Loremen Podcast - Loremen S5Ep49 - The Great Chislehurst Cave Mystery

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Who's that, beckoning to you from the mouth of a weird looking cave? Why it's Alasdair Beckett-King of course! Join him and James Shakeshaft, and enter a subterranean labyrinth hidden beneath a leafy London borough. In 1907, The Illustrated London News called it The Great Chislehurst Cave Mystery: 22 miles of hand-carved tunnels, with stories of smugglers, druids, and rock and roll legends. Come for the haunted pool, stay for the possessed tour guide. (Tour guy.) Come see the Loreboys LIVE in spooky West Norwood Cemetery on Friday 11th October 2024 (2024): https://choose-se27-comedy-festival.designmynight.com/66968247e76bce06372992c8/loremen-podcast-live-recording This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With me, Alistair Beckett King. And me, James Shake Shaft. And James, have you ever been to Stonehenge? Yeah, a couple of times. I bet you thought, I wish this were underground. I bet you thought the worst thing about this is the way it's above ground. Good news, James, I have for you a subterranean Stonehenge. Yeah, a mysterious underground labyrinth that goes by the name

Chislehurst Caves. I've visited them as research for this podcast and now I would like to share with you the great Chislehurst Cave mystery. James Shakespeare. Alistair Beckett King. Welcome. Welcome, welcome to a subterranean labyrinth. You are going to need to watch your head. OK. You're a tall, tall fella. In fact, I think you might have visited the place I'm about to talk about in real life. It is Chislehurst Caves.

Ah, in Bromley? In Bromley. I looked, I did look it up. I don't think I've been inside because it doesn't look familiar, but I've definitely been to the woods nearby because I used to live within two miles of these caves. Really? Well, the name Chislehurst, I think, means pebble wood. So you've been to the pebble wood wood, the Chislehurst woods? I live within two miles as the crow flies and then digs. And you've never been to one of the most extraordinary man-made caves in the United Kingdom?

James, James, James, James, James. Well, I've been to Cheddagorge. Yeah, that's, they're real, aren't they? I mean, no, this is real. This is real. I don't want to play down Chislehurst Caves this early in the podcast. So let's not get facts involved too soon. They're very exciting and mysterious.

In fact, I mentioned Chislehurst Caves briefly, an episode or a couple of episodes ago when I was telling you about dowsing and John Barks dead. Do you remember that? It could easily be an episode in the future. It shouldn't be an episode in the future. That would be really bad for narrative. Are you going to release them in the wrong order? I'm going to bloom in Queniton to retidin in the narrative. Oh no. All right. Well, I have in the past or future, I mentioned Chislehurst Caves because Major Pogson was dowsing there.

Yep, the son of the guy that invented Pogs. Now I want to dive in properly to the great Chislehurst Cave mystery. Oh, this sounds great. That is what the Illustrated London News called it on the 28th of September 1907. And in fact, I've sent you a little image of the Illustrated London News so you can see. It's a pretty cool illustration, isn't it? Oh, it's got a map on it. It's got a map.

It's got a hole. It's got fines. It's got pottery. It's got bone. It's got flints. It's got napped flints. It does. It's got a, it's got bone, it's got flints, it's got napped flints. It does. It's got a wild boar's tusk. It's got a secret entrance to the Druid labyrinth. It's got an ancient British well.

It's got reliefs cut into the chalk walls, probably by smugglers who infested the caves 100 years ago. And remember, that was in 1907, so that's 200 years ago. It's got a horseshoe bats, I think they're called. Although those are just your classic drawing of about bats. And he's got the top of a Dean hoe. He's got the top of Dean's. So it's got the top of a Dino. It's got a druid altar and the priest chamber. I thought it was priest's chamber, but it's just Priest's Chamber. Oh, singular. Yep.

But it's a big, a big load of caves. You can get more than one Priest in there. Yeah, come on. We've also seen a Priest hole. In fact, it's 22 miles of caves. In fact, you can see, you're looking at this map from 1907. It's not finished. You can see lots of gaps.

It hasn't been fully mapped out in 1907. Nobody knows how far it stretches. Some people think it stretches all the way up to the Thames, to Greenwich, or all the way to the coast out in Kent. I know those people are wrong, but still, you know, it's quite impressive. I tell you what, looking at the middle series, there's a lot of alters. There's a real alter district. There is an alter district.

