Law Verses The Supernatural: Legal Cases Haunted By The Supernatural With Naomi Ryan

0:47

Welcome to Haunted History Chronicles, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of the past, one ghostly tale at a time.

I'm your host, Michelle, and I'm thrilled to be your guide on this eerie journey through the pages of history.

1:03

Picture this, a realm where the supernatural intertwines with the annals of time, where the echoes of the past reverberate through haunted corridors and forgotten landscapes.

That's the realm we invite you to explore with us.

Each episode will unearth stories, long buried secrets, dark folklore, tales of the macabre, and discuss parapsychology topics from ancient legends to more recent enigmas.

1:33

We're delving deep into locations and accounts all around the globe, with guests joining me along the way.

But this podcast is also about building a community of curious minds like you.

Join the podcast on social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to share your own ghostly encounters, theories, and historical curiosities.

1:56

Feel free to share with friends and family.

The links are conveniently placed in the description for easy access.

So whether you're a history buff with a taste for the supernatural or a paranormal enthusiast with a thirst for knowledge, Haunted History Chronicles is your passport to the other side.

2:17

Get ready for a ride through the corridors of time where history and the supernatural converge, because every ghost has a story, and every story has a history.

And now let's introduce today's podcast or guest.

2:51

All rise for the opening of today's session.

Today we put the dark and mysterious on trial as we summon an expert to the stand, Naomi Ryan.

Naomi is a criminal barrister with a curiosity for the shadowy corners of legal history.

3:09

Naomi's career has taken her from the hallowed halls of Oxford to the highest levels of the civil service.

She's defended the accused, prosecuted the guilty, and now she's here to unravel cases where the law meets the supernatural.

3:25

When the Witchcraft Act was passed, it was supposed to remove the supernatural from our courtrooms.

But what if it didn't?

What if those whispers from the other side never truly left?

Naomi will guide us through chilling historical cases to uncanny events that still haunt our legal system as we explore how the rational meets the inexplicable.

3:49

So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, prepare yourselves for a journey into the unknown in the case of the law versus the supernatural.

4:13

Hi Naomi, thank you so much for joining me this evening.

It's an absolute pleasure.

I've been looking forward to it since we first started talking.

Do you want to just start by introducing yourself and telling people listening about your journey from studying law to becoming a criminal barrister and what kind of led you to this field?

4:33

Yes.

So when I started studying law in 2006, crime was what really stood out for me.

And when I was deciding on what career to pursue, I couldn't really think of working in any other area.

So I studied, I studied a lot.

I had to do a master's, I had to do my professional training.

4:50

And then when I started doing crime, I just couldn't.

I just kept doing it.

It was what it's possibly, I think one of the most interesting areas of law because it's where you see both very complex philosophical ideas, but also real life dilemmas, problems, interesting events.

5:08

It's a real mix of the very cerebral and the the very real.

It's it's a really interesting area.

So what sparked your interest then in that intersection of the law and the paranormal?

Was there a particular case or moment that led you to explore that unique area?

5:29

So I was always quite a spooky child.

I grew up in not like dissimilarly dissimilar to one of the people we're going to talk about today.

I think I grew up in a haunted house, or at least I grew up in a house where as a child, I thought it was haunted.

It was an old farmhouse where I had an invisible friend that as I grew up, seemed to appear as a woman.

5:52

It was a wonderful old farmhouse That was 16th century.

And I would see a woman in my bedroom in 16th century dress.

He would sit on the edge of my bed stroking my hair.

And this freaked out my parents because they are convinced that on occasion they saw her too.

So it wasn't just a childhood, sort of.

6:09

It wasn't just a childhood spooky friend.

It was something that bothered them.

And then as I grew up, I was always interested in ghosts.

I had the Osborne Book of Ghosts, which I'm sure every loyal ghost fan had.

And in that, there was the story that I absolutely love to this day about Jeff or Geth, the demon Mongoose on the Isle of Man.

6:29

Have you come across this?

I have, it's a, it's a brilliant account.

It's Absolutely Fabulous.

It's got it all, hasn't it?

Really it?

Has it's the greatest demon story I think I've ever come across.

It's about a beautiful, the beautiful Isle of Man where a little demon, and he's either a little demon or he's the spirit of an Indian Prince, or as I'm sure all of your listeners know, he's just an extra special little Mongoose haunted a little farmhouse called Cash and Gap.

6:56

And as a child, I was obsessed with this story.

And then when I went to law school, I discovered that Jeff actually formed the basis of a case because he was investigated by ATV personality on the BBC called Rex Lambert.

And a colleague referred to Rex as being out of his head for it, being interested in demon mongooses.

7:18

And so Rex sued him for libel and won on the basis that investigating demon mongooses wasn't crazy.

It was a completely legitimate investigation and scientific inquiry.

And so that's where my sort of interest started.

7:34

And I thought, oh, well, you can't get ghosts in law very often.

That's got to have been a one off.

And then as I sort of grew up and, you know, studied more and became more of a practicing barrister and looking into this area, I realized it crops up an awful lot because as I say, crime is where is where the rubber hits the road really between the, the theoretical and the real.

7:55

And people believe in ghosts.

And people who believe in ghosts will do criminal things.

And in those occasions, the courts will have to confront both the criminal element and the allegedly ghostly element.

So how do you then reconcile, you know, your background in law, which obviously relies on evidence and reason, with those interests in subjects like ghosts and witchcraft and and other supernatural phenomena?

8:22

I always enjoyed The X-Files because like Mulder, I always want to believe I was a spooky little child.

I sort of, as I grew up, began to realise that I didn't have any evidence of this.

I could explain the ghost in my room as a night terror, which I did suffer for from for several years and I but I just couldn't shake that desire for wanting these stories to be real and thinking that on some level these ideas persist across societies, they persist across centuries.

8:55

And so I suppose I hope that there's something in them.

Because whilst there's never any true evidence, as I think the cases we look at are going to show, just the propensity of stories makes me want to believe that there is something out there.

So could you perhaps give an overview then of how the paranormal has played a central role in the courtroom, know the types of cases this was seen in and and how the legal system handled those types of cases?

9:25

Well, I think the cases most people will know about are the witchcraft trials.

Up until 1735, the supernatural event that we would see in trials were witchcraft trials and were the belief in magic.

And they are as brutal, as cruel, as unjust and as an irrational, as as many people would suspect.

9:46

It was an excuse to persecute women and men, but mainly women, unusual, old, those who would we would probably consider neurodivergent now.

It was the way of punishing them for not conforming.

And so that's where I think it can be very, very dark.

10:03

And then what you see is the cases reflecting the sort of supernatural beliefs of the time.

So in the 1800s, you get ghosts cropping up as witnesses.

Now this was at a time when you saw a huge emergence of things like gothic horror.

10:21

And so people believed in ghosts.

You had gothic horror, you had the penny dreadfuls.

People believed in ghosts.

And so people did things.

For example, they became afraid in haunted houses or in haunted places of ghosts, and they accidentally assaulted real people thinking that it was ghosts.

10:40

And then what I find really interesting is that in the 1920s, you see the emergence of the spiritualist movement in cases.

Why is that?

World War One and World War 2, a lot of people die.

A lot of people want to speak to those that they have lost.

And there's also this huge emergence of technology.

10:58

So you have cameras, you have recording devices.

What does that allow people to do?

Claim to be able to contact and speak to spirits.

Where that happens, people are going to get upset when they're disappointed with what they hear, or they're going to get suspicious and there are going to be fraud cases.

11:15

And then what I find really interesting is that as you move into the 1960s and 70s, you start seeing the clairvoyant cases die away and you start seeing the emergence of demonic possessions and people blaming demons for awful, awful acts.

11:31

What does that coincide with?

Society's absolute love of films like The Exorcist, The Omen?

They almost happen simultaneously.

So that's what I think you see in these cases.

You see society becoming obsessed with some element of the supernatural, blaming behaviour on it and then having to go to court and the courts having to sort of try and work out truth from myth in order to hold people accountable for their actions.

11:57

So before we look at a specific case, perhaps you can tell us why that 1735 Act is an important year for the ghost law.

Yes.

So 1735 is a big year for ghost law because it sees the passing of the Witchcraft Act.

12:16

And what that act does is it essentially removes being a witch from the English legal system.

No longer can you be put on trial for performing supernatural acts as a witch.

And what that means is essentially the legal system has become secular.

12:33

There are no longer cases in which it becomes a matter of law to have to prove someone has done something supernatural, because before then you had these cases in which women were being convicted of speaking to devils, cursing people from 1735.

12:51

That should not be possible.

