Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep74: Loremen S3 Ep74 - The Ghosts in the Window

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

You know the feeling. It's night-time and you're all alone. You get the strangest feeling that if you look into the glass of a darkened window, you might see a scary figure looking back at you?  Well, the tale that Alasdair Beckett-King chills James Shakeshaft with in this episode is ever so similar. Except it's daytime, you're in church with other people, and the figures seem to be acting out a boring play. So... the same. It's the fenestral spectres of Trinity Church in York. Disclaimer: WE CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH that Alasdair found his information from a number of sources. Not you Colin. Really. Loreboys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.twitch.tv/loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And this is another live episode. And James, what's that you've got there? Is that an apology? Yes, I'd like to read this prepared statement. I made a grave error.

I neglected to press record on my computer, so you're listening to the backup audio. I'd like people to respect my family's privacy at this time. No further questions. So James is going to sound like an old modem. That's what I hear when you talk anyway. But in spite of James' apology, it's a cracking episode. Yes.

All about the ghosts in the window. I've got a ghost story. In fact, I see this as a medicinal ghost story because it is so chilling. Oh, perfect. So plausibly chilling that it'll be like an ice cube down your back, but without the sort of sexy connotations. Sexy? Yeah, I said it and regretted it instantly.

It's more like a bullying thing that happened at school for me. Are you sure you didn't just have very sexy bullies at school? I went to a sex school. It's impossible to expand upon that riff and stay within the terms of service of the platforms that are streaming us. Yes, definitely. My story for you is called The Ghosts in the Window. Are you chilled yet? Yeah, if it hadn't all been burned off by a Turkish barber, my ear hairs would be on end.

This ghost story comes from Trinity Church, which is on Micklegate in York. You know the way all the streets in York have gates in their name? Did you know that? Well, I got that there were a few from our chat with Amy about Brother Chukundus. Of course. Whitmer-Watmergate. Whitmer-Watmergate, classic. And there's Micklegate, Petergate, Stonegate. And there's a sort of a classic chestnut of a joke that the tour guides do which is that because there's the there's mickle gate and next to mickle gate there's mickle gate bar which is like bar as in barbican so it's the gate that the street runs through so the joke is that in york the streets are called gates and the gates are called bars and the bars are called pubs

you could have several american tourists chuckling into their fanny packs with that one i prefer my water gate one if I'm honest. Yeah, it's not as good as your Watergate joke. I agree. I actually spilled water. Did you? Unintentionally, yeah. Is that what Watergate comes from?

Yeah, that was my Watergate. So according to William Page's history of the County of York, this church has been there for flipping ages. I think it might be one of the oldest churches in the area. So it goes back to the 11th century. And it was the Holy Trinity Church or Holy Trinity Priory was an alien house. Oh. Yeah.

Which is a way less exciting thing than it sounds like. But that's a church whose mother church is in France. So it's a church which is attached to the French church rather than the English church. Alien. So I just included that because it's got the phrase alien house in it. The rectors of the Priory, the people who've been bosses of Holy Trinity Church, have some cracking names. I'd just like to give you a few of them from the 12th through to the 13th century.

Hermar or Hickmar. Nice. Helius Painele, Roger Pepin, William Wenge. William Wenge. William Wenge. Billy Wenge. A guy just called Hamo. Just one word. Just Wenge. William Wenge. Billy Wenge. A guy just called Hamo. Just one word.

Just like Madonna. Yeah. And my favourite, Odofricette. Ooh. Or Odofricet, perhaps. Why? Probably French. That sounds like a delicious dinner.

I know. It's been there for even longer than that, though, because when excavating the church in 1688, they found the tomb of a Roman soldier dating back to the first or second century AD. And he had been a standard bearer in the Ninth Legion. The Ninth Legion, James. The vanished Ninth Legion. The Ninth Legion that went missing and nobody knows what happened to it. Really? I didn't know about that. Oh, I assumed that was far too well known for our podcast. The Ninth Legion famously were in the

north of England and then appeared to go into Scotland and then nobody knows what happened to them. But I think we all know what happened to them. Yeah. Can you glass an entire Legion? I don't know. You could then.

