The Final Coda and Mysterious Apparition

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. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first didn't li up to the height. Like those five dollar roses at a gas station or a second hand piece of technology that breaks in the first ten minutes. Marketers know that feeling We optimize for the numbers that look great. impressions reach and react that when they don't show revenue, Well That's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that Bullpan Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO LinkedIn adds generates the highest roWas of all major ad networks You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title M cut the blls spend Advertise on LinkedIn the network that works for you two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a two hundred and fifty credit for the next one 's go to LinkedIn d. com slash broadcast. That's linkedIn d. com slash broadcast Terms and conditions apply Welcome back. This is the second part of our investigation into the South Shields Poltergeist. If you haven't watched or listened to partart one yet, go and do that now. If you have You will know what a truly frightening story we've got on our hands here. It's a family under siege where the very contents of their home seem to have turned against them and become weaponized. You are going need that spare pair of pants. I'm Danny Robbins and this his uncanny cold cases W has pass M music In the c See good st S secret cryst still re Here we are again. Thank you for all of your great theories. We're going to need them because it's time to return to forty two Lock Street in South Shields on the northeast coast of England. It's home to Marianne, her partner, Mark and her young son Robert. Now remember we've had objects flying across rooms, striking people, disembodied voices and a rocking horse that seemed to be able to materialize in different places. We culminated though with a very modern bit of activity, didn't we? Marianne receiving a string of brutal, horrible text messages that seemed to come Fr her partner Mark's phone That phone was off, the battery was removed and Mark was in the room with her watching those texts come in one by one. It's been a while, I think, since we've seen this level of jeopardy in a case and back to make sense of it all if that is possible. And the two people that you would always want by your side when the going gets weird. for team skeptic Forensic psychologist doctor Kirina O'Keee and for team believer, writer and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow. We ended on such a creepy moment at the end of the last episode. How do we explain it? So the thing with messages is that they have to have a source. They come from somewhere and initially it looks like it's coming from Mark's phone and he's already under a little bit of suspicion here due to the handwriting analysis Is it possible that a phone even when it's taken to parts can still send messages? Sure. Mbe there are experts in our audience who might be able to explain how that is possible. However, if it is, someone still has to sit and type it and Mark's accounted for. He's sitting right across the table from her, not touching the phone. So how is that possible? It's related to I'm sure as you said, there'll be people watching who know about this stuff Kin, we've had some extreme phenomena so far Are you worried about this family right now? Yes, there is an element of worry from me, both in terms of the natural side of things because if somebody is responsible for this phenomenon and faking it, then the family are in danger If it's supernatural, then equally they could be in danger. So yes, I'm worried about it from kind of an ethical investigator standpoint, but also I'm open minded to the rest of the case. All right, well, you will be pleased to know that we have a lot more evidence to assess. We'll be exploring some of it in this episode as we move forward, but let's get boots On the ground again at forty two Lock Street as we investigate the next installment of this chilling story. It is now late August, two thousand six, initially Paranormal investigators that Marianne brought into help Darren Richson and Mike Hallowwell I felt sure that this would be over quickly They told Marianne that pololtergeist activity of this level It can't sustain itself along. It almost always burns itself out But that ain't happening. The strange phenomena has not let up at all Worried that they're missing something crucial, Mike and Darren decide to bring in another investigator, a woman they've worked with before, Jill Butler. Jill is cheery and no nonsense, not the kind of person who sees spooks around every corner. And Mike and Darren are hoping that her practical outlook will bring some comfort to Mark and Marianne. So they take Jill to forty two Lock Street on twenty fifth of August When they get there, Marianne looks stressed, the strain showing on her face. She leads Jill and the others up to Robert's room and the five adults go upstairs in single file. Marianne in the lead, Mark at the back. They leave Robert outside in the garden playing As they turn onto the landing Mike sees Marianne's shoulder sack God, no It starts again, she says in the middle of the room on