Haunting History of Watchet: Accounts of Premature Burial, Ghosts and Eerie Folklore with Bobbie Rammond

Michelle: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles.

Michelle: First of all, thank you for taking a listen to this episode. Before we begin, I just want to.

Michelle: Throw out a few ways you get.

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Michelle: And family is also a huge help. So thank you for all that you do. And now let's get started by introducing.

Michelle: Today'S podcast or guest. In today's podcast, we peel back the layers of time to uncover the riveting history, myths, legends and even spectacle tales that have woven themselves into the very essence of a charming seaside town. Today, we're embarking on an enthralling expedition into the depths of watchIt's past, where history, ghost law and folklore intertwine to create a tapestry of wonder. There's something enchanting about Watchit, and it's not just the picturesque vistas or the salty sea breeze that rustles through its streets. It's a location with a treasure trove of stories. These stories, much like the town itself, are a delightful mix of heroism and dark deeds, courage and mythical happenings. How did this small coastal haven amass such an eclectic assortment of incredible, shocking and dramatic tales? Imagine sailing back in time to an era when the Vikings held sway over the seas, leaving a wake of raids and pillaging in their path. Between the years 918 and 977, Watch it was repeatedly targeted by these Norse marauders, etching their legacy into the annals of the town's history. The remnants of Dorse castle might now sit where the Saxon mint was once forged, a testament to an old age when coins were struck and kingdoms rose and fell. The year 1066 marked a pivotal moment in history with the Battle of Hastings. Amid the chaos, king Harold's mother, Eleanor, sought refuge in Watchit, plotting her escape to the island of Flat home. Little did she know that this moment would be etched into the town's folklore, an unexpected brush with royalty. Amidst the turmoil of war, 1170 bore witness to a gruesome tale, one that echoes through the ages. Two local knights found themselves embroiled in the murder of none other than Sir Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Fueled by a sense of duty and perhaps taking King Henry II's infamous words, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest to heart? These knights committed an act that would stain their names forever. To atone for their deeds, their families took penance in the form of building St. Decimens church and endowing land to the Knights Templar. Flash forward to the 17th century, a time when brave watch it, sailor George Escott stepped onto the stage. Armed with nothing but a shovel, he faced off against a notorious pirate gang. The ODS may have seemed insurmountable, but George's valor and determination prevailed as he broke one of the pirates'arms and captured their stronghold on Lundy Island. It's stories like these that remind us that truth is often stranger and more compelling than fiction. A royal touch of Whimsy came to watch it in the form of Queen Catherine of Briganza, the Portuguese wife of King Charles II. Charmed by the vibrant cloth produced there, she celebrated her delight by distributing spiced cider and hotcakes to the townsfolk. The memory of this regal gesture lives on in watchIt's heart and is marked by an annual celebration. The literary legacy of Watchit is equally captivating. Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his esteemed comrade William Wordsworth found inspiration in the town's cozy inns. It was within the walls of these establishments that Kohleridge penned The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, a poetic masterpiece that kickstarted the English literary Romantic movement. The echoes of these words can still be heard in the gentle lapping of the waves against Watch it shores. But it's not all tales of heroism and triumph. There's an undercurrent of tragedy too, as seen in the story of St Ducuman. This revered figure sailed across from Wales on a makeshift raft, accompanied by his loyal cow. Yet upon landing, his journey took a macabre turn when a zealous local decapitated him. Undeterred, St Dukuman calmly washed his severed head in a sacred well, reattached it and won over the skeptical residence with his unshakable faith. Resurrection takes center stage in yet another remarkable tale, this time involving Lady Wyndham. As she lay in the church, presumed dead, a sexton attempted to steal her rings, inadvertently awakening her from slumber. Lady Wyndham's return to the realm of the living sparked confusion and disbelief, a story that echoes through the ages and solidifies watchIt's reputation as a town steeped in mystery. Listen along as we immerse ourselves in just a handful of these fascinating narratives with our special guest for today's episode, bobby, the man behind XTools offers a unique blend of historical exploration and paranormal investigation to captivate audiences, bringing history to life in spine tingling ways. With a background steeped in history, heritage and archaeology, bobby's passion has driven him to create immersive experiences that bridge the gap between the tangible and the supernatural. It all began with the Dunster ghostwalk, an endeavour that seamlessly melds history in the paranormal. As a former Dunster Castle employee and a devoted paranormal investigator, bobby's journey into the unknown has evolved into an exploration of the spectral side of Somerset and beyond. So prepare to be transported to a world where history and the ethereal intersect, where legends and hauntings intertwine. Join us as we journey through Watchit with our esteemed guest. Together we'll traverse the misty landscapes of time and unearth the stories that are defined Watchit for generations as the threads of the past unravel. May you find yourself enchanted, intrigued and perhaps even spooked by the mysteries that await.

Michelle: Hi, Bobby. Thank you so much for joining me again for another podcast.

Bobbie Rammond: No problem at all. Thank you for having me on again. It's my pleasure.

Michelle: And we're going to be talking about a different area today, which is the area of Watch It, which is not too far away from Dunster, is it?

Bobbie Rammond: No, not far at all. Ten to 15 minutes in the car, I would say.

Michelle: Do you want to just tell people a brief history of Watch It?

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, definitely. Well, it's a very ancient place. When you're approaching Watch It, you'll notice that the signs point out is an ancient harbour town. There is evidence of ancient settlements in the area, there's ancient burial grounds at Williton and, like I say, surrounding the area. But the sort of history of Watch It really begins in the Saxon period, though. That's when we know for a fact it was used as a harbour. Alfred the Great had a burr established there. There was also a Saxon minster and there was a coin mint there. Quite an important coin mint that carried on use into the Norman period. Quite an interesting fact regarding the mint there, though, is well recorded of how the Vikings was harassed in the coaster at the 8th century. And more coins that was minted in Watch It have actually been found in Nordic states, which shows, obviously, the Viking success when they was raiding the coin mint at Watchit, which I find pretty obviously, most of those have been found through metal detecting. So, yeah, there's a lot of coins minted in Watchit to be found in the museums over in Norway and Scandinavia and places like that.

Michelle: You wait, there's going to be people descending now upon Watchit with metal detectors in the hope they can find some loose.

Bobbie Rammond: You would expect more to be found around the area where the coin mint actually was, wouldn't you? But to be honest with you, I think a lot of those coins would have been paid to the Vikings by the Saxons as payment to leave them alone, sort of thing.

Michelle: Yeah, which makes sense. It's got a really wonderful kind of mixture of history and folklore and ghost law, like so much of our wonderful kind of country, really. These lovely, wonderful places where you start dipping your toe into what stories they have to share and suddenly you are just discovering all of these different treasures, these gems of bits of legend, bits of folklore, ghost law, history, events, dark events, funny events, momentous events, and it's really very much like a treasure trove. And one of the aspects that really, really has intrigued me when considering the history of Watchit is a particular account of possible premature burial. It's a discussion that I've had on the podcast before with an incredible guest, Sarah Blake, from Hushed Up History, where we were looking at the nature of premature burial, accounts of premature burial, some of the folklore around it. And attached to it. And the difficulty in trying to find absolute, concrete evidence of that event with that particular person that it's recorded about. And through that discussion and through that research, and I've written about it and done various things on that topic itself, there is a name and names when it comes to watch it that have come up as part of that research. And I wondered if you just wanted to share your kind of stance in terms of what you've heard and what you know about the premature burial of Florence Wyndham in this case.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. So, firstly, like you pointed out, it is a real treasure trove of history, isn't it? When you visit the area, you see the quiet little quaint harbour town and you don't think, really, historically much would have happened there. But like you said, when you look into the history, you can be quite amazed, really, and taken back by the amount of events that unfolded in the area. And, yeah, that particular one that you're referring to, including Florence Wyndham, so from the Wyndham family, which were historically very important family in the area, but her story goes back to the 15 hundreds and it's recorded how Florence Wyndham was mistakenly thought dead and she was placed into a coffin and left in the church overnight. Anyway, the next day I believe it was the next day it was the evening before her burial was going to take place and the sexton of the church decided it's no use her being buried with those lovely gold rings on her finger. So he decided he was going to chop her fingers off and take the rings and leave her buried that way. But to his surprise, she come around and woke up and left him running when he tried to pull the rings off. Anyway, so she obviously, like I said, come around, and she wandered back to her home at Kentford Manor, which is not too far away from St Deckerman's Church, where she was due to be buried. A little addition to the story that somebody told me recently, actually, was how I knew she had to convince her family, or so the story goes, she had to convince her family that she wasn't actually a ghost and she wasn't dead. And the addition to the story that somebody told me recently was her husband was leaning out of the bedroom window with a rifle, almost about to shoot her because he was convinced that she was a ghost. But, yeah, there's other stories that say that she was already in the house cooking up eggs and bacon when her family members arrived, and it was at that point in time she had to convince them that it wasn't a ghost in the kitchen cooking up eggs and bacon. But, yeah, as I'm sure you're aware, if you've discussed it before, there is many different versions of the story, bits that have been added on just recently. Actually, I was reading about another story quite close to here regarding the witch of widthicoom. Her name was Joan Khan and she also lived in the 15 hundreds. I won't go into her story too much, into too much depth today, but I was just going to point out when she was found after thought to be dead, she was also found in the kitchen cooking up eggs and bacon. I don't know what it is with the eggs and bacon, but for some reason they like to add that bit in.