Chin a Legion. Chin a Legion. Oh, James, I'm just watergating myself. That was your watergate. Oh, no. This is why they say, judge not lest ye be judged. Here I was going, ah, James, with you, Watergate. And now look at me.

I'm moist. So the name of that soldier who was found in the tomb, Lucius Duceus. The Duceus soldier in the 9th Legion, Lucius Duceus. Oh, no. Oh, he's such a Duceus. Lucius Duceus. His full name was Lucius Douchiest Rufinus. Oh.

And he is, as far as I'm aware, the only extant member of the missing Ninth Legion. I think there's a good chance he screwed the others over in some way. I think they hated him and left him behind because he was such a douchiest. He was the douchiest. So what, you douche, douchest, douchers? I douche, you douche, they douche. He douchiest. So what, you douche, douchess, douchess? I douche, you douche, they douche. He douchiest.

And on the subject of being the douchiest, I have to clarify something now for legal reasons, which is that some of the information I just said appears on a website which is full of genealogical info about the history of Yorkshire compiled by a man called Colin. He's compiled a list of all the names of the people who are in charge of the Priory. And as he makes very clear in his nine page long copyright information, you are not allowed to copy the information he has gathered for anything

other than personal use. And so I am not allowed to repeat any of the stuff on the website, in our podcast or on the live stream. So I had to go and look it up in different sources. And you might think I'm exaggerating how uptight this guy is about copyright, but the copyright page is the only part of the website that is in public domain. And the copyright page includes a section titled Excuses That Cut No Ice With Me.

Which isn't the tone that copyright information is normally written in. I don't even have time to read all of the excuses that cut no ice with Colin. But here are a selection of excuses for copyright infringement that Colin does not tolerate. Is one of them funny names? But they were funny. Yeah, they were funny. And that is why I had to go and look them up in William Page's History of the County of York and not your website, Colin, because it's the same information. It sounds like Lucius wasn't the douchiest.

There is a douchier. Colin, excuses that cut no ice with me. I didn't realise I wasn't allowed to copy it, despite there being a link to the conditions of use at the page at the bottom of the copy page. This is as written. I'm just adding a voice to it. I think, if anything, you're toning it down.

I took over the website from someone else. So send my invoice to them. I didn't know that the copyright symbol meant I couldn't copy it. This is the worst of all. It doesn't have to say copyright on it. Copyright is automatic. And finally, I didn't think you would mind. Really?

That's all he says. Really? Me? And then it's just a link to all those nine pages again. You didn't think I, the guy whose whole deal is minding a massive amount about this, you didn't think I would mind? Ironically infringes Quentin Tarantino's copyright to use that John Travolta gif of him looking. He's like a loan shark who's like,

oh, you want a list of the incumbents of Trinity Church? Well, I can get it for you, but it ain't going to be free. Now you owe me. You have to give me £100. He doesn't ask for £100, though he does say that getting the information yourself would cost you £100. What does he ask for?

What does he want? What does he want? Colin does he want, Colin? He wants you to use the information for your own personal use and never reproduce it anywhere, even though it's just a list of historic facts that I now know in my brain. There are facts. But it's illegal for me to know them and to tell you.

You can't remember them. You can just read them but never recall them. And then I have to brain wipe them out. Oh, Colin. That is a potted history of Holy Trinity Church on Micklegate in York, featuring no information from Colin. Do you think that, you know,

like the audience survey put fake roads in to trick people? He mentions that he does that. Do you think it's Jambo or whatever that guy is? Mayo? What was the one whose name had an exclamation mark as part of their name? Hamo.

Hamo. Do you think he's the fake one? No, because I got it from a different book. But yeah, he does specifically say that he has used clever arrangements of words. How do you know that other book didn't copy Colin? So let's hope Colin's not listening. Or if he is, you know, get in touch.

Let us know what you thought of me devoting a good section of the podcast to making fun of your copyright notice. Yeah, Colin, let us know if that cuts any ice. Does sarcasm cut any ice, Colin? I think he must do because his little, like, oh, I thought it came from a different place. Well, send the invoice to them. Or whatever it was. So, friend of the podcast, Sabine Baring-Gould.

