The Aftermath and Esther's Final Years

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods Market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribbeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market Make Your summer sizzle. Here, you're free to slow down. free to splash into crystal clear springs. Feel Florida sunshine and spend the day outside Here, you're free to explore trails full of history, on foot or riding horseback And watch for a bald eagle gliding overhead This is OCalla Marion County, Florida. where wide open spaces, timeless landscapes, and the American spirit come naturally So go ahead Find your freedom here at ocalamarian. com Hello there. Thank you to everyone who's messaged me about our last couple of episodes, The South Shields Poltergeist utterly horrifying, rightight? We willll be coming back to that and all of our other investigations, this series in a special case update episode right the end of the series, but right now truly. extraordinary story for you, a famous one, in fact from the Paranormal Archives. We're going back to eighteen seventy nine An American actor called Walter Hubble has come all the way to the small town of Amherst to try and debunk a supposed poltergeist that has made headlines across North America. The haunting seems to revolve around a young woman called Esther Cox. She's been seemingly plagued by phantom noises, spontaneous fires and injuries that she says caused by something supernatural. Walter spends six weeks living with Esther and her family, but far from debunking the case. He leaves Amherst, believing that Esther is indeed being tormented ay a deemon. goodoodness me. What is going on in Amhherst? Let us see. I'm Danny Robins and this is Uncanny cold cases. What has passed passed ares together in the cold where lay S st Scretry still rem Thank you for joining me for another brand new episode of Uncanny cold cases of vintage haaunting this time as obsessed paranormal experts. As ever, we want to know if the answers lie in genuine supernatural phenomena or in that most mysterious and murky of places human mind or could it possibly be both? Here to help me unpack it are our experts a team skeptic, forensic psychologist, Dr. Kira O'Keee and a Tam believer wrriter and parapsychologist Evelyn Ho. Evelyn, many poltergeist cases feature a teenage girl at the heart of them Esttercoox is eighteen when things start here, but what makes this case different? What makes it stand out in the annals of paranormal history I think it's not just the level of phenomena that occurs, but the variety of it. There are some really, really bizarre stuff in this case that doesn't seem to happen in other pololtergeist cases And very uniquely, you have people coming in who are hardcore skeptics who are actively looking to debunk the case and they have their mind changed. Does that sound familiar, Karen? Yes, it does. That's my role. It's interesting is it's really well known internationally, but it's huge in Canada. There's even a festival devoted to every year in the town of Amberherst where it happened. And what's even more bizarre part of that festival, they have a huge mural, but they also have a pie eating contest. Why Why would you eat pies to commemorate a paranormal encounter? Very strange. I would worry about the content of those pies and what association they have with a poltergust.. Is it a Plytergast I I knew you were gonna to say that You know, there's that humorous and celebratory aspect of this festival. but I think what we're seeing all of these years later is almost like a sense of solidarity with Esther. You know people are sympathizing with what she went through and that I think is also at the heart of this festival. It really has captured so many people's imaginations, but be prepared is a sad unsettling side to the story. Let us see can make sense of it. We need to wind back. to about a year before Walter Hubble arrives to begin his investigation It's August, eighteen seventy eight Amherst is a quiet town, home to some three thousand souls Four churches, a music hall and a shef factory The focus of our story is Esther Cox. She has short, dark curls and gray eyes She's only eighteen years old, but she's already lived a hard life. Her mother died when she was just three weeks old and she was handed over to her grandmother who brought her up Esther has recently moved again this time to her married sister, Olive's house a cheerful yellow painted place called Teed Cottage And for the first time Esther feels like she might finally be able to settle into a normal family life But over the next couple of months, Strange things start to happen around Esther. Ccks move Bangs are heard around the house. things are just hard to explain away. One night She wakes with a jolt. Her eyes are red rimmed and bulging out of her head. Her temperature is sky high and strangeest of all She's swollen. She looks almost like she's been inflated She stands stock still in the bedroom hair on end like a halo. What is happening to me? she cries. I'm dying And from nowhere Three loud Thunderclamps shhake the room. Esther is immediately calm. Her fever is gone. her eyes and body are back to normal. It's so weird. Esther's