So there are three sections on this map you're looking at. The outer series, the inner series, and the middle series. And there are a lot of altars. More on that later. Do we need to translate for Americans? It's the outer season, the middle season, and the inner season. There is another name for the outer, inner, and middle series, which is inner and middle series, which is Saxon, Roman and Druid. If you walk into Chislehurst Caves, one of the first things you see will be on one of the cave walls, the map that you're looking at now, but in more detail, labeled just like that. Saxon, Roman, Druid. We've got 22 miles of caves cut into the chalk in Chislehurst, which is now, as you say, in Bromley, back in the past. That was Kent. As far as I can tell, the place didn't move, but still pretty

impressive. Well, I think when I lived there, it was Kent and then it became London. I don't know when it happened, but I think this might be the origin story for my county blindness. Will Barron I don't, I have a feeling it would have been like the seventies. I didn't write down when it became Bromley, you know, the London Borough of Bromley, but I think it's very possible that in your lifetime, the people who insisted on still calling it Kent died. Jason Vale That's more likely it, yes. Oh, I'm getting really freaked out by the reliefs cut into the chalk walls probably by smugglers who infested the caves.

They are very spooky. Yeah, their faces are sort of like creepy mask faces carved in thorns, because chalk is quite easy to carve and mine. With iris-less eyes. But they're doing the thing where it's like, I can't tell whether it's sticking out or sticking in. I think they stick out. Yeah, it's not like a, if you don't want an inny face hole that you can pop your face in. I think they stick out. Yeah. It's not like in, you don't want an inny face hole that you can pop

your face in. No. That wouldn't be right. You want an outie. And it looks like they've started to carve a nude man. And then respectfully stopped as they reached the troublesome zone. And also couldn't do arms. Their hands are hard to draw as well. You just want to stick with shoulders, basically. You know where you are there.

That's the question you've got to ask yourself. Why? The reason these 22 miles of cave were cut into the chalk remains completely unknown. Was that reason to get chalk out of a chalk mine? You decide, James! We may never know what the real reason was. The New York Times called Chislehurst Caves an all-purpose maze deep beneath a London suburb. An all-purpose maze?

All-purpose maze, yes, an all-purpose maze. How many different purposes are there for mazes? You'd be surprised how many purposes this maze has been put to. I suppose the containment of a minotaur or minotaur. Yeah, you're right. That is one of the most famous purposes for Amaze. And as far as I know, there have been no minotaurs here. The other one is like to occupy a child at a restaurant by popping one on the back of a menu.

It's definitely been used to distract children. Yes. And I can't think of any other, well, apparently to pad out video games. Yeah. Well, again, you'd be surprised how accurate that one is in this case. It occurred to me, I think this is definitely a pun in, it hasn't been used for a minor tour, but it has been used for some minors and tours. So that's like halfway there. Yeah. Oi, it hasn't been used for a minor tour, but it has been used for a minor too.

A minor two? Because it's like a minor two. A minor two? Because it's like a minor two. A minor two, yes. Very good. Ideally, we move on. Let's just move straight on. Many uses are reflected in the names of different parts of the cave. You've got Lumbago Alley, the Roman Well, the Isolation Unit or Isolation Ward, Snowy Way, Cavaliers Passage, and of course, the isolation unit or isolation ward, snowy way, Cavaliers passage and of course,

the haunted pool. Oh, that sounds spooky by definition. Lumbago as in back pain. Lumbago as in back pain. I don't know if Lumbago, is it a low roof? Is there a low ceiling there? So you have to bend over to go down it? I don't know why it's called that. I like it. I like the invention. That's funny.

That's a good explanation though, based on not knowing. So they've been around for a while. Nobody is quite sure how long. But at the start of the 20th century, the caves were rediscovered by W. J. Nicholls. That is Mr. Vice President of the British Archaeological Society. Are you saluting, James? Yes. Yep. Sounds like you weren't saluting. I know. I was thinking about it. This is Mr. Vice President we're talking about here. Mr. Repubbem. I apologize, Mr. Vice President. Thank you. You've got to imagine what it must have been like. The caves, they'd been known about,

but they hadn't been fully explored. And when Nichols was going down there, they were full of sand and loose rock and detritus, and nobody had really mapped them out. So nobody knew how far they stretched. I can see the illustration showing the section of a cave showing accumulation of sand. Removal of this might bring to light unexpected relics. And he's basically drawn a circle and then a line about fifth of the way up and then written the word sand.