Robert's little blue table There is a soft toy rabbit sitting there. But even at a glance, there's something sickening about it. The rabbit has been posed with great care, a large sharp Carving knife tucked under one of its soft paws. The razor sharp blade is pressing on the neck a fluffy yellow dg lying with its feet up in the air, wings slumped by its side What kind of sick joke is this? Mark, Marianne, and Jill head back downstairs for Darren and Mike Hang back They're worried. This feels too much Darren looks at Mike and raises an eyebrow. Could this have been staged? he asks Mike. Does the finger of suspicion once again point to Marg? Darren's expression changes from suspicion Absolute shock. Mike, he says, Some of things just tap me on the back of the neck He's felt a finger touch him, but no one else is there They head back downstairs and as they go, something soft strikes Mike from behind. It's a black and white toy dog. Again, there is no one there who could have thrown him Mike and Darren rejoin the others in the kitchen, but just minutes later there was a fur from upstairs, a sound like someone banging on a window And Darren sees two long blue Jupplo Lego blocks drop to the floor outside in the garden Mike and Darren look at each other now. They don't know how the blocks seemingly fell from an empty room, but they have both been watching Mark the whole time Jan It is so interesting having these investigators on the scene, now isn't it? carearefully documenting everything. We've got a photograph here taken by the investigators of this scene, this tableau If you like of the soft toy rabbit holding this sharp knife over the neck of the duck on top of Robert's little blue table. And again, if you want to see it, G ont to the visualized version of this episode on the Uncanny YouTube channel or look on my social media. What's going on Kareon? this is Poltergeistop person I think we've got to be careful because I agree with them that it does almost look staged However, when I hear about people being touched in a haunted house, prodded or they feel like their hair's going up or they feel like they're touched or a brush It's electrostatic effects and we know that electrostatic effects can give you that illusion of being touched. so potentially that's what's going on here. But electrostatic effects do not place a knife over a soft toy duck's throat something is going on here. One thing that really interests me, Evelyn, is that Mark is accused of stuff. People are suspicious of him. But then suddenly things are happening like the prodding, like the things flying out the window that he cannot been doing What do you feel is happening there? Is this a ghost who doesn't like not being credited for what it's doing I think that's us projecting human psychology onto it. So anytime in a haunting type case where there are effects such as noises or physical objects moving and then something happens, Mbe they ask if someone's there, Mbe they become angry, maybe they say ignore it and then it gets worse. We say, Ohh you've annoyed it projecting human psychology and emotions onto some non corporeal object. We really don't know that. And so I think in this case, it's two separate things. You've got this interaction with the toys and the knife and then as they're coming back downstairs, they've got this sensation of someone being touched. but for us, we are merging the two together and making it something else. Darren and Mike have come in here with the best intentions. They want to help this family do we have to wonder if they are making things worse? If by focusing on this thing, giving it attention, documenting it, they are somehow feeding it Yeah, I mean, that's very much a team believer perspective. There's also the psychological aspect By investigators being there documenting everything, you are equally giving attention to the possible natural explanation that's going on. But also they raise an interesting theory as part of their investigation, and that's something called poltergeist contagion I've talked about contagion before as a natural explanation where fears, behaviourors, thoughts, they spread amongst people Mike and Darren are saying that poltergeist contagion is even though a poltergeist might be focused on one particular person, actually if you get investigators or neighbourors or witnesses, the phenomena can start following and attaching themselves to those individuals and maybe that's what's going on too Eone, you've talked about this idea of a scale of poltergeist activity of things progressing, getting worse It feels like it's been terrible from the beginning and it stays terrible. The extremity of this case, the length of time it goes on for. That is surprising the investigators. They thought it would die out, it would run out of energy. Yeah, no, they're correct. And so normally the earlier stuff such as the banging, the noises, the objects moving, even sort of destruction of things lasts a much longer time. And then sometimes we get to communication and then in some cases it goes to threat to life. And then it ends really fairly quickly after we get to that point. This case got to threat to life pretty quickly earlier on with the messages and then it's just sustaining at that level, which is really unheard of. And