Spectral Highwaymen: Ghosts of the Open Road

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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 Erie journey through the pages of history.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Today we take a riveting journey back in time, where the clatter of hooves and the thrill of adventure intertwine.

We ride along the shadowy roads of the 18th century, where danger and romance were two sides of the same coin.

Our focus today is none other than highwaymen, the dashing rogues who prowled the highways and byways of old, striking fear into the hearts of travellers while captivating the imagination of history enthusiasts and storytellers alike.

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As the 18th century unfolded, tales of robbery and intrigue took centre stage.

The highwaymen's exploits were facilitated by a unique set of circumstances.

In a time without an established police force or modern surveillance, they had the advantage of anonymity and speed on their side.

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Ensuring the safety of roads was a daunting task, making it easier for these audacious outlaws to strike at will.

Travellers were often at their mercy, left to navigate the roads with trepidation, knowing that danger could be lurking just around the corner.

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Robbery was an all too common crime and the highways approaching London became notorious for the exploits of these criminals.

Foot pads, those daring rogues on foot, often part of gangs, terrorized pedestrians with their violent ways.

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And then there were The Highwaymen, the charismatic bandits on horseback who took to the open roads and targeted travellers in carriages and on horseback.

Armed with pistols and masked in mystery, Highwaymen became iconic figures with their demand to stand and deliver.

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Their audacity knew no bounds, and they struck with a calculated blend of charm and menace, often leaving victims both bewildered and captivated.

But were these highwaymen mere outlaws, or did they possess a code of honour beneath their thieving ways?

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For those highwaymen whose luck ran out, a harsh and unforgiving fate awaited.

Execution by hanging was the grim ending that many met with the most famous and notorious.

Often sent to Tyburn, these public spectacles served as a stern warning to potential wrongdoers.

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Once the noose tightened, the body of The Highwaymen faced another indignity, the potential for posthumous mistreatment.

Some were subjected to public display, their bodies left to hang for extended periods as a macabre example.

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Others met the anatomist scalpel, their corpses dissected in the name of scientific enquiry.

What makes the stories of highwaymen truly captivating is the unique tapestry of each account.

From their tales of crime, where they'd confront carriages and riders with their pistols drawn, to the grim fate of execution that awaited them, their narratives were as diverse as the roads they roamed.

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Take, for instance, the case of Captain James Whitney, who, faced a peculiar twist of fate, offered a reprieve if he gave up his accomplices, to which he complied, sharing their names.

But the reprieve he had hoped for never materialised, leaving him to face the gallows.

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His execution ballad shows the sympathy felt by the crowd and his final words are haunting.

I sigh.

It my sad destiny, my very heart does bleed, alas.

Why did they flatter me with hopes of being freed?

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Why did they bring me a reprieve?

Oh, tell me, tell me why.

Yet I at last the world must leave and be compelled to die.

Farewell, thou world.

I must embrace the bitter pangs of death And here in shame and sad disgrace surrender up my breath, for which this day I hit her came.

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So sad is my destiny, and though I startle at the same, tis just that I should die.

The very words that haunt the execution ballad of Captain James Whitney.

And then there's the tale of Claude Duval, a French born gentleman highwayman whose charming demeanour and ponchon for chivalry set him apart.

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He was executed at Tyburn for six robberies with others unproved in January 1670.

His execution ballad referenced his exploits and gentlemanly behaviour.

He was a man who reportedly never used violence in any of his crimes.

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His exploits are shown by painters such as William Powell Frith who captured him curtsying and dancing with a young woman by a coach as another gentleman has been bound and robbed.

An inscription of him post his execution read.

If male thou art, look to thy purse, if female, to thy heart.

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Duval's story showcased the spectrum of highwaymen, revealing how different and unique their lives and motives could be.

These rogues, often viewed as swashbuckling figures with a Robin Hood like allure, sometimes garnered sympathy from a society that, while condemning their deeds, couldn't help but be entranced by their daring escapades and perhaps a hint of nobility hidden beneath their highway robbery facade.

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The days of Hwy. robbery, once a daring escapade of the open Rd. eventually saw their twilight.

As the 18th century waned, so did the highwayman's reign of terror.

Factors like the Bow Street Horse Patrol's active pursuit of highwaymen after 1763, justices of the peace refusing to licence Inns that harboured them, and the encroaching urbanisation that led to fewer isolated roads played their parts.

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The emergence of banking and a shift toward carrying less cash further contributed to the decline, leaving the era of highwaymen as a captivating but distant memory.

Yet the stories of highwaymen did not fade into oblivion entirely.

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Legends tell of restless spirits lingering on the roads they once haunted.

Tales of eerie sightings at coaching Inns, crossroads, and even Shire halls still send shivers down the spines of those who tread upon these historic paths.

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The phantom apparitions of highwaymen, often seen in full regalia with masked faces and pistols drawn, continue to captivate the imagination of those who dare to explore the haunted lore of these roads.

Joining me today is author Ruth Roper Wilde.

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Ruth has a lifelong fascination with the supernatural and unexplained, stemming from formative years spent living in a house with an active poltergeist in Bury St.

Edmunds in Suffolk as a hobby.

Therefore, over the years she has researched for endless hours on the subject with the idea of eventually writing a book.

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She brings a healthy dose of skepticism and desire for scientific explanation to her research and writing, which was instilled in her by her ever pragmatic mother, who, when presented with a flying knife in the kitchen, calmly took out a tape measure and measured the length of its flight path.

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Ruth decided to make her idea of writing a book into a reality and has since published 8 books as an independent author.

Today, with Ruth's guidance, we'll dive deep into the lives of some of the most infamous highwaymen and explore their captivating tales.

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So fasten your seatbelts, or perhaps your saddles.

As we embark on a journey back in time, traversing the winding roads and treacherous trails trodden by highwaymen of old, let us remember that every twist of the road holds an untold story.

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From gallant gestures to ruthless deeds and heinous acts, these stories encapsulate an era of daring adventure, and moral ambiguity that continues to intrigue us to this day.

Without further ado, let's delve deep into the forgotten corners of history.

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Dust off those pages to illuminate the stories of the past and the ghosts that linger.

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

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It's really good to be here, really advise you to have our chat tonight.

Do you want to just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and and what sparked your interest in ghostly legends and supernatural phenomena?

Yes.

So I'm partially retired now.

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I was lucky enough to partially retire back in 2016 in my early 50s.

And I finally got to the stage where I thought, oh, I could do something with, you know, all the data that I've been collecting.

Because when I was a child, we lived in Bury St.

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Edmund in Suffolk for a while.

We moved around quite a lot when I was a child, all over the place.

And that particular property, which was a bungalow in the grounds of the old prison, just occasionally had a little boy ghost or a lady in modern dress, ghosts that would walk through it.

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And I saw the little boy once, twice, but I never saw the lady.

So it's kind of aware from quite an early age that odd things sometimes happen in houses.

And then we moved to a property in Welland in Hertfordshire, which had a really, really the active poltergeist that used to literally Chuck things around the house, turn lights on the off, turn the go, go on and off, bang on the doors, make huge crashing noises in the middle of the night doing the typical things you hear, you know, pertaining to poltergeist.

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And it just really sparked my interest in the paranormal.

My mother, before marrying and having children, had been a radio engineer for aircraft in the RAF.

And so she was a really pragmatic lady, not at all afraid, but, you know, from this sort of thing.

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And she would always approach everything that happened with her, right.

How can I explain that?

What is what is the natural physical explanation for what just happened?

So instead of sort of screaming or running around or, you know, hyping it up in any way, she was always just really calm and really interested in whatever the natural explanation could possibly be.

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And I think that helped me engender a sort of inquiring mind into it, wanting to know what it was.

And I quite quickly found out because obviously I'm old enough to be back before the age of computer.

But if she went to the library or anywhere, picked up an encyclopedia or anything like that, whenever it talked about ghosts or supernatural, most of them spoke about ghosts that clanked around in old castles back in the 1800s and something.

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And lady so and so fainted young people or whatever.

There were very, very few accounts of people in Muktentime being ghosts.

So I started correcting them when I found them.

And that started off, you know, just to in a notebook.

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And what happened then when I started my first job, when I left school, I was working in a library and I learned about card files.

So I started keeping a card file of all the articles I found or any books I found.

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And over the years, it just stayed a hobby really.

That progressed from a card file to keeping it, you know, on the computer.

And then I eventually discovered databases on the computer and managed to modernize it enough to actually use.

And just, you know, whenever I would go on holiday or anything, I'd sort of scour the bookshop for any the books read or some people Underwood books, obviously looking for accounts where people had seen sample within the span of my lifetime basically.

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So somebody sort of, you know, from the 60s onwards.

And by the time I came to touch you, there I was with huge databases full of data that I've collected over all those years.

And I thought, well, it might be quite nice to write a book.

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I wonder how you write a book?

So that's kind of how I started, just with that completely inspiring mind into what is it, What's it about?

Because I don't come from a religious background.

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My parents were atheist and like I say, my mum had this scientific thing.

I've come from a background of inquire into it and look into it and that just fascinates me.

Industry.

It still does all these years later.

I've had loads of encounters of my own because I actually get a ghost hunting whenever I can.

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And again, that just keeps the, you know, the whole fascination with the subject to life because every time something happens and you can't find a rational explanation for it, they were again completely fast forwarded yet again.

And and drawn back in again, it always seems to have the same impact as, you know, the very first experience or thing that you can't explain.

17:12

They're they're all so equally profound in different ways that just keeps you invested and interested.

And I and I think there are so many people out there with stories and accounts people.

I think most people naturally are intrigued.

17:27

And so it's fantastic that you've got these books which really do cover such breadth and, and range of different experiences from all kinds of locations.

And I, you know, I don't know if you want to kind of go on to just give a, an overview of some of the books that you've written to date to give that flavor of the types of themes and, and areas that you've explored really in terms of those ghosts and hauntings that you mentioned a moment ago.

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Yeah.

So I started off obviously I didn't know the first thing about how to write a book.

Some would say I still don't, but never mind.

And at the time that I partially retired, like I say, 2016 and at that moment in time, e-books had just become a thing.

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And when I did a bit of research into how do you go about writing a book?

How do you get a book published everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere with a with advising, don't try and send in manuscript to publishing house.

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At the moment none of them are accepting.

There was this sort of moment of low in the market while they waited to see whether the paper book was going to see to exist as a thing and ebooks are going to be the way forward.

There was a lot to talk about at the time.

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So everybody was saying best way to do it is to publish itself as an ebook and if it goes well enough the publishing houses will pick it up.

OK, I'll learn how to do that then.

I'd better start with something quite small.

Just want to figure out how you do this.

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So I decided to write a book about the ghost just around where I live.

So I live in a small village in Bedfordshire and the village is in a long shallow valley, very shallow.

You'd be hard pushed to stay with the valley unless you really looked at the topography.

