Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep83: Loremen S3 Ep83 - The Bleeding House

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

A quiet English home is disturbed by the sounds of piano music... but the Forster family do not own a piano. Pretty spooky, huh? So begins one of the most inexplicable hauntings the Loremen have ever encountered. Podcasting from their sickbeds, two brave little Loreboys share a ghost story featuring numerous unexplained apparitions and a guest appearance from disembodied cryptid, The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor. Plus, a timely reminder of the difference between a cat food magnate and a cat food magnet. How do you like (bobbing for) them apples? Loreboys nether say die! Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631  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 James Shakeshaft. And I am Alistair Beckett-King. And Alistair Beckett-King. Yes, James. We have got another spoopy tale. The word spoopy rankles with me so much, but I can't

argue with you. This is a really spooky tale. It is so spooky. It's spooky bordering on spoopy. So listen to the tale of the Bleeding House and a small little cameo from the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor. What? The Hairy Hands of Dartmoor. Fair enough. Yes.

Are you out of sorts, Alistair? I'm en-blanketed. Oh. I'm on the couch wrapped in a blanket. You're a blanketeer. I'm a blanketeer. Yeah, well, that makes it sound way more dynamic. I think I'm a little run down, James. I don't want too much sympathy. I don't want the listeners sending me baskets of fruit and cards. No.

Just a little tired, that's all. Yeah, I feel like I've got the makings of a super cold. Ooh. You know, from the paper. Tell me about the super cold. Is it like those mega bees that kill you? I think it's just no one had a cold last year so people are getting colds again again oh these are rubbish i forgot quite how bad they were i can't believe we've both been struck down at the same time we need a third emergency podcast robot that like steps in to take over in the event that we're

both incapacitated this is why we don't travel on the same aeroplane. Yeah. I've got my lawmen briefcase handcuffed to me at all times. Yeah. With my half of the secret codes. At that point we ran out of budget, so I've got a lawmen lunchbox that's

gaffered to my arm hairs. Equally immovable. Yep. If we haven't recovered next week, then podcast's off. Yep. That's the end week then podcast's off yeah that's the end we're too that's the end of it too ill that's the end of the podcast we were a bit ill we were a bit ill and we died and then the podcast stopped we had a good run well you can settle down i'm snuggling in in your blanket and blanketed like a cozy ghost so i've got another tale for you is it spooky it's another spoopy one don't worry And it's actually another one from Ghosts Over Britain.

Really? This is, I mean, bordering on actionable, the amount of content we've taken from that book lately. I think so, but it was written a very long time ago, and from the picture of the author on the inside cover, I think we'll be all right. Oh, yeah, I'm sure Peter Moss would never return from the grave to haunt two cheeky lawmen it's not like he studied how

i'm sure we can anger this spirit and not worry about that i'm going to google it now and find out if he's still with us i couldn't find out i tried googling him to see whether he'd come for us either in this life or the next um and his write-up though is very good he's it says on the back inside that peter moss has written 20 books including the famous history alive series why does everything sound like something shouted in a 1940s film i don't know i like his i like him though he's got he's good very good writer. Yeah, he's a good writer. But this tale is called, is entitled, even. It's not that entitled.

It's just a story. It's about southern middle-class white people who own a, I quote, modest manor house. Is this about ghosts who ask to speak to the manager? Ghost Karens. This is called The Bleeding House. See, now, if my granddad was saying it, it would be like, that bleeding house. Don't think it was named by my nan.

Bleeding house? Presumably, this would be where the Queen of Sheba lived. That's a reference to my nan's blood feud. Who's she? The cat's a reference to my nan's blood feud who's she the cat's mother yeah yeah yeah oh she's coming in here like the queen of bleeding sheba and the thing was i mostly knew sheba to be that posh cat food so it was just a cat food magnet magnate magnate magnate please always check whether you're dealing with a cat food magnate or a cat food magnet. Now, this bleeding house is on the north-facing slopes of the South Downs, a few miles from Brighton. Oh, yeah.

That's as close as he'll let us know. He lets us know it's in Sussex, and it's a, I quote, modest manor house. No big deal. It's just a modest manor house. And there are a few other dwellings around. It's modest manor house, the original name of modest mouse,ings around. It's Modest Manor House, the original name of Modest Mouse, and they just squeezed it together. They portmanteaued him.

