chamberlain played.
	And I was very fond of Rachel.
	I can't remember her name, but maybe she was very attractive.
	I remember my mother loving that series.
	I think Richard Chamberlain was the reason.
	But that's all I know.
	And they used to call it Droghide.
	Yes, I was just about to correct you on that.
	Yeah.
	Dragada, believe it or not, the G is silent.
	I understand why you'd want to focus in on the G, but it's silent.
	In Irish, just so you know, it's Drihid Aha, Which is the bridge on the Ford.
	So that's where the name comes from: Drihid, which is Bridge, and Aha, which is Ford.
	So I think Colleen again, the name escapes me, the lady who wrote the Torrellboards based that ranch in Australia in the novel on the town.
	But yeah, it's synonymous as things happen with Oliver Cromwell.
	So that's where I'm from.
	I never left the parish.
	I've always been from Dodd.
	I live there now today.
	I was born there in 1960.
	So I've got a very good local knowledge of the place.
	It's on the east coast.
	It's just north of Dublin.
	So where you were in the 80s, it's just up the road.
	You wouldn't be intended to call in unless you were passing by.
	So literally, then you've got Dublin and then you've got Black Rock.
	And if you go further north, you've got Drockida.
	Yes, you're a little skewed there just for people.
	That's a long time.
	Okay.
	Oh, no, I don't mean Black Rock.
	I mean Port Marnock.
	Yes, very good.
	Well done.
	Absolutely.
	You've got Port Maruck, yeah.
	Well corrected.
	Well saved.
	Not Black Rock.
	Black Rock is the other way.
	Correct.
	That's correct.
	So yeah, you would, that's more or less the way it goes.
	The major town between us and Dublin, there's Skerrys and Balbriggan.
	And then there's Brahada.
	But it was a medieval town.
	It was actually once the largest medieval town in Ireland.
	It was much bigger than Dublin was.
	It had a wall, town wall circumference of about a mile and a half.
	So it was significantly big.
	But of course, Dublin, because of the terrain, it was a lot flatter to build.
	Dublin took off and Drahana didn't.
	Okay.
	Well, now I know, thank you for that, because I knew absolutely nothing about the place, apart, as you say, from the thornbirds, which wouldn't have taught you much.
	And now I know a hell of a lot more.
	Thank you for that.
	Not at all.
	Okay.
	Now, before we get into the subject at hand here, and Oliver Cromwell and the paranormality, etc., surrounding him, your biography says you live in a haunted house.
	Yeah, that is true.
	My biography does say that.
	That's the aspect of truth that is associated with that sentence.
	I am currently in a castle.
	I actually work in a castle.
	And the castle dates from 1738.
	And yes, there are lots of stories about goings on that are certainly unexplained.
	We have very significantly, and if anybody wants to Google this, feel free.
	The Lady of the Stairs is a big legend around here.
	That's a lady.
	The name of the castle is called Ard Gillen, A-R-D-G-I-L-L-A-N.
	And it's in North County Dublin.
	And this lady, she was a very strong swimmer and she used to go swimming all times of the year.
	And she went swimming in 1852 in November.
	And she unfortunately drowned.
	And she left two children.
	So after the drowning in 1852, there have been lots of sightings of the lady of the stairs because the stairs which she descended to get to the beach still exist.
	And local people are very loath to embrace the stairs after dark and especially on Halloween.
	But there are lots of other things that go bumping the night around here.
	We've had paranormal investigations done.
	I really would be very keen to tease this out with you, Howard, because I'm, you know, as far as I'm concerned, you may have heard a slight hesitancy in my voice.
	But where I am on this is bang, slap in the middle.
	I believe that nobody in history that I know of has proved one way or the other that a dimension, you know, that you might consider that's out there exists.
	And I'm very open to that fact.
	So I just haven't crossed the Rubicon just yet because I seem not to be, if you'll pardon the expression, blessed with, you know, I haven't had sightings myself.
	And I can always put down my own mind, my own logical mind, I can always put down a good reason as to why there is a creek behind me at a current moment or there is a shadow or a light.
	So that's where I am just on this whole thing.
	But the Lady of the Stairs, if people see the Lady of the Stairs, look, I don't live too far from Hampton Court Palace here.
	There are members of the staff there who've worked there for years who've looked me in the eye and told me, and I have no reason to doubt them, that they have seen Henry VIII and three-dimensional figures from history waft past them on a regular basis.
	So, you know, I'm sort of partially convinced by that because the people who told me those things, I have no reason to doubt them.
	I understand exactly what you said, and I took very, I was very interested to hone in on the language you used.
	You said you had no reason to doubt them.
	And I do believe absolutely that people have genuine and sincere experiences that they are convinced are real.
	My difficulty is, and it's only just the difficulty is that I haven't had them.
	And I have to take it for granted that these people are telling me the truth and I understand them, but I've no reason to doubt them.
	But lots of explanations could be proffered for something that they've seen.
	For instance, an over-fertile imagination, a desire to see something, a trick of the light, anything.
	My fundamental, and I really would love somebody to just make sure, to convince me, because my fundamental problem with all of this is it's always obscure.
	If there are spirits out there, they seem to communicate with very oblique methods.
	They don't, you have things like orbs.
	You have things like doors opening at night, whenever, during the day.
	But they're all, you know, there's never a very clear, concise conversation that can be proven.
	That's my only point.
	And it makes you think, you know, maybe there's some kind of code wherever they might be that precludes them from actually being a little bit more explicit about it all.
	Or maybe just the way that it works, that it's such an effort to make communication.