Michelle: I was just going to say it's a rather strange addition to have to both accounts, really. I don't know what that says, really. Whether it was just very popular or.

Bobbie Rammond: They were very hungry when they wrote.

Michelle: It down or something that was told over the dinner table, I don't know. Or round a table with people gathering for stories, who knows? I mean, it's a very strange addition to have, like I mentioned.

Bobbie Rammond: But it is a strange and like you say, it'd be interesting to look into the psychology into why adding that certain aspect, but I'm sure there's some explanation for it. But I'm sure there'd be many different interpretations for it.

Michelle: But it is a really interesting bit of folklore just in general. I mean the popularity of the story of the lady almost at the point of burial or who has been buried, who somehow then revives at the point of being robbed in her grave by a sexton or a grave robber, somebody who's trying to take that ring off. But there are so many then variations of that account in terms of it slipping off, them having to cut her finger off in order to try and remove the ring, or they're about to cut the ring off. And then you have variations as to the response when she revives. In some stories, the sexton dies from fright. In some versions, when she wanders home, it's her husband who dies from fright. In other stories, like you just mentioned, you have accounts of her returning home, this long journey to her home, where her family refuse her entry because they believe she's a ghost. So you have some kind of a confrontation with the husband refusing to let her in. And then you have strange additions with the husband saying things know you can no more be alive than the horses breaking free from their stables and charging through the house and up the stairs. And of course, in those stories that's precisely what happens. So there are so many variations of this particular account across England, across Ireland, across Germany, France, pretty much all the European countries. In this particular case, what is so interesting is that there is only one other case that I've come across where the family name in this case, Wyndham, sees the century before another woman of the Wyndham family experiencing the same thing and having the same story attached to them. So in this case we've got Florence, but then we have a Catherine Wyndham a hundred years earlier who this story is also being added to what happened to her.

Bobbie Rammond: It certainly adds to the intrigue and it doesn't really help with trying to, like you say, establish a date for when it really happened, if it really happened and what of the story is actually true.

Michelle: It makes it really intriguing because it poses lots of questions. It makes you wonder if there is some kind of an element of a medical condition that maybe is attached to this line, this ancestral line. Is it keeping something miraculous alive? Maybe near death, at the point of near death through something like a coma or some kind of state where they're very much non communicative, non responsive and then they have this revival and to keep it alive, to keep that memory of that event which would have been very much celebrated and not understood. Being medical understanding was very poor. Is this something that's been exaggerated to make it stand the test of time?

Bobbie Rammond: Well, before I was aware of the earlier example in my head I thought, well, there's probably some truth to the story and like you said, without the understanding of medical science, you're probably in some sort of coma and assumed to be dead. And much of the sort of romanticized parts of the story have probably been added over the years. But actually learning about the earlier example would probably add to the theory that like you said, it could even be an inherited medical problem. She could have even had really bad sleep apnea or something like that.

Michelle: It just adds more to the mystery. And there are a lot of people that would dismiss that type of folklore. Well, it's obviously then complete nonsense because you can't have all of these examples and these cases of the same story in Germany and in England and in Ireland and all of these other.

Bobbie Rammond: This is how folks all works, isn't it?

Michelle: But there has to be some element of truth and this is where it becomes hard and it also becomes frustrating because you want that bit of evidence but there are nods to some element of truth somewhere in the story. If you take the example of Florence Wyndham, there's the pew, isn't there? Which points to this celebration of her kind of miraculous recovery.

Bobbie Rammond: Exactly so that was really interesting because I read about that in a book that's over 100 years old and I thought the pew end would be long gone. But he pointed out in the book, or the author pointed out that there was a pew end depicting Florence Wyndham giving her thanks to coming in her mind, she'd come back to life. And yeah, this church is in Sadford Bret. Very nice little church, well looked after. And when I walked in. I was very surprised to see it was the second pew end on my left, and it was absolutely amazing. So obviously it's Florence Wyndham depicted there, giving her thanks to God. There's other really interesting details, a couple of other really interesting bits was Two Little Mermaids at the bottom as well. And I did actually look up what that signifies in that era in religion. And I got to be honest, it slipped my mind. Do you happen to know?

Michelle: I don't. I'd have to look it up, but I certainly will, because, as I say, it's such an intriguing mystery. And given that there are nods to elements of truth in these stories in these places, I mean, we can't dismiss gravestones that, say, lived once, buried twice. We can't dismiss architecture on buildings, significant buildings in places in Germany that point to some kind of a resurrection experience of somebody within that area. We can't dismiss features like you've mentioned in this church, but it's trying to get to the nub of what it was that sparked that in the first place. And that's the really interesting historical element, I think, that you've got to try and strip back some of it to get to the heart of it and whether it's ever possible to, given that so many of these records won't survive and may not have even been documented in the first place. But the story, however much exaggerated or not, points to some amazing event, something miraculous, whether it was something medical, whether it was some example of premature burial, which, again, we cannot dismiss, given how rife that was and how much of a problem that was and how feared it was as well. Does it point to something of that nature? Who knows?

Bobbie Rammond: Isn't it? Because, like you said, I like the word you use, because to us, somebody in a coma coming around, to us, we understand that. Whereas back then, it would have been an absolutely miraculous thing to witness, to have experienced, and they probably would have truly believed that God had brought them back from the dead.

Michelle: Yeah. And this is something that very much manifested all the way through until the late 18 hundreds. I can think of an example in Oxfordshire, obviously, near where I live, of a young woman, and I've spoken about her on another podcast, and I think there's a blog on a blog. I wrote about her on the website where she was basically, without going into too much detail, she was a very young servant girl and she suffered a miscarriage not too early on in her pregnancy. So kind of midway through. And given that it was midway through, there was an awful lot of speculation that this was something that she had deliberately done to abort the child and kill the child. There was also speculation that her pregnancy was the result of some kind of an affair or coercive relationship with the master of the house. Who subsequently pushed for her arrest and her trial for murder. And he had a lot of influence with the judge, he had a lot of influence with many of the kind of the noble, richer families in the area. And she was put on trial and she had a lot of support, a lot of women coming to her defense stating she'd had no idea of the pregnancy, she quite well off family. No, she was very poor, so we're talking very poor young servant girl, very early teenage years pregnant, losing her child early on, and then suddenly in a court being accused of murder, and she was sentenced to death. She was found guilty by the court and she was subjected to hanging, where she was declared dead, and her body was then transported for public dissection, as was the case for all those accused of murder who'd been found guilty and executed. And at the point of her dissection, she revived and she was treated by the surgeons because she was very, very unwell. She was near death for several days. She couldn't speak, she could barely eat and drink because of the ordeal of being hung. There were pamphlets printed. It was very well documented. There was all kinds of news of this revival in the press.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, that's very interesting. I'm assuming that was sometime in the 19th century, was it?

Michelle: This was in the mid 18 hundreds. I think it was something like 1840, something off the top of my head, period.

Bobbie Rammond: I've come across quite a few examples of I know it's very morbid, but of unwanted babies being murdered. And I've come across at least two examples from the early 18 hundreds, and the baby had already been born and they was sentenced to hard labor for six months. And I forget what the other one was, but she wasn't executed. It's interesting that the baby hadn't been born yet, but she was still convicted of murder.

Michelle: Well, I think that the speculation was that she had either done something to try and abort the child, or this was certainly the rhetoric of the master of the house, that she'd done something to abort the child, or had done something to the child at the point of stillbirth when she delivered.

Bobbie Rammond: The child was delivered, but just not alive.

Michelle: And like I said, he was very well known, lots of connections, and so he pulled a lot of strings to get her right.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, I see. He had the power behind him to.

Michelle: Be able to she had a lot of public support. Like I said, there was an awful lot of people who came to her defense to say that she clearly had no understanding that she was pregnant. She was very young. She had no idea that what she was experiencing was labor or pregnancy symptoms. And so it must have been quite harrowing when she received that conviction. But what is really interesting, and it ties into what we were saying about the miraculousness of how people would have viewed some kind of a revival, was that at the point of her, we'll say resurrection as she's about to obviously be cut up and dissected in front of a large group of audience of people coming to see that event. She could not be prosecuted again because the moment she revived, that was a sign from God of her innocence and she could not be tried again because she'd already been hung. But also it very much pointed to, well, this is God saying she is innocent, and so therefore this is something that needs to stop, this needs to end. She's innocent. And so her whole life changed after that, where she was able to go on, marry, have children of her own and live this very long life. By all accounts and the records where nothing else of any note really particularly happened. But it ties very much with what we were saying of is this some kind of a medical thing whereby if they're very unwell and close to death or their presentation is that they aren't exhibiting the things that you would expect from somebody who is alive. E g they're not eating, they're not drinking, they're not speaking, they're not moving those signs that for the layperson. And again, bearing in mind doctors didn't necessarily know the signs of death at this point. It was something very much not understood and very much a problem. You have doctors having difficulty diagnosing death, let alone the person without any medical experience whatsoever. And so, given that, are they looking at someone and thinking, to all intents purposes, they look dead to me. And so then suddenly when they do revive, when they do wake up and they do speak, that would have looked incredibly miraculous and from God something totally and utterly unexpected. That must be a sign from God something special about this person, of course, which then generates some kind of a story about Know.