And that's really interesting, I think, because what it shows is at the very top, at least within the judiciary, people are becoming more secular, people are becoming more rational.

And it was this act was brought about essentially because a series of very senior judges put a lot of pressure on parliament to change the law, to remove the supernatural.

13:13

These were judges who had presided over witchcraft trials.

In some cases they had had to order that women were put to death for crimes that they privately thought were wholly impossible.

And they decided it was time to start pressuring Parliament, being very public, that the witchcraft offences should be removed from the criminal justice system and there should be no more supernatural offences within our legal system.

13:37

And in 1735, that happens.

So what was the significance of the the Witchcraft Act then of 1735 in this case that we're going to be talking about?

Yes.

So the case we're going to be talking about happens in 1759.

13:52

So that's how soon after this allegedly secularizing of the legal system, we see our first ghost case.

And So what I think that shows is that whilst legal practitioners, judges, scholars, academics were very keen to purge the legal system of the supernatural, as we'll find out, lower down society or as you were going down to, you know, the people that are actually committing offences, far less willing to recognize that ghosts and the supernatural don't exist.

14:24

So we're going to have the the chance to examine a few different legal cases with you, which exemplifies what you've been Speaking of, you know, one of them being the the Cock Lane Ghost case.

Do you want to just start by summarising the key events of the case and and how the tensions between William Kent and Richard Parsons initially?

14:45

Arose.

Yes.

So in October 1759, a chap called William Kent and his pregnant partner Francis leave Norfolk and they move to London and they need somewhere to live.

So they meet a chap called Richard Parsons and he lives in the delightfully named and still there Cock Lane, which is just, if anyone's in London, just by Smithfield's very close to the Old Bailey.

15:09

And it's a very gruesome sight.

And it was the site of many beheadings and executions.

It's where William Wallace Braveheart would be executed and it was a grimy area of London 1759.

But William and his his partner are desperate so they move in with Richard Parsons, his wife and their 10 year old daughter and everything's going all right for a little while.

15:33

William is a money lender and he gives his new landlord Richard quite a large sum of money, 12 Guineas.

And they get on quite well.

And we know this because at some point William confesses to him that him and his pregnant wife on actually married.

15:50

They're they're living in sin and that's quite controversial in 1759.

So everything's going well in October 1759, but by January 1760 things have all gone wrong and that's mainly because Richard has failed to pay back a penny of the 12 Guineas that was borrowed.

16:07

So William moves out with his now very heavily pregnant wife in January 1760 and very sadly, Fanny will die of what is diagnosed as being Francis, I should say, also called Fanny will die of smallpox in the months following this.

16:23

And this leaves William heartbroken, but not so heartbroken that he can't drag Parsons through the court to demand his lost money.

And this happens in the weeks following Fanny's death.

And you would think that's the end of the story.

But in August 1761, Parsons, who's clearly still irritated about being dragged through the courts, hears that William Kent has been involved in some litigation.

16:47

And he decides that he's going to try and punish this man that he's never forgiven for dragging him through the courts.

And he does that by making a very, very strange claim about something that's going on in his house.

So these strange claims then concern a rather strangely named ghost.

17:05

Is that right?

Yes, Parsons, the owner of Cock Lane, starts claiming that there is a ghost living in this house and that this ghost is communicating by knocking on the walls and scratching at the wainscoting inside.

17:21

And what happens is that you can communicate with this ghost and she essentially scratches or knocks one for yes, 2 for no.

And through communing with this alleged spirit, Parsons discovers discovers that this is Kent's dead wife, Fanny.

17:39

And so that gives rise to the immortal ghost of scratching Fanny at Cock Lane.

Which is just quite a name, isn't it really?

You can see why it gets popular.

Absolutely.

And and still popular today.

I think in terms of just the, the whole wording of that is just, it stands out.

17:58

Doesn't it pretty flawless?

Yeah.

So scratching and knocking then were obviously central to the ghosts alleged communication.

How did these methods compare to other well known paranormal cases such as the Fox sisters?

18:14

You know, despite they, despite the fact that there's quite a considerable gap between the. 2.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

So spiritualism, this idea of communicating with the dead often sort of traces back to the Fox sisters in New York in 1849, so 100 years later, and they famously commune with the dead by knocking, by asking questions, and the ghosts will knock back one for yes, 2 for no.

18:41

And it's fascinating because whilst this seems to be sort of the start of spiritualism and the start of mediumship, it's interesting that almost 100 years later, earlier you have these ghosts using that same method and no one really commenting on it and it not becoming this great sort of surge of spiritualism and mediums.

19:02

It's just seems to be accepted that that's how ghosts communicate.

And what's interesting is this isn't the only time in this particular story we will see ghosts commute or alleged ghosts communicating by knocks and scratches.

So what I find really interesting just at this early stage is that you've got a mechanism for ghostly communications emerging 100 years before it would actually become popular.

19:26

And I would, I would also say not just popular, but before it becomes really common, commonly associated with it, which is the fascinating part.

It's almost it.

It seems to be something that is only really picked up and run with when it comes to the Fox sisters.

But here you've got cases much earlier than that, as you mentioned, where it's very much part of the story.

19:47

And I wonder, I mean, this is a sort of talk for another time, but I wonder if that's because the situation in for the Fox Sisters in the 1840s in New York in particular was so ripe for that explosion of mediumship.

20:03

At the time, I think it was known as the burned over district because there were so many unusual beliefs about ghosts in the supernatural and trying to communicate with the dead just churning through that area.

So I wonder if the difference is that when cock plane is happening, there's not a sort of tragic demand to speak to ghosts.

20:22

So this is seen as parlour amusement rather than sort of.

What spiritualism was, which is a desperate attempt to communicate with people that you've lost.

So there were reports of of ghostly apparitions in the house before Fanny's death.

How credible were these reports and and what role did they play in in shaping public perception?

20:43

Yeah, this is a really interesting part of the story, and it's one that sometimes gets forgotten.

So in January 1760, so literally just as William and Fanny are moving out and just before Fanny dies, Cock Lane is sort of developing a reputation for being a haunted house.

21:02

And you do have, it's next to a pub, which always helps.

And you do have people coming and saying I've been to Cock Lane, I've gone to visit the Parsons.

There's something happening in that house.

There's scratching, there's banging.

My personal favorite is that a local man who will give evidence in the subsequent trial claims that while he was there, a ghost ran past him wearing a white sheet.

21:27

So there is this sort of strange belief.

And the moment that Fanny and William move out, Parsons does actually say, I think that this ghost might be William's first wife.

So he's already shaping up to start blaming whatever supernatural events are happening in this property on William Kent.

21:46

I personally query whether or not that is evidence of a ghost scratching and banging, as we'll hear do have a different explanation and the ghost running past the terrified publican in the as he comes out of the property.

22:03

I think it's just delightful.

I think that the fact that that was taken as evidence is just is just really rather charming.

So what happens then when Scratching Fanny emerges?

So it grows so quickly.

22:18

It's difficult really to conceive, partly because there's local interest.

This is already a house.

That's been a bit spooky.

Second, it's a delightful local story.

This sort of wronged man, Mr. Parsons, is suddenly getting contacted by his villain, his nemesis, dead partner.

22:40

It catches on locally.

School children start to gossip that they can hear the ghosts when they're playing in the nearby school.

And people come and they attend the seance.

And these seances are essentially people gathered into the room of Cock House, Cock Lane, exactly as you would imagine, asking questions in a darkened room and having these knocks or scratches come come back as a response.

23:05

And this will attract the attention of a key figure in the story because very shortly after the ghost starts to appear, a chap called John Moore, a local priest, attends the seance.

And he is really the reason this case gets catapulted into the limelight.

23:21

He is fascinated by it, and part of that is because he is very interested in an emerging religion called Methodism.

Methodism then has this unusual relationship with ghosts and it's founder, John Wesley, you know, reportedly grew up in a haunted house.

23:39

Do you want to just tell us more about that and how his background influenced, you know, this background influenced Reverend Moore's involvement in the case?

Yeah, I think it's important to remember that at this point Methodism was a very young religion.

John Wesley had essentially come up with it while at university in 1720 and it had only really emerged as a strand, recognised strand of Protestantism in the 1740s.

24:03

So maybe it's 30 years old at this point and it had a strong belief that the supernatural and spirits can return to Earth in order to communicate God's message.

And the founder himself, John Wesley, was a believer in the supernatural.

24:19

We know this because of Diaries he kept.

He enjoyed investigating ghost allegations, and he even believed he grew up in a haunted house.

It's rather delightful, actually.