family called the local doctor, Edwin Carrity, who comes to check her over Dr. Carity goes into Esther's room and finds her unconscious now, but with her lips moving as if she's speaking. thenen in front of his eyes, the pillow under her head, slides out as if being pulled by an invisible hand. One of the farm labouorers from nearby, a big lad called John He tries to hold the pillow in place, but he can't There's a tussle as he tries to wrestle it from a seemingly invisible force bed clothes fly off the bed, crumple in a heap on the floor. The doctor looks around the room, searching for the culprit. Esther, now wide awake. isn't looking at the bedclothesough. Her gaze is fixed over the doctor's shoulder, locked on the far wall. turnurned. Moments ago The Wall was plananked Now It is carved with furious scratcher spelling. Esther Cox You are mine to kill Holy heavens Evelyn We will get on to that writing in just a moment, but first off, noises, objects moving. Esther was craving a normal quiet life. She is not getting it. No, absolutely not. And at this point in time, based on the type of phenomena and the pattern that it's happening in, it feels like it's going to be a poltergeist case. And we can already see that starting to manifest because now she's seriously physically ill to the point where she believes that she's dying. Well, that's really interesting and seems to potentially deviate from some of the other poltergeist cases we've looked at where things are happening around you happening to her She's described as being swollen, Kirn. It's almost like a moment from a Rll Dahl story. What is going on? I think we got to remember she might actually be physically ill. and it could be something like meteorism This idea of kind of a condition that they talked about in the eighteen seventies, which was where people became abdominally bloated but it can happen very, very quickly. Would a massive loud bang suddenly deflate a person in that situation Well there are some conditions associated with bloating where that could be the case. I think the difficulty here with Esther is that she's also experiencing a high fever and delirium, which makes me think it could be typhoid fever. Now typhoid fever wouldn't necessarily just immediately dissipate with a loud bang. So it's an interesting moment Evan, the writing is quite literally on the wall in this case. Esthercoox, you are mind to kill. It's such a an eerie, unsettling thing to hear in any context, but written on the bedroom wall. It's extraordinary. It does, it lacks ambiguity. It's an extraordinary idea to get your head around the idea that a ghost can write. Because in this case it's described as being scratched into the wall So therefore, something has to physically do that either with another object, with a nail, with their own hand, whichich means if we can rule out that it's not a person, in which case Esher or the doctor are the only two people in the room So if it's not either of them thenen it has to be a force that does it and that breaks the laws of physics. Kirin, if that writing is faked, how Well, I think we've got to consider that there are suspects even at this early stage. If we look at Esther According to what I'm thinking from a skeceptical point of view, she might be suffering from delirium And so who's to say that she hasn't caused the writing herself? She even says early on that she felt that she was dying. We can't put this both ways com we. I mean, if she's ill in bed, incredibly ill, she's not also then getting out of bed to go and carve into walls, is she I think we're being very dramatic in terms of you her being unable to get out of bed. She's not bedridden, but also remember, the doctor walks into the room. He doesn't see the actual writing occur. it's only when Esther looks at the back wall that he then sees it. So there's time there before he goes into the room for Esther to have done it. Now' say sorry I feel like you would notice if you walk into a room, you'd notice Esther Coxs you are mind to kill carved into the bedroom wall. Well, no, why would you? You wouldn't go into a room and look all around the walls. You would be focusing on the patient and that's what the doctor does. All right, it's a good point. However we explain this writing, do we feel that Esther is in danger Yeah, absolutely Because if it's her and she's physically and or mentally ill, then this is only going to escalate. And if it's not and is something paranormal, and it's a poltergey's case, then we know that potentially this could escalate right the way up to threat to life Thank you both a lot to think about already, hell of a lot more still to come The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods markarket, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribbeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market Make Y summer sizzle. Here, you're free to slow down. Free to splash into crystal clear springs. Feel Florida sunshine. and spend the day outside Here, you're free to explore trails full of history, on foot or riding horseback And watch for a bald eagle gliding overhead This is OCalla Marion County, Florida. where wide open spaces, timeless landscapes, and the