Bobbie Rammond: No doubt they would have been praying for Know she was dead and they would have thought their prayers had been answered, essentially. But just what you were saying a moment ago about that girl, one thing I don't think you pointed out was Florence was actually pregnant as well, wasn't she? Actually gave birth to healthy boy two weeks after that.

Michelle: Whole again, it's just it's really intriguing. And the fact, like I mentioned, that she is not the only wyndham where there is this story attached to her. And like I mentioned, I can only come across one other example of that happening is really quite intriguing and I think it just poses an awful lot of different questions. And the only other example I'm kind of speaking and referring to is the Edgum family, which is again, interesting given that they are usually more affluent families whereby this is attached to. So yeah, just a really interesting element that I think really does deserve some discussion and thought and for people to be aware of, because it's a fascinating aspect of folklore and local history and some of these key people who lived as part of this community all those centuries ago.

Bobbie Rammond: And I think most of the original or the most contemporary sources regarding the event was printed on pamphlets, wasn't it, if I remember rightly.

Michelle: Yeah. And that would have been very much how they spread their news and they're very much the popular way of spreading the news of any kind of significant event when we're unlikely to have those pamphlets on record anywhere. For them to have survived would be miraculous.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. The books that we've written most contemporary to that may be based on the pamphlet information, but as you know, I think you've probably read the longest original, small truth, quite long, quite a lengthy story, isn't it? In my mind, there's no question that the author of that definitely added some to the original information that would have been included on the pamphlet.

Michelle: And those additions are just as interesting.

Bobbie Rammond: Because it's more about the broader mindset at that time as well, doesn't it?

Michelle: It does. I think it speaks to a lot of the fears around premature burial and the myths around death, about what happens to you. Grave robbing fears. These were very, very significant problems. We know this history tells us that this was a problem, it wasn't something of their imagination. And those additions, in some ways, it helps keep the story of that person alive. And we've got to be mindful of the fact that if something did happen for those people of that period in that time, it would have been significant. People embellish and then it gets told and someone else embellishes and it keeps going and it keeps going and it's kept an element of what happened alive. Whereas if it was something totally and utterly ordinary and not special, we wouldn't have any of this today still surviving. It would have died centuries ago. So the fact that these things still exist, there is this story still attached to Florence Wyndham and and then, you know, the Edgum family and various other families across Europe speaks to there must be something somewhere at the heart of it. Whether you've got stories combining, whether you've got elements being exaggerated, whether there's something medical, what's true, what bits. The bit that is made up and exaggerated is going to be very difficult to tease apart and to understand. But, yeah, it is a truly, truly fascinating aspect of folklore, of history, of, like I mentioned, these local figures in the community, but also then to find and follow the trail of how it impacted on the community through architecture, through buildings, through things left inside those buildings.

Bobbie Rammond: These were very real problems to people at that point. Grave robin and things like that. And you pointing out about gravestones marred, were buried once, buried twice, and there's so much tangible. Evidence, when you think about it. Like the large tombstones they used to put on the top of tombs to try and stop people, the grave robbing watch cameras and things like that. All of that comes from this period of worrying about, like you said, having your grave robbed.

Michelle: And it also speaks to the necessity of that. They obviously wouldn't have wanted that to happen to them because their resurrection depended on them having a good Christian burial and their body being whole. And so this was a real, genuine fear. Their soul in the afterlife depended upon it. And so these stories, I think, were very much part of people's understanding and real, genuine fears because, again, history tells us so. When you've got peak family members staying for weeks after a burial of a loved one in the cemetery in order to keep watch over the grave of their loved one so that nobody comes and tries to dig them up, people don't just do that because it's a whim. These were very real and present dangers. And so was very much that risk of someone being declared dead, whether it was through a doctor or not. Because, again, let's be very realistic. If you lived in the smaller rural communities, your access to a doctor was probably nil. We were dependent on someone else being able to say they are dead. Well, if our doctors of the day couldn't determine that easily and we're using all of these different medical devices and contraptions to decide if someone was dead or not because they weren't sure. And even then accidents happened. We can understand how this was an ever real and present worry and fear also.

Bobbie Rammond: They created that contraption, didn't they? For when they buried a body, it was like to be able to listen in and they would listen in to check if they was knocking on the coffin.

Michelle: Yeah, you had trumpets, you had things being rigged up to the corpse in case they moved bells up on the top, which is where we get the expression saved by the bell. You've got an array of different methods from the point of the moment they've died with pricking things like the toe with nails to see if it revived them. One of the most disgusting that I've mentioned before is the use of a trumpet being inserted in the rectum.

Bobbie Rammond: I heard trumpet. I was wondering where he was going with that.

Michelle: The doctor would manually blow smoke through the trumpet into the bottom. Hot smoke, tobacco smoke.

Bobbie Rammond: Is that where we get that saying.

Michelle: That'S where it comes from?

Bobbie Rammond: Because I think that was a more recent saying.

Michelle: It very much stems from medical doctors devising these techniques to try and revive someone if they were possibly alive. Which, again, just speaks volumes as to how rich a thread of discussion, fear, real medical concern.

Bobbie Rammond: This was so yeah, people, wasn't it? One thing I find interesting about this as well, though, I mean, as with many cases, it's interesting to think if that same event happened to just an ordinary person, there's no way it would be remembered, because Chancellor wouldn't have even been written down. And I think that adds to the theory of the things being added on over the years, because, like you said, they wanted to be remembered, then that begs a question, doesn't it? Like, did this really happen to Florence? Or did she see that that was a memory that people carried over from her ancestor and she wanted to be remembered the same way?

Michelle: Or is it a case of there was someone else in the area of watchit who was found to have been buried alive, but their name wasn't significant, to be remembered for it, but they also remember something about Florence, where she was near death around the time of giving birth, but survived. And that would have been miraculous. Childbirth was very much a killer of women in those times, so her survival would have been miraculous. And somehow, over the centuries and that passing of time, those stories have come together again. It's the beauty of the mystery of history.

Bobbie Rammond: Sometimes the more you think about it, the more your head thinks, oh, don't.

Michelle: You just wish you could be a Doctor Who and travel back in time and find out? Because I know it's the type of stuff that fascinates me, because people it's their very real, everyday experiences.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, like you say, when you look into it more and you look at it from different angles, I always try and think of it from the perspective of the person at that point in time. And I think when you do that, you can try and understand how it affected people more psychologically. Which explains, I think, why these stories was believed and why they'd been carried over.

Michelle: Absolutely, definitely. But yeah, that's something that very much was something that intrigues me and has intrigued me for a long time. Because obviously, given how rare it is for a family to have a recurring example of this in their lineage, like I said, I could only find one other example, which I've mentioned.

Bobbie Rammond: The other example wasn't a recurring one like the Wyndham one.

Michelle: It was pretty much identical, again, from the century before, same kind of things happening. I haven't come across any reference to near child's birth, but again, the fact that you have just 100 years before the same thing being added to a previous family matriarch within that family, again, what does it speak of? The fact that they're all women as well, which is interesting.

Bobbie Rammond: Have you ever come across any other stories of people coming back from the dead, from the sort of 15th century?

Michelle: Oh, gosh, there are a lot there are a lot of examples. And if you really do kind of dig deeper into it, there are a lot of things that were kind of being written and pulled together at that time. Speaking of this, because you had documents being pulled together by scientists, by those responsible for the dead, really indicating how big of a figure this involved. And yeah, I mean, there are lots and lots of examples and records showing how many individual cases someone has experienced in their time, in their area type thing.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, sometimes as well, I think things like this, it's good to start at the very beginning, try and find the earliest example or recorded example of something like this happening, and see what details are carried over. Because, as you know, with folklore, a lot of the time, details are carried over from the earlier stories.

Michelle: Something like that, as you know, does become harder and harder and harder to pin down, because the documents, the records just stop being recorded, they stop surviving. It would have been dependent on someone in the local area being able to document it to begin with. And if it was a small rural location, the chances of that happening would have been much more likely to have not happened to begin with.

Bobbie Rammond: And also, that story has to get to somebody who thinks it's interesting enough to actually publish in a pamphlet, because it wasn't just a little thing, was it, to print a pamphlet back then and distribute them?

Michelle: No, things like that. But like I said, given that there are so many examples, that this was a very real problem. I mean, just thinking about things like you've got William Tebb, who was the great big burial reformer, who basically trolled through so many different cases and records of it, and just in a very short period of time, he was able to pull something together which highlighted how significant a problem it was. I mean, he wrote about and put together a pamphlet showing that there were 219 cases of near live burial, 149 cases of actual live burial, ten cases of live dissection, and two cases of awakening during embalming.

Bobbie Rammond: And is this England?

Michelle: This was just in England. Only a very short amount of time. So we're not talking about centuries here. We're talking just over a few years. And that's quite eye opening.