Yeah. He didn't bother detailing the sand too much. He's done some dots to be fair to him, but yes it is. I get the idea. What was his name? WC? WJ Nichols. I don't know if he drew these drawings. Ah, okay. Fair enough. But it is around about that time. He describes clambering over huge masses of chalk in semi-darkness. He's describing it as being decidedly dangerous.

And there was the further risk of losing the right track amid the tortuous windings of the place. But the more he explored, the more excited he got. He said, there is an air of profound mystery pervading the place. A hundred indications suggest that it was a subterranean stonehenge and one is struck with a sense of wonder and even of awe as the dim lamplight reveals the extraordinary works which surround us. So it must have felt pretty extraordinary and magical if you were the first person in who knows how long to be heaving away big lumps of chalk and finding new tunnels behind them.

The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets of 1983 connects the caves with Merlin the Wizard's own hidey hole. Sorry, the what? I assume it's on all our bedside tables, the woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. 1983. Is it like a pink encyclopedia or something? Why is it a woman's? Yeah, it's an encyclopedia for her. I don't know why there is a girl's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. The reason I found this is that people talk about it being connected

with Merlin and this was the first source I could find that connects it with Merlin. – Perhaps it's like a tie-in to some sort of spin-off of The Lady magazine. – Yes, yeah, it could be. Barbara G. Walker, the author, says, Merlin's secret cave was located either in the Breton fairy wood of Brossélionde, or in the British druidic shrine of Mount Ambrosius. Some said this was Chislehurst, a chalk cliff honeycombed with caves long occupied by a college of Druidesses. Oh, is that the collective term of Druidesses? Did not know that. That's going on the list. And if there was a Dean, you'd have the Dean be called Dean Hull, like your character Dean

Hull from the previous slash future episode. Oh, they know. They know. Yeah, he's cleaning himself up and now he's the dean of a college of Druidesses. You Druidesses. And for the last time, Dean, no hanky panky. Bad news for you, James. Bad news up front. That isn't true. Loads of hanky panky. 兆 I know that obviously,

obviously, our College of Druidesses would have loads of hanky panky. That's not what I'm denying. I'm denying that the Merlin thing is true. So Barbara G. Walker has, I think in good faith, essentially misread the thing she's quoting when I followed up the footnote. It's not Merlin Tidy Hole. The footnote is saying basically that Mount Ambrosius might be full of caves like Chislehurst, but it's not saying Chislehurst is the place where Mount Ambrosius is. It's just saying an example of caves. So she's just misread that unfortunately and it probably hasn't got any connection to Merlin. But those altars are still there, those druid altars, we've still got those in the bank, haven't we? Oh yeah, I should hope so. I can see one, two, three, four, five, six alone on this map.

Well, there's something you might notice about those altars, which is that they're sort of all at the end of little tunnels. Yeah, all on the same side. I'm now looking at a panthe that I picked up when I was visiting Chislehurst Caves, and Dr. Eric Inman wrote A Short History of Chislehurst Caves. Dr Eric Inman wrote a short history of Chislehurst Caves, which is a handy pamph that covers their discovery by, or rediscovery I should say, by William Nicholls. The problem with the altars is that Nicholls was obviously big and enthusiast, and he's Mr Vice President, he knows his stuff. But he doesn't know much about chalk mining. I'm going to ask you to describe it. Can you describe the sort of altar alcove that you can see?

It sort of looks a bit like a window. I suppose it is kind of like a window. Or like a bay window. So you've got the little seat and a bit dug out. Yes, there's like a seat or table, which is sort of at your knee height or waist height maybe. And then there's a, yes, there's a little sort of a hollowed out area above that. And the thing is, as far as I understand it, that's how you mine chalk. So you don't start digging at ground level and then dig

up into the ceiling above you. You cut in and create a little plateau, a little table, and then you stand on that and mine away the ceiling. And then when you're finished, you mine away what's underneath you. And then you do that again. Yeah, you wouldn't want to be digging below your knees. Yes, exactly. And you don't want to take a quick trip to Lombargo Alley. Exactly. And you don't want big lumps of chalk coming down on your head. So that's perhaps one of the reasons why all of these altars are at the end of little tunnels that have just started, because that's how you dig a tunnel,

I think, if you're a chalk miner. So that's kind of a shame. So the names Saxon and Druid and Roman were applied to the different areas by Nichols and he was convinced that loads of finds were going to come out of the debris as the caves were mapped, as they were explored. Unfortunately, it just isn't that much stuff there. It's kind of like they were chalk mines. There just isn't that much cool stuff. The channels for blood to run down and the Roman well haven't really produced a huge amount of archaeology that bags up his theories. You'd think on chalk as well, the blood and stain. So I briefly got distracted. I looked up Eric Inman and he's the head of the pink pistols in America.