It's a rectory.

His father was also a religious man in Lincolnshire.

And in 1715, so John Wesley wasn't there at the time, but his family were, they started reporting hearing really sinister noises.

24:43

They heard deep groanings as if someone was struggling to breathe from different rooms in the house.

And they also, rather key here, heard knocking and scratching on the walls that appeared to respond to questions when asked.

And this spirit became so popular within the Wesley household, they even gave it a name.

25:02

They called him Old Jeffrey and the families throughout Wesley's life would debate whether or not, because this is delightful, they've got the letters between family members, whether or not it was the spirits or ghosts trying to commune with them, whether it was witches.

25:18

And rather sensibly one family member sort of hypothesised maybe it was the servants that were having them on.

But it remained a live debate within the Wesley family and would sort of influence Methodism's interest in the supernatural and in particular ghosts coming and communicating with people.

25:37

So can you discuss the, you know, the broader relationship then between early Methodism and belief in ghosts and and supernatural occurrences?

Yes, so, so against this backdrop, you've got Methodism being founded, but by 1767 it's quite big, especially in London.

25:56

There's approximately 24,000 recognised followers and they've got a rather unfortunate reputation for being rather credulous.

They're mocked quite a lot.

So at the same time that this religious movement is emerging, you also have the the sort of rationalism and reason movement that are emerging with the new Enlightenment.

26:14

So they're sort of in conflict with each other.

And Reverend Moore, who is a, he's an Anglican priest, but he's very interested in Methodism, starts inviting other Methodists to become involved in the what appears to be the seances, that and the hauntings of Cocklane.

26:31

And not only does he start attending the seances very regularly, he starts spreading it within the Methodist community and also rather fundamentally working with Parsons who has decided to start charging people to attend.

26:46

And that's when you start seeing this really supercharge everyone in London's interest in Cocklane, because you've got the religious people that are interested in it, and then you've got, as I say, people who were interested in just the parlour game that is going along to see a ghost for a couple of pennies.

27:04

And this all happens really, really quickly.

The ghost emerges in early 1791 and by January 1792 the story has got so big thanks to these two separate communities being interested in it that Fanny the ghost makes her big declaration.

27:21

Not only is she just dead, but that she was murdered by poisoning by her lover, William Kent.

And that's really what generates a huge amount of attention because not only do you now have a ghost appearing and communicating, but it's making an allegation to William Kent.

27:38

Sam, we know how big this gets because William Kent himself hears about this allegation and decides to attend a week later, in January 12th of January 1792, to hear one of the seances.

I mean, Can you imagine anything more mad than in the space of about two months, a haunted house suddenly turning into a haunted house in which a ghost is confronting their own alleged murderer in front of a paying crowd?

28:05

It's it's like something out of EastEnders.

I was just going to say it's, it's, it's something you know, you can't explain.

You can't possibly imagine it.

You can just see it's snowball snowballing, can't you?

And like you said, it's it's like something lifted straight out of a good TV show with all the drama.

28:22

It's got every twist and every turn imaginable and and unimaginable as well.

I mean, it's got everything again, hasn't it?

And it seems to happen in a very short, concentrated period of time.

It does.

And what you also have here is the rapid growth of Fleet Street during this period.

28:40

And obviously they have been reporting right locally and they are the third sort of source of energy for this story.

You have the religious, you have the local, and then you have Fleet St. supercharging it and turning something that is very confined to the Cock Lane and sort of surrounding area of Smithfield suddenly becomes not just London wide but national news.

29:03

Because it is, and frankly absurdly brilliant story for a journalist.

So how does the the story end then?

We we know there's a court case.

Is William put on trial for murder?

Well, it is rather delightful how big this gets.

29:20

We know it gets even bigger and I keep saying it gets bigger and bigger, but it gets so big that the Reverend Moore has been openly saying that this evidence should be enough to have William prosecuted for murder.

And that's the point when the Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Flodger, delightful name, takes an interest because he realises this appears to be a case that might put a man in danger of losing his life because obviously at the time, if you're convicted of murder, you hang.

29:47

So he decides to appoint a delightful committee of gentlemen investigators because he wants to know what's going on in Cocklane.

This is the Lord Mayor appointing people to investigate the Cocklane ghost.

And he picks a delightful array of people.

He picks a local preach priest and quite declared a vowed arch skeptic of Cocklane, Reverend Stephen Aldrich.

30:10

He picks a chap called Lord Dartmouth who is a Methodist sympathizer to give some balance.

And perhaps most famously, he picks Doctor Samuel Johnson, the public intellectual and actually a man who was in search of proof of the afterlife.

He he had a great I mean, I know we have a fear of death.

30:27

From his writings, it would appear that Doctor Johnson had a real pathological anxiety of death.

So he he was involved in the Commission as well.

And they start to once take investigations and they do three basic things you'd think would have happened already.

First, they go to one of the seances and they look really carefully to who is consistently there and they spot that Parsons daughter, 13 year old Betty, is always in the room or very nearby in one of the rooms upstairs.

30:55

Now they interrogate her and over several days actually, and including tying her up during one seance to see if that stops the ghost, which I think is slightly creepy actually, she doesn't initially crack.

And then they go to a seance and the seance says the ghost allegedly says through knocking.

31:14

If you go to my coffin, I will hammer on my lid to prove my existence.

So they really do.

This collection of gentlemen go into the crypt where Fanny has been buried and wait at the coffin to see if anything knocks and it doesn't.

So they go back and they interrogate Parsons daughter again and finally they catch her with Can you believe what this case all comes down to?

31:35

Two pieces of wood that she has hidden in her night dress and she has been hammering on the walls when people haven't been looking.

This would be the prosecution's case, I'll add, to make the noises.

And so the Commission believe they have uncovered the truth and Richard Parsons is arrested along with Reverend Moore and 13 year old Betty and they are charged with a rather complex, and it's that bit of a mouthy charge, conspiracy to take away the life of William Kent by having him charged with murder.

32:05

I mean, again, it's just like you said, you can't imagine the case getting any more incredible and strange, but it does.

I mean, it's just the the depths that they went to to investigate are just like you said, they're creepy, they're unusual.

32:22

It has them investigating people going to crypts.

I mean, it's just bizarre.

It is something straight out of a penny dreadful dreadful.

It's straight out of, you know, horror book.

It's straight out of.

And it's big names as well.

You've got Doctor Johnson down there in a crypt waiting to see if a ghost hammers on a on a coffin door.

32:44

I mean, you're right.

Who would believe that would happen?

And yet it did, which is the really strange thing.

And I suppose why it's it's a case that has endured in terms of being, being in people's, you know, awareness in people's consciousness because it is so fantastic, you know, in terms of everything that happened and the claims and the investigations and the proceedings and how it just rolled out.

33:11

I mean, it makes for such an intriguing analysis from so many different perspectives and viewpoints, whether it's the law, whether it's, you know, superstitions and beliefs of the time, whether it's how how it unfolded in terms of, you know, the the ghost element.

33:30

There's just so many different kind of approaches that you could take on this, which is just so fascinating.

It really is.

And I think it's it's also fascinating because it combines all of those things we love in such a massive way.

It's hard to imagine what it must have been like to have the crime of the century combined with the supernatural event of the century, plus celebrities, the public, intellectuals of their day.

33:58

It's it's a wonderful combination of the strangest factors.

So how did how then did this this trial proceed?

Well, they've really, it's, it's in July 1762, so a little while after.

And what I find fascinating is a, it's heard before a very, very senior judge, the Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield.

34:21

That's a big deal.

So that is the Lord Chief Justice is a role that still exists to this day.

It's now the lady Chief Justice, Lady Chief Justice Carr.

They are the head of the judiciary.

They are the most senior judge.

So that's how strangely, how interested the legal system was in this to appoint William Mansfield to hear it.

34:42

And actually the prosecution were very clear.

They'd chosen a really weird charge, conspiracy to murder, essentially by seeing that William Kent would be hanged for murder.

I would have thought fraud, perverting Court of Justice would be more obvious.

35:00

Or indeed, we were talking about the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

That act made it illegal to pretend to commune with the dead.

You could have used that act, but they didn't.

They went with this bizarre conspiracy to murder and the prosecution were actually very clear.

35:17

Parsons and more.

They'd create an elaborate fraud.

They were going to have the ghost accused Kent of being a murderer.

That was all nonsense.

They said that they proved the ghost didn't exist.

They also did sort of some background work as well.

35:32

They called the doctor that had diagnosed how Fanny Kent had Fanny had died and they had the doctor confirm it definitely wasn't poisoning, it definitely was smallpox and smallpox is a very easy and familiar disease to diagnose at that time.