	Or maybe they are just the stone tape theory.
	They're just impressions of things that were that have somehow magnetically recorded themselves in the buildings that we've put there.
	Who knows?
	That's very good.
	I have to say, that's very insightful.
	I can't.
	That'll make a change.
	Yeah, no, that's very good.
	But I also, you know, I think that, you know, there are those out there who, you know, who will tell you that they can connect with the dead.
	I mean, you know, and there are lots of people.
	My dad, for instance, is gone.
	He's passed on.
	And he, like you just said there, there may be a code that prevents them, you know, from communicating clearly.
	But, you know, he obviously told me, well, he didn't, not obviously told me that he would absolutely and categorically get in touch with me.
	But they, you know, in so many instances over the years with people in this world have had the same conversation, I'm sure.
	But it's never, you know, there's an element of cop-out in that.
	You know, okay, there may be a code, but is that good enough?
	You know, that just sort of, to me, it just adds to the doubt.
	Well, you know, I'm not 100% convinced, and that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this.
	But I've met so many people who've had their experiences, and, you know, they've all sincerely told me, but, you know, maybe they were experiencing something that is not ghostly, that has another explanation.
	But that's, you know, maybe another topic for another time.
	I just want to say one thing.
	I suspect you're in a very big room, and it's having a certain amount of effect on the acoustic here.
	So for my listener, this is the best that we could get, and it's perfectly intelligible, but there is a lot of reverberation going on.
	And I suspect it's because of that room you're in.
	It could also be paranormal forces interfering with the voice.
	I know which side of that equation I come down on.
	Okay.
	So we've talked about the haunted house or not.
	Let's get into the topic of Oliver Cromwell.
	Now, at the beginning of this, you wouldn't have heard my intro, but my listener will have heard this.
	I made an admission.
	Unlike a lot of Americans who are schooled in their history, because it's very much a part of the curriculum and they know their constitution and their past, because of educational failings in the 1970s, in my case, I wasn't really taught history very well.
	So Oliver Cromwell is a man who was in a movie that I was taken to see when I was a kid called Cromwell, and it didn't really make much of an impact on me.
	And at school, they didn't really teach us much about all of this.
	So there's a great big gap in my knowledge that I've had to try and fill over the last 24 hours of looking at stuff.
	And what I understand about this man is that, of course, he's a hugely significant figure in English history, but also he's deeply controversial.
	There are people in Ireland who brand him a war criminal for his activities there.
	Is there a way that you can sum up for me who this man was, why he's important and why he's controversial?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Well, just to hone in on the school thing as well, I mean, I pay very little attention to school as well, and I wouldn't have known an awful lot about him.
	But one thing we did know over here was that we've been taught and children are still being taught the same thing as that he came over to Ireland from England and he killed a lot of innocent Irish people.
	So he's got a very bad reputation over here.
	Over there, what happened was he lived in a time when the king of England, Charles I, turned out to be a bit tyrannical and ruled kind of independently of Parliament.
	And so his parliament fell out with the king.
	The civil war, a civil war then broke out between the royalists who favoured the king and parliamentarians or the roundheads who favoured parliament and it was an awful time in English history, the war of the three kingdoms which would have been Scotland, Ireland and England.
	And as a result of that, the king, and I'm synopsizing for just for brevity, the king, Charles I, his head was chopped off, he was killed, and Parliament found themselves in an invidious position as to how would they run the country.
	They tried to run it as a parliament, but it didn't really work because they had always had a figurehead.
	And they decided then that they would make Oliver Cromwell a protector.
	So he effectively was the only commoner ever to rise from relative obscurity to rule the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
	And that title that they gave him, Lord Protector, is a title that sends chills down my spine because it makes him sound omnipotent.
	It makes him sound like the Witchfinder general and somebody with ultimate authority in every sphere who rightly needs to be feared.
	Was that the way he was?
	Well, oddly enough, the name came from an English monarchical legacy because when younger Pritner
	So they dug into history and dug up this word, the protector, because they couldn't call him a king.
	Now they did offer him the kingship.
	But in the same way that you see sinister aspects to that name, other people might have found solace in it.
	Insofar as, as you know, it was a huge time in England's history in terms of colonizing the world.
	The sun never sets on the British Empire.
	And so he would have been protecting them, England, from forces, you know, like Spain and France and so on.
	And so a lot of people would have seen it to be a positive name.
	So there would have been people in England who were absolutely in support of him because they felt safe with him.
	But people in places that England reached out to, including Ireland, who would have felt quite differently because, I mean, if we take Ireland as an example, so many people died because the word brutal has been used in things that I've read today of the way that he repressed the Catholic population of Ireland, the way that he put people down, the way that he put them to the sword.
	I mean, one of the descriptions I read today was that this is the thing that blackened his reputation.
	Yeah, big time.
	Howard, this is a huge bone of contention because I'm one of the few people, this conversation is going to take a weird twist now for people who are Irish.
	And the Irish diaspora is huge over the world, especially in England, as you know, and particularly Liverpool being the capital of coming from Liverpool.
	I know all about that because there's some of that in me.
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah.
	You're a DNA.
	It's in there somewhere.
	And, you know, yes, Cromwell would have been blamed for committing atrocities, for committing war crimes in Ireland.
	But I am, and particularly in Drohada, he's associated, that's probably the biggest blot on his career.
	He's associated with having slaughtered the entire population here at Drohada.
	The thing is, that's complete bunkum.
	It didn't happen.
	It's nonsense.