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That sort of runs basically from Bedford through to the M1 corridor and My Villages Parkway along that sort of 10 mile.

And I thought, well, you know, if I just look into the legends and the myths around here and the ghost stories, and I'll see if I can interview anybody who's willing to talk to me.

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If they follow many of these guys, it'd be interesting to pull them into the modern times.

That's always what interests me is call it into modern times.

So that's how the ghost of Master Vale was born.

You know, I just looked up all the, the myths and legends and ghost stories around here and then literally went out on the, the villages social media and put literally put cards up in shop windows, you know, up and down with the valley asking people if they would talk to me.

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And those that agreed to, I'd go and meet with them or treat them on the phone or go and have a coffee with them, whatever and get their story.

And that's how the ghost came after Belle was born.

And I did load it obviously as an e-book to begin with, then discovered you could.

Also load it and have it come out of the paperback value it great.

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And one of the things I learned in that process was they, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

But they I really loved the fact that I had complete control over how I was going to write.

I may well be doing publishing, heralding complete disservice, but I have this fear that they'll make me try and sex up the accounts.

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I get into something really spooky or talk about demonic portals or, you know, whatever the current bug word is.

And I don't want to do that.

I want to write about real people and their real experiences within modern times.

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That's that's where my passion lies.

And I don't want to embellish a single word everybody tells me.

So I quickly sort of got the bug for by doing it this way, I can be my own boss in it and I can write them exactly if I want to write them.

21:28

So once I'd launched a ghost mark and Bayern in 20, only 2017 that until it took me about six months to do it.

And then thought right now I have these big databases full of data.

Obviously, having now had a bit of practice, it's clear that that's going to be too big to fit into one book.

21:46

How should I split the data?

So I thought, well, I've got a whole load that the anniversary ghosts and a whole load that the ghosts that haunt it haunt the road by wave footpath.

And then I've got ghosts that haunt buildings.

So I'll start with all the ones that are anniversary ghosts or cytical ghosts.

22:08

So these are those where allegedly they only haunt on perhaps one night of the year or during one month of the year.

And it's usually related to, you know, something like the battle or the day the person died or the day of the crash or, you know, whatever it might be that caused the haunting that happened in the 1st place.

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It's supposed to happen specifically on the day.

And I hadn't found anywhere where somebody listed them all out and I, I collected them all in a race bust.

So from that idea, the Almanacic Versus Ghost was born and that was published in late 2017.

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And that is literally exactly what it says on the table.

It is a set out my calendar, so month by month, and it gives you all the cyclical hauntings that I could find for the British Isle.

It gives you some of the history about, you know, the specific haunting and wherever possible, I've gone out and tried to find whether anybody is actually experiencing those hauntings.

23:15

Not as much success with that because one of the things I think it pretty much definitively answered is that there's no such thing as a typical haunting.

Particularly, I think the most you could say is that activity might ramp up around a certain date rather than be pinned for a date.

23:33

So that went out at the end of 2017.

And then I wrote the road map of the Ghost 2018 and this specifically looked at Ghosts that Haunt rode Byway Lane, you know, anywhere that wasn't the building basically.

23:49

And I very naively, honestly thought this will be the definitive work of Ghosts that Haunt Rd. because I've been collecting these stories at this point.

But best part of 35 years, whatever, I found them all.

24:07

It'll be great.

It could be the definitive work.

So I very similarly called it the Road Nothing British Ghost and didn't want to give us volume number.

So that, like I say, covers all those Rd. ghost stuff.

I think of them now with that one, I got a lot more success by going out on social media with all the people.

24:31

So I'd find an account of the Road Ghost, I'd find a social media outlet close to it, you know, and the nearest village, the nearest town, whatever, I'd join that and then just put what I call my ghost posts out.

People might have been asking, you know, has anybody had an experience they can't explain along such and such piece of road?

24:53

And I'm always very careful not to say, has anybody seen the white lady that's supposed to haunt the road or the black monk or the like, the horse or whatever it might be?

Because I want to see people's own accounts, and I don't want people reading my post and think, well, well, yeah, I saw a weird light along that road, but it wasn't her white lady, so she doesn't want to know that and not right.

25:16

And actually, that approach has worked really, really well.

Because what I find is that I get real paranormal hotspots where lots of people see lots of different things, but all in the same little clustered area.

So that that was really interesting to see it that way.

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And it's an ethos.

I've stayed with it, you know, ever since because it worked so well.

Then I'll say which area I'm interested in or which building, but I won't go into any detail about what's supposed to hold it.

And that way I get people down accounts.

I'm not leading all of this at all.

Having published that, what I actually found then, because I thought that was going to be it.

25:55

I had thought that was going to be the books I was going to write, but all the people that were writing back in answer to me for the road map were tending to say.

Quite a lot of them were tending to say, no, I haven't seen a ghost along that Bitter Rd.

26:10

You're asking about Pub Round Corner reported, or my house reported, or the place I were reported, or my sister's cousin's backyard of Gulf Coast or whatever it might be.

And quite a significant number of these people were willing to share their story with me.

26:28

So of course, I'd added all these to the databases.

So I thought, right, well, that's good, I'll publish a book.

I'd better give it a volume number this time because it's clear that people are sharing stories with me.

So they might be more than one book.

And that's how these Haunted Time Volume one was born.

26:47

And as you can see, the title stays with my desire to have it, you know, in volume time, in faunted time.

That came out in 2019 and for each location I again went out on social media and asked again, does anybody know anything about this?

27:10

And I got a load of more stories.

So quantity times volume to came out in 2020, by which time lots of people had asked of me saying, well, I don't know about that ghost, about such and such a Rd. but did you know the road one street over or the the bike pack on the other side of that town was born people And I had a my Plymouth Rd. ghost database was filling back up.

27:36

So I thought, well, now I've got enough here to write another road map, but I'm going to have to call it volume two and first one wasn't called volume one and Oh dear.

So that's just had to stand now, but people will have to kind of guess that road map, the British ghost is actually volume one and then it goes road map of Michigan coast volume to and will probably be a volume three at some point because of they say this is called up again.

28:00

Well, that came out in 2022, followed quite swiftly by these one times volume three and these one times volume 4.

Both came out last year entirely by mistake, I have to say, because I got so carried away and so excited about all the people that I was chatting to and all the research and everything, and I was merrily typing away last summer, you know, creating the books, typing it all up, typing all the research up.

28:28

And my computer suddenly went, Bing, you have reached the word limit for Google Word.

What?

I didn't even know there was a word limit.

Apparently there is.

It's 696 pages.

At which point I thought, oh, I wasn't really paying attention to that.

28:46

This is too big to be a book.

I had published a book with as many pages and actually we'd never be able to buy it, and then we'd be able to afford it because of the printing cost.

They'd have to have a trolley to take it home in.

So I thought, oh, that'd be easy, I'd just split it into two.

Fine, I'd just split it into two.

It's not that simple, as I quickly discovered, because then you have to think about, well, because I arranged my books in alphabetical order by the town or village and it's happening and sort of give the county.

29:18

If you're going to split what what was one book into two, you need to make sure you've given a fair smattering across all the counties in both books.

That you haven't inadvertently put all the villages beginning with the letter A in one book and all the ones beginning with the letter T in another book.

29:37

But you haven't inadvertently given all the really strong stories to one book and the slightly weaker stories to the other book.

So I had to create a whole new database on how to split a book in half and colour code it to know which was going into which book and then sort of colours around and the entries around to make sure it all sort of evened out.

30:02

And so these 1 * 3 came out in September last year, I think it was, and volume four came out in December.

And I am never doing that again.

I'm never writing two books in one year again.

It was too bad.

30:18

It sounds traumatizing, quite frankly.

It was the maddest thing I've ever done, honestly.

You know when you get to that thing and you think, oh, that's not going to work, What can I?

Do in half and you think that should be the very easy solution, but sometimes the easiest solutions are just anything but They become so complicated and and difficult.

30:45

It's just madding that it is case of let's just do this.

But no, it's it's just incredible, though, the body of work, just hearing you talk about it, and I've read pretty much every single book of yours more than once, you know, because that's who I am.

31:03

I like, I like rifling through these books and making post it notes and sticking things in and, and doing all of that kind of stuff because I really do enjoy reading these types of accounts.

And again, this is where I think it's fabulous what you've done because it is very much this just gathering of, of social history and social storytelling and people's experiences.

31:27

And it just seems to keep growing and keep growing and keep growing, which is incredible.

And I think it speaks to the power of when someone finds a place where they can share their own personal experience, whether it's similar or whether it's different.

31:43

Again, it comes back to what I was saying.

For most people, they want to actually be able to talk about it because in most other circumstances they can't.

And so it's great when they can find something that allows them to see something that maybe they've had that's similar or give them a space to explore something that you know, for them has been something intriguing to be able to share that with someone who, who is interested and wants to hear from them.

32:12

And it's just an incredible amount of work to be able to to do what you've done, which is, like I said, to gather all of these together to put for to put forwards for the audience to read them.

It does get a bit mad and overwhelming at times because in any given moment of research on any given day, I've usually got at least a dozen of what I call my ghost posts out across social media for different towns and villages, you know, around the place.

32:44

And that means that I've got to keep an eye on them all as to who's responding because some people prefer to respond on the social media post.

But I've also got to keep an eye out on my Twitter feed because some people prefer to get hold of me that way.

I've got to look at my e-mail because some people try to get hold of me that way.

33:03

And I've got to look at the messenger for, for the social media because people prefer, some people prefer to use that.

And then the ones that want to tell me a longer story, you know, they've got quite a lot to tell me.

I need to sort of, you know, set up on interview time with them occasionally that's in person more often or lock it by either video link or telephone call because of the distances involved, of course.

33:25

But it's all the time it takes to chat to everybody.

And like you say, whenever I start talking to them, because I, I literally, I can bore people to tears for hours about ghosts.

Given, you know, given my free reign with it, they'd be warned, you know.

33:42

But you know, if people say, what do you do?

What, you know, what are you interested?

And I said, Oh, paranormal.

I'm and also I said, Oh, I don't believe in that.

Mind you, there was this one occasion when, and I would bet any money that if I sat and counted, you know, if I bothered to count how many times people say that to me, I would bet it would be 95%.

34:04

In life in general, everybody has had at least one thing happen in their life that they have no explanation for.

Other people have had loads and loads of things and what I like to try and do and, and again this comes down to my ethos in researching.

34:22

I don't follow anyone particular theory or belief system about what the paranormal is written.

So I'm not with it to anyone particular theory or like what I say belief system.

I'm perfectly open minded and balanced about them all.

34:43

And, and that means that no matter what any given individual sort of life experiences, what they really did background is what their social background is, You know what their racial background is.

So you know how that affects their belief in that paranormal or not, it really doesn't matter because I'm not going to come at them with with any particular preconceived ideas.

