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.
Well, it's a beautiful early evening, I have to say.
A little bit of sunshine, hidden behind a little bit of cloud, but very, very warm and very, very nice.
I'm not going to say the weather's changed and it's turned and the seasons have flipped over, because who knows, next week we could have snow.
That's one of the great things about living in her, or rather His Majesty's United Kingdom these days.
Hope that everything is okay with you.
Please remember that there will be more information very soon about the Unexplained Live 2024.
That's the cruise with Morella.
It will be the third one that we've done, and we're back in Europe this time, that I can tell you.
Somewhere sunny and look towards the back end of October, the beginning of November for dates.
But I will be able to clarify everything as soon as I get it all confirmed and also the names of people who will be appearing.
But I can tell you, we've got some very, very good material for you.
And it will be an experience, not only an experience because you will hear and see up close and personal, you know, some of the people that you've heard or seen on the old TV show, but you will be able to interact with the people who've appeared on this show.
And that is a remarkably intimate experience to be able to ask them questions and to be able to take the conversation where we get into it in whatever direction that you want it to go.
So The Unexplained Live, your chance to meet some of those people and your chance to relax, enjoy the cruising experience on board one of Morella's finely appointed vessels, and also have a bit of a holiday too in somewhere that is going to be sunny for you.
So more information about that coming soon.
My Facebook page, that's the place to go for the latest information about the show, or shows, and anything that I have to tell you.
Go to the Facebook page, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes, the website, theunexplained.tv.
18 years worth of podcasts are lounging there for you.
Prepared to leap into action at any moment.
18 years, 804, is it podcasts now?
I've lost track.
It's probably more than that now.
If you started playing them today, then you would still be playing them more than seven weeks from now, continuously back to back.
That, I think, is probably a bit of an achievement, but I'm not really the person to tell you that.
Hope that everything is okay with you.
In your life, that you're happy.
A lot of people telling us that major changes in the world are coming soon.
It's an unstable place.
But I do believe, and something that I've always believed, and maybe you do too, that the world often goes through terrible phases.
But the ultimate end of all things is good.
That good always counters, trumps, and triumphs over not good.
So I think whatever may happen, all of the conflicts and the nastiness and the evil in this world, we know that at the end of it all, right and good generally triumph.
Boy, that was profound.
Didn't mean it to be, but I just think that so many people now are talking about wars and conscription possibly in the UK is being floated and mooted at the moment.
But I think we have to try collectively and look on the bright side of things.
What do you say?
Now, guests on this edition, you've wanted me to do more ghost material, so I'm going to bring you two ghost investigators from Liverpool.
They are part of Haunted Scouse.
Now, Scouse, let me tell you, for those of you listening in different parts of the world, Scouse is a stew that my grandmother used to make.
And my mother used to make it too, and my dad.
Everybody in Liverpool knows what scouse is.
It's kind of a basic meat stew with potatoes.
And you can kind of play with the recipe, toss anything in there.
But it is very much a staple of Liverpool life, something that people depended on in the Depression years when there wasn't a lot of money.
You make a stew, you know, you'll have it for a couple of days.
You can put a lot of different things in it, whatever happens to be cheap and available at the time.
So that's scouse, but it also came to be a word used to symbolize the way that people speak in Liverpool.
So, you know, I've got relatives who've got the great, and my father had it, the great Liverpool accent.
You talk like that.
Now, I've lived all around the country and I don't really have that much of it left.
There's a bit of it there, but there's all sorts of stuff in my accent.
But a real Liverpool accent, you know, a proper one, is like that, and it never ever leaves you.
That's the truth of it.
And sometimes when I get annoyed or somebody annoys me, I'm lost.
What are you talking about?
I'll go back into it.
So that is also another definition of the word scouse.
If you're listening in Flint, Michigan, and you're wondering what scouse is, now you know.
Not only is it a meal, a dinner, but it's also a word that is used to describe the accent of my wonderful home city that I no longer live in, but I go back to as much as I can.
And I owe every single thing that I ever became, if I became anything, to the things that Liverpool did for me.
And that's not an exaggeration at all.
What else is there to say?
I've told you about the website.
Thank you to Adam, who's also from Liverpool, my webmaster, busy guy.
Thank you for getting the shows out.
And I've told you about the great cruise, the Unexplained Live 2024.
More details.
I hope to be able to bring you quite soon.
Let's get to the guests on this edition of The Unexplained Then on Merseyside, Adam and Chris from Haunted Scouse.
Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Thanks for inviting us on.
So Chris, Chris and where do I begin with this now?
One of you, Adam, isn't it?
You're a teacher, yeah?
I am on primary school CTS.
Okay.
Now, when I was at primary school, right, in Waterloo and later in Liverpool, if I knew, and I don't know whether the kids you teach do know, but if I knew that my teacher was a ghost investigator, I'd either have been amazed and thought that was really cool, or I'd have thought that my teacher was mad.
If they know that this is what you do, which one of those do you get?
It's a little bit of both, really.
Obviously, this is just a hobby that Chris and I do.
So I don't really sort of bring that into my current job.
But As children are getting a little bit more tech savvy and do have YouTube channels and TikTok and all this stuff, they do eventually stumble across me.
And when they walk past me, it's like, is that you?
I'm like, oh, I don't know what you're going on about.
So I try and downplay it unless you think it's really cool.
And then I just give them a slight nod.
No, it is a few years since I was at primary school, as you might be able to tell.
Do they call you sir still?
It's just Mr. Billing.
But yeah, you get the odds and the odd other comments that we can't mention on air.
Now, hang on.
You're in Garston, is that right?
Or are you on the Wirral?
We need to get that.
No, I'm on the Wirral, Chris.
This is in Garston.
And we have to explain to listeners here, perhaps in other parts of the country, that one of the great things about Merseyside generally is, and I know I go on about this all the time, but it is made up of so many different things.
So there's a peninsula opposite Liverpool that's like a finger of land.
And that's sort of the bit that takes you from Liverpool into North Wales.
It's sort of border territory, isn't it, Adam, don't you think?
It is.
It's just in between.
It's such a niche place that you could pretty much get from one end of the world to the other in about 10 minutes.
But you're surrounded by water.
I'm sure Chris will disagree but this is the better side I think Do they still call you Edmund?
Before you go, Adam, and I'll bring in Chris, I promise.