	He actually strove to make sure that civilians, unarmed, innocent, grannies, granddads, uncles, aunts, toddlers, teenagers, all of that type, unless you were in the military, he managed, in my opinion, and I've got four books to back it up, to avoid what has been alleged, what he has alleged to have been involved in.
	He's alleged to have been involved in genocide.
	So this is where the conversation, you know, our conversation now takes a little bit of a turn.
	Well, I'm sure you get a lot of email and a lot of interaction on that topic.
	I mean, I hear what you say, and I don't know enough about it, and I'm being honest about that.
	I'm just trying to learn here.
	But equally, another article that I read from 1999, which I think was the 400th anniversary of Cromwell's death, there were protests in Ireland about marking this man's life and times in any way.
	So what we can say is that he's a controversial figure.
	Yeah, interestingly, I was at the forefront of those protests.
	I think I instigated them.
	What happened was I had his death mask exhibited over here to commemorate that particular occasion.
	And that did indeed invoke a lot of the ire of local politicians.
	And the deputy mayor, which you believe, led the protests.
	And we got a lot of publicity about that.
	But yeah, so essentially, feelings still run very deep in this country about Cromwell.
	And we do blame him for most of Ireland's woes.
	He is the monster, the bogeyman.
	But, you know, unfortunately, and I get what you're saying, you can't challenge me.
	And, you know, I constantly ask.
	You know, I'm not a historian, and I would have to do that from an educated perspective, which I don't have.
	So I merely hear what you say.
	But the reading that I've done in the last 24 hours about Oliver Cromwell, for stuff I should have known when I was 12 and didn't get taught, he's gone a bad rap in a lot of ways.
	A lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about him, along with the people who, to this day, this side of the Irish sea laud him.
	So I'm just listening to what people say.
	Sure.
	And to be honest, I think that's also very indicative.
	And of the situation, because it just shows the uphill battle that I have.
	And it's constant.
	I'm only making very small inroads into this tradition that has been gone on for centuries.
	And it's absolutely a very uphill, you know, it could, it's been something like three, nearly 400 years since the events in Ireland occurred.
	But it may take another 400 years before this whole tale gets told properly and it, you know, comes into public consciousness.
	Because, you know, to be honest, like it is, it is something that, you know, beneath this, simmering beneath the skin of most Irish people is an anti-English feeling, an anti-English sentiment.
	And that's true.
	And there's nothing we can do about that because we've, you know, people will tell you we've had 800 years of oppression and Cromwell led that.
	Of course, to me, it's all history.
	It's all nonsense because, you know, the circumstances back then, religious, political, economic, are all completely different.
	And you can't judge from this distance.
	But people do judge.
	And, you know, we all wanted you guys to fail abysmally at the World Cup.
	Thanks for that.
	That's okay.
	But, you know, there will be people who will call you an apologist for this man.
	And I know that you will say that, you know, you are doing this on the basis of research.
	And I want to say to people right now on both sides of this, I am merely asking questions.
	I am not taking a stance because I don't know enough.
	But, you know, apologist.
	Yeah, I'm a huge apologist for him.
	And can I just tell you the way I see it?
	I see this as I'm a trailblazer.
	I am absolutely on the side of right.
	I'm righting a wrong.
	You know, there are people who we certainly should blame for genocide in this country who are English, and there are lots of battles throughout the country, throughout the centuries, and where civilians were included and they were absolutely brutally killed.
	But the problem is that Hommel gets the blame for this, where he was the one who absolutely categorically didn't involve them.
	So, what I'm saying is that it's a historical miscarriage of justice.
	And it's very ironic that I happen to hail from Drauda.
	But when you do the research, I mean, you can talk about this level, and I'm not going to get into any significant detail, don't worry.
	But when you do the research, you really can only come to one conclusion.
	This is not rocket science.
	I am not in any way some sort of clever forensic detective.
	I basically just went in there with a cynical mindset, and I ended up with this particular stance.
	And what really I love is the fact that I keep getting pushed back from certain academics who should really know better.
	Most of whom are Irish, but they seem to want to continue this big grudge that we hold against you guys for, you know, 800 years.
	Well, it's a strange thing, isn't it?
	When you get down to the human level of things, and I've told my listener before here, and I told you before we started recording, that I worked for a short time in Ireland and grew up in Liverpool with a lot of Irish influence because, you know, we have the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool, and there are parts of my family who have those roots, so that's part of me.
	And, you know, we're all a mix.
	And I think the mix has made me all the richer, to be honest with you.
	But when I arrived in Dublin to work, and I had, you know, in the days when Irish cars had a red back number plate and English ones had a yellow back number plate, I thought, that's going to mark me out.
	I wonder what's going to happen.
	And, you know, people almost universally and entirely, as I kind of expected because of my experience as a kid in Liverpool, but they opened their hearts and their homes to me.
	It was, you know, it was great.
	I met some fantastic people.
	And some of the broadcasters I met have a much greater facility with the language than some of the broadcasters I worked with in England.
	That's a huge generalization, but I worked with some amazing people who back then were on the way up.
	And some of them are household names who you would know now in Ireland.
	So it's a strange thing, isn't it, all of this?
	And Oliver Cromwell is right at the heart of it.
	And let me say once again here, before people start emailing me, the point of this is that the views that you're hearing are Tom's and they come to you from his research.
	And I was failed by the education system in Liverpool from the ages of 11 to 14.
	So when I should have been learning all this stuff, I wasn't.
	I wasn't taught this stuff.
	And then by the time you get to 14, you're doing physics and you're getting into economics and you're doing all sorts of other things.