Yeah. It's a small hamlet that Peter doesn't give the name of. Small hamlet, one of Shakespeare's smaller plays. There's a small hamlet, Minnie Macbeth. He made a short play, and then he managed to get funding to make the... Everyone was like, I prefer the short. The short one was just the school bit, which is absolutely banging. Then he had to do the pre-story about it.

He just did loads of the rest. And like, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are they? Exactly. What's their deal? They don't even die on screen. Everyone just goes, oh, they're dead. They're the original Jar Jar Binks's. What's the correct plural of Binks? The Jar Jar Jar Binks is. What's the correct plural of Binks? The Jar Jar's Binks.

The Jar's Jar Binks. I'd love to see a Tom Stoppard play Jar Jar Binks is dead. That's what everyone wanted. Just Jar Jar Binks during all the other scenes in Star Wars. Or in Hamlet.

It's weird that he was only ever in that film. Yeah. The actor Jar Jar Binks never got to do anything else. Mesa think this lady doth protest too much. Mesa just mad north by northwest. Whatever it is. Is that the quote?

I don't remember it well enough. Not going for the obvious ones. No. No, thank you. I don't see him playing Hamlet anyway. No. I don't see Jar Jar playing Hamlet, no. Would they get the original actor who played Jar Jar Binks to play Jar Jar B him playing Hamlet anyway. No. I don't see Jar Jar playing Hamlet, no. Would they get the original actor who played Jar Jar Binks

to play Jar Jar Binks playing Hamlet? I think it had quite a negative impact on his career. So he's not got much on. Anyway, so we've got the Forster family, and they live in this bleeding house. And it's in a pretty spooky spot. This north-facing slope of the South down is apparently quite windswept. There's not many trees apart from where this house is.

I had to Google this because Peter Moss's turn of phrase was so fruity. He said it was a heavily timbered area, which means lots of trees. Not trees falling down constantly. Just men shouting. So this house, despite being in quite a barren area has managed to get itself overshadowed by trees and it's you can only get to it up a narrow winding lane but the forster family mr forster was a pilot of a well-known international airline and his wife and their young family they're you know reasonably levelheaded, not the sort of people you think would get spooked easily.

So back in 1961, this is when the troubles began. Piano music rang out, startling. Mrs. F, Mr. F, and the children's F. The little F's. The little F's, yes. F and Jeff. Apparently it wasn't a particular tune, it was just Mrs. F said it was more like improvisation.

A jazz ghost, that's the last thing you want. Yeah. You'll never know what to expect. No. Usually ghosts appear every night at 12pm, but the jazz ghost, any time. Could be any time. They're not going to follow your rules.

Squares. Yeah. And this startled everyone, this random piano music, except the six-year-old, because he'd heard it before upstairs. Oh, Alistair. Yeah? Sorry, did you think they had a piano? Because they don't.

What? I assumed they did, because they're a middle-class family. And he's got that moustache. Yeah. They don't have a piano. They didn't have a piano. That is more startling than I thought. They couldn't find the location of the music and it stopped.

It repeated once six months later and that was it. Then in 1963, Mrs. Forster was doing some ironing. She was ironing her daughter's blouse and a thick red liquid dripped onto the sleeve of the blouse. And Mrs Forster thought she had a nosebleed, but she didn't. You could imagine her going, oh, oh, and touching her face and then looking at her hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Confused. No blood there. There's definitely blood there on the sleeve. Where's that come from? So she took the sleeve to the sink, tried to wash it. Nothing. Did not move. It was indelible.