so is it a case of the fact that the original phenomena only last a certain period of time and then it has actually stopped and now we've got a human intervention. Or is it that we've got a really unique case where we've got a severe pololtergeist episode that is continuing continuing? And mean the question has to be, what is the endgame here? Is it only going to stop when somebody is hurt? Is it only going to stop when they're driven from the house 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 ribeye, grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred and sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices. Whole Foods Market. Make your summer sizzle ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first didn't live up to the height. Like those five dollar roses at a gas station orr a second hand piece of technology that breaks in the first ten minutes Marketers know that feeling We optimize for the numbers that look great. impressions, reach and reacts. when they don't show revenue Well That's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that Bull spend Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO LinkedIn ads generates the highest roWas of all major ad networks You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title more. cut the bull spend Advertise on LinkedIn the network that works for you. Spend two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a two hundred and fifty credit for the next one. Just go to linkedIn d. com slash broadcast That's linkedIn d. com slash broadcast terms and conditions apply talk don't we about how interesting these events are, but I think we've got to take a moment. whether you are feeling team believer or team sptic to just recognize How frightening this must have been for the family in this house. is Indescribable, really, isn't it? to immagine living through this kind of thing and they live of it day and night Be the very next evening, Mark and Marianne are in bed with the lights out. Mar is just starting to doze off and something hits her It's a stuffed toy dog She shouts out and Mark turns the lamp on, but he doesn't say anything. He just looks corner of the duvee because It is undulating, like it's being stroked by an unseen hand. Then with a sudden tuue, the duvet starts to unpeal itself from the bed. Mark and Marianne cling to the other end, amazed at how strong this force is, pulling the duve from them Mark speaks his voice It's shaky Marianne body feels like it's burning. He takes his t shirt off and Marianne can see a few random scratches, but then In front of her eyes, more marks appear. They're deeper and red around the edges now. They weren't there before What's happening to me? Mark says. Marion could feel the panic in his voice. That's when she called Mike He comes straight over and he photographs the scratches Then he, Mark, and Marianne go upstairs to check on Robert Rroobert is still sleeping peacefully, but His room has been trashed around him. Everything that could be moved has been moved, including the bed that he is literally asleep in, which has been placed in the centre of the room, surrounded by heaps of toys, clothes and piled up furniture. It is so weird and weirdest of all is at Robert's blue plastic table 's been mangled. it's all melted and warped somehow, twisted out of all proportion. It looks like Salvador Dali drew it. and suddenly The door to the toy cupboard bursts open. The light shade hanging from the ceiling swings jerkily back and forth. is something still here Perhaps, becausecause Mike is just taking a photograph after devastation Th he spots something out of the corner of his eye, there's a movement across the landing. Marianne sees it too and screams whatever it is Big, maybe twowo meters taller, solid, lump Darkness almost, but not quite human shaped. Mike feel a chill down his spine. It doesn't even have a face yet somehow He knows that it wants to hurt him. It resonates evil. It walks past the door to Robert's room and pauses If something without eyes could stare Mike would say that he was staring right at him, that it moves on into Mark and Marion's bedroom and out ofide They follow But Mark starts to feel uncomfortably hot again. Mike asks him to raise his shirt and gets out his camera. The scratches from earlier have largely faded, but in front of their eyes New ones are appearing. Red welts rising angrily across Mark's chest, then Across his sides, shallow bleeding cuts appear like he's been whipped Terrified, Mark goes to the bathroom to splash the wounds with cold water And he let out a shout. That blue plastic table that was twisted and melted half an hour ago. on the landing, but now It is in perfect unmelted condition. Wow, this case delivers on the shivers, doesn't it? Evan We have Mark as the focus again here, but this time is victim He's been seemingly injured. And again, we've got a photograph of some of those scratches on Mark's body was taken by Mike. And again, if you want to find this, if you want to see it, then look on the Uncanny YouTube channel or on my social media Talk us through your thoughts on this Yeah, so it's not uncommon for us to see people being injured in poltergeist cases Your options are that something physical is injuring them. It's an injury