	So the deep history just got left behind thanks to the education system.
	Now, let's get into the paranormality of it, because anybody who's a big figure becomes the stuff of myth and legend and talk one way and another.
	And I've read one of the other things that came up in the readings that I did in the last 24 hours about Oliver Cromwell was that there's a thing that people refer to as the curse of Oliver Cromwell.
	Have you heard about that?
	What is that?
	Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely.
	Well, the curse, you see, yeah, as you rightly say, I mean, his legacy has infiltrated so many aspects of history throughout the years.
	And he's, you know, it's just incredible the impact this man has had.
	But the curse of Cromwell is basically, it's like an F you.
	That's what it is in Irish.
	And this is what would have come through the years.
	If you had really annoyed anybody or anything, they would just go, you know, well, the Curse of Cromwell be on you.
	And that's exactly what it is.
	It's the same as saying F you.
	And most, now, these days, it's not really used in the vernacular over here.
	But, I mean, look, there are lots of, because this was quite a capricious time, if you like, in the history between these two countries, back then religion was huge and people believed in spirits.
	They believed implicitly in the paranormal.
	It wasn't even in question.
	You know, there were people back then who wouldn't even put on their shoes because they believed their shoes were beset with evil spirits.
	I mean, it was pervasive.
	Now, you know, these days, oh, I must tell you, sorry, there's a good story.
	Do you mind if I just, it's similar.
	Always want to hear a good story.
	Yeah.
	This is to do with his head.
	I just remembered.
	So, and it's interesting.
	There's a kicker at the end, which is good.
	So when he died and eventually his republic failed, the new king, King Charles II, had his body exhumed.
	And they hung, drew and quartered his physical body.
	He was long dead.
	And they stuck his head on a pike outside Westminster Hall.
	And that head lasted about 20 years, which you believe, on the pike, until a storm blew it down.
	And a soldier who was on duty underneath took the head away and he brought it home.
	Now there was a bit of an outcry because Cromwell's head had been there for 20 odd years and people were going, where's his head?
	This is, you know, they put out a reward for his head.
	Anyway, make a long story short, the head then was, when he died, he bequeathed the head to his granddaughter who passed it, sold it immediately to a circus.
	It was gone to a museum.
	And throughout the centuries, it was a curiosity and people used to pass it round and believe it or not, and take off a bit of his ear, a bit of his nose.
	But eventually, in the year 1960, they realized that they might have Croma's head and a scientific investigation was done and it was established that it absolutely was with the methods that they had then to confirm.
	So anyway, the head was then buried secretly in a place called Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge, which is the college he attended, in March 1960.
	And if anybody is into reincarnation, I was born in March 1960.
	Now, that's either an astonishing coincidence, and we've seen many of these on this show, or there's something else in it.
	I toy around with the possibility.
	I think to myself, why am I doing this?
	Because I'm quite vosophous.
	You know, I really am absolutely convinced that I need to get this message out to the world.
	And I do think, I'm not suggesting, of course, that I'm the reincarnated Cromwell, but you know, some people might think I am.
	Have you had one of those, I keep meaning to have it done because I think it's going to be, in my case, it's going to be a right old mix.
	I'm not sure what will be in it, but one of those DNA ancestry tests.
	Have you ever had that done?
	No, I haven't.
	Maybe you should.
	Who knows what it may reveal?
	But isn't that interesting?
	That's either an astonishing coincidence or some kind of portent of something else.
	So the head itself had a mythical status.
	Absolutely.
	Totally mythical.
	And even more to the point, because it was such a sensitive time in 1960 when they did bury the head, the dean of the college is the only one who knows the location.
	And he hands, or he or she, hands that information on to each successive dean.
	And, you know, while he's such a divisive figure, they still won't reveal where the head is buried.
	I mean, I don't know.
	Again, this may have passed you by, but in 2002, the BBC did a Great Britain's competition.
	Would you remember that?
	I do, because I think Winston Churchill was elected or nominated as the greatest.
	He absolutely was, correct.
	What happened was they just did a spurious, you know, everybody voted around and they had a top 100.
	Oddly, Bob Geldoff and Bono both ended up in there.
	But Cromwell was also in there and he ended up 10th.
	And there was a documentary made of the 10.
	The top 10.
	And his was, you know, so he was very popular.
	You know, in terms of the way the English would look at him, you know, he was seen to have gotten rid of a despotic king.
	Was he in front of Geldof and Bono?
	He was way ahead.
	Yeah, I think he wasn't very musical.
	I gather that.
	Well, no, that is interesting, isn't it?
	So, you know, his impact, you know, apart from people who experienced the schooling that I experienced, obviously, you know, sat with a lot of people.
	So his head is something that people talk about, and there's this mystery about his head.
	And the location, because he's, as you say, a divisive figure, and if the location was revealed, then all kinds of things may happen.
	But his house in Ely.
	Oh, yeah.
	His house is said to be, well, you know more about this than I do, well haunted.
	Yeah, well, you know, funny, I actually love that house because it's still standing.
	And that's the key area of this is that it's a medieval house and it's been around for hundreds of years, but Cromwell occupied it for about 20 and it's known as Cromwell's house today.
	And yeah, the staff throughout the years have, I don't know if you're familiar with the word puka.
	I am.
	I am aware of that word.
	Yeah.
	So they would be kind of rogue, you know, spirits who wouldn't be malicious or malevolent in any way.
	But pukas apparently appear on a regular basis in Cromwell's house and they untie staff's shoelaces.