And she came back to the ironing board there was another globule there on the ironing board in that situation i'd be looking straight up at the ceiling there and you'd be being eaten by an alien yes ideally but no she looked up there's no cracks in the ceiling there's nothing there's no marks on the plasterboard above that could indicate where this liquid could have dripped and there were no more drips apart from 14 years later there was a pool of this sticky blood on an unattended table yeah you're right do we go oh yeah oh i didn't go i was i was almost frightened silent i was so scared i didn't make a noise or react in any way at all now in 1973 mrs forster the husband's away probably flying and she had dinner with her children as normal she put them to bed and she went to bed early to have a little read and she got into a lovely four poster bed to

be honest it's not that modest a house yeah the, the Forster Full Poster. And as she was in the bed, settling down, having a bit of a read, she heard the door open, usual click of the latch, a little creak of the hinges. It's probably just one of her kids coming in, isn't it? They just want a little bit more of a bedtime story or a quick cuddle from mummy before bed. She looks up. It's an elderly lady that she doesn't know

oh the elderly lady shuts the door behind her and stands staring at her with her back to the door she looked solid but she was silent and she was staring intently at the bed miss forster was shocked she had enough time to take in every detail of this woman she She's got grey hair. It was slightly wavy, back in a bun. She's got glasses. She's got this long grey dress on and a lace jabbit. I don't know what that means. That's another character from Star Wars. Yeah.

She's got a little salacious bee crumb on her shoulder. Wait a minute. Has George Lucas been rewriting this? Yeah, this is the remastered edition. So, yeah. So she's there. This old woman is in her room and she's absolutely astounded. And then the woman paused for a few moments and then advanced on her in quite light steps. And Mrs. Forster called out, who are you?

What do you want? And then the figure seemed slightly alarmed for a millisecond and then vanished. And Mrs. Forster realised that this was some sort of ghost, not some sort of odd housebreaker. And she searched the house. Obviously, you wouldn't just think, oh, that'll be fine. I'll go to bed now. She searched the house.

No one was there. No one was found. In later days and weeks, she spoke to older people that lived in the hamlet, like in the little houses around. And the description was recognized as being the previous owner miss thine who died tragically in a fire 15 years earlier and the room that mrs forster was in was her old bedroom and there was no more manifestations

of miss thine apart from one year later in the autumn of 1974 and this is a lovely turn of phrase from Pete Moss a young man from the Argentine he means Argentina I guess this lad he happened to be sleeping in that room a year later I'm guessing they moved out of that room after that and slept in a different four boster bed but this boy was this young man was sleeping there he knew nothing about this hadn't heard about it but the next morning at breakfast he asked who'd been calling under his window during the night calling miss thine miss thine that's pretty specific yeah how could he know her name because ghost the most frightening experience occurred in 1971 in the next door bedroom to the one we've been talking about.

And now a family friend who was an experienced hospital nurse woke suddenly in the night with a feeling of intense suffocating heat and then an inexplicable prickling of the scalp. And she looked, she was now awake, she looked up and there were a pair of disembodied hands floating across the room towards her. Whoa, just hands? Just the hands. At normal height?

At normal height. And the hands started to move towards her in a menacing way, as menacing as just a pair of hands on their own can be. Is that menacing even by the standards of disembodied hands? I don't know if they're just like flicking the Vs or something as they come over. Just pointing and making fists. Yeah. I don't think they need to do much to be menacing if they're just hands floating.

There's almost nothing that they could do. Like there's almost no gesture they could do that would be relaxed. Unless they're doing a couple of thumbs up. That might be, seem a bit chilled. And the whole atmosphere was permeated with a sense of evil and these gaunt hands with their fingers extended and curved reached the posts of this other four poster bed no not a lot so she managed to start to recite the lord's prayer and when it got to the phrase the classic phrase when it got to the bit, the classic phrase, when it got to the bit, deliver us from evil,

the threatening hands vanished. Yes, that's the good bit, isn't it? That's the banger bit of the Lord's Prayer. Yeah. Forget about the trespassing stuff. Yeah, that's just fun for, because we used to have to say it at school a lot. I guess you did too because of school.

That was fun to just really go for the sibilance. Yeah, trespass. Forgiveness of trespasses. Forgiveness of trespasses. Yes. You get away with just buzzing through that whole section. Very much in the we wish you a Merry Christmas area. And yeah, this nurse, she never slept another night in the house.

She always slept in a hotel a few miles away. She was so terrified. And that's the tale of the bleeding house. That's so spooky. I'm not even mentioning the fact that that was obviously a dream. Yes, but the heat. Alistair, it ties into the woman dying in a fire. Oh, yeah.