Will Barron The pink pistols? Alistair Dixon Yeah, it's where gun mites meet gay rights. Will Barron Oh, right. Alistair Dixon The president. Oh no, he's not the president. He's just a member. Sorry. Will Barron He's not even the vice president. Alistair Dixon No, he's not even Mr. Vice President. Mark Steiger is the... I think this is a different Eric Inman.

Yeah, there's different Eric Inman. I think it's a different Eric Inman. But okay, I can feel like my supernatural score is dwindling as I speak. So, James, while Nichols saw the caves as a place of worship and refuge for ancient Britons, it might not have been true in the past, but it became true in the future for him, the past for us, because during World War II, the whole cave system became an enormous air raid shelter for thousands of people. Right.

Yeah. And it was described as being like a little city underground. It had a hospital, that's why there's an isolation ward. There were bunks. People stayed there. Subterranean Britannica says conditions were amongst the best available, I think by comparison with other air raid shelters. And earned it the nickname the Chislehurst Hotel. The caves were reasonably dry and relatively untroubled by stray bombs. Facilities eventually included toilets, which is just a great sentence. Eventually. They eventually included toilets, washrooms, a hospital with seven wards, two of them isolation wards, chapel and canteens. Its size also allowed quite unusual facilities to exist,

such as a barber shop, a gym and a dance floor. New tunnel exits were dug and a shaft sunk to provide more ventilation, which was circulated by large fans. Nice. This sounds quite nice for it. Yeah. The church area is still there with somewhat unconvincing mannequins sitting in the church. It was called the Cathedral of Rocks. Right. And in a pretty rock and roll move in 1941, a baby Kaveena was born there, or Kaveena. Oh, nice. Because she was called Kaveena, because you know, you have a kid in the caves.

What are you going to call her? Kaveena. What's she going to do? Change her name later in life. Yes. You're not going to call her man's name like Cave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just probably leaf through the women's encyclopedia of myths and secrets and just choose a word at random.

Oh yeah, I'm looking at some of the old pictures. After the war, it became a music venue and famously Jimi Hendrix played there in 66 and 67. Jimi Hendrix. According to the Jimi Hendrix. But when I was there, the tour guide explained, I think trying to put a little bit of spook into the story, Jimi Hendrix came and played that, but he didn't really like the vibe. He sensed something was off. You know, the way musicians are more in touch with this sort of thing than the rest of us. And after he had performed,

he didn't hang around. He just left immediately. James, there are a lot of ghosts. And it's weird because we're kind of dealing with an oral history here because it's been a place where people come and visit. It's been a tourist spot for a century. Not a lot has been written down about it. And so the ghost stories have been told from sort of tour guide to tour guide to tour guide over the years. I mean, I didn't want to correct you earlier, but you misspoke. Sorry, it's tour guy. Tour guy. I'm sorry. It's tour guy. Yeah. It's minor tour guy.

So loads of people have played there, apart from Hendrix, there's Bowie and... David Bowie. The David Bowie. David Bowie. If only one of us could do an impression of him. And who knows, maybe Harry H. Corba went there as well. We don't know. This is such a dirty, dirty cave.

Half of this cave. I've got to draw a line down the middle of this cave. Half of it will be yours and half of it will be mine. Oh, I don't care. That was, yeah. What's his name from Roxy Music? Yeah. I don't know. Lou Reed. That's who that was. Iggy Plop. I found some of the mannequins in the gallery.

Yeah. The mannequins are quite scary. Yeah. The bunk bed mannequins. Yes. So these are people who are sheltering from the Blitz, who've gone there to live in bunk beds. I think people were almost living there full time in many cases. One of the bunk bed children, mannequins, has got a bit of a Bowie. He's got a little of Bowie about the face. The haunted pool, James. There's a haunted pool.