Do they still call you...
I worked with Scylla Black for a series of hers called Scylla's Moment of Truth.
I did the voiceover.
And she knew that I was from Liverpool, and she used to call me a woollyback because she thought that I was from the Wirral.
And I could never tell her that, Scylla, no, I'm from the other side.
I'm from the side that you're from.
Do they still call you woolly backs?
I mean, Chris does, amongst other things.
But yeah, I mean, the thing is, we've got people like Paul O'Grady, you know, we're like great Paul O'Grady who come where I am in Birkenhead.
So I'm proud to be where I'm from.
I remember once having to present an award to Paul O'Grady, and I was so starstruck I could barely speak.
But that's another story.
Let's get to Chris now.
Chris, you're on the other side of the water, Garston, way?
I am, yeah.
I'm right by the old original docks of Liverpool down this end.
That's where they used to bring all the timber in, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
It's quite a historic area this, yeah.
There were.
I mean, look, when was I last in Garston?
Years now, because it used to be the other end of the train line from North Liverpool.
But I can remember seeing hundreds and hundreds of planks, stacked planks of timber coming in in Garston, the docks there.
People forget that Garston has a docks, as well as, you know, Liverpool and Litherland, but Seaforth Way.
Yeah, unfortunately.
I mean, fortunately for the house that I'm in, you can actually see the River Mersey from the bedroom windows, but the beautiful sight of freshly cut timber has been replaced with old washing machines and coopers on the side now for the scrap metal to be collected.
Well, I don't know whether that's progress.
I don't think it is.
Dan, you're a customs officer.
Are you allowed to tell me?
Where are you a customs officer?
Well, up until about four o'clock today, it was at the retail of B ⁇ M. But I've literally just went for my last day there.
I'm still customs, but I'm moving on to a new job in two weeks' time.
So I'm back in Liverpool city centre in two weeks.
So yeah, I clear containers through UK customs for companies.
Because it's all container now.
When my dad was in the port police and he was in the dock police for, God, five or six years, I think, of his service with the police there.
But they used to have these things called rummage crews.
Do they still have rummage crews that would go on the ships and check for stuff that they weren't supposed to have?
Do you know what?
I think the ships are that big now.
It's literally, I mean, like that one that hit the bridge over in America.
People don't realize there's thousands of containers on one ship.
So it's, yeah, everything is so tightly sealed and checked now.
And, you know, it's without boring all the listeners.
It's, you know, the UK customs have offices all around the world to make sure it's done correctly.
So yeah, I think there's less chance now of any unforeseen things getting on board.
I mean, I'm talking about a lot.
My father was serving in the police there a long, long time ago.
And my knowledge all dates back to then.
And the freeport up towards Waterloo, Seaforth was a new thing when I left Liverpool.
But it's a long time ago.
Now, that brings me to the point, really.
The two of you, both professional people in different ways.
Question for both of you, really.
Why the ghost hunting?
What's the appeal?
Go on, Adam.
You can take it first.
I think, I know Chris will probably give a similar answer, but when we're watching shows, shows such as Most Haunted and just looking at, you know, hearing a scouse accent of, again, another late, great Derek Akora, and watching these shows and thinking sort of, wow, you know, the places that they're investigating and sort of the history that ties into it, you know, isn't that phenomenal for a start?
But then you do start questioning, is, you know, is what you sort of see, is it for entertainment purposes?
Is it, you know, is it real?
And you just started going out and sort of exploring and doing this yourself.
And it's just a buzz.
It's a kick, you know, and it's, and it gets me out of the house.
It's just, it's a niche hobby.
But you have to have some result from it all, I think.
You know, as much as it's fun to go to places that everybody says, oh, yeah, that's haunted.
You have to come across phenomena.
So I'll start with you, Adam.
Have you come across a lot of phenomena in the time you've been doing this?
I'm what I'd call a healthy sceptic.
I know Chris will mention about things that he may have seen or things that have happened to him.
Nothing like that has sort of, I would say, has convinced me 100% that there is something that possibly is out there.
We've had a few things that have happened, such as doors closing in front of me, noises, sounds in certain places, our equipment going off.
And it's stuff like that and sequences of events that happen in locations that make me maybe think that a little bit more, that the possibility that could be something, but I always try and look for the rational explanation.
And just going back to what you were saying, even if we didn't capture anything, being allowed in certain locations and actually just digging into the history of buildings and of properties and of locations, that's sort of what the love of it is for me.
It's the shared love of history that Chris and I have that I know that we'll keep doing this for years to come, even if we don't capture anything paranormal.
And that area is rich in amazing buildings.
All of them have got a story.
I was reading the other day about a famous pub on the Dock Road called the Baltic.
Well, it was called the Baltic Fleet, right, when I was young.
And the very first interview I ever did was a guy called, was it Jeff Meekin?
John Meekin, John Meekin, I think, who was the boss of the Baltic Fleet pub.
A wonderful building.
And, you know, I would have thought if anywhere's got ghosts, that might have.
John Meekin, and I was like a trembling kid doing interviews.
I remember going there, and he was wearing a full Admiral's uniform.
Only in Liverpool would you get that.
But I'll tell you what, if you want to do investigations, you've got to try the Radio City Tower, the big tower in Liverpool, because there is a ghost there, and I have seen him personally.
And, you know, quite a lot of people who've worked there, especially late at night, this ghost of a watchman appears to them.
And I was filling in for Pete Price on Radio City about eight or nine years ago when he was still doing his late night phone in.
And I saw that there.
That's somewhere you've got to try.
So, Chris, you're a bit less of a skeptic then, yeah?
Yeah, I mean, I class myself as extremely lucky in that I'm in that probably 0.1% of the population who can hand on heart say they have definitely seen the ghost.
And again, I do people often turn around and say, or as I want to do, like, you know, we host events now as well.
And people turn up and say, I just want to see a ghost.
And sometimes you have to kind of say to them, are you sure?
Because when you do, it can be one of the most terrifying things ever.
And it's like for me, I've probably, I think I've seen three ghosts in my time and two of them were fleeting visions.
It's one was when I was 13.
And then since we've been doing Haunted Scouse, we had the great privilege of going to the Epstein Theatre.
Not long before it unfortunately closed down, we were given access to there, the old Neptune Theatre in Liverpool.
Oh, yes, I know.