American spirit come naturally So go ahead Find your freedom here at Oalamarian. com How are you feelitting team believer team skeptic but don't decide just yet. becausecause back in Amherst Things are about to develop in a big way Esther Story. has become the talk of this small town. To be fair It's hard for the locals to avoid it because this noisy ghost That's what it is genuinely very loud People say it sounds like someone is using a sledge chanel to break the shingles on the roof The minister from the local Baptist church, comes to check out the phenomenon He has a theory that somehow Eester has become charged with electricity and this excess power is coming out of her and interacting with the physical world Local people start to gather outside in large crowds. They're so anxious to see the phenomenon themselves that the police have to be called out more than once to keep order. And then things get even more complicated. Esther is found again in that feverish, swollen state. They send for doctor Carratity. Esther seems to be almost in a trance this time So she's speaking, describing something, something that happened last summer, something that she has hidden from her sisters so far What she describes isn't supernatural Something much more human and something much more disturbing. It seems that back in August, a local man. Bob McNeal Esther out for a drive in his horse drawn carriage. Bob worked at the shoe factory with Esther's brother in law and was interested in courotting her. But on that day, he took her out of town to a quiet clearing, reached into his coat, pulled out a gun Bob had a wild look and Estop was assured that he was going to do something terrible. Suddenly, there was a noise behind them, another carriage coming past That distraction might just have saved Esther's life Olive is almost in tears hearing about this. I knew that man would cause you harm, she cries. I swear he is at the bottom of all of this. Why I'd say it was him making all of these strange happenings around the house In that moment Three sharp rats ring out as if they're agree with her Stled Dr. Carrity asks a question Can you hear what we say And again, three sharp raps are heard as if to say yes Dror Caratity is puzzled. he can't work out how a living man could be haunting a house. The phenomenon continues. Esther starts to hear voices threatening to set fire to the house. Shaken and not wanting to be alone, she shares a bed that night with her sister Jenny. Jenny tries to reassure Esther, reminding her there's no such fing as ghosts Then As if in response, a single lit match falls from somewhere up in the rafters onto the bed between them. Jenny grabs it and puts it out for you Where did that come from Over the next ten minutes though. Eight ten more lip matches fall from all around the room. Jenny is having a hard time keeping up with them. What she and Esta are witnessing? feels utterly impossible. Then, Esther jumps to her feet and shouts in a hoarse voice, Look there, my God. It is the ghost. Can you see him She says that the ghost is wearing grey, glaring at her and most sinister of all He has a terrifying threat. If Esther doesn't leave the house tonight, he will start a fire in the loft and burn everyone in the house. to death Here in this is genuinely chilling in so many ways. What we're learning now is that Esther has clearly experienced some sort of traumatic incident at the hands of this man Bob McNeil. This is an era, isn't it when people didn't really talk about emotions or they didn't acknowledge the impact of trauma. Looking at it as a modern day psychologist, what are your thoughts Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, if you have a traumatic experience talking about it, can actually help with the healing and that trauma. Here we have no healing at all That experience has been btled up in Esther, and unfortunately what we're then dealing with is the potential of lashing out and kind of responding to that traumatic experience. And I have genuine concerns for Esther. Undeniable real trauma going on, Evelyn, but does that explain what's been happening I don't think explains all of it I think it could definitely explain some of our physical aspects of the case, some of the medical aspects Post traumatic stress disorder doesn't cause almost a dozen lip matches to fall from the ceiling one after another. It doesn't cause physical objects to move around the room. What are we to make of this assertion from Esther's sister Olive that Bob McNeil is somehow responsible for the phenomenon? This idea that a living human being could be creating paranormal activity And we do know that some people believe that poltergeist cases can be caused by a human rather than a spirit or a ghost William Rawl calling the term RSPK, which is recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. It's a really interesting idea, isn't it? that idea of somehow emotional turbulence within a person creating paranormal activity around them. And you know something that we've talked about in other cases before. Clearly, we have an incredibly emotionally turbulent person at the heart diss. know She's had this horrible experience at the hands of Bob McNeil. but the