35:08

So what they want to talk to me about is what I want to hear.

And a lot of people find that really, I get a lot of people say to me afterwards, it's been such a relief to be able to tell some of them.

There are some accounts in my books where there's one particular one that brings to mind an older gentleman who wrote to me.

35:30

And I correspond to him a while.

And he said, you know, I'm in my 80s now, and this happened when I was in my 20s.

And I've never told a soul, but I don't Care now what people think of me.

And it's so nice to be able to write this out to somebody, you know, and know that somebody knows that this happens.

35:48

And to me, that's the epitome of what I wanted to achieve, that people are telling their own stories and that I'm gathering that data.

I don't see it as my role to try and titivate the public by sexing up any of these accounts or trying to make them more scary than they actually came across or anything like that.

36:12

My job is to tell what people are actually experiencing and sort of gather that data and put it down for posterity.

I can't see myself ever wanting to sort of come up with definitive answers about any of it.

36:27

People ask me to, but I always say, well, my data suggests that there's more than one answer.

And so, you know, I'll leave it to somebody way more intelligent than me, you know, and with, you know, better qualifications in the subject and what have you to actually pass through all of that.

36:46

And maybe someday it will help contribute more resolving all of this.

Maybe it won't because maybe the paranormal is unresolvable.

I don't know.

I don't see, don't see that as being my answer.

My, my role in collecting that data, getting people to talk to me, spending all that time going out on social media, because that's the that's the biggest bulk of the work.

37:09

It's all about gathering of the information.

You know, I reckon that for in every book, if you, if you look at one of my entries, it's only sort of say three or four paragraphs long on any particular location, but that's three or four paragraphs.

You're looking at around about 15 hours of work in the background.

37:30

Because you know, you've got the original research.

Then you've got talking to people and putting posts out and checking posts, then writing it and then editing it and then re editing it and then on and on and on.

And it's hours of work a little bit.

But that's what fascinates me is that gathering of that data and I love it, love it, love it, love it when I find correlation, you know.

37:52

So somebody writes to me about, you know #2 Main St. in each other village.

And then a year later somebody writes me about #3 Main St. in the same village.

And I suddenly realise I've got 22 properties next to each other or opposite each other on the street, wherever it might be in the same location.

38:10

So it's got something similar happening and we've got something completely different happening.

But it's fascinating that it's happening, you know, with a sort of common boundary in in physical space And those correlations or particularly when I find ones where people are seeing the same thing or a very similar type of thing, you know, sort of thing, sort of genre of haunting if you like in one area that it just it's like winning the lottery.

38:35

Every time I find one of them I absolutely love it.

And we're going to be focusing in particular on two books that you mentioned though, which is the the road map, Road Map of British Ghosts and then volume two of the same of the same title.

Before we kind of go into some of the subject matter that we're going to be talking to, you know, talking about tonight.

38:56

Do you want to just kind of give an idea of the scale and coverage within those two books in terms of the types of experiences that you reported, you know, you report and the research that went into those two particular books in terms of the phenomena that you researched and reported on, for example?

39:15

Well, they started with that sort of three decades worth of research just getting categorized that this wasn't in a building, so therefore it's on the road or a path or a track or whatever or park.

And it was it was starting out with source stories that I would find somewhere else.

39:35

I haven't put any bounds on what type of paranormal activity loosely based around haunting ghost.

That's, you know, that's kind of the main thrust of it.

But as anybody who spends hot time reading that this, you very quickly realise that there's a huge blurring of lines between.

40:00

Is it a ghost?

Is it an elemental?

Is it a poltergeist?

Is it a stone tape theory?

You know, it's a recording of something.

Is it strange light?

Are we moving a bit into USO here?

Is it?

People have been saying it's a ghost, but actually what I'm getting is people seeing something a bit more animalistic.

40:20

Are we moving a bit into Cryptid type paranormal activity?

Yeah.

Are you moving a bit into the phase type activity?

You know, trickster type activity?

Things going on you very quickly when you're gathering the data as I'm not sure there is such a word as unbiasedly, but with there's as much lack of bias as I do that I'm just interested in the location and what people are experiencing you.

40:48

You get that complete bleed over between the genres.

So I don't, I don't narrow what people want to tell me.

I don't I don't specifically go out looking into, for example, Buffet or I don't specifically look into UFOs.

41:06

You know, they're not specifically in my genre, but they do bleed into my book without a doubt.

You know, strange things seen in the sky, strange little beings seen rustling through the undergrowth or, or, you know, things happening along that line.

And I, I include them because they're in the area that I'm interested in and because people shared that story with me, you know, that was their experience in that area.

41:29

I might have been writing out because they're supposed to be the ghost of a monk haunts that particular Rd.

But what I get back might be something that perhaps is more Cryptid related from something, but that's what they saw and that's what they experienced.

41:45

So that's what I'm going to include in the book.

So yes, so the, so the, the bandwidth is quite wide in the end, but it's what people want to tell me.

And all my books so far have been the British Isle tend.

I tend not to get very much from Ireland, which is a shame.

42:03

And Scotland and Wales tend to be slightly quieter.

Although more recently as Wales have picked up a bit of people have heard me say that a few times and then now engaging in which is great to come on Scotland catch up.

But I think it's that's partly to do with social media seems used a bit more differently in that place.

42:22

But it's harder for me to reach people and to speak to.

Same with Ireland, I think it's harder to get to do on the social media in that way, in that chatting way they seem to use it's more just for buying and selling things rather than chatting.

But they're all British related.

42:38

So, so geographically for child and in terms of subjects that I've asked about an area, you can tell me what you like about what you experienced there.

But again, this is where I think it's very, I think it's very brilliant what you do because I think some people might go into looking at a particular book or wanting to talk about a certain type of haunting in a certain location.

43:00

And you know, roads is a good example of the these paths and these, you know, little kind of sections by roads.

If we kind of think of that area just in general, someone might have a very specific thing in mind as to what they would expect from that area.

And so it's great that, you know, these books really do cover that full spectrum because as you know, the paranormal is so many different things and we often have particular interest in certain aspects of that, but it's a very, very broad variety of different cut, you know, areas that is covered within that overall title of the paranormal.

43:39

And so again, I think it's fabulous that it is just this collection of of different experiences and encounters that do help to show that coverage and that scale of the the various different phenomena that people experience and, and want to to talk about and report to you.

43:56

And like you said, it's, it's hard to pin pinpoint certain specific things because you do try and offer all the things that come in.

So you get that breadth.

And I and I think that's the key thing that, you know, I would hope people listening take away that if they're not familiar with with your work and want to be that they're going to get that real variety of coverage.

44:19

And I think that is I think that's another interesting element that you bring to the writing that is so completely open to share this this range, which not a lot of books and places do they tend to, you know, focus in on one certain aspect.

44:36

You don't.

You just allow people that space to share you their stories, which is great.

And the other thing that I'm quite proud of, if I'm honest, just, I mean, you, you, you hit up the nail on the head there.

That's one of the things I'm really proud of.

The people can share what they experience, but I'm quite proud of the fact that I don't just regurgitate all the other people have said about an area because that was one of the frustrations when, you know, back in the day, fourth piece, the back when I was going in the libraries and bookshop and I'd pick up a book and I'd get all excited.

45:06

I'd sit at home and I'd start reading, and there'd be this little sigh of disappointment with some of it because it would just be the same story that I'd read in three other books regurgitated with a perhaps one or two details added, but nothing essentially new.

45:25

And I would be left sometimes thinking, oh, come on, people, Go and ask them.

Go and ask the people, you know, has anybody else seen it?

So that that was very much what I wanted to do, was to be the one who took the time.

45:41

And it does take time, you know, I've begun to take them in a way.

But that's fine.

What I like doing to, to go out and ask people, you know, and I mean, ideally it'd be lovely if I had the money in the vehicle and time to drive around these places and physically knock on people's doors and talk in shops and pubs and whatever.

46:02

And of course that's unrealistic.

You know, nobody's got that kind of time and energy and and anyway, you know, people wouldn't talk to a stranger just knocking like that.

So social media, you know, is the next best way of reaching out like that.

And actually, you know, I have a huge amount of the best of it.

46:22

People are willing to engage.

Yes, I get a certain amount of, you know, Internet trolls.

I get a certain amount of keyboard warriors that you have to wade through.

That's going to happen.

But I think that happens in all walks of life.

It's, you know, part of life.

46:38

It's past, you know, experience.

But on the whole, I, I think I get a much bigger majority of people that give a positive response.

And when you think about I, I don't go out on paranormal social media, I go out on ordinary social media.

46:55

So these are everyday people go about their everyday business and they pick up the social media if they're a local village or they're a local town or sometimes the suburb of their town or whatever it might be.

And there's me popping up saying, Oh, hi guys.

You know, if everybody's seen a ghost along this road or in this pub or whatever it might be, and I just think it's amazing.

47:14

And I, I remain incredibly grateful to all those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who bothered to answer that.

Even the ones that say, well, actually, I've lived on this road for 40 years and I've never heard a thing about that ghost.

47:30

And I've never seen a single thing.

And I, you know, all my life, I've got up at 4:00 in the morning and gone to work.

And given that, never seen A to me that seeks me as valid to show.

Yeah.

The paranormal doesn't act on tap.

It doesn't act on demand like you see on television.

47:48

You know, you may well spend a whole years in one particular location.

And even though it's quite haunted, you personally might not experience it once or never.

And I think that's, you know, it's valid to show how that works in real life.

48:06

You know, that's just another aspect of the data gathering.

So you'll see in my book that the little say people said, you know, people locally told me that they'd never heard of the ghost.

I'm equally as happy to write back in the book as if this is what people told me about, you know, the experience.

48:23

And if I can't find any correlations and I can't find anybody to say about a location, I say so in the book, you know?

But again, I think that's the, again, part of the real draw to it because it is just very true to the experiences and what you're being told positively or negatively.

48:42

It's, it's not being embellished in any way.

So it is a real true reflection of what you're finding as you're going out there and talking and, and gathering this information.

And again, that's quite refreshing.

It's, it's a very honest portrayal of what people are experiencing and are willing to share.

48:59

And I, and I think that's, you know, that's very admirable.

Like I said, it's a very honest, honest reflection of what people are experiencing.

Yeah, and that makes an honest collection of data in my view.

Do I have any way of ascertaining whether people are telling me the truth or not?

49:16

Of course I don't.

You know, I've picked, I do get accessed by paranormal, other paranormal researchers sometimes.

Like, how do you know they're telling you the truth?

You know, you can't just take that face value.

And I think, well, why can't I just take it at face value and record it?

49:33

As they said, I'm neither claiming it to be true nor disclaiming it as untrue.

I am simply recording their experience.

And one of my arguments to that is with everybody who provides me information that then goes into one of the books or that I talk about on a podcast, wherever it might be, everybody gets the choice to have either their own name or pseudonym.