SBG. Wrote a book with, I think, a great title, Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents and Strange Events. Which, in fact, I discovered because I saw somebody tweeting it at the Lawmen handle on Twitter. Oh, nice one. Thanks, person. So one of our listeners already has this book. And that's where I came upon this story of the ghosts in the window

at Trinity Church, Micklegate, York. Micklegate? It's the swinging 1860s, James. Picture it. Sideburns? Sideburns are the length you would expect for the time. Women present to some extent. The 60s. In fact, 1866, and Sabine Beringhild receives a letter from an old pupil

of his, who is now a grown-up man, in fact, a clergyman, one of the top types of man, asking for his help, having had a strange experience in Trinity Church. And the letter is written in that cracking 19th century, needlessly polite way. He asks Sabine Beringhild, if you have ever heard anything of it and can help me in explaining it, I shall be grateful, as it perplexes me as one is always teased when something which one cannot account for has been brought to one's notice. By the way, Sabine Beringgold doesn't give the names of any of the people who've written to him. He just gives their initials. One of them. So this guy's initials are AB. So for the purposes of this, let's call him Antonio Banderas,

just to be safe. Good, B. So for the purposes of this, let's call him Antonio Banderas, just to be safe. Good, good. I'm not sure I can keep that up for all of the other correspondents, but we'll try. The ghosts in the window at Micklegate Church are a really weird spectre. So it's a fairly small church with a gallery, like a little mezzanine level. And if you sit on the mezzanine level facing the altar, ahead of you is the east window at the end of the church. Now, I've got a picture of what the east window looks like now. Oh, isn't it beautiful?

Oh, yeah. Jesus and that lot. Absolutely cracking window. That's not the window that the story relates to. That was put in, I think, in early 20th century, presumably because the previous window was haunted. I can't prove that, but I do know that all the rectors that ran the place absolutely hated everyone banging on about the ghost and going to try and see the ghost. So I can't help but think that's one of the reasons that they got rid of the window. Also, the little

gallery you had to sit on to see the ghost, they also got rid of that. So I'm just saying someone is trying to clamp down on this ghost and that someone is the rector of the church. Basically, it's like when you're doing standup at a bad open mic when you're new and they've still got the football on the TV in the background, but the football is a ghost. So what happens is if you sit up there in the middle of the gallery and you look at the east window at the far end of the church, you see in the style, they say, the magic lantern slide being moved, you see figures moving on the glass, just under halfway up the glass, glowing, bright figures, mostly women wearing a surplus, a white religious gown. Yes.

And what's fascinating about them is that they're seen all the time and they always tell the same story. So here, I'm going to read a little bit of Antonio Banderas' account. The peculiarity of the apparition is that it is a scene on the window itself, rather less than halfway from the bottom, as I saw it from the gallery, and has much the same effect as that of a slide thrown through a magic lantern when a scene on the exhibiting a sheet. So basically, there are three characters that seem to appear. So basically, there are three characters that seem to appear.

First, a nurse, a middle-aged woman of average height. Then a mother, a tall, slender woman, and also a child. And they carry out a little play, a sort of story. Antonio Banderas describes it as follows. The mother came alone from the north side of the window. That would be the left-hand side from the north side of the window. That would be the left-hand side, from the gallery point of view. And having gone about halfway across, I stopped, turned around,

and waved her arm towards the quarter when she had come. Their signal was answered by the entry of the nurse with the child. Both figures then bent over the child and seemed to bemoan its fate. The mother then moved towards the other side of the window, taking the child with her, leaving the nurse in the center of the window, from which she gradually retired towards the north corner when she had come. After some little time, she again appeared, bending forward and evidently anticipating the return of the other two, who never failed to reappear from the south side of the window,

where they had disappeared. The same gestures of despair and distress were repeated, and all three retired together to the north side of the window. And that was said to happen again and again, week in, week out, even several times within the same service. Especially on Trinity Sunday, but also at other times. Right. Pretty spooky. Yeah, pretty spooky. Pretty decently spooky.

Pretty decently spooky. I want to add some detail to how they appeared on the window. Yes. The windows were described as being tawdry, tawdry green stained glass. Right. But around the edge was clear glass. So as they moved in and out of sort of the window segments,

you could catch more detail. So you could see little bits of detail, but obviously it's through stained glass, so it's quite distorted. But they're described as wearing like classical robes. So again, Antonio Banderas describes seeing an arm bare to the shoulder with a beautiful folds of white drapery hanging from it, like the picture on a Greek vase. Nothing could be plainer than the drag of the robes on the ground after the figures as they retired at the edge of the window where the clear glass was. So Sabine Beringold starts looking into this and he contacts other people who've got accounts.