35:48

And they also managed to call a servant from within Parsons household who said I was bullied and pressured and paid to back up this story and to keep telling people it was true.

So they had AI think a very strong case and then finally they called a member of the gentleman's committee who witnessed essentially Betty being caught with these bits of wood.

36:11

So you'd think they were stitched up.

But what I really like, and this is where the topic of this talk comes in, is the defence had an equally simple defence to run.

They simply said the ghost was real and they said that there was a ghost in that.

36:26

We weren't conspiring to default to trick or fool anyone.

There was a ghost in that property.

We were speaking with it and we can't be sure of what it was.

It might have been Fanny, it might have been some other trickster ghost, but it was a ghost.

And they called witnesses who had heard and seen this ghost to say wasn't it real?

36:45

They even called the guy I talked about at the beginning who had seen the white sheep.

The ghost in the white sheep run out.

And it was for the jury to decide, was the ghost real?

If the ghost was real, they were to acquit.

If the ghost wasn't real, they had to convict.

37:01

And so 1735 Witchcraft Act I would say achieved very little.

You're still seeing the supernatural being an issue for juries to decide after that act is passed.

The answer of the juries is also quite telling.

Hazard a guess.

37:18

I would say that they were found guilty.

In 15 minutes.

So I think in this particular case, the jury, they, they did exactly what I'm going to talk about through these other cases.

They, they hear the evidence, they think about the evidence and they rejected the supernatural 'cause it is quite delightful.

37:38

By the way, we have news clippings.

They might have been convinced that there was no supernatural activity in Cock Lane, but we have a news clipping that shows that they did get quite spooked by a loud banging in the courtroom.

There was later revealed to be an open window in the courtroom next door.

So everyone was a little bit on edge about the prospect of ghosts, but not enough to convict.

37:59

So what then happened to the defendants after that then?

Well, first they spend nearly a year, February 1763, in prison waiting to be sentenced, which is astonishing.

And this is because the judge basically said, I'll give you some time to see if you can raise compensation to, to basically lessen your sentence.

38:19

And John Moore, the the priest, was able to raise £300, an astonishing amount in compensation.

So he didn't receive any further serious punishment.

Richard Parsons gets two years in prison and is ordered that he has to be pilloried.

So he's got to be locked in, well essentially the stocks.

38:38

And then his daughter, who is 14 at the time, gets a years hard labour.

So they're all punished quite severely.

And you mentioned that Richard Parsons was sentenced to be pilloried.

You know, it's a it's a punishment that was quite rare.

38:53

What does you know, this form of punishment tell us about public and legal attitudes towards this case?

You know, is it significant that Parsons wasn't beaten or abused, abused while he was in the in the pillory?

Yeah, Well, precisely.

That's a really, that's a really interesting turn in this story.

39:12

Pillories were essentially put out for for the judiciary to make A to make a sort of an example of you.

And they were expecting him to be punished.

And the pillaries weren't just sort of a funny a situation in which someone might throw tomatoes at you.

39:30

People threw bricks like you could die in the pillories.

So they were expecting Richard Parsons to be made an example of.

But nothing, and we know this from the records, was ever thrown at him.

And indeed they passed a hat round.

He was pilloried, I think it's three times and and money was raised while he was sat there.

39:47

And what I find really interesting is it does suggest that while the judiciary want him to be punished, the local people of the area, they don't seem so convinced that he was, that he was a fraud.

They seem pretty convinced that this is a miscarriage of justice, and that's why they're raising the money for him and refusing to participate in this violence.

40:07

But anyway, he's released in 1735, and he fades into obscurity, as you'd expect.

He doesn't seem to crop up ever again.

And rather tragically, the Reverend Moore would die very shortly after, actually in 1738, he's only 35 years old.

He dies of all we know is he falls ill and dies very shortly after.

40:25

So it's a it's a strange ending to the story.

And the the Cock Lane ghost case became, as we know, a sensation in London, you know, with rich and famous individuals attending the seances.

40:41

Again, what does this tell us about public interest in the paranormal during that time frame, during that period?

I, I think it shows the conflict between this growing rationalism movement, this growing in life, the growing Enlightenment values that you were seeing that were, that were basically reflected in the views of people like Doctor Samuel Johnson.

41:04

And also a society still fascinated by ghosts in the macabre and the unusual.

And we don't know if people that were going to those seances believed it was a ghost.

What we do know is they were absolutely obsessed with it.

And we know, for example, royalty snuck in to see the seances.

41:22

We know that there was a writer, Horace Walpole, relative of the future Prime Minister, went and saw it and artists were writing.

So Hogarth famously sketched the cop plane ghost in a, a painting that he did or an etching that he did, basically mocking Methodists.

41:39

And you had very famous writers, Samuel Goldsmith, Samuel Foot wrote plays about the cop playing ghost.

My favorite, by the way.

It's no, it hasn't been performed as far as I can see in about the last 60 years, but it's called The Orators by Samuel Foot and it's about cop playing.

And 1:00 during the trial, the defendant says that he should be judged by his peers and that he should be judged by a jury of ghosts.

42:03

And so they have to like get together a jury of ghosts to hear the trial.

And A, that's a joke in The Simpsons, and B, it's just a delightfully mocking idea.

So you can see, I think it is it really captures the public's interest in the bizarre, but also the strange conflict between the bizarre and and the the Enlightenment values of reason that were emerging at the time.

42:29

And I would say that captures the the conflict between those two worlds.

You know, it's like you're still holding on to something that is so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness, aren't you, in terms of how you've dealt with things previously.

And yet you're expected to just go into this new period of enlightenment and sit.

42:49

And you know, the idea being that you drop everything that you've been doing beforehand, all these ridiculous superstitious type beliefs, but yet it's it's very hard to do that.

You've got this grappling of these two worlds colliding in some ways.

And we all.

43:05

Yeah, I completely agree.

And I also think it shows something.

I think it also shows something very delightful, actually.

And that is I'm, I'm a barrister who, as you have said, is focused on evidence and reason.

But I have an absolute love of the supernatural.

43:20

And I do think it's either cognitive dissonance or it's the ability to be delighted by two separate things.

I'm a complete rationalist and I love these stories.

And I think this thought, this particular story shows how widespread that view is.

You can have intellectuals, you can have Samuel Goldsmith and playwrights and like Samuel Foot and Hogarth, and all of these people will hold themselves out to be intellectuals and rationals.

43:48

And yet they love this stuff.

They are eating it up.

And they might not believe in it, but they're delighted by it.

And I think that's that's how a lot of people feel about the supernatural.

And perhaps that's the reason I like it so much, because that's how I feel about the supernatural.

As the days grow shorter and the winter nights draw near, the chill in the air invites us to gather closer to the fire, where the flickering flames dance like specters in the dark.

44:22

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44:47

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45:06

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45:26

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45:55

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46:12

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46:57

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47:24

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47:42

Dare to embrace the unknown, to journey deeper into the veiled corridors of history.

For only together can we keep the ghostly embers glowing, illuminating the darkness with tales untold.

Now, as the fire crackles and the wind howls outside, let us return to the mysteries that beckon from beyond the veil.

48:07

What spectres await?

What secrets lie dormant, waiting to be unearthed?

Let us venture forth for the journey into the unknown has only just.

Begun and and this this links us nicely to the next case that you're going to talk to us about, which also left quite a legacy in in the public consciousness.

48:34

This is the story of Maria Martin in the Murder in the Red Barn.

Do you want to again just start by providing an overview?

Of the red.

Barn murder and how Maria Martin and William Cauder's relationship lead to this really tragic death and set of circumstances.

48:53

Yes.

So we're fast forwarding now, we're into 1826.

So you know, the witchcraft axe has been around for nearly 100 years.

You wouldn't expect any more ghosts, certainly now.

And we're in a very, a very charming village called Polstead in Essex.

I recommend visiting it.

49:08

It's on the Suffolk Essex border, just near Dedham Vale.

It's very beautiful.

And Mariah Martin is the daughter of a local rat catcher and so she's fairly working class, but, you know, respectable and she but she falls in love with the local tenant farmer, William Corder, who is arguably a class above.

49:30

They fall in love.

They have, it appears that they have children who rather creepily sort of she falls pregnant and the pregnancies vanish and one of the children appears to vanish or or dies in very suspicious circumstances, but their love persists for a little while. 1827 she appears to elope with him and she tells her family, in particular her stepmother that she's going going out and she's seen heading towards the red barn, which is a local landmark in pulsed.