Bobbie Rammond: Well, you kind of have me at ten cases of live dissection. I'm thinking, how does that work? Do they start twitching and they think, oh, well, we're about to start, we might as well carry on, or do they realize when they've already sort of.

Michelle: The really gruesome thing is that in a lot of those cases, yes. We have to bear in mind that the need for bodies, for the surgeon, was a significant problem, and this was a person who'd been convicted of murder. That's why they were on their table. And if they were at that point, in many ways, it was a way of finishing them off, finishing off what had already been started on the scaffold. When they'd been hung, they were due.

Bobbie Rammond: To be executed anyways. Was these definitely criminals because obviously I remember learning people even from arms houses and the work that were probably more so the workhouses when the new poor laws come in. It was part of law that I think if I remember the quote correctly, it was to repay your welfare debt your body will be given to medical child for dissection.

Michelle: Originally, it was just the criminal. So it started off with Henry VI allowing the barber surgeons, I think it was ten cases a year maximum. And so you can imagine ten bodies a year for all of these surgeons was never going to go very far. And then when they made changes to the Murder Act, it allowed them to continue punishing the murderers beyond death. And so therefore, they were denied burial. Their bodies were taken for dissection. And those convicted of murder and sentenced to death for murder were those who ended up on shy hall tables and in front of audiences for this process. And when things started to shift was again when you have well, there weren't enough bodies even then, and that was supposed to have been to try and help with grave robbing and resurrectionists, but it didn't have the impact. But they still weren't getting enough of the bodies needed to have these dissections. So, of course, then you have the commodity of the body through poor houses where, yeah, their body was also something that could be used for medical science. And it caused massive, massive uproar. Because for the poor working person, it was very clearly shows that the poor, the down and outs in society were fodder for the rich, for these surgeons, for the government to decide and do what they want with them, even in death. I mean, let's be clear, this was denying them the right to heaven. By doing this, their body was whole, is what they believed.

Bobbie Rammond: The worst thing that could possibly happen to them. And it's mad to think this is just, what, like 200 years ago, but.

Michelle: It resulted in riots. You had doctors riots, you had mobs. It was known as the I think it was known as the bloody Riot Act, bloody Riot Body Act or something like that. But it's what caused dissection to go underground. It was no longer done publicly and it was done privately in hospitals and surgeons and out of the public domain because of that outworld that outcry of disgust. And so again, it shifted attitudes and changes in policy around dissection in this country because of the response from people who found it so boring.

Bobbie Rammond: Imagine losing your job and being forced into the world. Think if it was today, you fall on hard times and you got to get to the job center and they say, yeah, okay, you can have your job center money. But just so you know, once you're dead, your body's going to go off to medical science thinking about no.

Michelle: But like I said, it just really does pay very starkly a clear picture as to what was happening during these centuries that we're talking about. That it was something very much being documented, being written about, being published in pamphlets, being written about in medical journals. And so of course it makes complete and utter sense that it's also going to be something spoken about in local communities. If Mary down the road has been near death and then possibly revived or someone else where something of that nature happens, the reasons behind it would have been not understood. And I mean, I don't know if you remember not that long ago, but there was only recently the case of the elderly woman who revived at the point where she was almost about to be buried and was immediately sent back to the hospital where she sadly passed away a few weeks later. Yeah, and that was only a few weeks ago and it wasn't a third world country we're talking about.

Bobbie Rammond: It's a reminder of how much we take it for granted. At least when we go, the doctors are hopefully going to be aware of the fact we're actually gone. Whereas a couple of hundred years ago you're lucky whether you're actually gone or not.

Michelle: Yeah. And it's been something that people have been trying to puzzle through and understand for all of that time. And when you don't have all the answers, you are simply hypothesizing, aren't you? You are learning, you're experiencing as you go, you're doing your best. And all of these stories and these things that we do have, these tangible pamphlets and documents, it's that that's the evidence that shows that pinpoints that there's some element of truth. It's just, as I said, trying to understand what it is. And certainly this case, especially with the connection of a previous family member for me, I think possibly speaks of something medical. It made me think of I'm trying to think specifically of his name. I think his name was Franz Hartman, who about 1890 518 96, he created a pamphlet that wrote about being buried alive in the examination of the causes of that. Things like death, trance, cataplexy. And again, all of those things are things that we've spoken about somebody who is who looks asleep but they're not reviving. So you can see that it was very much something being discussed and thought about.

Bobbie Rammond: Where was he from?

Michelle: Sorry, I can't remember off the top of my head. I'm sure his name was Franz Hartman and it was like 1890 518 96. But what's really interesting is his very real possible theories of medical understanding, like I said, mentioning things like cataplexy, cataplexy, trance, like states effectively coma, he was actually using it to explain vampirism.

Bobbie Rammond: Really.

Michelle: It was used to try and explain that phenomena.

Bobbie Rammond: So again, you can value and it's unexplored.

Michelle: Yes.

Bobbie Rammond: Do you think some of this comes from I suppose religion isn't so much in decline at that early stage, is it? But thinking earlier, when these sort of things would have happened, we've been discussing, the only explanation in their mind would have been, god's brought them back to life.

Michelle: Yeah.

Bobbie Rammond: They wouldn't have needed to look for other explanations for what had happened. It was just, oh, God's brought them back to life. Oh, god must really love that person. Whereas if you progress forward a couple of a few hundred years, somebody with the mind frame of questioning religion a bit more might think, actually, this person isn't being brought back by God, and this is what inspires people to go on and actually try and come up with other explanations for what's happening. Do you think that's what's the case with Brands?

Michelle: I think so. I think we just have to be really mindful of the fact that everything was in its infancy and they are learning as they're going, and they're only trying to find an explanation for something that is in the public domain, something that is being experienced. And we might laugh at the fact that his journal, his pamphlet, and he was a doctor, he was a learned man, was being linked to cases of vampirism. But if you essentially strip back what the vampire of the 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds, was it's not the handsome, sparkling vampire that we think of? It's not the Transylvania. No, it's not the Transylvania sucking your blood at the neck. Those were not the accounts being documented, of which there were a lot. They were of family members, pale returning from the grave, trying to gain entry to their home. Repeatedly trying to gain entry to their home. They could walk in the day. They could walk in the night. There was all kinds of superstition and things being reported about them. So is this just more example of someone reviving from death, either having been buried or before they're being buried? So does that word van vampire meaning the same thing as it does to us now? Or was it a case of someone reviving from a medical condition? It makes sense.

Bobbie Rammond: I've never thought of it like that. Yeah. So essentially, vampire is a way of explaining the phenomenon of coming back to life.

Michelle: I think it's a rational explanation for some of what was being experienced.

Bobbie Rammond: Very interesting thought, definitely.

Michelle: But I think we're all too quick to laugh because some of it far fetched and so do tales of, come on, someone reviving in the ground, in the earth. No, surely not. But actually, if you look at it, history tells us these things happened. There is documented cases. You only have to look at grave sites where they've uncovered bodies, where there are nails still embedded underneath what would have been the toenail pointing to the fact they were checking to see if that person was legitimately dead. There is strong evidence of bodies moving in the ground, in the corpses that's being discovered. When those sites have been excavated, which very much points to the fact that they did not go into the ground dead.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. And scary thought, isn't it, really?

Michelle: It is. But again, to us it seems so far fetched. But given, like I mentioned, there is only this very recent example. Is it so far fetched that 200 years ago, 300 years ago, when they didn't have machines and gadgets that you could hook up to the heart that would detect heartbeats?

Bobbie Rammond: In a way, it just shows how much we do take our understanding of medical science for granted, because people, like you said, will laugh it off because they're so unaware of the fact that this was truly in the mind of people back then.

Michelle: I mean, we know that there are circumstances where the body can slow down and mimic death. We know that. So, of course, for someone who doesn't have the same understanding of medical science, it would have precisely looked like death. But, yeah, it's truly, truly fascinating. I would suggest that if people are interested in it, to take a listen to that earlier podcast with Sarah Blake, where we examine the Marjorie McCall case from Ireland, which is the gravestone, and then we look at some other cases. And we tease heart some of that folklore because there was a really, really interesting study done in Germany where they identified how many regions, how many towns this story existed in. And when you see that, it's fascinating. But then to see how many of those locations, there are examples of architecture that signals that story. Again, fascinating. So, yeah, it's a really broad, big topic, but what does it say that it also pulls in small places like, watch it.

Bobbie Rammond: What you're thinking. Why is it that there were so many cases at that specific place? Was it because they had a better understanding of it, do you think?

Michelle: No, I think it probably speaks to there must have been somewhere an example of premature burial that really was significant, that did the rounds, that was then shared from place to place. It would have spread like wildfire. So then that case that was probably genuine from one area, from one place or maybe a couple of places, suddenly then springs up in this town, in this village, in this town, in this village, in this, and it gets attached to people and where it stems from gets lost. But because it becomes so synonymous and well known with that location, you then get the architecture springing up to kind of speak of this history that's been talked about for 200 years or 100 years or 150 years or whatever it is, and there it is as this signal to this event. But does it mean that the event happened there or 80 miles down the road somewhere else? Is the bit that's very hard to really get to the heart of and point to. But I think it's just evidence that clearly something happened somewhere and then it spread massively very quickly and very sorry.