And as I was walking through there, just in the right, just in my peripheral vision, there was a man stood there.
And it gives you a jolt.
It does give you a jump.
And did he disappear before your eyes, sort of thing?
Yeah, literally at the point of turn around to see.
Somebody was stood there knowing that the manager, Anthony Proctor, was in his office.
Adam was up on a balcony above me.
I'd just gone downstairs to just move a little bit of equipment on the stage.
And I saw the figure.
It was just a well-dressed gentleman with a beard.
And I could tell that much detail just as I looked.
And then as I turned around to look fully gone.
And it's one of those things where people are, the more skeptical people will say, well, we use multiple cameras when we film.
We'll say, well, there's a camera looking that way.
There's nothing on camera.
It's spectrums of light.
But in the same way, a tap or a knock or a flash of light could be spirits interaction.
The spirits don't, it takes a lot of energy.
And maybe you are just instantaneously, you're in that little split second moment and then it's gone.
And you never know whether, you know, what's your thought about it?
Having encountered three of these things, you say, do you think that they're like projections into your brain?
Are you really seeing them?
Because I'm still wondering whether that caretaker that I saw, that watchman I saw in the Radio City Town, he was as clear as, you know, you or me, whether he was a projection into my head or whether he was really there.
I think it varies.
I mean, you can, I mean, you can quite easily, subliminally just train somebody's brain for the moment that, and at 11 o'clock on a Thursday night, every March, that cleaner appears at the back of the theater and you just happen to be there around that time and your brain is waiting for this moment.
But I think when you so I think some people maybe do experience things because they want to so much and they've they've researched haunting so much that they convince themselves that what they experience or see has to be that haunting.
That flash of light or that shadow couldn't have been a car going past on a road or something different.
It must have been a shadow figure.
And it's, I think it's that when we're doing this, the longer we're doing this, the more, and our fan base say that's what they love about us is that we do not run around screaming when something goes bang or we experience something.
We stand in the spot and we go forwards to try to actually, you know, fully investigate what happened.
What could the other explanation be for what's just happened other than, oh, that was a ghost.
Anything down, check it out.
Now, the one that you saw in what I know is the Neptune Theatre, but is now the Epstein Theatre.
What was that like?
The guy that I saw was straight out of the 1960s.
Clothing gave it all away.
What about yours?
He was, I would say, I would want to say early 20th century, so the early 1900s, because he was smartly dressed and it was like an evening suit, but not extravagantly dressed.
So the kind of way is like, you know, before we all wore jeans, t-shirts, track suits, etc.
Even going back to the 60s, you see the old football from Gudison or Anfield and all the men are in suits on the cock.
But this gentleman was smartly dressed, he had a waistcoat on.
And people might say, How did you get that much detail in a split second?
Well, when you look, it's like you look, you see them, you snapshot that moment.
And then because I'm at that moment, I'm trying to kind of move away quickly as well.
I had to look where it was going because it was almost pitch black.
And then when you look back again, it's gone.
And the whole thing was caught on camera.
My reaction was caught on multiple cameras.
But yeah, I would put him at like 1920s, 1930s, and just out for the evening.
And it was something that was achievable to the working class is going to the theater to watch a show, a musical, you know, comedy act.
Yeah, because what was the Neptune Theatre before did a lot of work with kids?
I think they had a youth theater group.
I had a friend who was in it.
So, you know, a lot of people were able, ordinary people were able to interact with the theater in a way that perhaps in other towns and cities, they never got the chance.
Did other people, just before I go back to Adam Cross, because he's going to be getting lonely across the water, did other people see the guy that you saw ever?
No, nobody that we spoke to did, but we do know that there is a ghost of a gentleman who did fall from the top balcony.
And however he's fallen, the story goes that he died instantly.
So he must have landed on his neck or his head.
But he fell in that spot.
And on that same night, we did capture some very good evidence that backed up that story that we were told about that particular haunting of Anna Gentleman ghost in there.
So there is a story that backs it up.
And again, it kind of goes back to that, was there a subliminal seed planted for me?
But there was no description of the gentleman.
It was literally, we had this idea in our head, he was a maintenance person or something and fell off a ladder.
So we had no idea of the full story at that point.
One of these days, either of you or both of you, I think you should try to go if they'll let you do it.
And I'm hoping this building is still there.
I was there a couple of years ago.
But at the top of Bold Street, at Concert Street, which just goes off, if you're walking up towards the bombed-out church St. Nicholas's, there's a street called Concert Street.
And on the corner of that is what used to be a music hall, right?
And my dad, when he retired from the police, among the couple of jobs he had, one of them was running a shopping center, and one of them was regional security for Comet, who sold electrical goods in places that they call discount warehouses.
And one of them was that old music hall.
That place was desperately, deeply haunted.
And they said that it was the ghost of a girl who'd been locked in the theatre all night and had thrown, if the story's correct the way I'm telling it, had thrown herself off the balcony there because she was so terrified to be in that building.
Well, I have to say that if you went up the stairs to what would have been the balcony and was offices in those days, and I did go up the stairs there when it was Comet, it went deathly cold.
And my dad told me stories about they had a couple of swing doors like, you know, they have in the old Wild Western pubs, bars, you know, saloons, that's it.
They would fling themselves open and sometimes boxes with TV sets would throw themselves through these doors.
And one of the security guards they had there, a guy with an Alsatian dog, little Scottish guy with this wonderful Alsatian dog, very tough dog, would not go up the stairs.
So that's one for you to do.
But that's one of my...
I think it's a club now, if it's still what it was a couple of years ago.
Back across the water then to Adam.
You know, the reason we're doing this is a guy called Jeff, who I know you know, volunteer director of a Masonic Hall on the Wirral where you are.
Is it Clifton Hall, this place?
Yeah, that's the one on Clifton Road in Birkenhead.
And I don't know anything about that, I have to say.
But apparently that's haunted, the basement there?
Yeah, I mean, it was a privilege to be asked in.
We were the first team to conduct a paranormal investigation there.
So for us, that was sort of a big coupe, as well as it only being five minutes down the road from me.
So it was also pretty handy to get home as well.
But it's such an interesting building.
It's been there well over 150 years and sort of cast your mind back that long ago to what that area would have looked like.
It was a very affluent area.
You know, quite a lot of the rich and the wealthy would have their villas sort of based down there.