they've occurred accidentally, especially at nighttime, if you're asleep, you might notice that you've scratched yourself, you might catch yourself on something and then it can take a couple of days to come up as a bruiser or whatever. orr in this case, he feels that heat and that pain instantly, takes his shirt off and they see the welts or the scratches come up. and luckily for us they were able to be photographed at that And so is it something supernatural or is it something psychosatic? This is the astonishing thing though. Marianne and Mike, the investigator see this happen in front of them. Yeah, they do, but then again, there could be a perfectly natural physical explanation for it. You know I almost apologize for saying it, but it could be self inflicted. could be deliberate or he may not be aware that he's doing it. But if it's no, no, it's appear in front of him. like he's standing there and it appears one hundred percent. for anybody that knows in the nursing profession or don't want people to try it. But if you scratch yourself It can take a few seconds for that to appear. And depending on the force that you use, it can take a particular period of time for that to appear and become redder and redder and redder. Now who's to say that's not what's going on here? We can't discount the possibility that it could be self inflicted. You know, hold my hands up and say there is a very viable skeceptical explanation for those. right, I'm wondering what people at home will be making up, but it is a potentially paranormal prelude to something even more frightening that arition, it seems, that Mike sees. he talks about it feeling tangibly evil, which is quite a thing for an experienced investigator to say It is I think the detail of it being two meters tall is quite interesting. and given that they've just had this really serious phenomenon occur and then they've had something visual happen, you don't normally get full apparitions in poltergeist cases, that is going to be frightening to anyone. And when you're in that heightened state of fear a kos you're going to interpret it as being evil or malicious. You know what freaked me out the most Blue table. That very solid, very real object in Robert's bedroom. exxplain it to me Yeah, there isn't an environmental explanation for that If we had photographic evidence that it had melted and then effectively come back to life then I would find it very difficult to explain. But because we don't have that melted table in a photograph we be dealing with a visual hallucination? And then I think back to my point about electrostatics, are we dealing with EMF here, electromagnetic fields Eotentially we've got an environmental influence that is causing a visual hallucination. And all it needs is one person in that family that is particularly sensitive to these electromagnetic fields for them to think that they're having a real experience when in fact it's just a visual hallucination When you have these things happening one after another, again and again and again and again and again. and as a skeptic, your job is to explain each one away Is there a point where you kind of just go like What? how why? Why are they still coming? I've explained that way., explain that way, exxplain, but But they are still coming at me Yes, but then that's my job. I'm happy to do that. I think the difficulty is that I will be looking at an explanation for each individual phenomenon. rather than thinking there's one skeptical explanation for all of it It's quite easy and a paranormal, you know idea to go. It's all a ghost all a poltery. That's one explanation. It's simpler to take that on board As a skeptic, you're coming up with lots of different explanations for each one of the phenomenon. and I genuinely don't care Danny. keepeep bringing them on becausecause I'll keep giving them skepticalics. just behind you. in the shadows there are a lot of things waiting to be explained. And I would love to hear your explanations. Are you team believer or team skeptic? There is so much to debate on this one, isn't there? I can feel all of those uncanny WhatsApp chats I know lots of you have got going crazy on this case. So Let us get back to forty two Lck Street. After what just happened Marianna Mark are afraid to be left alone in the house. Who can blame them They ask Mike, the investigator to stay. and he agrees to sit in the kitchen and keep watch whilst they try and get some sleep in the living room Next to a mattress so they put on the floth of Robert. Nobody can face going back upstairs again Mike takes up his watch. on a chair at the kitchen table He takes a bottle of mineral water out of his bag for a quick drink places the bottle on the table and then folds his hands under his head and closes his eyes to get a bit of rest suddenly Every hair on the back of his neck is alertred. It's like the room is filled with a static charge. He sits all upright. Something is wrong, but at first he can't see what it is. Then He notices the water bottle It is stock still. But it looks all wrong. It's tilting at an impossible angle, balancing on just one thin rim of the bottom of the bottle Mike pokes it. It wobbles, but it doesn't fall. He examines it from every angle. He cannot work out how this could be possible. The family