Bobbie Rammond: Remind me, where was that example?

Michelle: So that was Germany.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, in Germany. It'd be interesting, wouldn't it, to know if they both occurred as completely separate instances or somehow influenced each other.

Michelle: Yeah, I mean, it was done by I think it was done in 1920, where they found 80 examples, 80 examples across different locations of this story. And elements of this story cropping up in that town or that village and something like 19 or 20 then examples of the architecture of the horse on significant buildings pointing to the story. But, yeah, it was a really big bit of research by an ethnologist, I think, in 1920. So, yeah, it's something that has intrigued many other people interested in this aspect of history, but also this aspect of folklore, because it speaks to an awful lot of experience of the everyday person, their fears, their experiences. Also, what was happening medically, scientifically, what was happening in terms of burial changes. Yeah. And premature burial.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, I think I'm sure you like myself. It really adds to these stories in general, having that tangible evidence. So it's not just words and stories, but to actually see a gravestone marked buried once, buried twice, it really adds to the story.

Michelle: Very much so, yeah. And like I said, those are sometimes all that you have all the pew in the church, it's all that really does remain. That's a physical nod to there being some kind of an element of truth. But it's things like that that I think, again, if you're visiting those areas or visiting that part of the world, is the stuff that you want to try and find, because that's the really interesting some of those are the really interesting elements, the unknown elements, aren't they?

Bobbie Rammond: Well, yeah. This story, whether it was based on that earlier example, that was 100 years previous, as far as I'm aware, the only part of tangible evidence related to that story is that buen, to me, it's fascinating and it really is worth seeing.

Michelle: But like I mentioned at the start, Watch It has so much incredible history, so many legends and bits of folklore. One of those other nods to that is something that we talked about on the previous podcast, which is the connection with Mother Leaky. So, again, if people haven't listened to that, that would be a good one to start with, because you went into that in a bit more detail. But what is the connection with Mother Leaky and her ghost and Watch It? Do you want to just remind us of that briefly?

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. So, like you said, obviously we mentioned her connection to Dunsta last time, but the sources that I've come across that relate her to watch it are essentially so before they got the key and the harbors that you'll see, in place at watch it now. They had quite a number of wooden breakwaters, and many, many of them was destroyed over the centuries from the 17 hundreds leading into the sort of late 19th century. And yeah, I come across quite a few sources where Mother Leaky was to blame for those storms. I think I mentioned to you before how it said, stand on mined harbor with a whistle, storms and destroying ships.

Michelle: And her son blamed her, didn't he?

Bobbie Rammond: Yes, her son. Yeah. Apparently he was to blame for his bankruptcy and for killing her own grandchild infamous woman. She was a nice lady in life. You wouldn't expect so much.

Michelle: That's the bit that we talked about last time, again, kind of like we were talking about with Florence Wyndham. Why is it that some of these stories get told and remembered and shared? What is it about that person that makes them special enough that their story doesn't disappear? And there must be something about Mother Leaky in life that meant that her story deserved being preserved. Whether it was there was something that she did, maybe that was a bit dubious, or maybe it just was that she was just such a wonderful, kind hearted woman, they turned her into some villainous character to remember her, who knows? But the fact that she has so much ghost law around her is fascinating across multiple different places, too.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, and maybe it could be a combination of all of the above. Maybe it could have been a story that was created to be a nice thing, and that's why it's pointed out in the sources that she was a nice person in life. But then perhaps there was somebody who didn't like her quite so much and pointed out the not so nice aspects of her, for example, kicking the doctor in the privates and things like that, which is comical.

Michelle: But again, this is the kind of the local story, the local myths, legends, folklore, ghost lore that is so fascinating. And watch. It really does have an abundance.

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Michelle: I'm sure you have plenty, but there's a really fascinating one, isn't there, about a saint from St. Wales? Do you want to talk us through that one? Because again, it's a really interesting example of precisely what we've been talking about when it comes to Watch It.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, definitely. So when I do the Watch It ghost walk, one of the first areas we get to is on the corner there. There's a little pebble mosaic. It's not that old, it's from 1994, but it's really interesting nonetheless. And it tells the story of St Decoman. So it's who the church is at Watch It is dedicated to. And like you said, he was from South Wales and he came over in the 7th century and it said that he came over on a small wooden raft and there was another raft in tow with his cow. And he actually, the story says he suckered on the cow on his voyage over to sustain him. And when he landed at what, the locals wasn't too fond of him and unfortunately decided to cut his head off. But it wasn't a problem for St Deckerman, he was a magical saint and he wandered up to the well, that can still be seen at St Deckerman's in Watch It Now, and he made use of the holy water there to reestablish his head. And seeing this magnificent feat, the locals actually grew quite fond of him after mean, I'll just be pretty impressed as well, to be honest.

Michelle: But again, it comes back to what we were saying in the podcast that you were on before when looking at Dunster. These wonderful stories, myths, legends, and the explanation that they have for certain things is just so fascinating in and itself of this, in many cases, these very early historical points.

Bobbie Rammond: As you were aware, he come from a period known as the Dark Ages, after the Romans had left England, so called the Dark Ages, because there's not very much written history. But St Dekkerman was from that period, st Korancock from just at the Road, who I think we mentioned on the Dunster one, he was from that period in history. So the history is there. It's just you've got to search for it and try and divide the myth from the actual facts, which can be very difficult. But there's so much written about these figures and these saints and the events that happened in their life. There's got to be some truth in the story.

Michelle: Yeah, again, it's been kept for a reason. And again, the difficulty is being able to tease apart fact from fiction, the myth from the real stuff. And that's because it's so old. It's so very old. And most people were not literate, so they wouldn't have been able to document it.

Bobbie Rammond: No. And I think a lot of the like you said, there was a literate, they wouldn't have been able to document it. And I think a lot of the reason these stories have survived is because of their background. Being religious stories, usually they would have told some sort of message. For example, the one before when we spoke about St Koranatok and the serpent that's like, symbolizing God's defeat. Over evil in some aspect. And that's why these stories would have been carried over, because they would have been spoken in churches over the centuries. And then at some point in history they was written down, at which point much has been added, romanticized, very much. But that doesn't take away from the fact that it was based on that original story.

Michelle: Yeah, they've become something that's been used for a moral lesson, if you like, something to remember for that reason and been used for those purposes. But something is at the heart of it that warranted writing it down in the first place. And, yeah, it's again, the really exciting bit of history, understanding the key figures and the locations, the places, all of how it's come together in this perfect melting pot and still then stays that the memory, the echo of that still stays in that area somehow. Whether it's through story, whether it's through folklore, whether it's through something in a church, whether it's through something that's been documented and actually preserved, it's the remnants of the stuff that was there right at the very beginning when it happened. And that's so exciting. Incredible. Yeah.

Bobbie Rammond: You go to watch it now and like I said before, it's a very quiet, quaint little area. And it boggles my mind trying to imagine what that area would have even looked like when St. Deckerman was know it was a whole different environment.

Michelle: But, you know, you say this was such a quaint, beautiful little place, but kind of like when we were discussing Dunster, these places, I mean, like so many other places across England, you saw some incredibly dark momentous, bits of history played out. When we think of history and we think about the big moments in history, we think about how they impact on larger places and larger communities. But history plays out for everybody. It plays out for the common person. So it's something experienced in very small, rural, leafy, picturesque parts of the world, as well as bigger locations, bigger towns and cities. Just like everywhere. Human nature is human nature. So you have some incredible accounts that signify so many things about the people and how in many ways we still haven't done much evolution, we haven't changed much, but they are really important records to not forget because again, they tell us about human nature, human life.

Bobbie Rammond: They remind us they were still human beings. They might have been 200 years ago, but they were still humans. They still had a brain that they used to think with, same way we do today.

Michelle: And I think it's our connection to them. It reminds us that we aren't that different. We may have this great spanse of time between us, we may dress differently, we may live differently, but actually, in essence, we are still blood and flesh in the same way and many of the same motivations and issues and things that happen still happen today.

Michelle: Yeah.

Michelle: And I know that one of the aspects of watch it that's really interesting, that you've done a lot of research about, and I know you've written about it for the blog, is the account of this really it's the really peculiar, twisted tale of basically trying to tarnish someone's name, to have them convicted of a crime and executed and really fascinating. Do you want to talk us through that account briefly? And like I said, I know it's on the blog. So for people who want to have the chance to read into it a bit more detail, do you want to tell us about the parish curate?