And yeah, we felt that the basement there, especially, because that would have been long before the Masonic Lodge was built sort of on top, where it was sort of the original home and dwellings of the people there.
It definitely had a different feel.
Like you said, with the story before, when you were going up the stairs and you sort of get that sort of feel that, oh, it's a bit colder here, it's a bit different.
Walking down sort of into that basement area, sort of the mood kind of changed.
And you can sort of put that down to maybe, well, you're going down to a lower level.
It's a little bit darker, it's a little bit dimmer.
But yeah, we definitely had a good sort of hour, hour and a half down there where Chris especially did have some good interactions in the Masonic room down there.
And on the whirl, I don't know whether it's a place you've ever thought about.
And I don't even know whether there are any stories about that.
But New Brighton had a fun fair, didn't it?
It had an open-air fun fair that I think burned down or was knocked down.
I think there might have been a big fire there.
And it was like directly opposite Liverpool.
And the ferry would let you off right by this fun fair.
And I think it had little gardens leading up to it.
You know, it had all the things, a big slide and all that sort of stuff.
But if anywhere was going to be a haunted location, that might be one of them.
But it's probably not one that you've checked out, but maybe one that you might think.
It's just the site now.
Just directly underneath where that fair is, is the new Brighton tunnels.
And I've investigated them a few times.
And we were there not so long ago as well, Chris and I holding an event there.
And it's a site in terms of history.
It's got all the old machinery where the bullets were made for World War II.
And it was directly underneath.
There was just room after room after room of all this machinery.
It's all sort of been boarded off now into individual sort of sections.
And I think there's rumours, I think, they're going to end up knocking all that down and putting houses there probably at the back end of this year.
So it's such a shame because, again, with, you know, a love of history and going into places like that.
And it's been used as a nightclub.
It's been used, say, as a shelter.
It's been used as a dance hall as well back in the day.
And with that, I'm getting a vision here of something from my old trips on the old ferries, not the current ferries, but the proper ferries, the ones that were there before.
They're like very impressive, aren't they?
Red brick ventilation buildings.
Is that what they are for the tunnels?
Have I got the right place?
It's the tunnels Adam's on about where the fair.
It's an indoor fair now in New Brighton, right opposite Perch Rock, the old fort.
That's right at the end of New Brighton, isn't it?
Yeah, the tunnels Adam's on about opposite there and right next to the Pavilion Theatre.
There's tunnels all underneath there that we use.
So I think the ones you were referring to, the ventilation tunnels for the Mersey tunnels, they are about half a mile further down.
They are there on the front, yes.
Because all these great buildings, I mean, both of you really, in Liverpool, they took, they're very impressive.
We've still got the liver buildings and the customs house there on the front, right by the Mersey.
But so many buildings.
But they took...
There was one that opened more recently.
There was one that opened decades and decades and decades ago.
And they're both routes across under the Mersey to the Wirral and, you know, back again.
But all of those places took their toll in people who died making them.
Massively.
And I think we sort of look at it as well where like Bold Street would be the same, where there's sort of possible tragedy or maybe something horrible may have happened and that kind of ether, it reverberates through sort of the atmosphere and maybe holds in the walls or in the stone and maybe kind of replays over time.
And I think the more tragic the event was, possibly the more energy that's kind of contained there that might possibly replay as paranormal as we would explain this to today.
Is that an area that you've been checking out?
Because I know there's St. Nicholas's Church, the bombed out church that they've left exactly as it was left after World War II, because a lot of Liverpool was flattened, absolutely wrecked.
And in fact, until recently, they were still rebuilding bits of it.
It's taken that long to put it all back.
But, you know, that, I think, has got a presence to it.
And certainly around the C of E Cathedral, there's supposed to be a place there, a little like a cemetery that's supposed to be very haunted.
I don't know what you know about that.
I promise you, I'm going to talk about the cases that you've specifically worked on, but I don't know if you've checked any of that out.
I think potentially you're on about St. James's Cemetery.
Right.
So the old Anglican Cathedral, the Red Brick Cathedral has St. James's Cemetery or the Old Necropolis, which is next to it.
Yeah, I mean, we've actually investigated there a couple of years back.
Yeah, it's one of those places that you can walk around of a day and it's got the name St. James's Gardens.
And rightly so.
It's a beautiful walk through.
The birds are singing.
There's leaves on the trees.
The flowers are out.
And then it's only like your eye catches a gravestone on the embankment.
And then you realise there's actually hundreds of gravestones lying on the embankment underneath the huge facade of the cathedral.
But you go back of a night when there's a few little streetlights that are along that site, those same pathways take on a completely different feel.
Yeah, it's an immense place.
And as you see, such a lot of history.
My own mum, her auntie, used to live across the road from there on Lower Parliament Street.
And my mum talks about that difference when you become an adult, you start thinking about things more.
But as a child, she played in the old catacombs there.
They've all been bricked up now.
But she said, we thought nothing of it.
We were kids.
It was a tunnel.
You went in and you played and you had no thought about what it had been used for.
But now you go back, now they've all been bricked up, but you can still feel it's a very energized place, St. James's Cemetery.
No, that's what I've heard.
And I think there are, you know, a lot of people, because there was a lot of disease about in previous eras.
And, you know, a lot of people who perished through various diseases, I think, are buried there.
Okay, let's go to your investigations and where are we going to start?
Walton Hall.
Now, I kind of think of Walton Village as being quite posh.
This is what I know as South Liverpool.
That's only because I was born in North and brought up in North Liverpool.
Walton Hall, you've had a lot of activity.
Talk to me about the place and the activity that I just mentioned that you experienced there.
Shall I start at?
I think you should because it's one of the places that Chris, we investigated around the perimeter as probably one of our second or third investigations that we did.
And Chris had always said, oh, if we could ever get into Walton Hall, honestly, there's so much history to it.
And it was definitely well worth it.
So I'll let Chris start on that one.
Go on there, Chris.
Yeah, I mean, again, growing up, I mean, I did my first bout of drinking in Walton Village as well when I got to a certain age.
So it was always Walton Hall at that time.
It was still functioning as a place where you host the parties and weddings.
And John, who was the caretaker there now for the new owners, the current owners, he was your host for the night.
So I've been privileged to be there with family parties.
And I even had old camcorder footage from back in the mid-90s when one of my friends had his 21st or 18th birthday there.