50:00

And I would reckon about $0.99 of my books, their pseudonyms.

And I got so fed up.

You've seen the earlier books.

If you read my earlier books, you see, I often say, oh, Witness told me.

I got so fed up of writing a Witness, but I started using pseudonyms.

50:17

And what I tend to do now is put it in the prologue.

Most of the names you're going to get in this book are pseudonyms.

Occasionally somebody will say, no, use my real name.

That's fine.

But to me, that acts as even more of a validation that they're unlikely to be lying because they're not getting anything out of it.

50:37

They're not getting their 15 minutes of playing with what some people tell me that they're doing it for because it's not their name attached to it.

So, you know, if like in the count of this chap, I mentioned them to go, you know, in his 80s, never told anybody happy that's now in the book.

50:55

But his own family and friends won't recognize as him because it's not his name.

So he's been able to share that experience but not put his own head above the parapet, as it were.

You know, and I I'm sure there are one or two in there where people are on your tails.

51:12

That's kind of human nature.

But I would bet that the majority are exactly what people have experienced because this is their one chance to say it.

So yeah, it just like I say, I could just spending the rest of my life doing this quite happily because it never, ever gets boring talking to all these different people, hearing their different experiences, coming across all the different myriad of different things that people experience.

51:42

Absolutely.

And it's fascinating.

And I hope that does come across in the books because fascinates me.

And so hopefully it does anybody's reading, but.

Oh, definitely, I think so, as someone who's read the books.

It's just as I say, it just, it draws you in because of that breadth, because it is just really reflecting people's experiences.

52:03

And you know, it's hard to pinpoint and and narrow down one particular topic of which we could we could talk about for for the podcast night in terms of what's covered in the road map of British ghosts volume one and two.

But we know we're going to talk about highwaymen as a particular aspect that have come that has come out of part of that research.

52:25

And I don't know if there's any particular reason why you wanted to draw upon those experiences and include those as part of the research in the book.

You know what you think it is that draws people to those types of of accounts as well and those experiences, if at all.

52:42

Well, it's funny actually.

It's not so much time drawn to them particularly, it's just that it's one of those, it's one of those sort of ghost tropes.

When you talk about Rd. ghosts, it tends to be the first place people's minds go to.

53:01

Oh, you mean like get a headless highwayman?

And it's such an embedded trope that that tends to be what people expect me to be writing about, which is quite strange because I have got a lot of highwaymen accounts, but nowhere near as many as all the other different types of things that are on our roads.

53:25

But I just thought it was a it's a nice topic to to sort of talk about when it's one that I haven't talked about before specifically.

So yeah, why not?

I think it's in so many people's consciousness, they're aware of the story of highwaymen in so many different guises, whether it's, you know, local tales or historical figures that I, I think it's something that most people are familiar with, like the, the tales of headless horsemen.

53:54

It's just seems to be somehow ingrained in us as an experience and part of storytelling and local law that just lives with us all that I think captivates and intrigues most people.

But, you know, just to kind of, I suppose, get the the the ball rolling in terms of really trying to tease apart some of what we know about highwaymen.

54:18

Do you happen to know any factors that kind of made certain areas that you came across more prone to these highwaymen and highwaymen attacks in general when we think about their place in history?

Well, it's definitely, definitely more likely on what used to be, and this is the key point, what used to be remote or wooded stretches of growth, because highwaymen in itself is when you know, historically speaking, they're they're not a thing.

54:55

Historically speaking.

What we're talking about is bandit robber who happened to be mounted on a horse.

There wasn't a job, you know, I'll go out and be a highway man.

You didn't go out and get your highway man uniform, you know, sort of decide, oh, I think I'll become a highwayman.

55:15

It's a name that got given to explain the type of thief whose right to be haunting on the road.

You know, they're going to be outcasts, they're going to be outlaws, and they are going to haunt the Wilder places where they can get up to their nefarious things without being interrupted.

55:36

But at the same time, it needs to be somewhere that there's going to be enough daily traffic if you like to actually be able to spring out on somebody and rob them.

They wouldn't want to sit for three weeks on on a tiny little back lane somewhere that one farmer went along.

55:55

And I think people today tend to forget, understandably, because, you know, we live in the world and it is now with tarmac grades everywhere.

The roads weren't like that through much of our history.

They were mostly just at that occasionally you have a bit more of a paved Rd. depending on how far back in the speed you go.

56:18

The major routes through the UK tended to be a bit more side because the Romans had built them.

So, you know, you have the network of what remained of the Roman road.

And then the progressively smaller and smaller Rd. just got worse and worse and worse in terms of, you know, muddiness and steepness and general impassable.

56:41

But in order to travel from one town to another, people had to go by coat.

And most people weren't rich enough to own their own coaching hall.

So there was literally coaches in Hawthorne who ran these routes regularly back and forward if you'd like, like the taxi of the day.

57:04

But these journeys were offered IN2345, whatever that is long, which is why we had so many coaching in because they would have to break the journey and the coaching ends would hold stable horses and this coaches could swap the horses over a fresh horses the next day and so on.

57:24

They'd sort of relay across the country like that.

And of course this meant the coaches were using the same route, you know, partly to try and stay safe.

So there'd be other coaches on the route, but this meant that The Highwaymen knew where they were going to be going.

So you're always going to be looking for somewhere that both remote, perhaps have somewhere a bit steeper or, or wooded or something where you might be able to slow the coke down, but also somewhere that's likely to have been a route between two places.

57:55

And you're going to get enough traffic.

And it's interesting because there's one when I did the ghost of Master Vale around here.

There's one, there's a tight what today is a tiny, tiny, tiny little lane.

And you know, it's, it's two cars wide, but only barely.

58:13

And that's supposed to be haunted by a highwayman.

And it's supposed to be haunted by, depending on which version you read, either Galloping Dick, which might possibly be a reference to Dick Durham, or Black Tom, who's more usually known as haunting one on the streets in Bedford, the actual parent now.

58:33

And when you look back on the older maps of this particular tiny little range, what on earth would be haunting that particular?

It's because that actual whole area was called the Black Lamb or the Bad Lamb, depending on how old that can look at.

58:51

And it's shown as being a very rough area in terms of it was both deep and wooded, you know, and a bit impassable in winter and so on.

Great place for hiring them to hang out, you know, and, and catching whatever was passing.

59:08

So and there were certainly, you know, some bigger properties in the area because the the ruins of how it was also just a mile or two away from it.

This was the area that John Bunyan wrote his pilgrims progress about.

So there were definitely people travelling that road at that time, even though today it's a tiny little rat run of the lane that, you know, only locals move.

59:34

So yeah.

So it's really just what what back in the day would have been the kind of area that would have been wooded, wild, a little bit remote.

And that's what's going to make me more prone, definitely.

And I think it's important for people to realise that this is obviously pre any kind of British Constabulary kind of patrolling and policing of these roads.

59:59

So you've got these, you've got these routes for which.

People are travelling, going from one place to the other and you've got nobody patrolling and monitoring those and, and doing something to try and prevent highway robbery.

1:00:15

So when you have people who are in need, who for them, this is their, their way of feeding their family, for them, this is their way of life.

You've got nobody stopping them.

At this point.

It's, it's a, it's an easy thing to fall into based on the times of the day.

1:00:32

And until you have the, the British police coming into existence, you've got nobody really doing anything to stop them.

It's quite difficult to stop them because you got to know where they're going to be, which comes back to what you're saying.

You know, they, they try to stick to these out of the way places, the unpredictable places whereby it was going to be easier for them to get away with what they were doing without fear of, of punishment and, and all the things that came if they were found doing what they were doing.

1:01:04

And so it's, it's, it's, I think important to understand that aspect of it to then understand what what was transpiring in this period of time and why we have the stories that we do today that still exist to reflect some of that history.

1:01:20

And don't forget as well, but Britain itself was far less densely populated than it is now, but massively less densely populated.

So there were huge slaves with very, very ancient forests, you know, or moorland or marshland.

1:01:41

You know, my own village, Master Morton, it means the village in the marsh, you know, East Anglia, for example, it was all still marshes, you know, before it was drained.

All these places were remote, They were difficult, but people still have to cross them, either get to the port, you know, or if they were going on the pilgrimage in medieval times, they would be traveling along down the final England to get on the continent, to carry on down the Holy Land.

1:02:12

You know, people still needed to travel, but it took them much longer and it was a much more dangerous occupation than the end of the day because like you say, there wasn't police sports, no way to.

Yeah, this was the Wild West of its tidal effect, wasn't it?

1:02:29

And it would only be if you happened to have an area where the road went through, perhaps the lands of a rich sheriff or a rich monastery or something.

And they paid to have toll keepers or ever keep the road and and keep an eye on it that it might be a bit safer for, for travellers.

1:02:51

But maybe This is why the fear of The Highwaymen, it's kind of more embedded in our social cycle, if you like, you know that it does come forward and abode in one of the past because that was the thing to be seared off, you know, the robbers, the bandit, you know, and then there were wolves and what happened so far back, enough roaming as well as wild boar and so on.

1:03:17

So you know, you had the danger from the animals, but you also had a very real danger of being attacked and travelling.

So it is one of those things that you can see why it becomes a bit of a trope when you really think about what the times were like.

And I think it's, it's also one of those elements of our history that because of the fact that these were people travelling from one coaching into the next, these stories of Hwy.

1:03:43

Highway when highwaymen went from 1 area to the next.

So they kind of travelled from place to place and, and I think we've only continued to do that.

You know, there is this real kind of intrigue in that, that it's, it's something that stayed, it's endured.

1:03:59

And I think it's partly because of, of the very nature of, of how they were told and spoken of, of the day and what we know about them like we've been talking about because, you know, this was a way of life that was, it wasn't easy.

It was quite harsh.

1:04:14

I mean, if they were found doing what they were doing, there were some harsh punishments.

And I don't know if you want to kind of share what you know about what happened to highwaymen typically when it came to when it.

Comes to chatting core, yeah.

1:04:30

Yeah, what happened to them?

Because you know, it's, it's, it's definitely part of their story.

And again, I think it feeds into why we're so interested in their history and the the accounts of them.

Because wherever you go, there are accounts of, of highwaymen.

There's this local and and storytelling that exists of these people, but their story comes from someone and somewhere.

1:04:52

And like I said, I don't know if you want to explain what the typical punishments were for these individuals and their crimes.

Well, it's really interesting because the popular myth that most people will think of when they think of a high women is most high women ghosts are tend to be reported as headless horsemen.

1:05:15

You know, headless high women, often with a headless horse.

Well, weirdly.

And yet we've very rarely been headed people in British history in actual fact.

So how that translates what we actually did to them to their ghosts being headless is a bit of a strange one.

1:05:37

And the other myth that seems to be the ground a lot is that we hung them in gibbets to die on these lonely roads.