An LS. Now I've searched. I can't think of anybody who has the initials LS who I can do an impression of. Leo Sayer. I thought about Leo Sayer. Where's he from? The past.

I'll just guess what Leo Sayer sounds like. Is he from Birmingham? I hope he is. He is now. Because I'm going with it. Leo Sayer describes, the figure appeared to me to be decidedly outside the window and at a greater distance than was possible for anyone to be.

The pure white of the robe quite obliterated the colours in the window. The distinct outline of the figure was most striking. Right. So you're on a mezzanine level. You're on a mezzanine. You're on a mezzanine. You're looking at halfway up a stained glass window and there's what appears to be basically glowing people

on the other side of that window. Yes. But they would have to be floating in the air to get the angle. What you've described there is exactly right, so you are visualising it correctly. Right. There's a story that goes along with the story we're seeing there, which is that during plague times, there was a young family,

a father, a mother, and a child, and the father died and was buried at the east end of the church. Ah, I thought you were going to say that the father was a nurse. You daft sexist. Because fathers can be nurses too. Yeah, I cannot operate on this child because I'm a nurse. I'm not qualified. It's not how surgery works.

So the mother and father both died, as did the little girl. But because the little girl died of plague, she was buried outside of town in the plague pit. And so this is the mother, the ghost of the mother, going to fetch the little girl from her grave outside of town in the plague pit. And so this is the mother, the ghost of the mother, going to fetch the little girl from her grave outside of town and bringing her to visit her father's grave. With the help of a ghost of a nurse? With the help of a ghost of a nurse, yeah.

They've still got to keep the same job after death. They don't even get a day off. Yeah, it is really quite hard on the staff, yeah. And she's working on a Sunday, evidently. Good point. So hopefully she'll be getting... Double pay, double ghost pay. The next account comes from someone

with the initials HGFT. I cannot think of anybody. Hugh Grant's Francois Truffaut is the best I can do. I don't think I can do that accent. Hugh Grant's flipping toupee. Okay, with the voice of Hugh Grant's flipping toupee.

This guy, Hugh Grant wrote into, in 1874, having read about it, he wrote into the Newcastle Daily Chronicle and told his version of the story. I was really worried you were going to say, having read about it on Colin's website. Oh, no! Brass him up. He was found shot in the back of the head.

With an ice cube and a knife. And the ice cube was, I mean was it was seeming to be untouched so hugh grant says importantly that the ghost is it's often seen as distinctly on a dark rainy or snowy day as when the sun is shining when i saw it the sun was not bright one of my friends with a companion has watched outside the wall where he had full view of the whole place around during morning service. The ghost had been seen from the inside, while nothing outside was visible. James, I mean, I know you. I knew the minute I was going to tell you there was a ghost in the window, you'd be like, do they know how windows work?

Good, that was my next question. Did they understand windows in those days? Were they just looking at some people rehearsing a play about a sad baby? This is the very controversial question. What was happening? Is this essentially just a window? But before we move on to the theories, I have one more ghost for you that allegedly appears in the window. And that is the ghost of the Mother Superior from when it was a nunnery and this story is quite different you remember when henry the eighth dissolved the monasteries yeah they sent a gang of lads around to dissolve it and the mother superior said no i won't let you come in and

there was a standoff and that standoff is recorded in a poem who wrote this poem ea old which if i've ever heard a yorkshire name ea old. Old. Oh, E.A. Old. Is the Yorkshire-ist name. It's only got one consonant in it, basically. It's just all the vowels. E.A. Old. E.A. Old. E.A. Old. Writing in Yorkshire Chronicle. Oh, lovely. I forgot to mention, I looked this up

in Yorkshire Legends and Traditions by Reverend Thomas Parkinson. Not calling his website. Not calling his website. Which is a book I will return to because it also has a chapter called The Worm of Sex How? So, I didn't know there was a worm there. So here is E.A. Old writing at Yorkshire Chronicle.