50:01

It's a large red barn and neighbours see her and she appears to be dressed as a boy or she Drew has to be dressed in very masculine clothing and she's walking away and rather hauntingly that's the last time she's seen.

Now over the following eleven months, William, William Corda, this tenant farmer she's fallen in love with, will return to the village occasionally and he will write to Mariah's family and he will say Mariah's doing really well.

50:29

He provides letters that she has purportedly written, but none of them are in her handwriting.

And he says, oh, that's because she's injured her hand, but it is her handwriting.

And about a year after she disappears, this is where the mystery starts.

Mariah's stepmother has a dream, and she has a dream three nights in a row.

50:47

She says that her stepdaughter's spirit is coming to her while she sleeps and is saying repeatedly, come and find me.

I'm in the red barn.

And finally, after a year of not seeing their daughter, Mariah Martin's parents and stepwell, father and stepmother go into the red barn, start digging up the floor and they discover her decomposing body and it is clutching William Cauder's handkerchief.

51:13

It has been buried in what appears to be a fairly shallow grave.

She has.

While she's very badly decomposed, it's quite obvious that she has a bullet wound to her face and it may be that she has a stab to her chest and the neckerchief, something some sort of she's holding one, but it might be something like a neck cheek tied round her neck.

51:35

It's unclear whether it's clothing.

It may be that she has been strangled.

So a very, very brutal death.

So how did the the stepmother's dreams about the burial location contribute to the investigation?

You know, what significance did those dreams have in in prompting her father to search the red barn?

51:55

Well, this is where it depends who you listen to.

Mariah Moulton's stepmother says that she's been having these dreams and that her stepdaughter comes to her three times later.

And this what her story does change during the course of the the investigation.

She says she's simply become suspicious because Corda has been acting strangely.

52:13

And there is no denying Corda has been acting strangely.

This story will progress and it will become, as as it won't surprise you to know, a huge press story.

And during the the commentary on the trials, a rather darker suggestion is made, and that is that about 11 months into Mariah's disappearance, William Cauder stops sending the family money.

52:36

And it's at that point they decide they're going to start investigating what they suspected.

I suspect all long.

So really this dream, it starts out at the beginning as being taken very seriously.

In that it does.

There is no denying a body is discovered and then it shifts.

52:53

The narrative shifts, shifts as the story goes on in the in the press and in the criminal proceedings.

So William Cauder fled the village but continue to send letters to Maria's family.

How did how did these actions influence the investigation?

53:13

How was he eventually apprehended?

Yeah, well, William Cauder has the problem within the criminal justice system of being complete idiot.

He flees to London, he takes up lodgings in Camden, I think it is.

And he starts advertising in local newspapers that he's desperately in need of a of a wife.

53:33

So the police, the, the, the runners, the Beau St.

Runners as they were known, the magistrates essentially.

So the criminal justice system at the time is rather unusual.

What they do is they find that the local Pollstead coroner decides that there has been a murder.

53:50

They have to go to the magistrates, to the family, have to go to the magistrates to ask for a warrant to be issued.

And then the Bow Street Runners will go looking for William Corder and they find it surprisingly easy to find him because his name is all over the lonely hearts in his local area.

54:06

And I beg your pardon, It's not Camden, it's Ealing.

They find him very easily.

He's arrested and he's brought back to Suffolk or Essex Suffolk border to stand trial.

So during his trial at Bury St.

Edmunds, he claimed that Maria committed suicide when he ended their relationship.

54:25

How did the court and the jury respond to that defence?

So I feel a bit sorry for him at this point by the time he is put on trial.

This has taken a little while to be put on trial.

And by this point the story of the dream has made it into the press and that makes it very hard, I would say, to get a fair trial.

54:47

Because at this point, not only does everyone know that Mariah Martin has been murdered or think that Mariah Martin has been murdered, but they've got a very odd reason for believing why.

So I do think it's quite unfair.

But to be fair, his defence is also a bit rubbish.

55:05

He says that he met with Mariah Martin at the Red Barn not because he wanted to elope with her, but because he wants to break it off with her.

And that he she was so heartbreaking by this.

She reached for his guns, took the gun out of his belt, and then shot herself through the head while he struggled to get the gun back.

55:24

That's his account now.

The evidence that they do have that isn't the ghost is actually quite compelling.

Corda had Mariah Martin's handbag and his belongings.

Why would you steal her handbag?

That just seems a bit odd.

His sword is recovered, and records showed that he had had it sharpened days before the killing.

55:42

Now, you'll remember that she appeared to have a stab wound to her chest, which is slightly suspicious.

He kept pretending that she was alive.

That's a really odd thing to do if you know that she's dead.

And most strikingly, there was evidence that the guns didn't go off, that the wound that was inflicted wouldn't have been consistent with a fight.

56:03

It was more like she'd been shot square on in the forehead.

So there was a fair amount of evidence against him.

There was also a fair amount of evidence, you know, that was a, that could have gone in his favour.

I mean, there are reasons that she may have killed herself.

56:18

There was quite, as I say there were, there was what appeared to be potentially some missing children, a lot of shame attached to the relationship she may have.

If he was breaking off with her, you could see her reaction.

The biological, the forensic evidence.

This is the 1820's.

56:34

The evidence isn't great, so the postmortems are fairly unsophisticated.

So it's an unusual case.

I think it could have probably gone either way, but as it happens, William Cawder is convicted.

And and what about the ghost?

Did it actually appear in the trial?

56:51

So it's quite murky.

It definitely appeared in the inquest.

So in cases like this, when you find a body, the first thing that had to be held was an inquest to decide how, what, when and where Mariah Martin died.

And at that hearing, Mariah Martin's stepmother definitely said, I located this body because of a, a ghost came to me in the dreams.

57:14

It definitely cropped up in that proceed in those criminal proceedings or that that trial, that inquest trial, but it didn't make it into the criminal prosecution itself.

But what did happen is that by the time that the trial happened, it was being so widely reported, all of the jurors you would have expect would have known about it.

57:34

So what I think probably should have happened is it should have been mentioned in the trial because the jury should have been explicitly told do not think about the ghost.

That's what would have happened today.

Juries would have been told.

You may have heard about this bit of the story, or you may have heard about this in the press.

Put it from your mind so it doesn't crop up in the trial in circumstances where arguably it probably should have been.

57:56

So why do you think it wasn't brought up?

And I think the prosecution probably didn't want the evidence in.

It doesn't help their case.

It makes their witnesses look a bit mad.

And secondly, they didn't need it because the only thing that that evidence did was was show how Mariah Martin's body was discovered.

58:19

There's no disagreement about the book that that's not a contentious issue for the trial.

Everyone agrees Mariah Martin was dead under the Red Barn.

It doesn't matter if she was found by psychics or if she was found by some unfortunate guy digging up the floorboards.

It's the fact she was found.

58:35

So I think one of the reasons it doesn't crop up is they don't need to, they don't need to prove that to to get him convicted.

So we know that William Corder was sentenced to be anatomized, with his skeleton used in a hospital and his skin used to bind a book of the trial.

58:53

How common was this form of punishment, and what does it reveal about societal attitudes towards crime and justice in that era?

I think what it reveals is just how grotesque the criminal justice system was at this time.

He was hanged in Bury St.

59:10

Edmunds before a crowd of 7000 people.

That is astonishing, rather gruesomely.

We know that.

I mean, historically by this point the long drop method hadn't been perfected.

So the method of being able to break someone's neck very quickly when you hang them and the the reports of the time show it took him 8 minutes to die in front of those 7000 people.

59:32

And then he faced an even more gruesome punishment because under the Murder Act of 1751, anyone convicted of murder could not be buried.

They had to be denied a Christian burial.

And instead there were two options.

You would be publicly dissected or anatomized for the purpose of medical science, or you would be hanged in chains.

59:52

And it's also called gibbeting or gibbeting.

And that law actually remained in place until 1828.

So he almost escaped this punishment.

This crime happened in 1827.

So he very nearly would have escaped this gruesome treatment.

1:00:08

But as it happens, he was anatomized.

Not only did they put him and conduct a public anatomy for everyone to see, they took his skin off.

He was flayed and they bound a book of the trial and they.

Bound used his skin to bind a book of the trial and you can see that book in the beautiful and wonderful Moist Hall Museum in Bury St.

1:00:30

Edmunds.

I highly recommend it, It's very eerie.

Worse than that, they actually flayed his skull so you can see large chunks of his face and flesh that were were flayed and tanned and put on display.

And as you've said, his skeleton was was displayed and used as a teaching tool in a local hospital till the mid 50s.