Now everybody doesn't know would give it.

It was essentially a big tall post, you know, probably about 1215 feet high from which was hung an iron cage and the person was locked into the iron cage which fitted quite neatly around their body and when literally left there to gradually die of burst and exposure and whatever.

1:06:05

That's quite a popular myth, but it actually very rarely happened that people were hung in the gibbet's life.

Very rare indeed.

The the most common punishment for highwaymen was simple hanging.

1:06:22

You know if you were caught and convicted of Hwy. robbery you were hung.

Occasionally you did get the more gruesome 1.

So there is a story on the A6 around Barrack Gill, which I think if I can Cumbria and one of the things they used to regularly do, it's the highwayman would be taken back to the scene of his crime and hung there as a warning to, you know, his confederate for whatever in the area, rather bandit in the area.

1:06:58

And he'd he'd actually be hung there.

And then generally what happened was his dead body was hung in a gibbet to gradually rotten fester and hang there as a warning.

So you know anybody else who was going to misbehave in the same way with this particular highwayman?

1:07:15

The legend is it and and the story of the haunting is that he was taken back to the scene of his crime and he was whole.

But they didn't take enough of an account of the drop that was needed to break his neck when they hung in.

1:07:32

So when they dropped him, he just swung there gasping and fighting for breath in a in a really awful way.

And the legend is that a passing poachman, he's always described the passing poachman, took pity on this poor soul struggling at the end of the rope and shopping.

1:07:53

And the haunting is that you're supposed to be able to still hear the sound of that gap being and choking in the area where the hanging post was on just off the just beside the A6 at Barrett Gill.

So I wrote to the pub that was nearest which was the Rose and Crown and asked them if they knew anything about it.

1:08:17

And they very kindly bonded.

They actually knew quite a bit with being medical to it.

And they were able to tell me that in 1768, John Whitfield was the actual hireman in question and that the local regions that rather than being hung, he was gibbeted alive on the hill.

1:08:40

Hence the moans and gaffes suddenly died.

And hence the fact that somebody eventually passing the slide.

But they've done a bit more research, the Raven Crown.

And they were able to tell me that there is a St.

James's Chronicle dated August the 12th, 1768 and that read that on Wednesday, John Whitfield for murdering William Coburn on the highway near Armathwaite was executed at Carlisle and afterwards hung in chains near the place where the murder committee.

1:09:17

So the whole story of the haunting isn't actually true.

He wasn't taken back to that place and you wouldn't be able to hear him gasping.

And because that didn't happen, he was hung at Carlisle and then his body was trans 40 to the Asus Barrett Gill and hung in a gibbet there to act as a a warning while it's gradually blocked the way.

1:09:45

So yeah, quite gruesome really.

And then there's another one.

This is this is one actually from Ireland.

And and this is a slightly more gruesome one.

It's a gruesome subject.

Unfortunately, apparently this particular hireman decided to rob a wealthy house along the road, a slight change of job description for the light.

1:10:11

So he broke into a house, robbed it, and made his escape on horseback with his bag of stolen good.

But the guards of the house, a set of strung a piece of wire across the gate posts because that's the highwayman rode through it at full Gallup making his escape.

1:10:29

His head was severed clean from his body by the piece of wire.

And so therefore that bit of Rd. is called Cribbily Rd.

I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correct.

In Ballymena in Ireland is supposed to still be haunted by his headless ghost still on horseback, particularly around the time of Halloween each year.

1:10:50

And that is why that particular ghost is headless, because they thought that, you know, he had his head severed by this wire.

But there are other versions of the same haunting, you know, this headless ghost.

And there's several other stories to explain it, the most colourful of which is that a local Squire had an argument with his lover one night and stormed off out of the house, got on his horse and galloped off in a bit of a rage.

1:11:17

But he was so angry, he didn't wait for servant to open the gate of the house.

He just tried to force his horse to jump them and the horse shield and didn't, but he was flung off and decapitated when he hit the fights on top of the gate.

1:11:35

So it's his ghost that haunts for the headless gate.

So yeah, quite interesting that you can have these different hauntings for the apparent when getting rid of a high women, but the most common one was simply to hang them.

1:11:50

In later centuries.

I think some were deported to Australia but you know, in earlier centuries they were hung.

Just like Tales of Highwaymen, you have such unique and interesting stories, real stories.

1:12:06

They're real accounts.

They vary just as much as the ghost law that surrounds them.

And again, I think this is partly the intriguing aspect of them that the real story, that they're real kind of life behind the person that exists as this story in this particular area.

1:12:21

As you know, the ghostly tales that still exist, they are so varied.

I mean, some that can be particularly harsh, some that can appear more lenient.

Somewhere the crowd seems to really be in favour of this highwayman where their their deeds are seen as being something more heroic.

1:12:41

And then in other cases, the complete opposite of this, you know, you have such an extreme variety of individuals and stories and accounts and what happened to them.

And it just adds to this richness.

I think of their the tapestry of the of their stories and and the ghost stories that exist around them.

1:13:01

I think so.

And I think, well, that that's a nod to the fact that in modern times, we tend to look back and think highwaymen, whereas in all those centuries, it wasn't highwaymen as a job description, if you like, it was so, and so, you know, Joe Blog, in some cases, the other thing, who was caught for whatever crime.

1:13:29

And so the the harshness or leniency of the crime either way, and how the crowd viewed it, depending on what that person had actually done.

You know, it's, it's a much more nuanced set of history, if you like, because these these were foot pads.

1:13:48

They were bandits.

They were highwaymen that we've been living on a horse.

You know, they they filled the whole range of essentially robbing or murdering or stealing from people.

1:14:05

You know, either while the people are sleeping the the coachings or by actually, you know, stopping the coach or stopping the rider and you know, in his cart and the horse thought of that and city robbing them on the spot or on some occasions murdering them.

And of course, it depends on which crime they're being caught for.

1:14:23

And as to, you know, how that particular area was being run and by whom as to whether their punishment would end up being harsh or or leniently.

If you were in an area where the local Lord of the Manor was a right tyrant and, you know, was taxing the people beyond sort of starvation point and behaving like an absolute horror.

1:14:54

And then some poor lad who stole, you know, a few loaves of bread and a few coins from one of his bailiffs.

Perhaps, like out on the road, the crowd are going to be more looming.

Even though we we now can't think of that person as a highwayman.

1:15:11

They're going to be thinking of it as little Jimmy from around the corner who was pushed into this because of the, you know, half behaviour of the, of the landlord sort of thing.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's a broad, broad area of history spanning several centuries.

1:15:29

And of course within that, for more than several centuries, a lot of centuries.

And of course within that you've got all sorts of different characters and all sorts of different reasons.

So it's only kind of in more modern days, probably since the advent of film, when we've got this picture in our heads of highwaymen as dashing handsome chappies all dressed in, you know, shiny black stacking and leather and, you know, very dandy looking, sort of brandishing their shiny pistols at the side of the road and shouting stand in the liver.

1:16:02

That kind of comes from the film.

And you know, in particularly the sort of earlier film, you know, from 1920s onwards, that image of a highwayman is now in our heads socially.

That's not what was really a hireman.

1:16:20

So in, in actual fact, if you look at one particular one in, in Bristol, it's called Pembroke Rd.

It's actually the B44.

The most sources that you that you will read will describe that ghost as Jenkins called the rope a notorious hireman and he's described as a hidden something dwarf the unusually long arms who would wait at the side of the road tending to be injured and whenever anybody stopped to help he'd leap up and rob them.

1:16:54

And the actual historical version of that is that 26th of March 1783 gentleman William Cavaro was tried for murder and sentenced.

He executed by hanging and then his body was divided or hanging planes on Durham Down, which is just around there.

1:17:13

And in actual fact, you know this, although we've got this modern day idea that they were hung in gibbet to to die when they weren't usually their dead body.

That doesn't take away the horror of it because the individual would be taken lying to the blacksmith and fitted for the cage very often because they not put too gruesome a point on it.

1:17:39

The cage had fit closely enough around the human body as it slowly decayed.

It would stay in one piece within The Cave because otherwise it would just fall off the chains and wolves and whatever would scatter it and that would be that.

So they wanted the body to stay like a skeleton in The Cave as it gradually rocked away.

1:18:00

So the cage had to be fitted quite closely around the person, which meant they were quite often built to measure, if you like.

And that was done while the person was alive.

And if you can imagine the horror of that, to know that you're about to be hung and at the edge, fitting you into this iron cage ready for when you're hung.

1:18:18

Yeah.

Quite, quite.

Yeah.

Horrific.

It is.

And.

It's truly horrific.

It's almost like a a, a made to measure suit.

But it was it was done precisely to make an example of them to act as this warning that this is what could happen to you.

1:18:36

And of course, these were erected in in places and they were high enough so that they could be seen for miles around.

And again, it was all done to show them off in as a warning that this is not something that we want people to do as a as a means of making their living.

1:18:55

This is the punishment that will befall on you if you do something similar.

And again, I think this is where some of the stories around them then continue that these local stories that began around these highwaymen that then continued that have become ghost legends and local legends is again, another warning.

1:19:16

It's that reminder that if you if you do this, this is the kind of death that you could have.

And then you are going to be like these ghostly stories that exist of these highwaymen.

You're not going to be given the sanctity and the peace that everyone else is supposed to be promised in death, you know, and, and, and it's all there.

1:19:37

You can kind of again, kind of again understand why they became so embedded in the in the local storytelling and again, something that's continued over the centuries.

Absolutely.

And you know what's really fascinating for me anyway, I love it and I'm doing my report, that particular one in Bristol, Jenkins Croparo, his body was hung in the gibbet and where he committed death, murder.

1:20:06

And the historical record actually shows that locals in that area after a time petitioned for that giveth to be taken down because the site and stench of it as it slowly rotted away was turning people away from visiting nearby Hot Springs.

1:20:24

And so all the businesses associated with those Hot Springs are suffering because of this rotting body on a post.

Isn't that awful?

Gosh, that is that's quite a find to come across that.

That's incredible.

And somewhat revolting.

But it's, but it's, again, it's kind of matching up, isn't it?

1:20:42

History with these, these stories that still exist and experiences that people have.

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And I don't know if, as you know, part of what you were doing in gathering these stories and other research that you've done, if you had any particular fascinating or significant highwaymen individuals that you came across that really stood out for you, that you that you haven't mentioned yet.

1:25:35

Well, you would, you would be really remiss talking about highwaymen not mention Dick Turpin, wouldn't you?

I mean, everybody just about I would imagine has heard of Dick Turpin at some point because he is the epitome of high women legends, you know, within, within the UK.

1:26:00

You know, he's, he's supposed to have done the amazing ride from London to York on his faithful mare Blackbuck and all that.