A pause. The word advance is given. A rush. A muffled tread. A weary sigh. The moon on high. A holy woman, dead. A throng of scared and shrieking nuns, a band of ruthless men, a furious mob without and yells

of execration, then a struggle fierce, and flames that burst on high with lurid light. These were the sounds that met the ear, these were the scenes that froze with fear upon that fateful night. Those days have passed and perished. Three centuries have fled since in that stony portal gate the martyred nun lay dead. Oh.

So they killed the nuns, this blooming gang. Yeah, they killed the nuns. They could have just dissolved them, but no. And some people say that the figure wearing a surplice is that nun. Ah. So that's like a fourth extra ghost that I'm throwing in there that's good ghost good ghost so basically what happens after that is you've got a flame war going on in in the new castle chronicle between hgft hugh grant's flaming

toupee the at that time incumbent rector of trinity church and someone called novo castrensis who is presumably like a sock puppet of one of the other people in the argument, but has just adopted a fake name like on Twitter. His little avatar would be an egg. And they argue about what is really going on. There are several theories. One of them is that across from the east window, there's a little cottage and a guy called JL. John Lennon?

John Lennon. John Lennon writes in to suggest that there's a window that opens up in the college across the way and what happens is the light of the sun

catches on that window and it projects onto the window, you see. So that's all you're seeing, just glinting windows every time someone opens the window. It's not even the most

impressive stained glass window in the Beatles. So that's one, I think you'll agree, crap theory that absolutely in no way explains seeing three figures carrying out repeated actions. What an elaborate reflection that would look like this whole story. Yeah, I don't buy that one at all.

And then there is the Rector's Theory, which is backed up by an anonymous personages research. And I'm going to show you the drawings done by this anonymous person. So on the right, you've got you, James, sitting in the gallery. In the middle, you've got the window and the beautifully labeled pseudo ghost and real ghost. Oh. It's not clear to me what it means by real ghost, but I think it means... A real ghost. Oh. It's not clear to me what it means by real ghost, but I think it means- A real ghost.

That a person standing there would appear to be a ghost in the window. There is a little cottage across from the church, the same one with the magic window. The idea being that simply people moving in and out of the door of that church and crossing the yard are what is being seen inside the church. And that explains it. There's simply no mystery. That is the other theory.

I think it stinks to high heaven, James. What are they doing there when they should be in church? Jim Moon's asking if it's a variation on Pepper's Ghost. It sounds like it could be. Do you know what Pepper's Ghost is, James? Is it to do with John Lennon? It's not to do with John Lennon, but I'll explain it in the voice of John Lennon.

If you're not familiar with Pepper's Ghost, it's an early magic trick. And by the voice of John Lennon I mean generic Beatle. Not a specific Beatle. Yeah, voice actor in Yellow Submarine. Yes, one of those guys. Yeah. It's an old magic trick, Pepper's Ghost, where an angled piece of glass

shows a lighted figure. So offstage, there's a person dressed in a sheet being hit with the limelight, and then a piece of glass at 45 degrees is on stage. And when that light lifts up and down, the ghost appears to appear and disappear. But of course, that wouldn't work inside a building, because when you're looking out through stained glass, it's much brighter outside. So you couldn't possibly be seeing any reflections from the inside of the church. But great suggestion.

Thank you for that. Good guess. We can't research this any further because that window has been replaced and so has the entire gallery. There's no way of going to check. And the building on the left has been completely destroyed. Mm-hmm. Oh.

Oh. Hello, law folk. The noise you just heard was me slapping James right in the face with a dazzling three-dimensional CSI-style crime scene reconstruction of the diagrams drawn by the newspaper's anonymous correspondent. Search for Lawmen Podcast YouTube if you want to see it in full. The upshot of my experiment was this. If those probably not accurate drawings were accurate,

you might have been able to see the neighbours' feet if they stood right up against the cottage opposite. But there's a very good chance their feet would have been hidden by the wall that marked the edge of the churchyard. Back to me. I'm not saying it's ghosts. You know that I'm a sceptic and I don't believe in ghosts. But everybody describes them wearing long robes and they describe those long robes dragging on the ground, which is not how people dressed in the mid-19th century. And it doesn't seem likely that you'd be able to see long robes dragging on the ground. More importantly, if they're supposedly glowing so brightly that they shine through the glass,

how is the sun hitting them? Oh my gosh. The whole yard would be in shadow. And in order to be visible, they have to be standing right against the wall. It just doesn't add up, James. It doesn't. It does not add up. It just doesn't add up.