I mentioned it up top. It's haunted. And I've read about this in James Wilkinson's Ghosts of Chislehurst Caves, another pamphlet, as well as News Shopper, which covered it in 2004. They said, "'In the 1800s, the body of Mary Jane Beckett murdered by her husband was found in the cave's 15-foot deep pool, and it is believed she has been seen wandering the caverns ever since. That's vague. The 1800s was a long period of time. I was pleased to see James Wilkinson mentions, he can't find any record of Mary Jane Beckett's murder, neither can I, separately looking

for it without realising he'd done that. It's the kind of thing where if someone was murdered in the 20th century in Chislehurst, you might think that it would come up in a newspaper or something. Especially since we have the full name of the person, who is also the main character of a series of novels from that time, Mary Jane Breckett. But anyway, maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. The point is, there's a ghost there. A grey lady, she appears as, or a mist near the pool. Now, according to Jimmy Wilkes, James Wilkinson, tour guy, or in this case, gal, Michelle Baxter, saw the grey lady twice. Different times. The first time she wasn't even a tour guy. She was just a civilian, I suppose.

The first time she saw the grey lady standing at the pool and the second time Behind her always the same distance away as she moved around the caves Right like a shadow is what Michelle said not like a shadow. Okay great lady Like a great lady. This is James. This is getting very spooky. I need you to believe a lot of what I'm gonna say now Okay, otherwise, I'm going to say now. Okay. Otherwise, I'm getting nothing for supernatural. Once while backing up a tour, the most incredible thing I have ever seen here happened at the pool. I first thought that it had to be my imagination. It was so strange.

I saw a pair of hands had come out of the pool and were holding a baby aloft. I couldn't understand what I was seeing as there is no story that links it or anything. I looked twice, feeling quite nervous, but couldn't see it again." So that was Michelle Baxter's baby held aloft ghost. That's quite good. Yes, definitely. So those are some of the ghosts of the haunted pool. There's the lonesome Navi.

Another tour guide, David Duker, was giving a tour and one of the people on the tour asked, what's that man doing over there? Sorry, I'm trying to get the accent of the person from Kent. And that's good, yeah. What's that man doing over there? That's all right. I mean, they lived in London for a while, but that's normal. Yeah, I think I might be doing, yeah, Dickensian Cockney more than Kent. Someone said, excuse me, what's that man doing over there? And he looked and saw a middle-aged man with a receding hairline or bald head. I could see his head quite clearly because the light from the top of the doorway seemed to reflect on his forehead.

He was wearing something like a donkey jacket and a hoop sweater with black or blue heavy trousers that resembled jeans and he had dark shoes on. It looked like he had just come off a building site, like a Navvy. David Duker looks away. A moment later, gasps from all around. The people on the tour, 14 or 15 of them, have just seen that man vanish before their eyes. Woah. Yeah.

So Duker comes out of the caves feeling a little bit shaken and he runs into old man Gardner, also mentioned in the past or future episode. I think it's probably the same James Gardener who was burying gold coins down there for old Pogson. Omg, it's Old Man Gardener. Yes. He was visiting, David Duker ran into him sitting outside and went up to him and, I quote, apprehensively said, Oh, I think I've just seen a ghost down there. He says, I tried to say it in a jokey way in case he thought I'd gone mad, but I felt unnerved. Before I could describe this figure, Mr. Gardiner said, Oh, down by the isolation unit, was it? And then Gardiner told his story.

I was called out one night because the police had received a call regarding strange noises at the caves and found the old entrance to the caves had been broken into. It was in the night and I called a party of other guides to the caves to help me search for the intruders. We had a good look around the caves but didn't find anything, but about two weeks later the decomposing body of a man was found by a little wooden hut. He had no matches or a torch. And I guess he died of fright because he looked that way when they found him. He was as stiff as a plank. That's kind of standard for corpses though, and it being stiff.

No offense. No offense. I was also, I was making my own assumptions when you're saying he was found by, I was anticipating that to be whoever found him, but when he was found by a little wooden hut, briefly became confused. Well, I thought that would be chilling, but you've anthropomorphised a hut. I did. Which sort of takes the edge off.

I anthropomorphised a hut. But yes, that guy with a look of terror on his face, Erectus. Yes, exactly. Needless to say, James, do I need to say it? When Gardner describes the clothes the dead man was wearing, they were exactly the clothes that David Duker saw. Classic Navi wear. Classic Navi. I don't know that this would have been the 80s. I don't know that we have Navis in the 80s or 90s.

We do need to explain what a Navi is because I think the young people nowadays might be imagining one of the Navi from Avatar, from the Avatar series of films. It's more like a road man, isn't it? A Navi? Yeah, I think so. Navi is a labourer, I think mostly Irish in the 19th century. People who were used principally for digging trenches for canals and railway, I think. Those are navvies. There's also the story of the penitent priest. And the penitent priest. The penitent priest. Which takes place around 1958 and is essentially the same story.