And there's loads of swashbucken stories about and it's quite amazing how how broadly you'll find stories of a highwayman and it hinted at it, it could well have been dipped up and just how wide an area they claimed he was covering.

1:26:31

And I suspect that that's very much like I always chuckle about the ghost of Anne Boleyn, who quite frankly, if she is a ghost and haunting, she's clocking that overtime card as hard as she can because she popped up in so many different properties all over the place.

1:26:50

You know, she really is working the other life.

And if if Dick Curtin is responsible for as many high women ghosts to be claimed to be, he's doing the same.

You know, he's really getting his overtiming, whereas I suspect he's just become the representation, if you like, of a high women.

1:27:09

And it's funny because right right into the 1940 we was being used for things.

So I found this account.

There's enough to be guy that you said just down the road from me here in Bedfordshire.

The property there called Woodfield House, very old property and allegedly Dick Turpin used to use the nearby Ashley Woods as one of his hideouts.

1:27:34

I'd have my doubts of that myself because we're quite away from the A1 here and that tend to be more where he was talking about.

Of course, you know, that was his back.

But anyway, legend says that he, you know, used that forward and was one on his highway and that on Dark Knights where the mist was hanging, you can still hear the echo of his horses.

1:27:53

He's travelling down the lane now and where the cock flames.

Interestingly, in the late 1940s, and this this is historical record, the owner then of Woodfield House was a chap called Blame and Tea.

You happen to live in Ilpai Island in Twickenham.

1:28:10

What a great name is a place to live.

And he lodged an appeal in the court against the stated value of Woodfield House that he owned, claiming he couldn't let it out for rent because it was so haunted.

1:28:27

And he said, you know, from deposition to the court was that Dick Turpin had been an acquaintance of a family who'd lived at Woodfield House back forever.

And that Dick had happened to discover that the head of the household had murdered his own daughter and her lover, sealing them up alive in a cupboard within the property.

1:28:49

And rather than doing the decent thing and reporting the chat to but authorities as they were then, Dick Turpin being Dick Turpin and a high women and a nasty well saw in this an opportunity for blackmail.

1:29:05

And he blackmailed this owner of the house into letting him use the house as a faithful hole and would also extort money out of it.

And Blaney Key, the owner of the house now in the 1940s, said that he couldn't rent the house out, but it wasn't worth what it was being claimed to be worth for taxes or something.

1:29:27

Because the ghost of this murdered daughter still haunted Woodfield Hill, his appeal fell because the investigator for the defence showed that the house had been built in 1820 and Dick Turpin was handed in 1739, so therefore he could not possibly have been in that house and found anything out about the owner.

1:29:54

You know, the timing is nearly 100 years old, claimed to use Dick Turpin in the 1940s.

Of course it doesn't actually prove that the house wasn't in fact haunted by a murdered girl, which is who the ghost is supposed to be.

Just means Dick Turpin had nothing to do with it.

1:30:11

And I, you know, you can't help but wonder if if old Blaney King hadn't been trying to use such a famous name, would he have actually managed to get away with his claim about the haunted house.

But it was just about the new Dick Turpin that made the whole tale fall and touristy, just as a lovely little ending to tale.

1:30:30

I did find a witness who told me that her uncle had seen the ghost of Victor actually riding along with the cock lane.

Thought it might even have been far back in the 1940s that her Uncle Thorne.

I would counter that with when he saw the ghost of.

1:30:48

Somebody on the horse.

But I don't suppose anybody living knows what Victor can actually look like.

You know, if you put a line up of Ben on horses, they're all, you know, riding a Black Horse, We wouldn't be able to pick one of them over the other.

1:31:03

But very interesting that I've actually got a live witness of somebody's an apparent highwayman along that that lane.

Not within my usual time scale, but at least with a living memory.

But yeah, so that's that's Victoria Turpin, you know, so famous and still still making court appearances in 1940.

1:31:26

I think he's.

I mean, I think you hit.

The nail on the head he's.

Just so well travelled.

He does seem to be to appear everywhere.

And I think you're right.

I think it's it's partly down to he's just so well known that he's almost become the representation of just the figure of the highwayman itself.

1:31:45

It's just something recognizable that can be named as well.

It's possibly this individual because so many other names are lost, you know, so many other names just aren't known in in quite the same manner.

But it is it is intriguing how he does get about he is the Anne Boleyn of the.

1:32:04

Highwaymen ghost world, I tell you, he's a very busy ghost, a bit like Oliver Cromwell.

His ghost knocked up the overtime as well.

Absolutely.

So do you have any particular memorable stories and legends?

About highwaymen that just stand out for you, that you've made it into the book or just personally.

1:32:22

There were just so many different ones that are, you know, sort.

Of memorable or particularly intriguing or anything.

It's quite hard to pick anyone out if I'm honest.

I mean there's one Hemel Hempstead on the B487.

1:32:39

Now this was only in 2009 and I found a source that said a driver passing this way for down this little tiny Rd. shortly after midnight or a caped figure with a wide brimmed hat crossed the road in front of his car that disappeared in the approach wasn't on a horse.

1:32:59

This is just a, a, a caped figure with a wide brimmed hat.

And that's that's what the source said.

And I went out locally as I always do, you know, asking on social media and so many people wrote back to me to say, oh, that story in 2009, everybody locally think we saw Lady Catherine Farrow, the ghost of she was the notorious Hwy. woman, the wicked Lady.

1:33:31

So all around that bit of sort of Hemel Hempstead and across sort of across the Saint Alban, we have all around that area and you'll see pubs called the Wicked Lady and and so on.

And it's all this Lady Catherine Farrah's member.

1:33:48

Of the nobility.

Had plenty of money no need to be out robbing people.

But for whatever reason, legend has it, you know, she decided it was more fun at night to dress up in what we'd think of as traditional high women garb, you know very dashing lace sleeved black leathered tight kit and go out on a horse and and rock people.

1:34:14

And she was eventually bought to book for it.

So I always think that one's a bit fascinating that the the original source didn't claim it was the wicked lady.

But when when you talk to people locally, everybody assumes it must have been the wicked lady because she was the one year and just kind of coming back to something that you were talking about earlier, which.

1:34:30

Was, you know, this role of the coaching in in terms of the the history of highwaymen, you know, these were coaches going from one coaching in to another.

And of course, that's where we get the name coaching in themselves are fascinating and they have their own kind of stories to share.

1:34:46

I think when it comes to paranormal activity reports of highwaymen.

And again, I don't know if you want to kind of touch upon the role that they played in terms of the activities and, and some of the eventual captures of, of highwaymen and how they can kind of get pulled into some of these stories of, of ghostly highwaymen.

1:35:06

If you, if you can kind of, I don't know, share any of that that you know about.

I only know a little bit about it because of course I I.

Focusing on hauntings rather than necessarily history, although I delve a bit into history when I found a haunting.

1:35:22

So I'm kind of going the other way around, if you know what I mean.

But if you think about what we were talking about earlier where you had to get from one side of the country to the other.

And this was a journey of several days.

This was split up and broken up by these coaching.

So they were literally everywhere.

1:35:39

If you, if you go in any village or small town or even the bigger town still in the UK and just drive around and look for one of the pubs that has an archway next to it or as part of it or even a closed off archway, you know, it's now bricked over.

1:35:55

That used to be a coaching because the archway is where the coaches rode through.

And then literally when when you start looking around like that, they're just everywhere.

There were so many of them and the coaching is themselves.

I mean, you know, historically they were often the focus.

1:36:15

Of much of.

The village life or the town life around them because they were the one public building at the time, so they were used for when the quarter sizes came round.

They weren't used for.

1:36:31

Jail cell for people, if they were caught, they were used to as morgue, contemporary morgue if somebody had murdered.

And no doubt but that highwaymen will have stained in them sometimes, not only just to, you know, go and tilt a few pockets and things while everybody else was asleep, but because they themselves need a hot meal and a bedroom every now and again.

1:36:54

And if they've managed to make enough money in any given week, no doubt that they did get their horses into at the stables there and get themselves, you know, an item, you know, prep the hot meal in a cup.

They must have played a huge role.

1:37:10

In the whole.

Transactional business, if you like, as as the life cycle of the highway because you know, we were saying earlier that there was no police force as such.

Well, that also meant there was no court houses that we would think of.

1:37:27

Like we have to say, you know, every town has a magistrate's court somehow grail courts, etcetera.

And there's a whole infrastructure in place through much of British history.

Justice.

Would be spent.

At the Asylacis, which is in effect a travelling court.

1:37:44

So they, you know, the Asylacis would arrive at Bristol or, or like an old Saint Albans, wherever and they would sit in court for a few weeks where they would hear all the cases and dispense justice and then move on.

1:38:01

So they were often held in the coaching in, you know, they'd, they'd take a room up for it if there was a coaching crash.

The injured.

People would be brought to the.

Coaching in if.

Somebody was murdered, the the body would be brought to the coaching in.

1:38:20

If the highwayman was caught, he'd be brought to the coaching in and locked up somewhere until the advisers came up.

So huge, huge part.

And they certainly, we definitely we do get ghosts of high women relating to various pubs around the plane.

1:38:40

So certainly one springs to mind Doctrine on the Forest, they used to be, I don't think it's the pub anymore, but it used to be called the Fort Hall Hotel, which was going on its own right on the a 64.

I think it's longer been shut but in 2006 a driver was passing this and some stories say that he saw a fiddle on horseback standing beside the pub.

1:39:07

Other stories say he saw the man dressed in Highlands and clothing leaning against the ward club and holding a horse by the bridle.

So there's both versions of that.

But whichever version reads they all say he looked back in his rearview mirror and and the vision had disappeared.

1:39:26

But that pub would probably have been a coaching in back in the day.

Interesting.

That's one of the ones that whatever account you find all says the figure is seen regularly Fighting came back to 1950, but I haven't been able to find a single fighting of it other than that one that's reported in 2000.

1:39:45

So, you know, figure out what you will.

Or wasn't it a highwayman?

Because I often think, well, how would you do it was a highwayman?

Like like I said earlier, they didn't wear a uniform.

You know, that's only in modern myth.

If you like, since we had television.

1:40:03

To dress them up in a certain way, just like they did pirates.

We think of pirates is dressed in a certain way.

And you know.

So what he actually saw was a chap with a horse leaning against the pub that then disappeared.

Could that not be the ghost of one of the victims for the high women?

1:40:22

We couldn't necessarily say it was a high women.

And I actually think that's quite interesting because it's like, well, how are you?

Identifying this.

Person, even if you say, oh, that was Dick Turpin, how do you know?

How do you know what Dick Turpin looks like Is the answer.

Exactly.

1:40:39

But I do think the.

It kind of gets pulled into.

It again, because it's something familiar and it's known and, and you know, like you mentioned, you know, coaching Inns are just part of the the everyday life and death of highwaymen for so many different reasons.

1:40:55

And again, this is where I think you can see just being made to, to fit in some ways or yeah, just being brought into the mix.