Bobbie Rammond: Yes, definitely. It is a fascinating story from the 16 hundreds. We've obviously been talking about pamphlets and things like that. And what's really interesting with this one is there is a pamphlet from the 16 hundreds that describes this story. And, yeah, basically, Mr Trapped, his name was, and he was a curate from Old Cleave and he fell out with a few of the locals. I won't go into too much detail because we could be here for ages talking about this one, but if anybody wants to breathe more details, by all means to have a look at the blog. But, yeah, he fell out with some locals and there was various, let's say, aggrievances between the two of them. And at one point, Mr Trapp's wife actually died as a result of drowning. She was down at the beach and the tide came in and she couldn't escape and she died as a result of that. Now, the people that Mr Trat fell out with, they tried to use this as an excuse to really tarnish his character, but it didn't work. Something else they tried. So someone from the group decided they were going to break into his house and nick his curate clothing and go wandering around and basically harassing local ladies with the intention for those ladies to go and report that to the authorities. When the authorities have the description of Mr Trapp's clothing, they thought that would do the job, but that didn't work either. Anyway, it was when Mr Trat was actually created, the curate, that it was sort of the last draw for this group that really wasn't fond of him whatsoever. And, yeah, they unfortunately decided to murder him and it was quite brutal. I don't think they had fully thought it through, looking at the sources that I've got regarding this event, which certainly imply they hadn't thought it through because they had done the murder. And then it was as if they was trying to decide what to do next. And they actually took Mr trap's body back to Mr. Trapp's house and cut it to pieces, disemboweled his body in Mr Trapp's very own bath. And then they sort of thought, okay, what do we do now? And the only thing they could think of was to try and ram all of these bits of body into some earthenware jars that was in the building. So they'd done that and they was able to get rid of many of the jars. And they did use a big pot as well, which they filled with much of the blood from Mr. Trapp. Anyway, obviously the authorities some time after this event knew what was going on and was searching for Mr. Trapp, and they sort of had an idea that it was this gang that had the problems with Mr. Trapp and they was actually questioning this gang at Mr. Trapp's house. And it was when one of them picked up or was asked by one of the officers there to pick up the pot of blood he purposely spilt, know, pretended it was an accident. And apparently it was. That what really gave them away. And, yeah, they ended up in court and ended up being executed for it.

Michelle: Yeah, which comes back to what we were talking about earlier. These people, if they were found guilty for murder, that's what happened to them. I mean, execution was a very common offense for an awful lot of crimes, not just murder. There was like 260 something offenses of which you could have been hung for. So it was a common punishment, well, for things that we would consider very minor today, but for then were very significant in the eyes of the law in terms of the elite, but also common people like farmers and things where it would have had a significant impact on their livelihood. And so, yeah, crime and punishment is a really interesting aspect of this history, of this part of history and the local history. So something like that, an account like that is really fascinating to understand, beginning to end, what happened and how it played out, but also the wider implications of crime and punishment. And last time we were talking about the men being led over the bridge in Dunster and how significant something like that would have been. But something like this really would have been significant as well. It would have been very memorable to the people in the community. Crime and punishment would have been something that had such a significant impact on the people of the day, watching it play out, if they were involved, if their family was involved, and so on and so forth. And I do think that's why we often then have things that stay and act as reminders of some of these changes and these pivotal moments in that kind of part of the history books, if you like. And again, I know that Watchit has similar nods to this aspect of history. And there's a really fascinating contemporary rhyme, isn't there, when it comes to punishment and changes in punishment in Watchit that I don't know if you can speak of and go into a bit more detail.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, I think the one you're referring to is the one that comes from the Enclosure Act. The Enclosure Act came around in the 17 hundreds prior to the Enclosure Act, you've got much common land that's being used by many of the people in a said area. And then after that act was brought into place, basically a lot of land was being parceled off and sold to the highest bidder, essentially. And as you can imagine, as with the crime and things that you've just been mentioning, this would have had a massive impact on people. Their livelihood depended on this land and all of a sudden, within a click of her fingers, it was taken away from them because people with more power and more money than them was able to do so. But the rhyme that you're referring to, if I remember it correctly, the law locks up the man who steals goose from the common but leaves a greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose. So, yeah, that's a contemporary rhyme from the late 17 hundreds, which I think is fascinating. I think it speaks volumes about the mindset of people during that period and how it affected them.

Michelle: Well, don't you think it speaks to some of the things that we've mentioned? Because it's really basically saying that the rich can steal something away from someone effectively and they can get away with it. But it's kind of this one rule for one and one rule separate from other people that someone else can get away with something really quite heinous, whereas the common person can't.

Bobbie Rammond: There's that aspect, but it's also taking away something that was theirs, isn't it? Yeah, they're actually getting away with things that they're not allowed to get away with. But they're also I mean, you could like, literally, as they've worded it, they've used the word steals. And I think they felt like it was stolen from them because.

Michelle: They worked it, they owned it, they lived on it. But you're right, it could be snatched away from them, stolen from underneath them, simply because they had the money and the power and the position to do so. And yeah, it just speaks very much of the class system and the attitude around what people could do in your position in life if you were lower in status that you could.

Bobbie Rammond: A lot of people was living in poverty as it was, and it wasn't just their animals and their farmland. A lot of this common land was used for fuel. They needed this wood, they depended on it to survive. And all of a sudden, huge swathes of woodland was being taken away from them and they had no fuel. It would be like us today, all of a sudden having no electricity, literally.

Michelle: But I think the fact that they use the idea of the goose for the rhyme, I think is very telling. It's very revealing because it's basically a source of food. And what is effectively being conveyed in that rhyme is you are taking away the things that sustain us. You are robbing us of the things that give us the ability to thrive, because this land would have been the land where they lived. They were able to grow what they needed to survive, maybe worked that land.

Bobbie Rammond: Their livelihood, wasn't it?

Michelle: Yeah. Stripping of them.

Bobbie Rammond: There would have been like lime kilns on this land and all of this stuff, and all of a sudden the local lime kiln they would have used was being taken over and paid rent on and things like that.

Michelle: And bear in mind, they would not have received any recompense for this. They would have literally just been out on their ear. It's that simple.

Bobbie Rammond: It's not like today, where they had no rights. Essentially, their common land was gifted. I think at that point in time, it was still based on not necessarily ancient charters, but much older sort of royal charters that allowed common people to have a certain amount of land for their animals and their livelihood.

Michelle: But yeah, I just think it's a fascinating rhyme that speaks so much in terms of who they perceive as some of the criminals in this part of the world and society in general, and who can get away with things and who can't and how it's always the poor person who tends to suffer at the end of it. And it's really revealing, I think, in terms of how harsh life could be, and easier in some ways if you were someone of position and note and society.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, 100%. And I also think it speaks volumes about the change in mentalities of people. It also signifies that they're going through a period where all of a sudden they're in a position where anything they feel is theirs can be taken away from them. With the Industrial Revolution, it very much was the case, kind of coming back.

Michelle: To things that we've spoken about in this podcast in the previous one. It is those periods of change, of something significant happening, that people, because they weren't literate, let's be honest, most people were not able to write these things down. They told them in ways that were significant and meaningful for them. And that's storytelling, it's song. It's these remnants of those events that sometimes last. Thankfully, that point to this was something that they were enduring, that they were having to survive, being done to them. I think if anybody had someone suddenly coming in and taking away their home, they would have an awful lot to say and they'd be writing to the press in their local council office, local MP, parliament, whoever it is, wherever you are in the world, you'd be making a real stink about it. What could these people do? Not a lot.

Bobbie Rammond: This is another reason, though, we're lucky that things like this have survived, because something I really love with history is looking at history from the bottom up, from the real people at the bottom of the food chain, let's say. And unfortunately, not a lot survived for one reason or another. It could be because, like you said, the majority were illiterate. But thankfully, these rhymes have survived and I guess they've just been passed down with oral history. And then at one point in time, somebody's had the appreciation of the importance of the history of it and wrote it down. That's why we got it today.

Michelle: Absolutely. And again, I think that's the really magical aspect, that these things, the fact that they have survived should continue to survive. We should know about it, we should celebrate it, we should talk about it, because they're really revealing. And in this example, you've got words that signify how traumatic it was, how difficult it was, how it stripped them of the things that they needed to survive, to thrive. And you could dismiss it as a really nonsensical rhyme that means nothing, but actually it means so very much. Just think about the person behind the words in that rhyme, the people you.

Bobbie Rammond: Could write based on that sentence. Like you said, it signifies so much more. You just need to look at it from a different angle. And it's funny, I always try and use quotes like this and contemporary quotes, doing my walks and things like that, and I always get excited about this one because I really love it and I love the idea of telling other people, but nobody seemed to share that excitement. And I think that is for that reason, they're not looking at it from the perspective that I appreciate it from. They're looking at it with their modern eyes and it's just a little quote that doesn't really mean anything to them, but it signifies so much more.