1:00:50

It looks records die out after that, but it was certainly being used up until the mid 1950s.

And I highly recommend a trip to Moy at all because you can see the flayed skin as well.

It's it's grotesque, but fascinating.

I mean, there's some really grotesque descriptions of his anatomy with the fact that he was still wearing his trousers and his stockings and his chest was flayed open as they were galvanizing his lungs, weren't they?

1:01:16

And just the the reaction from people in the crowd at seeing that was quite, was quite descriptive.

I mean, again, it's a little bit like Cochlane, but even worse.

The things people would turn out to see, but at the same time, it is that example of the, the gruesome and the grotesque and the, and the Enlightenment values of rationalism.

1:01:37

Reason.

Imagine seeing what is essentially the act of breathing demonstrated from the inside.

Like it's, it's, you can sort of see this murky world, but also this fascinating edge of science that people were getting to experience.

1:01:54

And again, I think we see that with some of the things that they were doing with his skull, because his skull was very much not only examined by George Creed, who was the anatomist who made his own conclusions about the bumps on the head.

But you know, he then sent that off to a leading phrenologist, didn't he?

1:02:12

That also kind of made these claims about.

Well, we can tell from these bumps that this is someone who is of low intelligence and who is prone to superstitions and all these other kind of labels and and I things identified about quarter based on the shape and size and patterns that they could observe on his skull.

1:02:33

So again, you see science coming into it that in in that way, which is is also fascinating.

Yes, I mean, we laugh at all of this now.

We laugh at the the absurdity of phrenology.

But at this point it was sort of, it's the precursor to psychiatry.

1:02:48

You've got it's it is cutting edge science.

We laugh now, but at the time this was true men of medicine in an awful, like gruesome way, experimenting and trying to use this body for good and actually just just using it such an awful grotesque manner.

1:03:08

I kind of compare it to if we think about in modern, in modern kind of scientific inquiry where we have collections of, you know, known serial killers, for example, where their specimens of their brain have been maintained for scientific study and understanding to see if there are things they can learn from the brains of these types of individuals about the crimes that they commit.

1:03:34

Likewise, you know, donations of, of, of brain specimens for all those that are diagnosed with known conditions, known disorders, you know, psychopathy.

It's, it's kind of similar.

I think you can see the, you can see the, the similarities there.

1:03:50

It's just that we tend to look back at these and laugh at them because they seem so preposterous.

But who knows in 100 years time people might think the same thing of what people are doing today in in their own modern enquiries.

Oh, almost certainly, Almost certainly we're going to be looking back on certain things that we have done even in the last 20 years, the last 50 years.

1:04:11

It's you see it in medicine, you see it in law, how quickly things change.

And it's I think really important to remember when we look at these sorts of cases, these are not absurd people doing stupid things.

They are often very, very bright people who just don't have the knowledge we have, and if anything, we wouldn't have the knowledge we have unless they had been doing this, this sort of thing.

1:04:34

So this case became a real core celeb, you know, inspiring novels, plays, penny dreadfuls.

How was the story of Maria Martin and William Corder exploited by the media, you know, and entertainment entertainment industries of the time?

1:04:53

So I think there were two the the Victorian period in the the 19th century had two huge influences that made this case massive.

First you saw the emergence of policing with the Bow Street Runners and an obsession with crime fighting for the first time ever.

1:05:12

And it would be a present through the whole of the 19th century, this idea of crime fighting and deductive reasoning to capture criminals and, you know, the excitement of tracking someone down through the adverts they were placing in a newspaper.

All of this became possible the first time.

1:05:29

So people were obsessed with the drama, the sort of Sherlock Holmes drama of it.

And then people, as I said earlier in the Victorian and the 19th century, were fascinated by ghosts and the supernatural.

This is, as you've said, the time of the penny dreadful.

It's the time of Gothic horror.

1:05:44

The emergence of, you know, Dracula is coming out.

Then you get Frankenstein straight.

It's the the whole of this period is just imbued with a love of ghosts and crime.

And this case had both.

And we know how obsessed people were by it, by the number of plays that were put on.

1:06:02

Plays were being written about this and performed during William Corder's trial.

That's how quickly they're churning them out.

One was even staged at the Red Barn in Pollstead.

I mean, that is grotesque.

And I don't think you would ever see that happen today.

A play about a murder being performed at the murder site within a year of the murder.

1:06:22

And it was also moving into other areas of traditional folkloric entertainment.

So travelling singers, ballads were all being made and performed about it.

And then also you have this really grim side, the emergence of what we would know is dark tourism trinkets.

1:06:42

So figurines of the Red Barn became very popular, made out of pottery, really gruesomely.

Mariah Martin's burial plot was essentially vandalised and her greystone was chipped away out.

The Red Barn was dismantled and sold.

1:06:59

People would buy bits of the Red Barn.

So you started to see it was so popular that over the sort of next 10 to 15 years it would basically eradicate any evidence that it happened because people were taking bits home with it.

So just kind of referencing some of the, the kind of the souvenir hunters and, and, and things that were happening at that point.

1:07:20

You know, what would you say that the public obsession with this case, their desire to possess pieces of the story, what would you kind of say about that?

I think it's an instinct that we would recognise even now.

Dark tourism, you know, I'm we are in a podcast talking about the supernatural and crime.

1:07:43

Many people listening will be interested in dark tourism.

I am interested in dark tourism.

I've been to lots of very strange places.

But I think we all know that there is one step beyond where a certain group of society or a subset of society are very interested in possessing direct products of crime.

1:08:03

And I think you see it in the way that famous crime scenes will get vandalised and bits chipped off and taken from them, but also the interesting things like serial killer art.

There is just an instinct, I think, especially amongst the criminal or the criminal fan fraternity, that sometimes leads people to do very strange things when it comes to souvenir hunting.

1:08:28

And also doing the strange.

Things like communicating with serial killers, I always find that that next step, it's rather bizarre, but it it happens, we know it happens and happens.

Quite a lot.

So yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.

Yes.

1:08:43

And I do.

I make this absolutely clear.

I am, I am a spooky little person.

I like to go to all of these places.

So I'm not trying to shame anyone for that.

It's just when you cross that line and decide that you want to take it home with you.

Absolutely, I completely agree.

I'm the same.

I've been to plenty of strange places in my time.

1:08:58

I find it it's interesting because it it you learn so much.

I think it enables you to look at something and really examine it and really start to try and tease apart the social history.

What we can take from that I think is really important.

1:09:13

But like you said, when you start to cross that line, it's just a bit.

Yeah, it's it's.

I wouldn't and it's and it's almost certainly a criminal offence.

I'll add that little bit of free legal advice in.

Well noted.

So how would you say then the case of Maria Martin, you know, influences or relates to other similar cases that we know of, You know, things like the murder of Zona Shoe in West Virginia and the case of Eric Toom in 1922.

1:09:42

In what ways did the involvement of allegedly ghostly visitation shape these cases?

So what I find fascinating is the Red Barn murder becomes enormous.

It catches so much of the public's attention for a long time.

1:10:00

And then you have two later cases that I wonder either ghosts appeared in them or this, this particular, the Red barn ghost, let's just say, had influence even beyond what we would initially have understood.

And the first case happens in Greenbrier in West Virginia in 1896.

1:10:18

And Zona Hester Shoe, I think it's a beautiful name.

She's married.

It's almost the reverse.

She's very well off, very privileged, and she marries the local, basically the local ruffian who has an equally odd name of Erasmus Trout Stribbing Shoe.

1:10:35

And their marriage seems to be very happy until she ends up dead at the bottom of a staircase in their home.

And the coroner comes in and he decides that she has died from childbirth, bafflingly.

Now what's very interesting in this case is that very shortly after Zona is buried and at her burial, I should make it clear, it was an open casket.

1:10:57

And her very, very sad husband sobbed beside the coffin the entire time and refused to let anyone get too close to the body to inspect it or to have a look at it, which is obviously completely normal behaviour.

But very shortly after she's buried, her mother begins to say that Zona's ghost is appearing.

1:11:17

And Zona's ghost is not just saying that she was murdered.

She is turning her head all the way around, like in The Exorcist, to demonstrate that her neck has been broken.

And as a result, Zona's mother persists and demands that her body, her daughter's body, is exhumed.

1:11:36

And it is.

And it's investigated by a proper doctor, by the sounds of things, who concludes that she obviously died from a broken neck.

And not only did she die from a broken neck, but there were post or there were bruises still visible on the body that showed that apparently finger marks were around the throat.

1:11:55

And so Trout, who had been the man to find his dead wife, allegedly, and also had behaved so strangely at the funeral, was put on trial.