idea that that would create scale of activity we're witnessing feels just fantastical, doesn't it? It does feel fantastical. I think you know there's points here where I agree with Evelyn. Some of this phenomena And some of the actual experiences that Esther is having herself can be explained away even as a result of the trauma. The trauma might be a trigger for physical illness, which then we're seeing manifestations of Interesting that the Victorian fascination with electricity, this kind of newly discovered thing at that time is very much at the heart of the way people are assessing her Yeah, we look at electricity now and we take it for granted. Back then it would have seemed almost magical. Even lit matches, you, lit matches only really became common usage about twenty thirty years before then. So that in itself is also quite magical. So to have these things appearing out of nowhere is a mag. I can't believe you use the word magical ly terrifying it. It's a moment Unlike anything we've seen across this series really, the idea of lit matches appearing in mid aair and falling to the ground, how on earth do we explain it I did it as a child, although I don't want to confess this to my children that you could take a match on a matchbox and flick it And it would light in mid aair. So who's to say that we can't have that sort of thing happening Don't worry your kids will find out about it. There is no danger of children watching YouTube. All right, It is january eighteen seventy nine just four months since all this started Esther is as you can imagine emotionally physically trained Nobody feels safe around her anymore Olive and her husband send Esther to stay with family friends who run a local bar and restaurant John White and his wife and son People are really interested in what's happening to Esther, and she becomes quite a big draw in the restaurant in a horrible freak show kind of way The Whites try to watch Esther around the clock now for her safety and everyone else's for one day They leave her in the dining room, with John White's young son, L Fred passes the time by whittling a piece of wood with a knife. Then, horribly, an unseen force apparently twists a knife from little Fred's astonished hands and thrusts it twice into Esther's back, leaving it stuck there the wound, bleeding heavily little Fred is distraught and John White admits defeat. He can't protect Esther or his unfound And in March, she has to pack her bags again. But now several distinct spirits reportedly claiming to speak through the knocks and wrappings on walls that seemed to follow Estra around the strongest of these It seems to be a spirit that Esther calls Nicol He drops an inordinate number of swear worords and claims to be responsible for the fires that break out around Esther He says that when he walked the earth He was a shoemaker They ask Bob He is in heaven He says, no then Is he in hell The answer comes Earth shattering the loud series of knocks. Yes Lime. Evelyn The word extreme doesn't do it justice. No, I think this is the most severe incident of physical harm in any polgeist's case I have ever seen. And we're not just talking about a scratch. She's stabbed, it's pulled back out of her and it flies back into her again. She's bleeding quite profusely. It's incredibly serious. I can't think of anything else like it that we've looked at. and Kirn, it's in her back I would imagine it's quite hard to stab yourself in the back Yeah, it's very difficult to conceptualize how that would be possible if. What are the possibilities as a skeptic here, what are you looking at I'm looking at the possibilities. So we know that littleittle Fred, so John's son was whittling with that particular knife And so Are we dealing with him throwing the knife and causing this particular stabbing So that's one possibility. but if we can discount that Little Fred is responsible for it, The only other possibility is that it was a little scratch or maybe there was a stabbing at the top or maybe in the side and it was self inflicted and then it's been embellished over the years. You know I can see just behind you right now pretty large elephant in the room whichich is that if it's not one of those two possibilities It could be paranormal We've got to be open minded to the possibility. as much as I hate saying it as a skeceptic, it does mean that I'm open minded. It doesn't mean I'm cynical. And here looking at all of the natural explanations, I feel that we are dealing with a particular phenomena in this case that is very difficult to explain and the only possible explanation might be that it's paranoormal. Oh my goodness. Kirin. What? Did you actually just articulate those words? I said might. I didn't say definitely paranormal this is revolatory. I feel like I'm involved in some kind of seismic interview of a politician here when I'm like, you know tell me Minister could it be a ghost? Could it be a ghost? It could be be I just don't know how to explain it and You know at this point, I would be reaching out to the skeptical community to saying if we discount it its littleittle Fred, we discount that it embellishment of the story What other skeptical explanation is there and please help me with