Michelle: Absolutely. We've just kind of been thinking about a moment of change and you mentioned a different period of change, which is something that very much impacted Great Britain but all parts of the world, which is this huge industrial shift. And industry booming different types of industry groundwork for things like railway lines being set up to boost transportation and businesses and transport and freight transport and so many other things when it comes to industrialization, which very much impacted people at local level and communities at local level. And Watch It is no different to that, really, because you've got changes coming through in this, again, quite small, rural, leafy community of railway lines being brought in. And again, it would have been something very significant for the community in terms of impact on trade, on ability to take things to market, local businesses, travel, work, jobs. This would have meant that this was a community that suddenly started growing and expanding as a result of this addition coming into the local area.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, 100%. And they had the mineral line there, which brought the coal in from the Brendan Hills, which was established in 1857. And it's amazing when you go onto the harbor where the lighthouse is today at watch it. Thankfully, they preserved a small part of the mineral line that actually extended all the way onto the harbor and allowed them to actually use hydraulics to literally tip the carriages that was full of coal directly onto the you. Know, just previous to this, they would have been bringing the iron ore down on carriages from the Brendan Hills, and they would have literally had to load it onto ships by hand. So you can imagine what a game changer it was to be able to bring that down all the way to the ship and just literally tip it onto the ship. And then it would go from there straight over to South Wales. And to me, I see that ship kind of as an extension to the railway line because it was like a triangular system. The all would go over, they would smelt it over there, stuff would come back, and it was just a constant system. Yeah, it's amazing. And like you say, you wouldn't really expect it looking at the small little town.

Michelle: No, but there are real nods to different aspect of life and industry and business. I mean, there's a real maritime and sailing kind of nod being out at sea, but then this real industrial kind of nod and engineering nod, and boom in this sense of then you've got.

Bobbie Rammond: Other around that like you've got the Hobblers. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Hobblers before.

Michelle: I haven't, no.

Bobbie Rammond: They're very interesting. They was initially known as the Hobblers. So it's basically groups of people that would help to guide ships into the harbor. And in Watch It, there was a number of small groups and they realized by the sort of mid 18 hundreds that rather than work against each other, they would be better off creating a group. And that was where the Hobblift comes from and they established Hobblift society in Watch It, which I think is quite interesting. And again, that stemmed from that industry.

Michelle: Fascinating. And yeah, again, it's just really interesting, these words, the root words, the etymology of these words and where they come from, because so often today they've changed to something else and they're used for other things. But to see what they were originally and the source of them originally is always fascinating. And again, the impact on the community at community level, that there was a need for this, for them to kind of have to do that, really. That was their job.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, this is what I try and tell people. It's the same with the dunster one as in Watch It. It's quite easy to walk up the harbor and assume that it's always been that quiet. But actually, I have to remind people that 200 years ago, just under 200 years ago, there would have been trains coming through this very spot. There would have been groups of men hurling iron ore from the carriages onto the ship. There would have been ships up and down. I remember reading, I think, the biggest thing that was landed off a ship in Watch, it was 150 ton boiler that was used in the paper mill there. That was huge.

Michelle: But it really does signify how much has shift in some ways in terms of life in these communities and the types of industry that we had then to what we have now. And I think most people kind of have can recollect in, say, the last 50 years, some of those changes, but go back even further and you can really see the origins of them. And there's very much this booming trade of all of these things, the busyness around it. And yeah, playing out in small places like Watchit with waterways absolutely teeming with ships coming in and working, transporting things, bringing things in. Having things being put on their ships and taken elsewhere. And likewise, trains being used to transport these goods around the country in different places. And so, yeah, it's something that we tend to think of as only having been around in, say, the last 50, 60 years in the demise of it. But history is really quite vast. It goes back much further. Whether the origins were very humble, like you mentioned, of people having to do it by hand and then by simple carriage and horse cart, then that kind of movement towards boats, steam locomotives, you can see that evolution. And then the decline of those over the last 50 or so years, which.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, well, like you said, it goes up much further. I find it really interesting when I try and explain to people, for example, at Dunster, when they had the harbor there, well, for a start, people find it very difficult to even imagine Dunsta as its own harbor. But secondly, you try and explain to people that in the 14 hundreds ship was leaving that harbor for France, Spain, they wasn't just connected to Wales over the Channel, it was connected to the much wider world. And that was going back over 500 years, which I find phenomenal. But I got to say, I do understand why people can't really appreciate it, because it's really hard to imagine, you know, when you go down to watch it, it's very hard to imagine because.

Michelle: It'S so quiet now, it's so underused in the way that it used to be used. And let's also be honest and try and remember that where you have that connection with water and the wider world, there is obviously also the very real threat of invasion. And so just as a kind of a focal point, these were positions that were kind of of note to be mindful of and to be watching out for, because it was a route in of people trying to gain entry into your local settlement. So if you go back even further, these were places that were safeguarded or watched and where you would have battles and skirmages and people trying to come through into. So they've had such significant parts to play in our histories. They're just very quiet.

Bobbie Rammond: So it's that's interesting to say that. I mean, there's a map from Spanish Armada period, and that shows it's either Watch it or Dunster, but it shows the harbor there with some ships in the harbour, which I think is amazing, shows the importance of it. Also, we've got Duncare Beacon. It's believed, if I remember correctly, that that was first established as a beacon during the threat of the Spanish Armada and all of these little things. Now, every time I go up to Duncare beacon, I can't help but look out and imagine I'm seeing the Armada coming towards me and I'm the one lighting the beacon. Luckily, they never got to that point. And that goes forward even more. Right up until World War II, it was very much a heavily defended area, Dunster and Watch it there's pill boxes that remain to show the Haven site at Watch. It was a very big sort of army base used by American soldiers. They even had their very own air strip there. And I've seen a photo just recently, I forget the name of the airplane, but they actually had a remote control airplane that they used to use for target practice.

Michelle: Yeah. So I think we have to suspend that disbelief and really try and kind of value them for the place that they've had and the importance and significance they've had.

Bobbie Rammond: Significant and their importance.

Michelle: But not only that, these small places. You've got Cleave Hill, which obviously has nods to ancient settlements and forts that would have had the same kind of purpose very much as a place of trying to withstand attack. These other places that you can wander through and you can't imagine scenes of battle or sieges and all of these other things playing out. But we have so many things like that dotted across our landscape which speak of much more turbulent times of the need to defend and fortify against invaders.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, exactly, because you said Cleveland Hill, that's where Doors Castle was established, which was the Angler Saxon borough. And yeah, unfortunately that's on the cliff edge now and much of it has been lost to coastal erosion. But it's on that hill as well, where there used to be a chapel and it's recorded that that's where St Deckerman was actually buried. But unfortunately, I think it was in the 16 hundreds that that chapel literally fell off the edge of the cliff and was lost to sea.

Michelle: Honestly, it's so fascinating. It's this wonderful, rich theme of history and all the other things that we've mentioned that's so fascinating. And we can't kind of talk about folklore and history and all of these things without also talking about some ghost law. And we've been talking about kind of this boom of industry and how busy the waterways and the railway line would have been with all of this new movement in business and industry and so on and so forth. But I know that there's some really interesting sightings and paranormal activity associated with the station and the railway lines, isn't there? That goes back to a particular collision, doesn't it? Do you want to tell us about that? And obviously some of the ghost law surrounding it.

Bobbie Rammond: Yes. So there was a crash on the actual Mineral Line. So there's the two lines that watch it. There's the main line, which is connected to the West Somerset Railway. Then you've got the Mineral Line, which comes down from the Brendan Hills. Now, there was actually a head on collision between two trains on the Mineral Line, which resulted in a fatality. So you can walk the Mineral Line today, and many people have suggested that they've seen a ghost and had strange experiences while walking along there. But one I find very interesting is in the number of people actually recorded seeing what they described as a phantom train flying through Watch It station. So that would be on the main line, the West Somerset Railway line. But, yeah, I thought that was quite interesting. Unfortunately, there's not many details to the story, as is the case many times with ghost sightings, very often you just get the sort of description of what they're seeing, but still interesting nonetheless.

Michelle: But I think it takes talking about it and it's starting to be documented and recorded and pulled together and then over time, you get this bigger and bigger, don't you? But it's so fascinating. And again, it speaks to so much in terms of engineering and history that these accidents were quite common because these bits of engineering were new. So the safety features that we have today signals on being used as part of travel along these lines, they didn't have them, a lot of those established.

Bobbie Rammond: As a result of these accidents.

Michelle: Yeah. And so, again, it kind of speaks to all those elements of change and engineering and these feats being very new and the evolution of that, but then the impact again, on local level in terms of accidents, that really would have been quite newsworthy within the local community. And of course, then the elements of that that remain with the community through some of the paranormal activity they experience, and also the stories they tell of it. Again, which of it is true, which of it isn't true, what is experienced, it's documenting that it's starting to piece some of that together and it only takes enthusiastic investigators to start pooling those resources and putting it together and documenting it in a folklorist that you get a bigger and bigger and bigger picture. But so much of that doesn't happen at local levels. So it's great when you do have enthusiastic people who start that process.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, definitely. And fortunately, not something I've looked into too much depth, but it probably worth me going along there and actually taking some of. The ghost devices along and seeing if I can establish some communication of some kind.

Michelle: It's fascinating, though, but it is so unusual. And I think we're all familiar with ghost law when it comes to railway accidents or stations or old lines that have since been abandoned and things like that. But it's a stream of the paranormal that I don't think has had the same level of attention and investigation, partly because of the difficulty in being able to investigate those areas, I think. But also, do you think there's a.

Bobbie Rammond: Stigma around it the same way people seem sometimes a bit worried about telling people if they've seen, say, the ghosts of an animal of some kind?