And unlike in the Red Barn, this ghost does make an appearance in the trial because Nona's mother is repeatedly, she says, this is how I came to suspect that Zona had been murdered.

1:12:14

And the defence repeatedly cross examine her, challenging her account and trying to depict her as mad.

And what I find really interesting in that case is we, the judge said to the jury, don't listen to any of that.

Put it out of your mind.

The ghost has nothing to do with it.

And so the judge actually has to engage with this part of the story.

1:12:34

And Trout is convicted and he's sentenced to life imprisonment.

So here you have almost the exact story playing out, and that's in 1896.

The other case is 1922.

This is in England.

Eric Toomes goes missing.

1:12:50

He ran a studpile farm with his business partner.

And Toomes mother goes to the police and says that she had dreamed that her son was at the bottom of a well and was been had been trying to tell her he'd been coming from that well.

1:13:05

Again, these dreams sound awful to tell her that he had been murdered.

And this spurs on the police at New Scotland Yard to open an investigation and they go to the stud farm.

They find it's fallen into disrepair in Tomb's absence, but they do find his rotten body at the bottom of a cesspit.

1:13:25

And the investigation officer who was a senior member of New Scotland Yard, the Scotland Yard who has also talked about this case and who allowed this story to be repeated in a book about it, said that he investigated and was glad they searched that pit because of the ghosts, because of the dream.

1:13:43

Anyway, they tracked down the Tombs business partner who suspiciously, one might think, commits suicide as the police are attempting to arrest him.

So we don't actually have a trial for that case.

But there is no doubt that the investigation officers at Scotland Yard believe that the crime was uncovered because of the mother's communication with the ghost.

1:14:02

So there you have it, two stories that seem remarkably similar to the account of the Red Barn murder.

And I would just say that, you know, if anybody's interested in that case of Eric Toombs, you can actually read Francis Carlin's memoir, which is in the public domain.

1:14:19

It's called Reminiscences of an Ex Detective.

And like you said, he was considered one of the big four of New Scotland Yard.

And so, you know, these, the cases that he speaks of are considered to be culturally of significance, historically significant.

1:14:36

And you can read his own account, his own words of how the case unfolded and his thoughts.

And, you know, I quote, this is what he actually said about it.

It was one of the most remarkable things I have ever come across in my career, that a dream should have been the starting off point in the investigations in this unparalleled mystery.

1:14:59

So, yeah, those were his own words in terms of what he thought of the case.

Just it's fascinating because, again, it's one of those ones that seems to have all those twists and turns almost straight out of a, you know, an Agatha Christie book when you think something else couldn't happen.

It did like you said, a, a, a suicide of the of the person upon their arrest to avoid, avoid kind of anything happening.

1:15:22

It's just it's bizarre how it all unfolded and how it all then connected together.

And it's fascinating, I think, to hear a police officer, a senior police officer in 1922, this is not that long ago, willing to give credibility or credence to the idea that if it's not a ghost, then it's a premonition of a something supernatural led to the uncovering of that murder in that police officer's eyes.

1:15:47

And I think he even states at the beginning of that section of the memoir that, you know, they obviously receive an awful number of tips from the general public that they have to chase down.

And some of those are of the supernatural that seem rather strange and bizarre.

1:16:06

But again, they have a duty to chase those up if there is some credibility to it.

And in this case, they they did precisely that.

But yes, he he states in his own words, just this was the starting off point of this just incredible investigation with all these twists and turns that that led to the outcome that they, that they were able to find the body.

1:16:30

And I don't think there's any doubt.

If they hadn't have had the father of, of Eric Toom come in to say my wife is having these dreams, I don't think they would have been at the point where they would have found and recovered the body.

I don't see how they would have.

They would have got to that point.

1:16:45

So it is, it is fascinating how it all kind of falls like dominoes to get to that point.

Yeah.

No one was looking for tombs.

No one thought he but I mean, his family were concerned, but but no one had thought that this could have happened.

Yeah.

So you know, those cases are fairly old cases.

1:17:05

Surely there aren't any modern cases involving ghosts appearing to solve cases or appearing in criminal cases.

No, I think it's probably fair to say that ghosts appear with less frequency over the last few years.

1:17:22

But they do crop up and they do reflect the beliefs of the time.

So I've got one example.

Again, this is from a police officer's memoirs.

In 1921, there was an especially gruesome murder in Bournemouth.

A young girl, Irene Wilkins, was a servant girl.

1:17:37

She had been tricked to Bournemouth by a fake telegram offering her a job and when she arrived at the station it appears that she was picked up.

It's by the murderer walked to walked away from the station with him and then murdered and assaulted before her body being dumped in open ground near Bournemouth train station.

1:17:59

How does then a ghost get involved in this case?

Well.

Scotland, this is again, this is a memoir from a police officer because I always find it odd even describing this case.

But Scotland Yard were baffled and this was 1921 and that's a key date because this is a peak, the peak almost of the revived interest in mediums.

1:18:19

You've got to remember this is following World War 11 of the reasons that you see spikes historically in mediumship is periods of mass young deaths.

So World War 2, in the years following you saw a resurgence of mediums.

1:18:36

World War One, the American Civil War sparked an astonishing increase in people believing in mediums.

Combined with that, as I said earlier, technology, photography, sound recording, film, Lots of scientists were getting interested in ghosts in the paranormal because they thought, Oh well, we can capture an image.

1:18:54

Maybe a ghost is just a sort of a different kind of soul image.

So 1921 was a weird period in history where a lot of people were interested in supernatural.

And against that Scotland Yard took an allegedly a very unusual step because, according to the police officer Edwin Woodhall, they approached a group of Bournemouth spiritualists who provided them with assistance from the ghost of Irene Wilkins.

1:19:21

The police officers bafflingly attended seances, according to this police officer, bringing with them clothes that belong to the murdered girl.

And over the course of five months, the ghost allegedly told them that her murderer was called Henry Alloway and he was actually arrested on unrelated charges.

1:19:40

And when the police found out about this, they went and looked at his handwriting and they realised his handwriting matched the handwriting of the telegram that had lured Miss Wilkins to Bournemouth station.

And this gets even weirder.

An ID parade was conducted and the Post Office employee confirmed Henry Alloway as the man that had sent.

1:20:03

The Who had sent the telegrams that lured her.

So he goes on trial.

He's arrested, charged with murder and goes on trial in Bournemouth Crown Court.

So did the ghost feature in this case?

This is depends how you feel.

So I think it's fairly absurd.

1:20:19

During the course of giving evidence, a prosecution witness stated that he had completely forgotten a date and he told Edwin Woodhull that he he closed his eyes, spoke to one of the spirit guides that had helped in the case and magically this date suddenly appeared before his eyes whilst being cross examined.

1:20:40

And in his book, Mr. Woodhull says that he is convinced that this is the only example of a ghost ever helping a witness with a cross examination.

And he also states that he believed that another medium who was involved in the case predicted the verdict while sat at home.

Given the other evidence in the case, I would argue the verdict was a slam dunk.

1:21:00

But yes, allegedly this is a case in which a ghost helped in a cross examination.

So what was the the verdict then?

Yes, Alloway was hanged, convicted and hanged for murder, and this case would sit very uncomfortably with me.

Very uncomfortably indeed, had he not given a full confession after the crime and said he had done it.

1:21:21

I mean, obviously actually confessions of this type aren't always reliable, but I'm just about satisfied that this isn't the worst case, worst miscarriage of justice involving a ghost that I've seen.

And is that the the last time a ghost appears in a trial?

1:21:37

So ghosts have certainly stopped appearing in trials, criminal trials.

But I do have one story to finish with and that concerns a case that occurred as recently as 1994.

And if you have any lawyers listening, I suspect they will recognise the case I'm about to talk about.

1:21:55

It's referred to within the legal world as the Crown and Young.

So in February 1992, Harry and Nicola Fuller were found murdered in their home in East Sussex.

They had both been shot to death.

It was very brutal with a shotgun and the defendant, Stephen Young, was accused of murdering them and robbing them to settle a debt.

1:22:16

And the trial itself proceeded very, very smoothly.

The prosecution relied primarily on evidence showing that Young owned guns.

These guns matched the bullet casings found at the scene.

It looked like a very straightforward case and the jury went away at the end of the trial, stayed in a hotel overnight, came back the next day and they duly convicted Mr. Young of the double murder.

1:22:40

So where's the ghost then?

Yes, so I said it in crop over the trial the following month, a juror contacted a solicitor, this is a juror on the murder trial and he said he had some concerns about the safety of the verdict and he went to speak to the solicitor and he admitted, or I should say he said because he wasn't involved in what happened.