And so for us to get in, finally got the contact number for it.
And we went in there.
And it was our first moment.
I remember standing, remember going in, shutting the door and John had let us in and then he leaves the site and leaves you on there.
And I remember shutting the door, standing there and just standing in the hallway of this grade one listed building and looking at Adam and saying, wow, mate, at that point, we've made it because we've been investigating outdoor locations.
We wanted to project to people that park you walk around in has a history and that's great, but you can't control the environment.
And you wanted to take that step up as a channel and say to people, okay, now we're going to show you what we can actually do with how we format our investigations.
And we just stood next to each other in Walton Hall and you just looked at the grandeur of it and you were just in awe of it.
But the second that that door shut and you listened, it was noise after noise after noise.
And I think we can both safely, hand on heart, say it's the one location that we've both come away from and had experiences that even the healthy sceptic couldn't explain.
And can you fill in a few blanks on that?
You know, the sorts of stories that go round about that and the kind of stuff that happened to you?
I know you have knocks and bangs and orbs.
Yeah, I mean, the famous one with Walton Hall, they call it in the cellar.
They say, you know, they will say it's the black monk.
Well, it's a shadow figure monk.
So, of course, to the naked eye, that's the thing.
It's the same with 30 East Drive, the Black Monk of Pontefract.
It literally is the figure of a monk because there was a monastery nearby.
And a lot of the history of Walton Hall was about, you know, the church was part of that back and forth and things.
And in the actual basement itself, John himself told us how his wife used to hate going down there because she saw this shadowy figure quite a few times.
Whilst we didn't experience the shadowy figure, you can sense a presence when you're down in that cellar in Walton Hall.
And we did capture some very, very interesting stuff on audio.
One of it being, because I do the editing, one of it would be sitting there, the headphones on, and as clear as anything, knowing that there was only myself and Adam in the building on the top floor, a little girl's voice saying, Mummy, where are you?
And Walton Hall is set right away from Hausen Estates.
It's a grand hall.
I had its own grounds.
It still has its own grounds.
And we have to say that it was built in 1704.
It was, exactly.
That's it.
And as I say, it is, you know, it's in such a state of disrepair, but it is a grade one listed building, the same as the Royal Albert Dock and the Anglican Cathedral.
So it has had family after family come through it before it's kind of end use.
Again, to go back to Clifton, it was Clifton Road.
It has been a Masonic hall as well.
But it was latterly used as a convent school, the school of Notre Dame, before it went on to then be a function place.
So it's had so much history run through it that you've got your famous ghostly stories.
There's a lady on the top floor that doesn't like you being there.
And then, as I say, you've got the figure of the monk being seen in the cellars.
That sounds like the perfect place to go.
Apparently, I'm just reading about it here.
It was renovated in 1772 and built in 1704 as part of architect Robert Adams' work.
So, you know, Liverpool is full of places like that, and they've all got history.
And we know, you know, sure as eggs as eggs, as they say, that some of them are going to be haunted because of the generations who've passed through them and the things that have happened with them.
So, Adam, on the Wirral, you've investigated one of Liverpool, and Liverpool is replete, we have to say, with some amazing pubs that have got terrific stories to them.
Peter Kavanagh's pub in Liverpool 8.
It hasn't changed internally since 1929, got a hell of a history.
What happened there?
I mean, again, Risa, who let us in, Peter Koanas, it was just, it's such a beautiful building.
You know, you look around in that pub and on the walls, it's just all hung up of history and there's alligators and all kinds of, it's such a brilliant place.
And it was probably the second or third pub that we did as Chris struck upon the idea of when it was locked down.
All the pubs were empty and we could still legally film socially distance.
So we did a lot of our pub series and film there.
And obviously more to give these pubs a nod to when they were back open to make sure people got back in them.
But yeah, we visited twice on our first investigation.
Again, usual stuff, you know, with the knocks, the bangs, the taps.
But we sort of struck gold when we were investigating one of the little snugs there.
It was just a tiny room where Chris said, what we'll do is we'll set up one of our experiments.
And we have this little music box that Chris bought at a charity shop.
Nothing special, no sort of history to it.
It was just the box that, you know, play music, kind of a trigger object, put it in the middle of a table, had one camera on it, shut the room.
There was only one way into that room and one way out, no windows.
And we caught on camera the music box as it was playing.
It slid slightly to the left-hand side, then rotated and then moved again.
It was a sequence of about two minutes that happened.
But seeing something like that on camera and knowing that we'd set that up and we'd controlled the environment, It was, it honestly, when Chris said that's what we caught, I didn't believe him until I saw it myself.
And I'm still trying to explain it away.
And I was there and I set that up with him.
So that's probably one of our best pieces of evidence in like four years that we've been doing this.
And that place is legendary.
It's got a heck of a history.
What do you know about the history and things that have been reported there?
The thing with Peter Cavanas, the fascinating thing with that pub is that it's three buildings now knocked through.
So it started out at the original Peter Cavanas, which if you're looking at it from the outside, the right-hand side is the original pub that was built with the murals on the two snug walls.
And then to increase the size of the pub, they knocked through into the house next door.
And then further later years, they knocked through into a third house.
So the size of Peter Cavanas now actually incorporates three original sites.
So the other, the other main, well, the main ghostly sighting in there is of a young girl in the main bar area.
We didn't know about this young girl until afterwards because we used to like to interview the landlady or the landlord of the pubs just to give them their moments on TV and on the channel.
And if people only watched that just to see, you know, they couldn't get in the pubs at the time.
If they just wanted to see Rita or Dave or whoever else we were interviewing, that was great.
So I went back about a week later to interview Rita.
And it was only then that Rita was talking about her friend who had the gift of sight, who was saying about the ghost of a little girl that appears.
And you're kind of thinking, you're glad you didn't ask because what we do, Howard, is we don't ask the locations to tell us all about the haunting.
We want to see if we capture something that tallies up.
But when Rita told me about that little girl, you're kind of thinking, we didn't do anything in that corner.
You know, it'd be great to get back.
And that's straight away.
I said to Rita, look, while you're still closed, can we come back?
And she was more than happy for us to come back.
And we did.
We went back about a week later to film again.
And did you get anything then?
We did.
And I think I'll let Adam tell you about the, we use a bit of equipment called the REM pod, which has got the lights on the top of it and detects a proximity energy next to it.