wake at the crack of dawn that morning, and Mark and Marianne decide to go with Robert to Marianne's mum for a while to try and get a break from the activity in the house But later that night, Marianne phones Mike in distress She has had another series of text messages The first one says Tonight is a night You will die The second Please don't go now I will just come with you, bitch then I can get you when you awake And I'll come for you when you're asleep Who am? G things feel so bleak to Marianne now. E leaving the house doesn't bring respite from whatever this is. They are right on the point of despair. and then Mike talks to a friend of his about the case, a guy called Stephen Swales, who is both a senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the local university and a drruid Stehen is fascinated to hear how the paranormal activity in the house clusters around items that use electricity, the mobile phones, the baby monitor, the battery operated toys. He's got a theory that the entity has been drawing on electrical energy, using it to manifest, cut off the supply of that energy and you might starve it So he advises Mark and Marand to turn off every electrical item in the house at night, not standby mode, off every single one They do it. And the phenomena at Lock Street Stopped Is it over, Eve? is it really as simple as this? you power down and you defeat the poltergeist? Well that's it. So in most poltergeast cases there's a point where you the person who was the focus of the case moves away or moves out. So Bad of pololtergeist surely moves away and eventually the phenomenon starts to taper down In other cases, it's that the family leaves the property. They don't know if the phenomenon has continued on. We very rarely ever have an ending and in this case we do. It's incredible, Kirin. What does the skeptic do you make of this? It's interesting because it kind of buys into one of my theories which was around electromagnetic fields. If there's any of the phenomena that we could explain as a result of hallucination Of course that phenomena is going to stop because you stopp the electricity. So you potentially you've got bad wiring in the house or something that's causing these fields and now Mark and maybe some other members of the family are not experiencing it But for me, the difficulty is, how do you explain writing How do you explain objects moving where there are multiple witnesses? Pulling chairs away though? Yeah they're not all hallucinating. So I think we've got a subsection of the phenomena where as a skeptic I go brilliant. That solves it. And if anything, that supports my theory for some of the phenomena doesn't support it for the other phenomena And that's where I leave with a head scratching moment. Incredibly mundane item, a water bottle. Who would have thought that could become frightening We are looking at an image right now of that minineral water bottle Tilting it. What looks to me here at an impossible angle That for me, I'm not impressed by. Can we get a water bottle right now? Can I have a water bottle Here we go. All right, Kirin. How do we do it on, shall we? Well I'm not saying that I can replicate it straight away, but there's a possibility that you can get it to Stand at an angle, you need the right amount of water. If you can get your water bottle to do what you are witnessing there that Mike's water bottle did, send us your images, email it to us uncanny at bbc. co. uk. I don't know I was impressed by that. I've got a h. Look, the water bottle is the least of our worries here. We've seen so much phenomena throughout this whole case What do you think was happening in that house I think that there's a possibility that some of it was supernatural in that there is a lot of things that are really severe and difficult to explain. I think the one positive aspect of this case is that it did stop. And somebody advised them to do something, in this case, powering down the entire house because for whatever reason they believed it was connected to electricity or electromagnetic fields. and it did stop And so regardless of whether it's supernatural or not, luckily everyone was safe. This case is known as the South Sils pololtergeist. I'm not going to ask you if you think it is definitely a poltergeist. I know that would be a bridge too far, but Do you feel that you can explain everything that we have heard? I'll be absolutely honest, no I don't think I can. And at some point although I call myself CEO team skeptic, almost tip a respectful hat to investigators that were there documenting all of this, but also subsequently other investigators, the chairman of the Ghost Club, looked at the data and he came out saying it feels like this is a genuine case. So it would be arrogant of me to dismiss all of their findings. I think there potentially is a nugget of something special here All right, thank you so much for sharing your time with us over these two deeply spooky episodes, but don't go anywhere just yet because There is one final coda to this story On Saturday the thirtieth of september two thousand six, back at the height of all of the unexplained phenomena Mark phones Mike Hallowell the investigator and asks him to come aroundound to the house and look at a video that he's taken on his phone