1:23:01

Whilst they had stayed at the hotel that night, the other jurors, several other jurors had decided after several drinks that they should have a seance to contact the ghosts of Harry and Nicole Fuller, the murder victims, to find out if Stephen Young was definitely the murderer.

1:23:21

So they got together, they set up an Ouija board in a hotel room, and they purportedly spoke to the ghosts who told them that Stephen Young was definitely the murderer, and the Ouija board spelled out that they should convict him.

So what impact then does that then have on the conviction?

1:23:42

Yeah, it doesn't sound great, does it?

It's always worrying when things like this happen amongst jurors.

Now, normally this is a really, this was a very tricky case for the Court of Appeal.

So normally you go to the Court of Appeal and you say that there has been some weird irregularity in my trial and it makes my conviction unsafe.

1:24:00

And in this case, you would say you can't have juries relying on ghost evidence.

These these jurors went away.

And whether or not they it was real, they truly believed they heard evidence from ghosts and they used that against me.

That wasn't evidence in my trial.

That was evidence they found that they shouldn't have used.

1:24:17

But there was a real problem in this case because the law at the time said that it was completely illegal to ever reveal what jurors had discussed in deliberations.

So you couldn't.

There was an issue here of, well, these jurors, are you even allowed to know what they did?

1:24:37

Even if it's completely mad?

Technically, juror deliberations are all secret.

They could be as mad as a box of frogs and you can't hear about them and you can't appeal based on that madness.

So what were the Court of Appeal to do then in that case?

1:24:56

So I think they tackled it really admirably.

It was preceded over this Court of Appeal hearing by another Lord Chief Justice, so you can see how seriously they were taking it.

What I find really interesting in this area of law is how often Lord Chief justices get involved in these trials.

1:25:11

They clearly either really enjoy them like I do, or they see them as being very serious and they took a very creative approach to the issue.

They said there is a difference between jury deliberations that happen in a jury room and jury deliberations that happen at 2:00 in the morning drunkenly in a hotel room after a night of boozing.

1:25:32

And they said that this Ouija board session happened in a bar, not a jury room.

And you're allowed to talk about bar jury discussions.

You can't talk about deliberations that happened formally in the jury room itself.

1:25:50

So that got past the first hurdle.

The Court of Appeal basically said we know that it was jurors, we know jurors were talking, but we are going to consider whether or not their decision to hold an Ouija board gives rise to a legitimate ground of appeal.

So what then, did the Court of of Appeal conclude?

1:26:10

Well, they were struck with a pretty tricky situation.

The prosecution came along and said we want this conviction to stand.

It's not unsafe.

Trials take a long time.

All the witnesses have to come and give evidence.

They didn't want to have another trial over something as in their minds as stupid as a bunch of people getting together and playing in a Ouija board.

1:26:31

So they said the prosecution, this stupid ghost stuff doesn't make the conviction unsafe.

The jury convicted on the evidence they heard in court, that means it should stand.

But the the Lord Chief Justice disagreed and he concluded that the jurors behaviour amounted to a serious material irregularity.

1:26:54

And in his judgement, which is in the judgement that was published, he concluded the jurors clearly attempted to obtain extraneous evidence.

So that's what he calls the evidence of so-called ghosts.

And he says, whilst we can never be sure if they actually used it, because you can't actually talk about what the juries discussed in the jury room themselves, there was enough of a risk that they might have used this ghost evidence when deciding whether or not to commit convict a man of a double murder.

1:27:25

And so they said that whilst attempts to communicate with the dead may be considered futile, it seriously risked the fairness of the trial and for that reason convictions were quashed.

Order of a retrial.

So then what happened then?

OK, so he was then convicted again, and this time without the help of any ghosts.

1:27:44

We know that.

So could something like that happen again?

So that's the interesting question.

If the Ouija board happens in a hotel room, then the outcome would definitely be the same.

But what is scary is that in this, at this particular time in 1994, if jurors had used the Ouija board in the jury deliberating room, if they had actually done it in the courtroom at the time, there would have been no way to have discussed it on appeal because that was all completely secret.

1:28:14

So what you did in a jury room, if you did decide to sit round and speak to the dead in 1994, there'd be no ground of appeal.

But that has now changed.

There are very limited circumstances in which behaviour in a jury room can form the base of an appeal.

So I think if this case happened again, that there would still be the, the, the decision would still be overturned.

1:28:38

And what I think I always like to remind people when I talk about this case is that it sometimes seems silly.

And it is silly.

But if the ghost had told the jurors to acquit the defendant and said no, or the, I should say, the alleged ghost, and if the ghost had said no, quit them, it would have been impossible to have had him retried at the time for double murder.

1:29:04

And it would be virtually impossible even now to retry someone for a murder if they were acquitted because the jury spoke to ghosts.

So this stuff, if it had gone the other way, would have had a really serious consequence.

So it's not, it is very silly, but at the same time it could have not been, it could have actually been far more serious.

1:29:23

It's fascinating though, to hear he kind of explaining it in that way because I think it, I think it highlights something very, very important that maybe we don't talk about enough when it comes to jury service and the importance of jury service.

But they really do have a very important role to play as part of that process.

1:29:42

And so something like this, you can really see how it could have very much gone either way based on those actions that night in a bar, having had several drinks.

I mean, it's quite, it's quite frightening really to think about it in that, in that terms, how it could really have gone either way.

1:30:01

Yeah, I think that the jury system is one of the greatest creations in our legal system because instead of getting some clever, highfaluting judge to decide you're guilt, you do turn to your peers, you just turn to strangers and say, judge me.

But I also think it's worth remembering that sometimes things that don't seem particularly serious, juries can do very, very stupid things.

1:30:24

And it doesn't feel serious until you look at the consequences, like we have done here.

Like, it's one thing to con to convict, and that man still, you know, still spent time in prison on a conviction that at the time was unsafe.

Obviously, he was then subsequently reconvicted.

But if it had gone the other way, it would have been astonishing because you'd have had a potentially double murderer out on the streets because people got drunk and decided to choose an Ouija board.

1:30:50

Honestly, it's just been so fascinating to have the chance to talk with you about historical cases all the way through to some of these more modern cases and to see the at the heart of these cases, how elements of the supernatural have very much become entangled in what's happened before the trial, during the trial, etcetera.

1:31:11

It's just, it's just been really enlightening to be able to hear your take on it as someone who is part of this field, part of you know, that world, to hear your take on it as a, as someone within the legal profession itself, it's just been so interesting.

So thank you so much for giving up your time to come in and share what you know about these cases and your insight into them.

1:31:31

It's just been really, really wonderful to talk to you.

It's an absolute pleasure.

As I say, I think the law can sometimes get a bit of a reputation for being a little dry or a little inflexible or a little unfair.

And I hope that these cases demonstrate that actually the due the legal system is very good, when it's called upon, of balancing the need to be rational with the need to understand and scrutinize and consider really unusual ideas.

1:32:02

I think the legal system, with the exception of witchcraft trials, which are done terribly, the legal system is actually very good at being a tribunal to to consider these often very strange cases.

And I will make sure that as part of the, you know, the podcast description notes as well as on the website, there are links to your social pages, etcetera.

1:32:23

So that if people want to follow up and see what else you're doing, you know, other talks, etcetera, that you might be giving or things that you're writing about that they can easily find you to follow along with, with other cases that you maybe share as part of your interest when it comes to the paranormal and the law.

1:32:40

So I'll make sure that that's all available on the website and in the podcast description notes.

Perfect, that would be wonderful.

Yes, I can be found on Instagram at Spooky under score Barrister and there are many more cases that I can discuss.

This is my little favorite topic and I love giving regular talks on it, so yes, it would be lovely.

1:32:58

If anyone wants to hear more of this, just follow me and find out where I'll be talking next.

I've got to say, it's one of my very guilty pleasures in terms of where my brain goes when it comes to the paranormal, paranormal, because it is very surprising how when you start looking, how how easy it is to actually find cases in the law that involve paranormal supernatural aspects.

1:33:21

It's it's surprising just how many there are when you start digging.

And it's fascinating.

It really is truly, truly fascinating.

So like I said, thank you so much for giving up some of your time to talk about something that really intrigues me.

I really, really appreciate it, Naomi so much.

1:33:37

So thank you once again and I'll say goodbye to everybody listening.

Thank you for joining us on this journey into the unknown.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.

1:33:58

You can follow us on social media for updates and more intriguing stories.

Until next time, keep your eyes open and your mind curious.