With a priest instead of a navvy. A priest going to the caves, hoping to do some kind of penance. We don't know what the priest had done wrong, but knowing priests… ALICE Break in and enter. MIGUEL Yeah, he was very compounding whatever sin he had committed. It gets worse, stripped off all his clothes, and walked the caves by night, presumably as a sort of self-flagellation. But he flagellated a bit too hard and died and was found with his fingers all scratched and bloodied as if he'd been trying to get out. However, that's clearly the same story, but with a different job. There's the Cavalier, as seen in Cavalier's passage.

And my favourite thing about this from James Wilkinson's Ghosts of Chislehurst Caves is that My favourite thing about this from James Wilkinson's Ghosts of Chislehurst Caves is that it's basically an oral history. It's mostly interviews with tour guides. I can't remember the name of the tour guide, but they describe it as being a cavalier from Cavalier and Roundhead times. It's like, yeah, yeah. You could have said English Civil War or the century. But yeah, cavalier from Cavalier times. And one talk I saw that Cavalier in Cavalier's passage. I think perhaps the name and the ghost of the other way around. Maybe it's called that because of the ghost. There's a German shepherd with a cat's face. So moving on.

I'm just going to throw that in there. There's a German shepherd with the face of a cat. A Neko man Ken. Yes. Yeah. Is that actual Japanese you did there? Neko means cat, and I think in Jin man ken, the Jin was the person, wasn't it? It looks like, I mean, people do see animals down there quite a lot, even though animals are not allowed. And then sometimes the dog looks around, meow! Ungodly face of a cat upon a dog's body. Or some people think it's one of your classic alien big cats. And if that wasn't scary enough, James, let me tell you about the challenge.

From the New York Times in 2016. For decades after the war, the management offered a prize of £5 for anyone brave enough to spend the night in the tunnels. Only one person ever wanted, a police officer named Tony Bayfield in 1958. The offer was discontinued in 1985 for safety reasons after one hopeful dislocated his shoulder in the total darkness. Nasty, but James, I can't tell you how much that plays down what actually happened. Oh really?

Yeah, I read that and thought, oh, that doesn't sound particularly spooky. But then I picked up Jimmy Wilkes' book and heard about it from David Duker and Chris the men involved. And it is quite a tale. Oh, yeah, go on. Are you ready for it? I am. First of all, let me tell you about Tony Bayfield, who stayed the night in 1958.

He was a police officer. Even he found spending a night in the cave very difficult. Even the toughest guy to have ever visited the caves found it a challenge. He set up a ring of candles around him and he spent the entire night carving a horse into the wall. It's now called Bayfield's horse or the policeman's horse. People refer to it. He focused on carving that horse and he didn't look away from it and he didn't look behind him. Dukas says he kept looking at the wall for fear of what he might see standing behind him. So he made it out, but he made it out shaken.

A changed man with a fiver. With a five, with five pounds, which in 1958 was still pretty rubbish really for meeting a ghost. Dave and Chris decided to recreate the challenge in the 80s. They got permission from Annie Rieke, who was the boss at that time. She wasn't keen because, you know, it's dangerous and, you know, they didn't really do that sort of thing anymore. She was persuaded.

And just to be clear, the price had not gone up. Really? From the 50s to the 80s. It's still a fiver, I think, at this point. So it's hardly worth doing it for monetary reasons. The rule was that they were going to spend the night at least 50 feet apart from each other. So they weren't allowed to scare each other or comfort each other. The idea was for them to be separate and in the caves. David went to the carved horse, Bayfield's horse, and Chris went towards the pool, the haunted. Now there is a tape recording of this and apparently it picks up as they go

to bed. It picks up, you know, the usual, the buzzes and the crickles and cracks and pads and thumps until a scream. There's a terrible, terrible scream echoing all through the caves. If you go there now, they have a big sheet of metal hung, which they'll hit with a big hammer. And you can hear how it takes, it feels like several minutes for the echoes to dissipate as they, you know, it just, the noise just carries on and on and on all the way down the cave. So you can imagine how a scream would sound in the middle of the night. David Duker fumbles his way out of his sleeping bag and tries to find Chris. And when he finds him, he hardly resembles his friend. I'm going to read now.