Michelle: I think there's a possibility and a connection with take the example, for example, of the phantom train. I think it has similar nods. With people who report phantom vehicles of some description, whether it's a car or a truck, all these other accounts that you hear of on roads and things in different parts of the world, I think there is a degree of stigma attached to them of surely not really someone.

Bobbie Rammond: Worried about what the next person is going to say. And it doesn't help because then people don't like to tell their story. I had an interesting one recently. Someone was telling me they truly believe that they seen somebody riding along on a penny farthing. I thought that would be a sight to see, wouldn't it?

Michelle: But how is that any different to somebody experiencing a locomotive moving through?

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, I've had a very strange experience, and let's put it this way, it was extremely pitch black. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and I could hear horse hoos. This was when I was much younger and to the point where in my mind I knew there was a horse in front of me, but I had to carry on walking up this lane, and I was very worried about walking towards this horse and I just kept walking and I never passed this horse. And to this day I think what did I hear? It was very strange because there wasn't a horse there, but I definitely heard it.

Michelle: I think one of the other very significant elements about that kind of pool of stories and accounts is the difficulty in actually experiencing it. If you think about a building, say, for example, a castle, a haunted inn where you're getting that footfall that traffic in and out all of the time, likelihood is, at some point, someone is there at the right time, at the right moment to experience whatever it is that comes through, either as a residual energy or an intellectual haunting of some description. Whereas if it's a location that's moving, that is over a much larger distance, like a road or like an old abandoned railway track line, the likelihood of you being there in that spot is far less likely than you going to your local pub, because you have to be along that line in that location at the right time. And so the circumstances, I think, are different as well. You don't use them as frequently as you do these others, you don't visit them as frequently and again, it's not.

Bobbie Rammond: Happening, it's just that it's not being witnessed by people.

Michelle: Yes. So does it point to, are we just missing some of these things that happen, we're just not around to experience them? Do we miss sounds? Do we miss the noise of the train going through? Do we miss people wandering the line? Are we missing something just because we're not investigating these areas in the same way? Who knows?

Bobbie Rammond: So that would imply, just based on what you said, that there's something in Anniversaries, because like you said, you have to be there at the right time, the right place to be able to witness it. And maybe that could explain why numerous people seen it at the same time, because they was at the right place at the right time. And I don't think there's something in there. I had a really strange experience once and I'll keep it short, but basically I was in a graveyard doing an investigation and I was overwhelmed with a sense of mourning to the point there was tears coming down my face. Anyway, I had to get out of there and it was actually the next day, I looked onto Facebook and a local history group put a post on there saying it was that yesterday it was a hundred year anniversary of three children who had died in a lake adjacent to the graveyard where we was. And at that moment I thought the only way I could describe how I felt was a feeling of mourning.

Michelle: I think the paranormal is a mixture of so many different things and yeah, I do think some of it is very much down to being somewhere at the right time, especially when it comes to things like residual hauntings. Echoes are something that is replaying over and over again.

Bobbie Rammond: I think this is part of the trouble with it. When people haven't experimented in that area, they can have a go, but because in their mind they have an idea of what they're trying to seek and when they don't find it, they've had their answer. But the thing is, they need to look at it differently and actually realize it's. A paranormal isn't just one thing. No, there's many theories and I think there's truth in a number of them.

Michelle: But also be mindful of the fact that a lot of these locations, when it comes to railway tracks and lines and stations, because they have been in use. And think about the safety measures in place about don't go in this area, the fencing, the safety measures that have been put in place to avoid further accidents on the line, it has meant that access to them has been restricted again, it limits the amount of traffic, doesn't it? So, again, is it down to how they've previously been used and in use that, again, has reduced the number of experiences.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah. Because this goes back to what we were saying earlier. About 200 years ago, it would have been hustle bustle, whereas now there's not really anybody there. Yeah. No, it's an interesting theory, isn't it?

Michelle: It's all fascinating. It's seriously all fascinating.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. People haven't seen it for a while. Is that because it hasn't happened or just it's happened lots of times, just nobody was there to see it. Yeah, interesting thought.

Michelle: But it is just again, as I was mentioning, it's just one of those aspects of paranormal reporting and encounters that I think we all hear of but we don't necessarily have much experience of or can really identify where those are. And so it is really interesting when you do have something in a location, because there's an opportunity, I think, to maybe do some further inquiry and research and digging into it, because who knows what you kind of uncover along the way and what could be going on that we're just missing out on.

Bobbie Rammond: Missing out on? Yeah. Like you say, that could be something you're missing out on entirely. Or it could be something that adds to the story that you already know about an area or an event in that area or something like that.

Michelle: Honestly, it's always so incredible to talk to you. I mean, just think about the different topics that we've covered.

Bobbie Rammond: We've only just touched the surface of what you know what I mean? I honestly feel like we could do a week long podcast and we still wouldn't even be near covering everything.

Michelle: But this is why I think people really do have such wonderful opportunities to go and explore places if they're so inclined, and go on tours, go for a visit, go for a day out.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. Get an old map, have a look at an old map, read an old book that's 100 years old and just embrace it and see what you can find out about your local area. Because there's so much there when you look, there's just so much to find.

Michelle: And who knows what you might find in your local church. You might come across a pew that's connected with a family. There might be a connection with something else in the village that you live in an event. Who knows what is going on that you've walked past time and time and time again.

Bobbie Rammond: And also finding out about that Puen that showed me that it doesn't matter how much you know about a certain story, there's always much more to learn because, as you know, there's many different variants of the Florence Wyndham story. I thought I'd read all the stories and I didn't think there was much more to learn. When I read in that book about the pew end was amazing. But when I actually found it, just that was an eye opener to me. So I realized what is out there relating to that story that people aren't even aware of. What else?

Michelle: Who knows what else is, like you mentioned, that is there that hasn't been connected to it, that is more evidence that points to something or doesn't. Again, it's just all the mystery of history, isn't it? And it's literally all there, hoping to be revealed.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. Sometimes you don't need to find the exact answer. It's the journey you take to get there that is the magical bit.

Michelle: Right?

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah, exactly. And what's the point in doing it otherwise? You've got to have fun with it and enjoy it.

Michelle: We want to necessarily know for certain if Florence Wyndham died and came back to life or had a medical emergency or didn't and there was nothing to.

Michelle: The story at all.

Bobbie Rammond: No. It would take away from the mysticism, wouldn't it? And then it wouldn't carry on. It would be like, okay, that's done and dusted. We know about that now. But it's the fact we don't know that keeps it going, I think. And that's folklore, isn't it?

Michelle: Yeah, all folklore and myths and legends. But also, I think to some extent, the ghost law and the way that we can examine some of that paranormal activity, whether we can make those connections with history or not, even if there is no thread that we can find that connects it to some possible event or person. Still, the fact that that story exists is fascinating to understand why it was created, what was going for the people at the time that they created this story to fill this gap that was left by the absence of those people involved. Again, just so there's something very real about it, I think, that is really interesting.

Bobbie Rammond: Well, the perfect example is St Eckleman. I think we all know he didn't actually have his head cut off and place it back on and go back to normal. But to me, that doesn't take away the value of the story. I find it just fascinating, even though I know it obviously didn't happen, because it still says a lot about the people at the time. And again, it probably speaks about what I was saying earlier with the other story of St Karanatop. It's speaking about good overcoming.

Michelle: And again, it's making the connections with why those stories were so powerful that they lasted. That, I think, is the quite revealing aspect, because it's not necessarily about kings and queens and the politics of the gentry. It's about what was being fed down to the people at very local level or being experienced by the very local community.

Bobbie Rammond: What held enough value to be seen as important enough to actually carry it over for them.

Michelle: Yeah, because they were the real mass population, weren't they? They were kept it going.

Bobbie Rammond: Yeah. Even if this was written in a pamphlet, unless it was carried on in oral tradition, I would have thought that pamphlet would have disappeared and been forgotten about. But like you said, it's the fact that it's been held in that collective memory because of its importance in the hearts and minds of people, as opposed to just talking about the event when it happened. And as we discussed, it could go back even 100 years before that, which makes it even more mysterious. But there we go.

Michelle: So, yeah, I encourage anybody who's listening, if they haven't listened to the previous podcast that you've been on, where you talk about, know you can find all those links on the website. You'll be able to find Bobby on there, so you'll be able to find all episodes that he's been part of and the blog and so on and so forth. And obviously find out the information on the website or in the podcast description notes to come along and take part in some of your tours and the things that you offer to explore. Some of these locations we've been talking about, I very much encourage people to do that or do that on your local level near where you are or somewhere else. Just get out and explore, find.

Bobbie Rammond: And if anybody comes across anything regarding Florence Wyndham that we haven't already discussed, I'm sure we would both love to hear that or see it, even.

Michelle: Right. Too right.

Bobbie Rammond: And if you want to see the photo of the pew end as well, just point out you can find that on my website. I've done a little write up regarding her story and included the picture of the pew end there. So have a look at that.

Michelle: So intriguing. So, thank you so much for coming and talking again, so passionately about another area that you love so much. It's very much appreciated.

Bobbie Rammond: No problem at all. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the history of the area .

Michelle: And I will say goodbye to everybody listening.

Michelle: Bye, everybody.

Bobbie Rammond: Bye bye.