I mean, there's a, there's a classic example of close to where I am where in Oxfordshire you have the Holt Hotel, which is forever linked to Claude Duval, who was there, the French gentleman highwayman who was known to frequent that that area.

1:41:20

He did stay in in the hotel.

That's not dispute, you know, that's not in dispute.

It's known that he stayed there.

But somehow his legend when it comes to the hauntings of the Halt of which, you know, people report hearing ghostly footsteps in their bedrooms and out in the corridors, that's become Claude Duvall.

1:41:42

And somehow he's been linked to a murder that took place in the Halt Hotel where one of the previous landlords, you know, his wife was murdered at the hotel.

Now, if we take that, it's a, it's quite a leap to go from where we.

1:41:59

Know Claude Duvall.

Stayed here to these footsteps are definitely his.

And somehow this murder that has become this ghostly story and an account of the hotel is linked to Claude Duvall, whom we know was a gentleman highwayman.

He never committed violence.

1:42:15

And that's part of of what we know about his execution.

You know, it's sung about him.

He did not commit violence.

If you look at the portraitures, portraits of him of the day, you know, you see him with the the frilly cuff and collar and so forth, bowing and dancing with the ladies.

1:42:32

You know he wasn't committing murder in in the Halt Hotel.

It's highly unlikely he had anything to do with it.

But somehow it's become embroiled in the story of the Halt simply because he stayed there on his way to somewhere else.

And that is so true of how we like to.

1:42:51

Assign somebody famous to our ghosts in the UK.

Somehow I always think of this one.

I think it might be Hampton Court.

Palace.

One of the royal properties anyway, where the ghost, I think it's laid again grey was supposed to haunt and and soon of her is the the swish of a brown skirt goes to her.

1:43:18

I think I've remembered that right then, because it always fascinates me.

It's like, how could you attribute the swish of a skirt to any specific person in history?

Yeah, of all the, of all the.

1:43:35

Ladies who would have worn a brown.

Skirt at some point with that colouring it's got to be her yeah yeah and you know when there's been hundreds and.

Hundreds of ladies.

At least, if not more, Who swished up and down those halls over the centuries?

1:43:52

You know, how could you possibly say that with one particular?

Lady or another?

What you what you have got is an interesting bit of haunting.

Possibly, you know that To me that's much more interesting than it must have been a Berlin or like Jane Grey or, you know, people or whoever.

1:44:13

But yes, we seem to want to negoti this somehow sexier or more reflectible or something if we say it's someone famous, because I think most of the time like like so it's some poor schmuck.

I think quite often the ghost that we see that people, you know, become known as a high woman.

1:44:35

I often wonder is it the high woman or is it the victim we're seeing?

You're seeing something you know that legend has got enough about were the ones.

Where I've found people that have actually.

Seen something, you know, but how do we know that that was a high win?

1:44:50

And why, why, why could that not have been the victims still holding the egg when they died?

Fascinating.

You can see where I go.

I run myself down such rabbit holes that I'm doing my research when I get so fascinated with it because at the end of the day, from my perspective, what I'm writing about, you know, I find the correlations that people are experiencing in the paranormal, you know, so the hotel that you just mentioned, you know, something is happening in there that that then this this whole story grows around that possibly has zero truth in reality, but the actual haunting itself is nevertheless simply happening.

1:45:38

Absolutely.

It's just, it's something completely different that causing it, you know, and again, just coming back to what we were saying, it's it's interesting how some.

Of these figures then travel from place to place based on what we know about them.

But again, the same question then arises, is it actually them?

1:45:54

I mean, I can think of another example from around where I am of, of very notorious highwaymen who were a trio of brothers called the Dunston Brothers.

And they were brutal, really savage, very well known in the area for committing really rather heinous acts.

1:46:14

And they did not just limit.

Themselves.

To to the roads they were they were known to try and commit acts of robbery, you know, violence wherever they could and in one and how they basically ended up kind of their demise, if you like, was they attempted to burgle to rob a manner in the area and it went terribly, terribly wrong.

1:46:37

One of the brothers called Dick amongst these trios actually lost his arm and because then nothing is known of him later, it's assumed he he later died of his injuries.

But the remaining two brothers were were caught.

They were taken to Gloucester where they were tried.

1:46:55

They were executed there and then their bodies were brought back to Oxfordshire where their ghost then appears around the tree which was close to the the Gib.

You know, the the gibbet that they were ever literally left in to rot into decay.

1:47:15

As we've touched upon, they are known to frequent a former public house where again they weren't, they were known to frequent the manner in which they were attempting to rob.

I mean they literally crop up every single place you can imagine where again, they were associated as as either staying, robbing, dying, or you're not dying but being placed after their death.

1:47:40

And they are everywhere across Oxfordshire if you start to look for them.

But you.

Can almost.

Track their story of how it's how it's been embedded in in the local history, the local storytelling, the local myth telling because they were so notorious that they've just continued to be talked about long after their death.

1:48:02

And therefore anything that's paranormal that that.

Happens exactly.

In an area they were known to be operating.

Yeah, it's the Dunstone brothers.

It's likely to be them in.

People's minds.

Yeah, exactly.

And.

It might be, if I'm not saying it, definitely no, it couldn't be.

But by the same time it might not be.

1:48:19

We have, you know, we have a very long history and we haven't yet established what exactly causes the haunting.

So yeah, who knows?

I do get quite fascinated by this.

It is definitive ascribing, you know, but it is.

Fascinating.

And, and I think one of the other fascinating aspects are.

1:48:36

Some of the, shall we say, the kind of common features that get attributed to these this overall ton of trope, if you like, of The Highwaymen ghost ghostly tale in British folklore.

And and I don't know if you want to just kind of elaborate on that.

1:48:52

The types of typical things that you've come across that get shared with you in terms of something that is expected that we imagine.

And we kind of all.

Expect when it comes to the The Highwaymen ghost ghostly story so many of our high women ghost stories.

1:49:10

Are headless islands.

Often with a headless 4.

And I'm sure we never beheaded horses in our history.

You know, that just wasn't the thing that we've done.

I'm sure it was the odd accident when one got beheaded, but it wasn't the thing to beheaded, you know, horses, a murderer or whatever.

1:49:27

And we didn't even behead the high women.

So why the ghosts of all ended up being headless, I don't know.

I don't know why that gets.

Into you.

Know popular myths if you like, but so often you you get accounts.

1:49:45

People say it looked like a highwayman.

I mean, there's a there's, there's one of water watermen Still and Hulbert race.

Lots of people apparently have seen the secret man standing at the end of the road close to the graveyard, and he's described as looking like a highwayman.

1:50:09

What do you actually mean by that, you know?

It's that what do you?

Actually mean by are you saying they've got the sort of typical tricorn hat, They've got a cloak on, they're carrying pistols at their belt.

What part of that?

1:50:24

I was saying highway but people don't question so that gets written down as.

The description.

You know, I saw this man standing there and he looked like a highwayman.

If I was interviewed, I'd say, well, what do you mean?

1:50:42

What?

What about him made you think Highwayman?

Give me a description.

But we seem to just accept that description as if it it were a thing when, as you know, I've touched him before it wasn't a thing.

You know.

Highwayman were just people who robbed and murdered and whatever on the highway.

1:51:03

They didn't have a specific uniform or specific form of dress.

The most you could say is they're likely to have been wearing dark coloured clothing because their activities were at night mostly so.

Yeah, I think that's the most.

Common feature.

1:51:19

Is.

He looks like I Yeah, it's just the way the mind thinks, isn't it?

But it is.

And I And I wonder if that just comes back to well.

Being near a road.

So therefore the automatic assumption is Highwayman.

And something that you you spoke of earlier, I think really resonates.

1:51:36

I mean, very often in the scenarios do we ever learn the victims names, those that were murdered, of which, you know, this did happen.

People were savagely beaten and sometimes killed as part of these acts.

But very often those names now are completely lost unless you really dig into the history.

1:51:55

And so it, it's a very natural question to to ask, is it what we're seeing The Highwaymen or like you said earlier, or is it the victims because they're by these locations near their place of death?

You know, as I said, history has remembered the names of some of these highwaymen, sometimes more than others.

1:52:15

But their exploits have been recorded because they were these figures of warning.

Their stories have continued to be told and told and told and told in all these different guises, including ghost law, but their victims haven't.

And so again, it's it's almost where our mind naturally goes to.

1:52:35

It is the logical question to ask, is what we're seeing truly exactly what we think it is?

Or is this more to do with the crimes that were committed themselves and the victims of those crimes and some kind of echo of that that makes just as much sense as the the squashbuckling highwayman on his horse, headless or otherwise, being something that is being witnessed and seen in that moment.

1:52:59

The victim does it.

When you think about, you know, this could be somebody who.

Was just riding home from dinner at his mother's back to his Manor house and he fell off his horse and Derby.

Exactly.

Yeah, but he's wearing a coat and a hat because.

He was travelling and it was drizzly.

And that's what people wore then when they were riding, you know, it's, it's our mind that loops to high women, I think.

1:53:24

And and that that detail again, I think is so important because.

Obviously these these locations were used all of the time.

People had to get from A to B either by foot or by horse and accidents were commonplace.

But precisely because they were commonplace, you know, someone could be thrown from their horse or they may have an accident where they slip down the side of a banking and and injure themselves and succumb to their injuries, whatever that may be, That's not going to be particularly noteworthy.

1:53:53

So that gets again, pushed to the back of stories that get told about and repeated over time.

But the highwayman doesn't because it's got that something that meant that it lasted the centuries of of retelling as opposed to just the the general accidents that would have happened all of the time by the nature of these places being so heavily used by the the population of the time.

1:54:21

I wonder if I mean there isn't a way to go back because.

Recording history gets more and more stuff the further back you go, doesn't it?

What you can actually find written down.

But I wonder if you were able to go back to, I don't know, say 1300 and something and look at the social media version of that day where they would have been talking about highwaymen then.

1:54:49

And it's that that carries down.

Or whether.

Actually the whole term hireman is a much later invention.

You know, from legends around sort.

Of liberty.

Lady and Dick Turpin, you know, they're very much the sort of 17 hundreds, 1800s and then we get.

1:55:11

Into the early. 1900s and they're romanticized on film and in books.

Is that what's actually called the whole trope?

Or if you if there was such a possibility to.

Go back and look.

With what was the trope in 1300s about people who rob on highways, would we still have a highwayman trope?

1:55:33

And I suspect the answer is probably not.

Probably a later invention we don't like today.

We tend to think of Christmas as massive residence.

There's always been a Christmas, but it's really just a Victorian invention, you know, It's really that the whole celebrating of Christmas thing in the way that we think of it, and so many of the iconic, the symbolism for it, if Victorian, it's not older than that, but we've forgotten that because that's in our history of Victoria, you know.