	And you might think, you know, well, you know, people tie their shoelaces all the time.
	But apparently this is to a degree where it's well known and they go, oh, God, my shoelaces are all done again.
	So it happens on a very regular basis.
	Now, the place was investigated by a lady from Cambridge, I think, in the 70s, as far as I remember.
	And they did, you know, I wouldn't be familiar, I couldn't articulate this properly, but they set up machinery and microphones or whatever.
	And she connected or communicated with Cromwell.
	The only, again, it's ambiguous thing for me is that there wasn't a very clear message.
	The message was that whatever was happening was a positive thing, that he approved of what she was doing.
	And again, I just, I'm lost as to, but look, that's the case.
	You'll see his dead body, well, a mannequin of his dead body if you go there in the bed.
	And it is a very eerie, very eerie place.
	And lots of people have witnessed, have said they've witnessed various apparitions of the man himself through the years.
	But you can tell why.
	I mean, you know, I know, you know, I'm currently in a castle.
	In my opinion, the older a place is, the more it reeks of history and the more potential there is to, you know, have something, because of all the people who've passed through, I suppose, and, you know, have something appear.
	That's where I am.
	You know, it's unlikely, or is it, that a brand new house is going to have spirits, you know, associated with it.
	You said something very interesting here that I don't want to let go before we start talking about other stuff.
	This woman in the 1970s, I think her name was Marjorie Kite, who was behind the investigation then, and there was some kind of indistinct message from Cromwell himself broadly saying, you know, I appreciate what you're doing here.
	That indicates that if his spirit is around there, and that's a big assumption to make, that he will have been aware of the intervening history, that he wasn't stuck in his place in time.
	Yeah, it's an interesting interpretation of that.
	You know, again, like I, and I know we've touched on this earlier, and my problem is, Howard, that I will always default to, and I'd love you to be able to, I understand that you're driving this conversation, but I'd love you to be able to tell me and maybe some of your listeners, where, with your experience, where, you know, okay, so let's say people die.
	At that point of death, you know, consciousness goes.
	And I'm not, again, a scientist, I'm just an ordinary Joe.
	I don't know.
	Rigamortis will set in at some point, very early on.
	And the potential for something to exist is, you know, is it non-existent or is it very low?
	I mean, where, you know, in layman's terms, does the potential come from something you just described there, that Cromwell approved, you know, that people are communicating from that dimension?
	How is it possible that after death?
	I know it's the $64,000 question.
	I get that, but I just can't, you know, why is it so obscure?
	Why do we not know and understand exactly what happened?
	Is it to do with energy, for instance?
	Well, I think in a way, and again, I'm not wholly convinced of any of these things, but if you talk to people, for example, who work in hospitals where people are looked after at the end of life, they will tell you that in the period before death, very often, and this happened with my own grandfather, my dad's dad, they are aware of other people, perhaps relatives from the past.
	In my dad's dad's case, that was very much the case.
	And there was some information that he relayed that not even my father knew, which he had to separately verify, and that came from the other side, allegedly, in Bootle, in Liverpool, this was.
	So there's a kind of prelude, and then other people who've worked with those who've died or have been dying will tell you that there's a change in the...
	And there was a story about George Harrison, you know, the Beetle, one of my heroes, whose body was said to glow.
	I mean, this is maybe an apocryphal story, at the point of death.
	And I asked his sister about that.
	She wasn't there.
	But she's aware of the stories, Louise Harrison, who's on one of my previous podcasts.
	So I think at that point, if anything happens, and I don't know whether it does, I suspect it might, it's going to happen then.
	And there is some kind of transition that goes beyond the laws of physics as we understand them, that is beyond our ken and is not for us to know.
	And that's the thing that happens.
	And everything beyond that, then what is left is, as my late brother-in-law described it, all that's left is the space suit that you were wearing when you were here.
	You know, that's the way I'd like to think of it.
	Of course, it may just be oblivion, in which case they turn the light off and that's you.
	Good night, Vienna.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, see, you know, I always think of, I don't know if you remember, there was a particular, very, a particularly good adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Disney.
	And the Jacob Marty story at the very beginning, and it's so scary when, you know, he's sitting upstairs, this is Ebenezer Scrooge, and I think Jacob Marty comes up the stairs, but you can see that he's changed.
	And then when he leaves Ebenezer Scrooge, he goes out the window, and there are lots of spirits out there in the ether, you know, unable to, you know, it's just such a scary Hollywood image.
	And I often wonder, you know, is that where we come from?
	Do we have such a, you know, are we conditioned by Hollywood?
	Are we conditioned by movies?
	Are we conditioned by our upbringing?
	You know, where, you know, how can you possibly wipe the slate clean if all of these images are in your head?
	I know, for instance, if you don't mind me, you know, mentioning Darren Brown, he's such a scary character.
	I mean, if he walked into the room, he would be just looking into my soul.
	And I know how skillful he is at reading people.
	I know, for instance, he went to the States and he did a psychic show over there with an audience.
	And he told, it's on YouTube, he told the YouTube audience before he went in that he wasn't going to be communicating with the dead, but let's see what happens.
	And he went in and he had, you know, he had nailed so many specifics about people who died.
	You know, for instance, you know, your grandfather was into motorbikes and he also loved candles.
	And did he make candles?
	And all of this was very specific.
	I'm only paraphrasing.
	And the people who, you know, the subjects who broke down in tears thinking that he had communicated with their loved ones, he had to ask them permission to air this because he told them at the end he wasn't communicating.
	He was simply reading people.