So yeah, I think it was a moment Adam had been waiting for for a long time.
So I'll let him tell you about that.
And I have to say that this investigation caught the attention of Kieran O'Keefe, who I've had on my radio show, you know, very famous psychologist, investigator in all of these things.
So, you know, there's some serious stuff going on there.
So, Adam, what happened?
It did.
And just to add to that, he did say it was probably one of the best sort of pieces that he'd seen because he's investigated the pub itself intimately and he knows Peter Caban as well.
So he knows the environments and he could see how we'd set it up and how it was done.
It was extremely difficult to sort of explain.
But yeah, as Chris was saying, we'd had a REM pod that we'd added to the kit and we'd had it for about five months.
And it was just one of those pieces of equipment that we turned on.
It never went off.
You know, nothing ever sort of went near it or triggered the electromagnetic field to make the lights sort of light up on it.
And we were in the room, as Chris was saying, where this supposed spirit of a little girl had been seen playing.
And as we were just sort of talking, the REM pod went off on the table or in the corner where this girl's supposedly seen.
So we were just like two giddy schoolgirls, Chris and I think, oh my gosh, is that it?
So we just sort of calmed ourselves.
Then we started just asking questions.
It was like, is this the spirit of a little girl?
If it is, can you go towards that device and set it off again?
Instantaneously, it went off and lit up.
So we were like, oh, wow, that's brilliant.
So again, we asked another question.
Again, it was about two or three different questions in terms of who you are, whether you're male or fingers.
If it was a little girl, if it was a girl, and then if it was a child.
And each time it was over two or three different questions that the REM pod was sort of instantly responding every time we'd asked the question.
So to sort of get that in the moment of seeing a device go off is great.
But then to feel like we were actually having a conversation was just even better.
And to catch all that on camera as well, you sort of do see Chris and I's reactions to think, oh my gosh, this is some brilliant stuff that we're getting.
So you got the vibe that it was aware of you.
It felt that way because it was just sort of, you know, you can say, for me, as a healthy skeptic, you can go, well, it's sort of coincidental that it's sort of going off.
But it's every time, you know, I finished asking a question within two or three seconds, it would then light up.
It stops, ask another question.
Two or three seconds later, it lit up again, then stopped.
And then again, so that sort of repeated about three times it was and the whole sequence sort of there to see.
And for me, it felt like that was sort of in the moment, a conversation.
Wow.
Well, if that's all I can say, really, wow, that, I mean, that's a result, isn't it?
Absolutely, in anybody's book.
I mean, for us, for me, especially being quite sceptical, it is golden.
And again, it is hard to explain as well that the vice that we had had never gone off before.
And we've been to some really supposed haunted places where some really horrible things may have happened or tragedies may have happened.
And the piece of kit just didn't react at all.
So to capture that, to not go off once, twice, three times to sort of the questions that we were asking, it was just, yeah, it was, again, another one that I think I did say was extremely difficult to explain.
If you could explain it, we'd be happy to sort of hear it.
I have to say that I don't know a ton about the Wirral because, you know, we all, when you're brought up on Merseyside, there are so many different districts of it.
So if you're brought up north, as I was, you didn't tend to go down to the south of Liverpool that much because why would you?
There was nothing to go.
You had everything that you needed in the north.
And days out were The Wirral and North Wales, but you did an investigation at Bidston Hill.
And the only thing that I know about Bidston Hill, because you pass it when you drive on the motorway that goes down the Wirral towards Chester, and Bidston's got an observatory, and it's quite old and quite famous, I think.
It is.
It predicted the sides for the D-Day landings at one point.
And it's been converted now.
It's now housing and accommodation.
But Bidston Hill, in terms of sort of history, it is sort of one of the most historic places on the Wirral.
And in terms of paranormal, it's had literally every sort of paranormal kind of entity reported there from witches, werewolves, satanic worshipping, vampires.
It's got little black dogs, every sort of bit of like paranormal aliens.
It's all been documented there.
It's the highest point on the Wirral and it gives you some brilliant views, if anything else, of over the water onto Christian's side.
Okay, but did you, when you investigated Bidston Hill, did you come across anything or was it just one of those that it's interesting to go to the place where all of that history?
It's one where, I mean, at Halloween, I did some ghost walks up there just with people to see.
It was kind of a freebie that we put out to see if anyone wanted a history walk because I'm only down the road from there.
And it's a really, really vibey place.
You just get sort of feelings and the stories of Richard Tilly and the murders that sort of happened up there.
It's again, you sort of get inside your own head.
But on investigations when Chris and I have been there and have walked up there alone, we've heard some very, very strange noises, felt some really certain parts of it quite uneasy.
But again, it's hard with it being an outdoor location that you can always sort of pass it off as external sort of circumstances where, oh, well, you're outside.
It could be the wind.
It could be a branch.
It could be animals.
So it's harder to sort of narrow that down to say, well, there has been paranormal experiences there.
But Chris did hear something quite strange when we were investigating part of it, didn't you?
Yeah, I mean, if it's what I think Adam's referring to, Bidston Hill is cut in two.
So you've got one side of it, which is near a very famous cemetery, Flay Brick Cemetery.
And that's kind of where there's a road cut through Bidston Hill now.
So we, on one night when we were filming, we started off on the furthest side over towards the cemetery, knowing that we were going to walk the length of it and there's a bridge across the road.
And then you get to the windmill at one end of the top of it.
And on the other end of the plateau is the observatory.
But before we even crossed over, we were just walking through them.
We just finished doing a piece to camera.
So we thought, right, let's move to the next area that looks creepy enough to do something else because it's as mad as that sounds how it's obviously because we're doing a series, we want it to visually look good as well, as you never know where you stop.
And as we're walking up, Adam's about 20 yards behind me.
We've both got a handheld night vision camera.
And Adam's camera just captures me jumping to the side.
And it was pitch black.
This is the thing a lot of people don't realize when we say it's dark, it's pitch black, dark.
And when you're in the woods and things like that, what I heard coming towards me, it suddenly sounded like horses' hooves were about 20 foot in front of me.
And I could, I felt the ground move and I could hear the noise of the dump da da da da da dump.
But it got so loud that I actually moved to the side.
So my camera doesn't kind of see it because I'm holding it.