The only thing I would say is if you were to wear an ankle-length dress and people couldn't see your feet, it would appear that your dress would be touching the ground. Yeah, that's a really good point. I hadn't thought of that. But they would also need to be on fire. And people would probably notice that that and that wouldn't be... I understand why they're so upset now, but...

Then there'll be like a nurse and a mother and then a child who was just a torso and arms. Like they would have mentioned that. So there you go. I don't have an answer for you, James. All I can tell you is that it is unexplained. What it could very well could be is that those people in the cottage across the way are actually ghosts. That's the most realistic explanation, isn't it?

They're ghosts. You just happen to see some ghosts through a window. They're not actually in the window. To be fair, the rector does say that the ghosts appeared when people were living in that cottage and didn't appear when people weren't living in that cottage. When people were living in that cottage and were on fire. Alistair, that lovely model, if someone wanted to use that themselves, is that an sort of open source program or would they need to, do you hold the copyright to that model? James, I researched all of those little people and I made that. So anybody who has seen that has committed a crime. If that's in your brain now, you owe me £100, basically.

Are we going to see nine more models that explain how? Nine more animations of someone being unable to cut ice. What do you make of that tale? Quite scary, actually,

that it happened enough times that really takes away sort of the explanation of it being that people in the cottage is undermined by the fact that there was this repeating pattern of movement. Yeah, and somebody, in at least one account, somebody is sitting on the wall watching while this supposedly happens. Yeah, they would have thought to have looked at the cottage, surely. You'd think they would have thought to look to see

if somebody was exactly where the ghosts appeared to be. But we just can't know. Are you ready to score? Yeah. First category. Yes. Names. I was quite cheeky and I threw in a few at the start that didn't really have that much to do with the story.

Yeah, you threw in a bunch. Old bloomin' whammo blammo. Mayo. Heymo. Heymo. Heymo. He unsuccessfully applied to have an exclamation mark added to his name. And William Wenge, let's not forget.

Oh, Billy Wenge. Oh, don't forget. Oh, don't forget. Oh, don't you forget about me. Lucius Ducius. Lucius the Ducius. Rufinus. That is an actual person who died at the age of 28.

So that's very young actually so we've been a little bit Lucius the douchest Lucius douchest he died at 28 which is the douchiest age he was a douchest frozen forever

in douchedom was he really the he was a standard bearer of the 9th legion it's carved into the stone and there's a picture of him holding a standard yeah

standard bearer of the 9th legion and being a bit of a douche Rosanna is saying as a 28 yearyear-old, I'm offended. I can't believe anybody under 30 listens to our podcast. So that's great news. What's in it for them? It's just they're learning about the sort of 90s popular culture and the history of hip hop.

Yeah, maybe like if you're 21 and you think, I really want to get into a podcast that gives me the background on Noel Edmonds. I'm concerned, though, that the use of the earlier names represent a copyright violation. I don't know if I want to reward that. But James, I didn't

think he'd mind. Really? Yeah, Lucius the douchess. It's got to be five. It's got to be five for Lucius. Okay. Next category, Supernatural. james they looked through a window and they saw some people there explain that can't i can't i like that you used the powers of science to prove the existence of ghost or ghosts i used good faith investigation and empirical evidence

to prove that they have to be ghosts. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. You totally Occam's raised it. That sounds risky. But there's only three ghosts, right? And the special nun. Oh, special nun. There's also the pseudo ghost

from the diagram. Pseudo ghost? Yep, there's a pseudo ghost. Four and a half? No. We don't do halves in this podcast. How do we know that that child is a child? It could, that could be, there's no scale, is there?

There was no ghost 50 pence or... So that could be two giants squabbling over their dinner. So it's a four. Are you saying that's less supernatural? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next category, impressions. It certainly made an impression. Do you know what?

I'm not going to go with impressions. Can I make it accents? Because I don't think they were strong enough as impressions for me to get any points there. Can we just say general accent for this category? Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. So we did bad John Lennon.