	So what I'm saying, I suppose, is, you know, from so many other angles, a lot of this is explainable.
	Do you know what I mean?
	And I think my show and the work that I've done over these 17, nearly 20 years now, to be honest, and the interest that I've had all my life, my position resides somewhere just beyond the explainable.
	I'm in that 10 or 15% that we scratch our heads about.
	And that's what keeps me going.
	That's what fuels me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And can I ask you, you know, the way when you consider you've spoken to people, obviously, over the years who have genuine and sincere experiences.
	Like, you know, how does it work that they do and you don't or I don't?
	I mean, I have a, I'm not going to bore my listener again with the story because I've heard it way too many times.
	But I have seen a ghost once.
	And my father had a lot of paranormal experiences.
	He was in the police in Liverpool and in the army before that.
	And he had a lot of experiences and he was in no doubt.
	And his father before him used to read the teacups for people.
	You know, in the Great Depression in Liverpool, people would come in and his dad would read the teacups.
	And they were all great believers in these things.
	And I saw a ghost in the Radio City Tower in Liverpool of a, golly, I'm telling the story now.
	I'm just going to apologise to my listener who's probably heard this way too many times now.
	But, you know, I was on shift filling in for Pete Price on Radio City late night phone in.
	I go up to the loo at one o'clock in the morning.
	I've done three hours on air, so I need a toilet break by that point.
	Go upstairs as the news is on, come straight back down.
	I'm about to, this is this huge, lovely big tower in Liverpool, amazing views.
	And I come back down, I'm about to put my hand on the door of the studio and this guy who looks like a watchman, he's short, he's wearing a cap, he's got shiny boots, he's got a tweedy type three-quarter length coat, like watchmen in Liverpool used to have on the docks.
	And I looked at him, and I'm just about to open my mouth to say, Oh, hello, hello, who are you?
	And he disappeared in front of my eyes.
	And I wasn't scared.
	And I walked into the studio, Jonathan Dean, the producer there.
	I said, Jonathan, something really weird's just happened.
	And Jonathan's words were, you saw him, didn't you?
	Everybody knew about it except me.
	So what's that all about?
	I have no idea.
	We've got to get back to Oliver Cromwell and the ghost, though.
	Can I just ask you?
	Sorry.
	So it's only because I'm intrigued.
	But you're still not convinced.
	You're still in that 15%.
	I understand that your past explainable and that you're, you know, but you haven't, again, crossed over to that side where you're totally convinced the dimension that's allegedly out there.
	The old watchman might have been imprinted in the building.
	He might be there.
	He may well be there to this very day.
	He's just like in the old days, you'd have reels of film that would go around to the beginning and play again.
	That's maybe what he was.
	Okay, so you have a potential explanation for that.
	Well, I don't know.
	It was very weird because whatever it was looked at me and I looked at him and I was about to speak to him when he absented himself in front of my very eyes and I was quite sober.
	I was not tired.
	I was rocking on my show.
	I was doing fine.
	So I'll never know what that was.
	But apologies to my listener for telling that story yet again.
	But it's, you know, that'll go with me to my grave.
	Whether or not I come back again is a whole other issue.
	There'll be many people listening to this saying, please God know.
	Malahide Castle in Dublin.
	They taught me when I worked in Ireland, it's not Dublin, it's Dublin.
	Malahide Castle in Dublin is haunted by apparently a Cromwellian soldier.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Myles Corbett is the name of the guy, and a lot of people would know that name over here.
	You see, the negative things that they did to Catholics back then always had repercussions.
	There's always a redemption story when Cromwellian soldiers did stuff to Catholics.
	So, yeah, he apparently desecrated a Roman Catholic chapel on the grounds.
	He was given Malahide Castle by the Cromwellian plantation took place and a lot of Cromwellian officers ended up with fairly chunky land segments over here.
	But yeah, Miles Corbett eventually got hung, drawn and quartered as well for various reasons.
	And it's really odd that people say they've seen him.
	And as soon as they see him as an apparition, he falls into four parts because he was hung, drawn, and quartered.
	So that's been recorded again, you know, probably too many times for it to be a coincidence.
	I don't know.
	But yeah, that's the thing.
	I mean, there are lots of stories.
	For instance, down in Wexford as well over here, this is a very significant area that was attached to Cromwell too, because he's supposed to have murdered everybody down there.
	When the soldiers, the Cromwellian soldiers, when they took over, they had to sleep somewhere rather than in their tents as they were taking the towns.
	They took over a convent.
	And in that convent, again, they would have been plagued by spirits, probably the spirits of those they killed, to the point where a lot of them just ran out of the room screaming.
	And there are also stories of when they were shooting at Catholic priests, that the bullets from the gun, well, it was a musket ball as opposed to a bullet, but it wouldn't penetrate the cowl.
	So that's the habit of the priest.
	It would just go so far and then just drop in front of the priest so they couldn't kill them.
	These are, you know, lots of different stories.
	We also have the Hellfire Club over here, which is a great name.
	I don't know if you're familiar with the Hellfire Club.
	I've only heard the name.
	I don't know what it is.
	Yeah, well, basically, it was a place of debauchery and decadence over the years where people, you know, after a hunt might go kind of the bourgeoisie.
	And, you know, there are rumors that they made sacrifices there and that a young lady was killed.
	But devil worship is associated with the Hellfire Club in recent years.
	And I can tell you, just as a matter of interest, because again, to me, it's your imagination.
	As a young adult, I visited the Hellfire Club and I can't tell you, Howard, how petrified I was.
	I literally ran away from the place.