But Adam's camera just captures me moving to the side.
That's probably one of the scariest things I've experienced.
And that's there's no apparition.
There's no ghostly horse.
There was no noise of an artillery going past or anything like that.
It was just those horses' hooves and the feeling of the ground that very faintly, my audio on the camera does capture it and I enhanced it as much as it could.
But when Adam catches up with me, we always say to our viewers, they've got to know us so well now that when we react to something, they can tell if it's a natural reaction or if we don't put anything on anyway.
But they could tell I was shook up by something because it did kind of terrify me in that moment.
What the hell have I just experienced?
Did you do any research as to what that might have been?
Well, the whole area is the whole area is so historic on the Widdle and that's the thing with it.
There was a lot of Nordic and Viking history to the Widdle of Great Battles on there.
So it's very difficult.
The further back you go, it's very difficult to kind of gauge that.
But there were a lot of old manor houses around there as well.
So Parkland, that's it.
It could have just been, you know, somebody outriding their horse and there could have been a tragedy where the horse might have fallen and broken its leg.
And it might not be, who's to say there's not spirit animals as well.
So it might not have been the individual riding the horse that came at Cropper.
It might have sadly been the horse itself that could have gone, there could have been a hole that it's gone down, it's broke its leg.
And even back then, they would have unfortunately shot the horse there and then, you know, for things like that.
So maybe that was what that's what that little burst of energy is.
But then maybe there was a battle there at some point.
And I just heard this little echo from the past of several horses on the charge.
Interesting you talked to me about the Vikings thing.
I had no idea about that.
I should know, shouldn't I?
I didn't know.
Presumably the Vikings would have come down from And that's, of course, where the Vikings had a big presence.
They still have a festival there.
So presumably they came straight down from the Isle of Man, and the first place you hit is the Wirral.
And the planes, if you get the plane from like London or anywhere, in fact, across to the Isle of Man, it's going to go across, up the Wirral, over the water, and then land on the Isle of Man.
That's the way that that works.
One more place in Liverpool, then, for either of you, really.
It's a place that's very dear to my heart because I went to a lot of Pantos there when I was a kid and other things.
But I can always remember seeing Ken Dodd a few times, famous Liverpool comedian, sadly no longer with us, very much out of the Beatles era, a man who could entertain for, as we know, for hours and hours and hours, the Royal Court Theatre.
You investigated that, didn't you?
We sent so many emails off, how we're trying to get into places because we do self-fund the channel.
That's the thing.
We're both working full-time.
And as I say, so we do rely on charity a lot from places just letting us in and seeing the benefits of the promotion.
We're not a huge YouTube channel, but it's great promotion.
And what happened by a quirk of fate, Jerry Linford, a fantastic writer from over on the Widdle, he wrote a play and the play was called Haunted Scouse.
And that got announced back in September, October time last year that it was going to be coming on at the Royal Court.
So we started to get messages from our fan base.
You know, A, Candy do that?
Well, yeah, because we're called Haunted Scouse.
It's just a play.
And B, you know, is it you guys that are in it?
Are you doing the theater show?
And say, we're really not that talented.
It's a theater show.
But then we just kind of thought, there's a foot in the door.
Sent an email off.
Again, sadly got nothing back.
And then out the blue, we got an email from one of the heads of the marketing team there, Kofi, to say, we've got this play on called Haunted Scouse.
You guys are called Haunted Scouse.
Would you come in and investigate the theater to help promote the play?
Oh, great piece of public.
The opportunity.
Wow.
So what did it deliver for you?
I think the stars just did a line there.
And yeah, as I said, we were very lucky just to be in there.
And it definitely did.
In terms of being in theatres, you have this, it's always full of laughter and full of noise.
But theatres at night and theaters when no one's there, they don't half take on a very sort of different feel to them.
But yeah, we did again a lot of the way we filmed our multiple cameras and had them in certain spots.
We put a few different bits of equipment on certain chairs.
And luckily, we caught one of our cap balls, one of our little round balls that sort of you've got to touch it to make it light up.
It gets pushed off one of the chairs and we've caught it on camera.
So knowing that again, we've set that sort of investigation up and we've controlled the environment.
We know that you could say that, well, it's, you know, maybe vibrations have sort of knocked that off.
But we'd been walking around all night along on that floor and we were up on the top level when it happened.
So for to be walking around on that level and for nothing to be falling off any of the chairs again, it can go down as unexplained.
And the same thing happened down in the basement room as well.
We unfortunately didn't get that one caught on camera.
But that again was pushed off with some force with the way it landed on the floor.
So for me, it definitely delivered.
And, you know, talking about Ken Dodd, he appeared there a lot.
The Beatles appeared there a lot.
But another one that you, I don't know how you would do this, but there was a story that you probably saw at the end of last year, about September, that Ken Dodd's widow is haunted by his ghost, Lady Anne Dodd.
And apparently, she told a newspaper, and I'm just looking at the story here, I always say goodnight to the picture.
The weirdest thing is a door, every so often it closes, and we've all heard it.
And you think, for goodness sake, it's just air.
Someone's opened the door, but it's not.
He's around.
She's admitted she still dreams about Kendall.
I mean, a big, big presence.
I would have thought that if his presence was anywhere, it would have been at the royal court because of all of those pantos and all of those marathon gag telling sessions that he did there.
But anyway, that's a good idea.
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that we are big believers that, you know, as individuals, we can take spirits around with us of loved ones as well.
You know, just quickly back to Bidston Hill, we use a bit of equipment called the Spirit Talker app.
And it actually, my father, who I lost coming to 16 years ago now, he actually, his first name came through on the app, and you'd think, okay, it's in there.
And then his middle name came through on the same app.
And then when I asked, okay, if this is you, Dad, can you tell me what relationship?
And he did, you know, the next word through was lad.
Now, on, I was always known as Ronnie's lad.
So, you know, so it's, it's one of them things.
It's like whether it's a famous spirit celebrity moving around with a loved one, or whether it's just someone who's close to us.
Even when we host events, we do say to people, listen out for the name that might be relevant to you.
Because sometimes you do have a protective spirit who travels around with you.
And maybe sometimes they want to say hello as well.
I think that's true.
I think those things do happen.
And, you know, do your research too.
If you get a name like that, check back in your family because I've been to mediums and things in the past.