The skeptics if you are out there, get in touch now the future of the uncanny franchise is at stake right now. If ghosts exist Kerein, what are you gonna do know I have a job. Evelyn, Bob Nickeoll is similar to Bob McNeil, that man who tried to attack Esther. Lots of people have joined the dots here. Is it significant? Yeah, it's significant in that I think it reflects the psychology of the situation. And for her, she had this incredibly traumatic experience. She's now got these further seemingly endless, potentially paranormal traumatic experiences. So either she is giving it that name or someone else is sort of feeding her or leading her on that it's her name or it is genuinely some sort of person or demon that is possessed it. Kiran he plays such a big role in this case, always lurking in the shadows behind all of this. What do we know about the real life bob? Well, I think what's interesting about this particular character, Bob, is that he has the hallmarks of what forensic psychologists talk about as a potential high risk likelihood of becoming a serial killer. We know for a fact there was animal cruelty early on in his childhood, but also spontaneous fires potentially. So we've got the hallmarks. Interesting detail, the spontaneous fires, given the stuff we've heard about already. Exactly. and it's also interesting as well that we get that association with the name Nickel And for me, that's not surprising as a psychologist. Effectively what we've got is her giving blame all of this phenomena that she's experiencing to that original individual that's responsible for the trauma that I feel triggered all of this stuff Thanks both. Uncanny community. What do you make of this? It is a case with such high stakes, isn't it? But we are not done yet. By this point, the story is all over the Canadian press. This is the height of the spiritualist boom And the Esttercoox affair sparks story after story, keeping readers hooked for almost a year and that is how Walter Hubble isars about it Hubble is a jobbing actor with a deep loathing for mediums, and he's sure The whole thing He visits her in Amherst, where she's back living at Teed Cottage with her sister, Olive and family They are now, sadly, the only people prepared to live with her Hubble has only been seated for about five minutes in their home When his own umbrella sails over his head, as if thrown by a force he can't see it, flies five meters. Esther walks into the room at the same time and a carving knife whizzers through the air from somewhere behind her and lands on the floor between them Tubble searches the room behind Esther Let's no on there also sees lit matches fall from the ceiling. He seems to find this delightful, repeently saying, Bob, I would like a match being answered with a flurry of tiny flames falling from the ceiling. Hubble is instantly converted from skeptic true believer. He stays with the family at Teed Cottage, finding out more, interviewing them and their neighbourors about everything that has happened He ends up writing a book toold the G Amherurst Mystery, which is an instant bestseller But whilst Walter Hubble gets rich off Esther's story. Things don't go so well for Esta herself She starts a new job with a farmer, maybe hoping that a change of scenery will give her a fresh start But the phenomena follows her there The farmer sees knives fly at Eston. But he's not worried about ghosts. he is a modern man. And here's another scientific theory Esther is somehow magnetic This theory lasts until he's bn. Burned to the ground At which point he decides to Eher is an arsonist She's convicted and sentenced to four months in prison It feels Horrendously cruel after all that she's endured Has Esther been behind this all or lot It's so hard to say, but there is one last bit of mystery here Esther only serves a month of her sentence Some modern experts say that this is because there was a huge outburst of public sympathy for her, which helped secure her early release. That's not what newspaper articles at the time place They say that the phenomena followed Esther to prison and that the guards couldn't keep her safe from the banging, injuries and small fires, even if she was locked. he handed in a small, unfurnished cell. Whatever it was found Port Esther E then do we know what happens to Esther after this We do She married twice. She had a son by each of her husbands. Both husbands died, so she became a double widow And then after that she lived in poverty for the rest of her life and she died at just age fifty two. Horribly sad story here and also horribly familiar. There so many of these cases, where have a young woman at the heart of it. It's damaging to go through something like this It is. and when we look at this case, there are two things. Number one, you can deflect the criticism that it's been done for attention and for money because with Esther, she certainly didn't gain from it but also she suffered trauma not only in experiencing the paranormal phenomena, but also the after effffects of it. And I think weve got to remember that All right, great to hear your thoughts, both of you. Uncanny community. Where are your thoughts at right now? What do we make of Walter Hubble?