	It was so foreboding.
	Is that in Dublin?
	Yeah, it's in the Dublin Mountains.
	Yeah, it's just not too far from Rathfarnum, actually.
	Yeah, we have to say that for our listeners' benefit, the radio station where I briefly worked, Radio Nova, was based in Rathfarnham.
	And if you ever get the chance to go to Dublin, take a little trip outside.
	I think it'll take you, well, it depends on the traffic these days, but it'll take you 15 minutes or so.
	Go and have a look at Rathfarnham because there was a warm welcome for me in Rathfarnham, let's put it that way.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	You know, the story that I always tell about, here we are telling stories again.
	Sorry, unexplained listeners.
	I know you want wall-to-wall, back-to-back ghost stories, but the thing that I never forget is driving to buy my groceries one summer day.
	And I took, you know, I think, was I lost?
	Well, I didn't have, I think I had a rough idea of where I was.
	But I remember driving past a field outside Rathfarn.
	I'm on the way to Super Quinn.
	For those in England who don't know, Super Quinn and Quinsworth supermarkets.
	I was on the way to Super Quinn to buy my Gouty meat products for that week.
	There's another Irish brand that they won't know in England.
	And there was a priest in a field, and I was driving past in my VW Beetle, 1972 VW Beetle, much restored and hanging together on a wing in a prayer.
	And he looks at me and he waves.
	I didn't know the man from a bar of soap.
	And he waves and smiles to me.
	And that's a little image that I will take with me.
	Another one from another vignette, as they say, from my life.
	We are clean people, like I say.
	Well, you know, I think you've got to visit.
	those who haven't visited Ireland, they should, because there's a story there.
	And, you know, you might, I always say wherever I go, you always come away learning something.
	And people are people wherever you go.
	And, you know, you'll always meet somebody, I think, if you're open-minded, who's on your wavelength and has lived a different life from you.
	And I find that interesting, but then that's probably why I'm doing this.
	Now, I worked of the many places that I've lived and worked.
	I worked in Worcester.
	And you have a story.
	I don't know how it relates to all of the things we've been talking about.
	But I had heard reference to this and long forgot the details.
	The Phantom Bear of Worcester Cathedral.
	Now, I know Worcester Cathedral really well, and I can remember reference to the Phantom Bear.
	Really?
	Details of the story, no idea.
	Well, it's simply, there was a Battle of Worcester.
	I don't know if you, I presume you tuned into that.
	That was the Civil War battle.
	In fact, it was the final battle of the English Civil War, the one that cemented Cromwell's path to being protected.
	It's an odd one, this.
	There's a sentry before the battle, a Royalist sentry, who reported encountering a phantom bear, which rose up at him, and it even chased him across the field.
	Now, this is before the Battle of Worcester.
	And he's supposed to have turned around and tried to shoot the bear.
	So I don't know whether he hit him or whether he just the bullet missed, whether it were in the trim or whatever.
	But that was, and so he predates the battle, but apparently he still exists.
	And there have been lots of people who will still tell you that they've seen the bear around the cathedral.
	And it's just one of those oddities.
	Why a bear?
	Because I know bears don't exist in England, but maybe phantom bears do.
	I think we had them, though, hence the vast number of pubs in England called the bear.
	I think they were around.
	I stand to be corrected on that.
	There's something else I don't know.
	But I think maybe in history they were here.
	What about the eavesdropping cavalier at the Old White Heart establishment in Hull, Humberside?
	Yeah, you see, eavesdropping or at least whispering and eavesdropping, as you can imagine in the Civil War.
	And again, if you've ever seen, and you mentioned the Crumbull movie there, if you've ever seen any depictions of that particular time, because families were divided and because you couldn't really be sure who you were talking to, and your brother, your father, you know, may have been on the opposite side.
	So eavesdropping was quite a significant way of getting information.
	And the only Whiteheart Inn in Hull, the landlord, the current landlord, who is a self-proclaimed sceptic, he has frequently reported sightings of people listening.
	So this would be to try and snub King Charles, a ghostly apparition comes in and out of sight.
	And the act of ear wigging is just very significant that whole time.
	So it's obviously associated with the English Civil War.
	I just think that's a bigging aspect of it.
	Well, what I'm told is that this act of earwigging, and earwigging, I think, is a UK and Ireland term, which is kind of overhearing stuff.
	They used to tell me when I was training to be a journalist, some of the old Fleet Street guys used to say, travel on a bus, because you'll always overhear things by earwigging that could make good stories for you.
	But that particular act of the Cavalier earwigging, I think, was the catalyst for something pivotal in the Civil War, wasn't it?
	Well, it was to do with King Charles.
	Basically, it was Cavalier who was attempting to listen in on the plans to snub King Charles.
	King Charles was, you know, he was a king, and he ruled independently, as I mentioned before.
	So, yeah, and he eventually ended up losing his head.
	But you see, to me, a lot of this stuff could be done retrospectively, you know, because of the fact that, you know, when you look back and you look at these huge historical events, I mean, that was the only king who was killed in English history.
	And Cromwell was the only time in English history where, as I said before, a commoner rose to that level.
	So a lot of these stories would be, you know, maybe written to just fit in nicely with the events.
	Well, yes, and sometimes things are reported at places, locations where impactful and important things like the one you've just talked about happen.
	But then I always, the sceptic in me thinks, well, you know, recently we had the anniversary of the death of one of my heroes, along with George Harrison, John Lennon, at the Dakota building in New York City.
	I mean, it was just a completely needless tragedy.