I don't go around mediums now, but in the past, and they've mentioned names from like Victorian times that I didn't know.
But actually some of them, when I've looked back and done the genealogy, yes, there are those names in the family.
So, you know, you never know who's with you.
Now, not only have you done investigations, both of you, on Merseyside, you've also been to some of the most haunted places in the UK.
And I think we've got time to talk about what they keep calling the most haunted location In the UK.
That's 30 East Drive in Pontefract, Yorkshire.
Home, of course, of the famous, infamous black monk.
I know you went there.
What happened there, Adam or Chris?
This was Adam's bucket list once, so I'll let him wax literacy about this one.
This, I mean, yes, as Chris said, it was on my bucket list purely because from the stories that you hear about it, from you know, the poor girl being dragged up the stairs, the things getting thrown down the stairs, doors closing, you know, taps turning on, and it's sort of had kind of every kind of paranormal sort of incident sort of happen just in this seemingly average two up, two down house.
So I was just saying to Chris, this is something that we've got to do.
And I think the way, again, we go about it, we've got six, seven cameras here.
We can cover every sort of angle.
So how people have filmed in here before, we can do something completely different.
You know, as transparent as we are, so if this is supposedly one of the UK's or even the world's most haunted places, we're definitely going to capture something.
And yeah, it was a long, long day, long night.
I think it was one of the hottest days of the year that we went and filmed there.
But it was definitely worth it.
We caught some interesting noises.
We got a really, really good sort of like a wispy kind of white figure that went in one of the bedrooms upstairs that it moves on camera from right to left.
But equally, just as that happens, it sets off one of our pieces of equipment as well.
And that was when Chris took one of the things that had been found that had apparently shot out of the fireplace was this really old set of keys, really heavy metal keys.
What shot out of the fireplace?
Apparently, yeah, I can't remember who it was or what investigation.
I think it might have been one of the sort of people there just kind of tidying up and getting the house ready.
And it sort of shot out and flew into the middle of the floor.
So they were just hung up sort of next to the fireplace.
And Chris moved them and we put them on the stairs.
And we're sort of saying, you know, if these keys sort of belong to you, you know, maybe you can come.
So we had equipment going off on the stairs and then instantaneously at the same time in the bedroom.
That's when we caught that as well.
And did it feel, because of the reputation this place has got for the black monk, did it feel like malevolent?
I think when we opened the door, it was definitely, it was like stepping back in time.
It was sort of like Joe going to, I mean, I'm sort of mid-30s, late 30s now.
It was like going to my nan's house kind of back in the day when I was a kid because it's still set up like a house from sort of the 60s.
So it definitely had the sort of a feel to it.
But again, you hear that many stories.
You've seen that many sort of people film there.
And you've obviously seen the film and the lights go out as well that was based around the things that happened in the house.
So all these sort of preconceptions are kind of playing in your mind.
So it was really hard to kind of go, no, he needs to put that out and how we investigate.
We're going to sort of see what we can find in this moment.
But yeah, constantly as you sort of call on out and investigate, you are thinking, you know, well, I hope Chris gets dragged up the stairs.
Well, yes, as long as he doesn't get hurt in the process, I haven't got any hair, so there wasn't any chance of me getting dragged up by me here.
Only a Liverpoolian could say that.
And that's why I love my home city.
I was just thinking to myself that, you know, here we are talking in a way that we couldn't have done 20 years ago.
I'm, you know, sort of southwest London's surrey borders now, but very much Liverpool is my background.
You know, I moved because in the days when I was doing what I was doing, you had to move to get on.
But then there's Chris, you're in Garston, and then Adam, you're across the water, across the Mersey on the whirrow.
It's amazing how we can do these things now.
So you talked about a bucket list, and I guess both of you have got one.
Where would be, if I was to give you the keys to the castle, the creme de la creme of investigations, either on Merseyside or anywhere, where would you both want to go?
Do you know, people often say they go straight to those larger locations, and I think we've done a lot of the ones that were on our bucket list, but me personally, I would love to do Speak Hall because it's literally a stone's throw away from where I live.
And I mean, the estate I live on, apparently, there's some ancient scripture that I should be getting free access to Speak Hall all year round because it was actually in the deeds, the original deeds of the house.
Oh, that people that lived locally should get free entrance into there.
But I would love to do Speak Hall.
I haven't been for years, but because it's National Trust, if you send an email, unfortunately, they want like £2,000 to let you in.
I can't comment about that because I don't know, but I've never actually tried.
But Speak Hall.
Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of the places that we love to go in, it's just they price you out of it as a small team like we are.
And it's all we want to do is just push your local history as much, chronicle it on video because we do a good job with that.
But I tell you something, I've absolutely loved talking to both of you.
And let's do it again at some point when you've done some more investigations.
And if you want to plug either of you, the YouTube channel, you know, tell people what it is, where they can find it, what's coming up next.
Adam.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe this is your secret.
Yeah, straight onto YouTube.
And we are simply call Haunted Scouse on YouTube.
If people want to subscribe, it's 100% free now and forever to subscribe.
But on all the usual social media pages.
But yeah, and if anyone has any locations that are within our reach, if anyone's listening, they got the keys to the Radio City Tower for a start.
We would love to do that.
Again, we're always just looking for new locations to do something that hasn't been done before.
And it's not about scaring the bejabers out of you, Really, the best ones I think are probably the ones that just appear to you like a surprise.
I wasn't scared when I saw what I saw, and I know what I saw.
It was just like, oh, and as I was about to say hello, the guy disappeared.
And I think those are probably the best encounters.
Well, listen, Haunted Scouse, Adam and Chris, I hope you have a great weekend.
I know that you're planning to go to North Wales tomorrow as we record this.
By the time people hear this, you'll have either been or not, depending on the weather.
But I wish you well with everything you do, and thank you for giving me time.
No, thank you, Howard.
It's been brilliant.
It's great just to talk to like-minded people like yourself about the paranormal.
So I've really enjoyed it.
So thank you.
Yeah, and obviously another fellow Scouser.
So yeah, brilliant to speak to you as well, Howard.
Thank you very much.
Your thoughts, welcome on anybody you hear on The Unexplained.
That was Adam and Chris.
Stories of hauntings and investigations of hauntings in the Merseyside area.
They are part of Haunted Scous.
Check them out online.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
So until we meet again here, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained.
Please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.