He opened his eyes and looked straight at me. And his face wasn't like Chris. The face was taut and cracks appeared in the skin like a very old man's face. Chris's face was usually plump, but now he looked ravaged and emaciated. His eyes were the worst, completely red. They glowed like red light bulbs. It was looking right at me. A really horrible looking face. All right, this is your mate. He ran to the door. Chris had locked them in. He didn't have a key. He had to call Annie and Abraham, who was working there, to come and unlock and let them in. And then all three of them went back in to try and get Chris. And when they came back, according to David, Chris was running about on all fours,

like some kind of cat-faced dog. Annie doesn't mention that part of it, but she does corroborate that when he looked at her, she saw glowing red eyes. Chris, on the other hand, remembered nothing until he was in Queen Mary's hospital with someone doing something to his arm. And he has no memory of anything that happened that night in Chislehurst Caves. He dislocated his shoulder. It was a bit darker than that, dislocated his shoulder. And he was scuttling around on all fours. He was just going for a late night scuttle.

If you have difficulty sleeping, what are you going to do? Just scuttle about. But that's what they say to do, isn't it? You sort of reset yourself by having a scuttle and brushing your teeth and going back to bed if you can't sleep. So that, James, was the last time the challenge was ever faced. reset yourself by having a scuttle and brushing your teeth and going back to bed if you can't sleep. So that James was the last time the challenge was ever faced. Do you think you could do it? For £5. For a cool £5? Yeah, for a sweet 5 Gs if Gs are pounds and not thousands of pounds.

I don't know if I'd want to now. I'm a bit scared. I've been looking at the gallery and it's very scary. It is. It is very scary and atmospheric. And it's well worth visiting if you're in the Kent slash London Borough of Bromley area. And since you're talking about how scary it looks and you're actually looking at pictures of it, I want to come straight in on the scores with Supernatural. Okay. If you go to slide 24 in the gallery, you've got some sort of nurse giving out some medicine to children, one of whom looks like a ruddy Jimmy Carr.

MIGUEL Because he's pink faced, you're not angry at Jimmy Carr here. Is it that the mannequin looks like Jimmy Carr or does Jimmy Carr look like a mannequin? ALICE It's the one after the Bowie one, the Bowie by the bunk bed. MIGUEL Oh, yeah. Straight in on David Bowie one, the Bowie by the bunk bed. Oh yeah, straight in on David Bowie there. Yep, there he is, young David Bowie. Yeah, yeah, I can see Rudy Jimmy Carr. And then if you look in the doorway, there's just a floating girl. Yes, a levitating child and a small Maxine Peake as well.

Yes, that's who it is, yes. Then the next one. Is some, I think a plague victim. Oh, is that a plague victim? I think so because there's rats and chains and I don't think that, and I think possibly Orc ears. I'm not sure that is historically accurate. And then I think there's a church. That's the church of the, that's the cathedral of rock. The cathedral of rock.

The guy on the right is the guy from Back to the Future 2 that gives Martin McFly the idea to go back in time. Put some money on the cubbies. And a small child dressed like an art student from an American sitcom in the nineties with a little red beret. Yes. Is it Clarissa? Yep. Yes.

She looks like she's about to explain it all. Or no, or maybe Blossom with the hats. Red Beret. Yes. Is it Clarissa? Yep. Yes. She looks like she's about to explain it all. Or no, or maybe Blossom with the hats. I think we're thinking of Blossom, aren't we? You're listening to two guys describing pictures you can't see. So yeah, this is just, sorry, Schilsler's hyphen caves.co.uk, the gallery. If you want to look along and get a vibe of the place, it's really scary. It's really scary. It's really scary.

Definitely spooky. That man that became the dog thing scuttling around. That's spooky. The baby in the hands, the shadow or ghost. Yeah. That's pretty scary. I'd say I'd give it a solid three. Becomes a red-eyed demon. That is really scary. That's really scary. And Jimi Hendrix didn't like the vibe. Jimi Hendrix. Yeah, explain that. Jimi Hendrix didn't want to hang around afterwards. Just have a beer. I thought this was supposed to be music.

So it's going to be rock and roll. It's going to be cool. Is it really a three? Okay. It's a three. I'm not going to, I'm not going to budge despite these terrifying mannequins. Okay. Then names. Names. Yeah. There's some good ones. We got OMG. It's old man Gifford. Was it Gifford? Gardner. It's old man Gardner. Lumbago Alley. Lumbago Alley. The isolation unit. The haunted pool. Snowy Wayation Unit. The Haunted Pool. Snowy Way. Mr Vice President. I think the Isolation Unit was my nickname at age 13.