You did bad Hugh Grant. Very bad Hugh Grant. Or good Hugh Laurie. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, I think there was definitely more than five, so it gets a five out of five for accents. Yes. Final category, copyright infringement.

Ah, yeah. This is where it stops from being a nice bit of a fun podcast and we need to actually think about the implications of what we've done here today. First of all, in my defence, we were all having a good laugh, James. Oh, that cuts no ice. We need something that is going to cut the ice. I think even using the phrase cuts the ice is a copyright infringement

because I've never heard it anywhere else before. You know what? I think I've made a mistake here because it's my belief that I have committed no copyright infringement in the process of researching this story. Really? Yeah, yes.

Yeah, James. In a wild reversal of convention, I am gunning for a zero here. So if I give you a big score... Then that's you admitting that you believe we committed copyright infringement.

Unfortunately, it's a damning indictment of your impressions because none of those bordered on... I'll take it. I'll accept that. Are you allowed to do impressions of people? Is that a copyright infringement? I think we have to press you for a score there, James,

because now it's got to the point where we're just asking each other questions that neither of us know the answer to. Yeah, just a few legal questions, guys. This is Lawmen, a podcast where two unqualified people speculate about legal issues. So if you're having any problems... We only need to change the spelling of the name. We don't actually need to change the name.

Nothing we say constitutes legal advice, just to clarify. This podcast is presented for entertainment purposes only. Would you believe? If that. So I've got to go zero. Yes. So that we can struggle on for another week. A sweet, sweet zero.

Sweet lady zero. Alistair, I can't believe we got through that whole episode and livestream without us or anyone else, movie warning, pointing out that the ghosts in the window are basically anti-movies. The reverse movies. Yes. See you.

We did it at the same time, twins. So if you fancy joining the chat on our Discord server, you can gain access by joining our Patreon. And solving three riddles. Patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. The three riddles are the long number on your card, the expiry date, and then turn the card around. What are the three digits that you find there?

What's your favourite bit of the music. Haircut. Haircut. You've had a haircut, James. I've had a haircut very recently. It's on its first styling, apart from the obligatory ruffle up as you leave the barbers. And this is observational comedy that is literally over your head, Alistair,

I'm presuming. Like, what is the deal with haircuts? I don't know. It's just a question. What actually happens to you? Did it just stop growing? Sometimes I take it back a little bit. I tend to keep it sort of nipple high.

What if the nipples change height? Which is happening as age makes fools of us all. Yeah. The rest of the body is staying in the same place and they are just drifting. I'm stopping myself because I think this is in violation of Twitch's terms of service. I'm not sure. I think you're allowed to talk about nipples, but you can't paint so good a picture with your words that people could see it

and then we'd get taken down. This is the problem. With my gift, James, it's as if you are seeing them. That's the problem. That's why I can't. You're too good at describing things. With my linguistic gifts, it's a real danger. Are they like ears and noses in that they continue to grow nipples?

Certainly in my experience. And that's actually what gave rise to some of the vampire myths because they dig up graves and they find that after death, even the nipples continue to grow. Yeah. They said that about Hitler as well. Did you ever hear the story of Hitler's nipples after death? Hitler's nips.

Absolutely massive. So welcome to Lawmen, the leading Hitler nipple... Discussion forum. Hitler nipple conspiracy purveyors, I think. When the mainstream media won't tell the truth about Hitler's nipples, it falls on ordinary citizens like me and James here. What can I say? Someone's got to ask the important questions.

What size were Hitler's nipples? At the point of death. Did he even have two? Because we know, you know... Maybe he had three or four. Eins, zwei, drei. I don't know what nipple is in German. I'm going to assume it's like niffel.

Yeah. Niffel? Ach, mein niffels. Ich habe meinen nippel gekotzt in meinem lederhosen mechanism. Sorry, ge-mechanism. So I'll do it properly, shall I? Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends, Hitler's nipples, and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King.

And I'm James Shakespeare. Made of Beezus saying, didn't expect to learn this much German from a folklore podcast. Not going to lie. Not going to lie. Not a lot of that was actually German. So do watch out. Is that what NGL means? I assume it means not going to lie. What do you think NGL means? Nigel. I thought it was a thing. Can anyone confirm if I'm right? I just assumed it was not going to lie.

Could anyone confirm if I'm right?