	And I hope Mark David Chapman, who did it for his own reasons, you know, rots in jail.
	I hope he never gets out.
	But I'm going to get people telling me, oh, yes, you do.
	But I'm not aware of John Lennon making an appearance outside the Dakota building where he sadly left us.
	Yeah, well, and again, to me, this all boils down to, you know, there are certain people, for instance, you know, you've had an experience with a ghost, but yet you're not completely convinced.
	So there are those who are completely convinced, and there are those spirits who, you know, the ones who are dead, who apparently stay dead and don't communicate with us.
	And there are those who allegedly do.
	So, you know, there's so much in all of this that, look, it's a huge, obviously it's a massive area.
	To my mind, you need to get that right for yourself in this world, because I think there are very few other aspects of life that are really that significant aside from family and being happy.
	I think this is, because, you know, it's your reference point, I think, for life.
	Because if you, you know, I have a terribly negative, you know, Viewpoint.
	I think that when I'm dead, I'm dead.
	Now I'm happy enough with that, and maybe I'm going to be one of the ones who will remain dead and not communicate with anybody.
	But it's not such a bleak outlook as it might seem.
	But I think it's very important to get that right because a lot of people, and you know this, and there are people listening who will know this so well, and some of them may be included in this, is that they, you know, they believe that they're going to go to a much better place or a much worse place, depending on how they've lived their lives.
	And that dictates how you live, if you know what I mean.
	So whether it's heaven, whether it's hell, is purgatory still a thing?
	I know Limbo's gone, but it depends on your religion and so on.
	But if it's final at the point of death, well, I think people need to embrace that.
	And I just wish that I could be one of those people who experienced something so I could believe.
	Yeah, well, you know, I'm still well.
	I mean, I've seen and heard a lot.
	I'm not 100% convinced, but I'm more on the convinced side than not on the convinced side.
	And I think my listener knows about that.
	And as for purgatory, I'm just trying to hope that I can avoid, if that place exists, I'm hoping that I avoid purgatory.
	Another word that my Liverpool grandmother used to use an awful lot back in the day.
	I often wonder where she got.
	And I've talked about my dear, dear grandmother so many times here.
	She had so many Irish phrases, and she wasn't Irish.
	But somehow there's some family connection that I don't know about that meant that she inherited, some of which I cannot repeat here, I have to say, phrases that I later also heard in Dublin.
	So there's some kind of connection there.
	But listen, as to you, Tom, thank you very much for this conversation.
	I do think that you ought to write, if you haven't or you're not planning it, you know, a book about the ghosts of Ireland, in which you can include all of this material.
	You know, the psychic side of me says that's what you should do.
	And you should, you know, I'm talking myself out of a gig here, but you should do the audio book.
	You should narrate it.
	Yeah, well, thank you.
	I would give it serious consideration.
	And I know that there's a big audience out there for it.
	I suppose I might do that.
	Is it okay if I inappropriately mention a book that's just come out that I've written, if this is okay?
	Do it.
	Yeah, you're very good.
	Thank you.
	No, it's just that it's the life of Oliver Cromwell, and it's called The Protector.
	And the subtitle is The Fall and Rise of Oliver Cromwell.
	It's a rollick and good read.
	He was a hugely significant individual, as we've mentioned before.
	Rags to riches sort of story.
	But yeah, and I don't take any royalties for my books because I'm not interested in money.
	It's all about the message.
	And the message in this is that Oliver Cromwell was kind of a good guy.
	And if you're Irish, you're probably throwing something.
	Well, I mean, look, just to once again take my listener back to the outset of this.
	I don't know enough about the history and I should.
	I should do some more reading.
	And I wish those teachers back in 1970, whatever it might have been, you know, I wish they'd been a little better.
	I was telling the story of how my school was what they call a secondary modern school in a part of Liverpool.
	And maybe there'll be people listening to this who had a wonderful experience there.
	I didn't.
	I had a hell experience there for three years of my life.
	And then we became a comprehensive by merging with the girls' grammar school.
	And new vistas opened up for me.
	And that's why I'm sitting here doing what I'm doing now.
	So, you know, I need to know much more.
	It's the point of what I'm saying here, just very circuitously, is there will be people who will disagree quite vehemently with you.
	And on the basis of what they've heard here, are you happy with those people getting in touch with you to not to vent their spleen necessarily, but to take issue with you?
	Vent away, vent spleen.
	I'm well used to it.
	I have a very thick neck.
	I'm Irish, so it doesn't really bother me.
	But what I can say is that, you know, I'm not just saying this.
	I've done the research on this.
	And, you know, people can, if they want to vent, they can vent.
	But there's absolutely no question about my research.
	And if somebody wants to, you know, make some counterpoints to the points I've made, that's kind of a little bit more sensible than kind of going, oh my God, because I see a lot of stuff where, you know, this guy is off his trolley and he has no clue.
	I have lots of clues, and I am certainly well on my trolley, if that's an expression.
	Well, I'm hoping that I'm more or less affixed to mine, but who knows?
	Other people will have different views of that.
	Tom, thank you very much indeed.
	Tom Riley, the man that you've been hearing.
	Tom, thank you.
	Have a good day.
	Thank you, Howard.
	You too.
	Well, a very different kind of conversation.
	And don't forget, if there are any points you want to raise, please raise them with Tom Riley.
	And as he said, he's quite willing to take in emails and comments and suggestions and thoughts.
	So there.
	That's all I can say about that.
	We have more great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained from my humble apartment.
	Until next week, my name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained Online.
	And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

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