Were you a unit in those days? A lonely unit? Check out the size of that loser, people would say. Quietly. Check out the size of that loser. Yeah, there was a lot of good and Chislehurst caves just sounds good. I mean, we had references at least to Mount Ambrosius and Brosellion, the Breton fairy wood.

I bet they would. I think it's also a three though. What? The Chislehurst Hotel? Classic mid-century self-deprecation or self-mockery, the Chislehurst Hotel. The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. And Brian Dowling. And Brian Dowling.

And of course Brian. Okay, that's pushing up to a four. I'd forgotten some of those names there. Yes. All right, I'll accept the four. My next category is Minor Mystery. for. My next category is minor mystery. So brace yourselves. I'm doing a bit of wordplay here on minor, meaning small, but also minor in the sense of someone who minds. I'm miming it. I'm being a mimer-miner. And a jemimer. Minor mystery is my category, James. Because, okay, I admit, Nichols, Mr. Vice President Nichols sets up quite a lot, but doesn't really pay off with Chislehurst Caves. But you've got to see it from his point of view. No one had been down there. It was really dark.

It was the early 20th century. Nobody really knew anything about anything in those days. There could have been dragons down there. Easily. Easily. There could have been 10 dragons. Yeah. Okay. It was, it was probably a chalk mine and that's, that's it. But still mysterious.

Yeah. It was, it is a minor mystery. Some of the things. It probably has been a chalk mine for a pretty long time as well. Yeah. It might not go back. We don't know how far it goes back. It's not mentioned before. Excuse me. I'm far it goes back. It's not mentioned before.

Excuse me, I'm just looking up Dr. Eric Inman's book again. It's first recorded in a Saxon charter between 1250 and 1274. So that's not that old. That's pretty old though. It's pretty old. It's not Romans and Druids old. No, it's not quite Druid times. But it is definitely a miner's mystery. And the miners probably would have experienced some mysterious things happening there. So I would say it's a good four. Oh, thank you very much. And the final category, James, those red, red eyes. Because I have a feeling you didn't think it was that supernatural, but I do think I freaked you out a bit with

the eyes. So I'm trying to score just on those. Like two light bulbs they were. Bing bing bing. Probably all lens flaring when he looks towards camera. Or a bit like one of the versions of Blade Runner. The one that really tells you that Deckard's a replicant. Is there a version where his eyes go brrroooom? His eyes just like reflect like a cat, like all the replicants do.

Yeah, I haven't seen that. I don't think this is supposed to be a mystery anymore. It's like that. It's like that. But instead of being a replicant, he was a dog with a cat's face. A scuttling around man. Scuttling around guy. And his face went from podgy to taut and with cracks in. I don't know, but podgy feels pejorative, James. This is a real guy we're talking about who's scuttling around like a beast. Plump. Plump was the much more pleasant term used by David Duker. Yeah, he went from plump to emaciated, ravaged,

aged. James That was really scary. And he scuttled around so hard he dislocated his arm. As far as we know, that's what happened, yes. So that, I think that is a five. Even though I could be a real lawman, knit, what's the word, like a stickler to the law. I'd be like, well, there were only two red eyes there. You could. Oh, wow. OK, well, you're giving me the benefit of the doubt. It's full up of terrifyingness.

Oh, well, thank you very much. And James, I'm going to remember this and you can call this favor in when I am scoring you like two or one in the future. All right. OK. I'll put that in my pocket. Just pop that in your back pocket for later. People might have to remind me it's alive. Yeah. Just pop that there and forget about that, please. Yeah. So it may not have been a great Cheserhurst cave mystery, but it was a mystery. That was wonderful.

Thank you very much, Hans. And if people want to hear bonus content, perhaps some extra stuff from this episode and other episodes, where could they go? I would suggest they wend their way through the labyrinth of the internet to patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod Yeah, and they'll be rewarded with bonus episodes and access to the Lawfolk Discord to chat with like-minded lawfolk And people could come see us live on the 11th of October 2024 2024 See the link in the show notes

And thank you very much for you for listening Thank you, James. I feel like we should mention, because people will probably mention to us that a Doctor Who episode was filmed there. And Doctor Who was filmed there, but I don't think, I don't think Doctor Who fans are particularly known for pedantry or bringing it up apropos of nothing. So yeah, Doctor Who was are particularly known for pedantry or bringing it up apropos of nothing. So yeah, Doctor Who was filmed there. A Doctor Who was filmed there.

A doc, yeah, one, one of the doctors who's and Doctor Who went there and his name is Doctor Who.