1:56:05

But I think it's the same for all ghost stories.

Unless you actually see the face of the apparition, and it happens to be a face of someone you know, it's very hard to assign who that might be by whoever's witnessing them, and even more so when we're.

1:56:20

Just talking about.

You know, a figure on a horse and even more so if the figure's headless, no chance of staying who it was because they haven't got a head.

And I think comes back to something that you said from the outset in terms.

Of you don't try and come up with, you know, a particular answer to these experiences because I think it comes back to that precisely that what is likely is a haunting what what we actually understand is is happening in in these circumstances and these experiences.

1:56:52

For that person, that's genuinely what they think they're seeing and experiencing a highwayman.

For someone else, it might be something completely different that they feel it is or attribute it to it.

It becomes very personal and it's hard to then disagree with that because you weren't there.

1:57:08

You haven't experienced it.

It comes back to what you were saying about, I think one of the intriguing things of what you do is by open this up, opening this up to collect these experiences, you're documenting them.

And what you do see very, very clearly and very well, I think are hotspots where there are various different accounts or locations that are very close to each other.

1:57:35

A road that's close to another Rd., for example, where again, these same types of experiences are being reported.

And that's where I think there's really interesting and again, intriguing things that come out of that.

Going along with that line.

I don't know if there's any particular hotspots or areas that you found that came up through your research where you know, some of these are just, there's so many of them that there's, you know, various different accounts of these types of experiences that make it quite intriguing that these have become almost hotspots for this type of reported experience or something like it, if you like.

1:58:16

I haven't got any specifically hotspot.

For different types of high women, if you feel to me what I have got is I've got a real hotspot.

I've thought that was before so some of your listeners might have heard to speak that or that I've got a real hotspot up in Rising in Redford.

1:58:35

Rising is a small, typically in British village, lovely brown building, mostly one high strength run for it and then you have a few small feet cockets, very rural arable land around it with some sort of ship path, a few cow patches.

1:58:54

Very typical industry.

And I, I think I'm up to 8 or 9 accounts now of some kind of equine entity that holds the land around there.

1:59:11

It's never seen with a rider.

The horse is always seen just as the horse.

But I've often wondered it, you know, is that because it was a horse that belonged to a hireman.

And you know, I've often wondered that myself about that one.

1:59:29

And it's never, you know, it's seen in daytime, it's seen at night time.

It's seen both as an actual whore or sometimes it's just herd.

It's heard sort of snorting and stamping in broad daylight like that's to where people are walking.

1:59:47

It's heard it gone midnight tip topping down the highway St. and yet nothing to be seen.

It's been seen at rocks with a field with a sort of orangey glow around the hall.

It's been seen leaping out of the head across the road in the main beams caught in the main beams of a car headlight.

2:00:08

And you can see the hedge on the other side, but just the outline of the horse not building.

So.

And all these accounts are ones that I found from the witness directly.

So these are all directly from the first hand witness and they all started from one source story that I found in a book somewhere I forgot where from the top of the hub as a farmer who experienced.

2:00:38

It in in daylight.

Working on the ditch, on the side of the road, on the field ditch, you know, edge of his field and he heard a horse galloping towards him and he sort of stood up and bent over working with it just in time to hear the horse.

2:00:54

Crash through the hedge, right?

Next to him and gallop on down the road away from him, but nothing could be seen.

So that's the first account and.

Then you know, going out.

Locally, I've had to keep updating it from various stuff, my books because more and more people when they read it in the book and then write them and say, Oh my God, I've seen such and such of on there and what have you and and it's now widened out slightly.

2:01:19

Somebody's given me an account a couple of miles away at another village, but very similar thing of, you know, then say the horse diving past them in the dark.

Why isn't it?

It's wider with it.

Why have we got that hotspot has something to do with either a horse that was ridden in baffle raiding.

2:01:40

Or it was the horse.

Behind them or it was the horse of somebody who was selling or it was the horse of the view.

It was a bit of a wild one and galloped all around the place making you that.

Who knows.

But it whatever it is, it's being seen a lot right into modern day.

2:01:58

I've literally got it started without 3 decades now, but again, just really fascinating that you've been able to collect.

So many of.

Those accounts of something, you know, a thread that runs through all of them that connects them, that you can't say, well, it's like anything.

2:02:13

We can't really pinpoint exactly what it is because we don't know.

But there's enough similarity across all of them that there's something connecting them.

They're all reporting.

And of course, that's that's intriguing when you think that these are people that aren't connected in any way, but yet they're giving you something that's similar.

2:02:36

And the question then is, well, why?

How What is it that is being experienced by so many individuals that carry some element of truth across all of them that they're all experiencing that you're able to pick up on and see as a common occurrence in one local area, Be it like you said, possible highwaymen, possible soldier.

2:02:58

What it is, you can't say.

But that little.

Bit of intrigue as to the similarity I think is the fascinating bit and it when it's supposed to similarity.

You know, it's all equine related.

All of it is a horse in some guise.

2:03:15

And yet at the same time, the fascinating that is no one account is the same.

You know, the closest I've got is the sort story of the sorting horse crashing through the head.

And I've got a story from decades later of a couple walking their dog on a Sunday afternoon and hearing the horse snorting and stamping the other side of the hedging.

2:03:40

And they reached the end of the hedging ground.

There was nothing in the field that wasn't there.

They're the two most similar accounts of all the walk out, but although they're all equine.

They're all seeing something slightly.

Different hearings in slightly different, not in exactly the same though.

2:03:58

It's just around the lanes of one particular village, you know, but you're looking at, you know, a few square miles, patches, travel sort of thing.

And yet, why does it present?

Differently to different people.

Why?

Do some people hear it?

2:04:15

Why do some people see this outline?

Why do some people see this orange glow around a horse in a field It you can just foggle your.

Mind for hours on this?

And the correlation.

Read the books, people, there's loads of them.

2:04:32

It's really interesting.

Absolutely.

And I think, you know, that's certainly the message I would give, you know.

Your books give such an opportunity to just explore so many different regions and so many different types of experiences that you know, one page is not the same as another page.

2:04:50

But you, you start going down these, these rabbit holes and these thoughts and you start thinking about things and asking questions that just, you know, it's why I think I've read them so many times because you find yourself asking different sets of questions the second or third time you look at them because they are so very intriguing.

2:05:12

So, yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating being able to, to chat with you to kind of tease some of them apart and to, to kind of get your perspective basically in terms of what you think about some of them.

And I'm thrilled to hear that you've gone back to the book.

Time again, because when I write them, I kind of imagine them being used like a bit of a reference book for where you might find the ghost and why and what's there.

2:05:36

So it's nice to hear that somebody's actually kind of using them a bit like that because yes, I do try to put as much detail as possible in, you know, I think in one of the books I've actually got a multitude latitude coordinate coordinates of where an actual horse.

So if somebody wants to pop along to that road, that particular road, and see if they can spot it, you know, but I won't mean gathered data.

2:06:00

Things don't trust that.

On anybody not meant vehicles, but you know if it's an open public road and the data send me the data it's all going in with the data that that kind of what I'm doing and and and.

What my whole ethos is.

And yeah, it's a bit like painting the 4th bridge.

2:06:17

Yeah, if I'd start and the beast.

So just to kind of think about what you're doing.

Next, do you have any future plans, future research, future things that you're working on that people can look forward to and expect coming up from you?

2:06:33

Really.

Of course I do.

I I often.

Joke that I did actually take a bit of a break this time between publishing the last one and starting on this one that I'm currently doing.

Because usually I hit the publish button because I self publish and it is physically an act of, you know, publish.

2:06:55

You know, you click on public and I sit back and I think, oh great, I've done it.

I can sit back and have a rest for a few weeks and you can guarantee that nine times out of 10, it goes about 12 hours and my fingers start itching to go back to Peter and look at the database to see what's on it.

2:07:16

So yeah, I just, I never run out of the desire to go back to it.

I did have a little break this time because I'd done two last, which was madness, but I'm branching out a little bit at the moment.

So I'm currently writing these Haunted Time Volume 5.

2:07:35

This will be in America for a change, and I'm already using exactly the same interests.

Find a sore story that interests me that's supposed to be within, you know, my lifetime, that sort of time frame.

2:07:51

Go out on social media, find people to talk to and I'm getting some absolutely fascinating stories already backing people, including finding the sister of one very well known Rd. ghost and interviewing her because she came forward to me to want the oil.

2:08:10

And then on another, I'm not restricting this one to either roads or houses or anything.

I'm not switching it that way.

I'm just, you know, talking to people about the paranormal.

So on another one I I.

Had a lengthy.

2:08:26

Interview with the owner of a holy house called The Dildo and she wonderfully took me on a tour of a house with a video conference, you know, on Faceline as soon as I could actually see what she was talking about and where, where things happen.

2:08:45

So, so that's the one I'm currently working on.

But at the same time in the background, there's definitely other things forwarded time Volume 6 starting to build, which will be back in the UK because I've still got people obviously answering older posts and answering previous emails and what happened.

2:09:03

And so that database is going back up again, but I'm not, I'm not going to try and split the American ones because America's too big, geographically too big and.

If you try to write a book.

About it Road goes slowly headed with the UK.

2:09:19

It wouldn't be just one book, it would be probably several dozen, but just to cover the record, the geographical spread of it.

But yeah, so busy researching, busy talking, cool.

Busy interviewing, cool, cool.

Just doing what I usually do really.

2:09:35

So it could be more books people.

There'll be more books coming.

Lots to look forward to then I look forward to them coming out because they.

Sound intriguing, particularly branching out to to to look at the states.

I mean, that would be fascinating.

So I'll be looking forward to them, let alone anybody else.

2:09:53

Good.

Honestly, it's.

Been such a such a pleasure to talk to you Ruth.

Thank you so much for your time.

It's been so interesting to just find out more about your process and what is involved with what you do.

But then also, like I said, just being able to go into one tiny aspect of, of things that you've uncovered as part of this, this data collecting and so on that we've been talking about.

2:10:18

So honestly, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for having me.

It's always my huge pleasure to come and.

Raffle endlessly about this subject that totally fascinates me.

And yeah, thank you very much for having me and I will make sure obviously to include links to your.

2:10:35

Books and to your social media pages and everything about you both on the website and in the podcast description notes.

So if people aren't familiar with you yet and want to come along and, and find out more about what you're doing and about your books, then it's easy to do so via either the links on the website or in the podcast notes.

2:10:55

And you know, suddenly, I hope they do because I don't think they'll be disappointed.

And if you want to e-mail me anybody, it's a very simple.

E-mail it's just Ruth Rope a while and the way I felt wild.

No spaces oranything@gmail.com so nice and easy to find by e-mail and do send me a story and honestly I'll say thank you again and goodbye to everybody listening.

2:11:19

Bye everybody.

2:11:35

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

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2:11:52

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