I've forgotten about that. That's good. Yeah. And the prickling sensation of her head, which would be like if you had your hair tied back in a bun, I imagine. And an Argentinian boy is unlikely to dream in English. It would have been presumably senorita thine, not miss. Yes. Perplexing.

That's a pretty scary story. Now, floating hands on their own, you don't hear that very much. Have you ever heard of the hairy hands of Dartmoor? I think I have. It rings a bell. They're a classic UK clipped, which is just a pair of hairy hands. In the 1920s,

would cause people to drive off the road in Devon. It's one particular stretch of the road. And I got some information from Mark Norman of the Folklore Podcast.

He's been my, my deep throat on this one. Right right is that the right term i hope so i really hope so yeah google probably google it yes just do that so what happened with the hairy hand the tale of the hairy hands is that in 1921 there were three car accidents on the same corner in dartmoor it was known locally as nine mile hill the first accident happened in march and dr helby who is the prison doctor at nearby princeton i couldn't be less relaxed about dr helby the prison doctor he was riding down on a motorbike with his two kids in a sidecar

when the engine suddenly became detached from the frame. What? If you're familiar with a motorbike, that's most of the contraption is the engine, really, isn't it? I mean, yeah, I'm not a mechanic, but I would say that the engine, usually you want to keep that in the vehicle. Yes. He shouted his children to jump clear, and they managed to escape unhurt,

but he sadly was thrown off and killed. Oh. And then, a few weeks later, a caravan was coming down the same stretch of slope do you know what caravan is no it's an old word for a coach it actually comes from the french caravan which means a carriage with benches in it yeah bonk like the latin word for bench like a bonkette like bankrupt or mountebank as i think we've touched on before of course what's that why mountebank because they would stand on benches

hocking their wares and people used to go on a jolly in the caravan in the past they were all right for day trips but you didn't want to go too far because they weren't very comfortable but yeah this one was particularly uncomfortable because it rolled whilst going down there and some of the passengers were thrown out and someone was quite injured and afterwards the driver was heard to mutter that he'd felt invisible hands pulling at the wheel no one mentioned this in a statement at the time well you wouldn't, because it's weird. And then in August, a young army officer was riding his motorbike. He was also thrown into the verge and sustained scratches and some shock. He was apparently a very experienced rider.

And this is his quote, which I just have a listen. It seems to it seems to escalate as it goes along. It was not my fault. Believe it or not, something drove me off the road a pair of hairy hands closed over mine i felt them as plainly as ever i have felt anything in my life large muscular hairy hands i fought them for what i was worth but they were too strong for me they forced the machine onto the turf at the edge of the road and i knew no more till i came to myself lying a few feet away on my face on the turf. That really sounds like he's trying to make an excuse.

She's like, oh, I don't know what happened. Felt like someone was pulling it away. Some hands, some hairy hands, some strong hairy hands did it. I don't remember anything of it at this time. I think, though, if you were going to make something up, you'd make something that didn't involve invisible hairy hands. I feel like you would invent a more plausible lie, wouldn't you? Like there was someone on the road or something jumped out.

He was in shock. The guy was in shock. He was in shock. Now, after these accidents, it's called, this is an old book, they're called road men. The road men, yeah. The road men altered the camber of the road

because it had been an adverse camber on that. Do you know what an adverse camber is? Does that mean that it goes down in the middle of the road? It kind of, as it goes around the corner, it slopes out towards the corner rather than sloping in towards the inside of the corner. I see, yes. So you're liable to spin out.

Sort of go off the road. It would feel like a pair of invisible, and yet hairy hands were pulling you away. So really, the real hairy hands were gravity. Yeah, science. And just momentum. And then in 1923 to 1924, a Moorman was walking up this stretch of road at night.

I've got no idea what that means, and I'm not looking it up. Is this a man of the moors rather than a Mormon? Yes, I guess so. Right. A Mormon. He felt an intensely cold blast of air and from the wall he had a terrible screaming and he ran up to his friend and said, what's that screaming? But his friend hadn't heard a thing. And then a woman and her husband and her child were camping on nine mile hill near the

powder mills and the woman woke in the night and she woke with a feeling of fear and impending danger and she looked out the window and i've got a quote here actually as i looked up to the little window at the end of the caravan i saw something something moving and as I stared, I saw it was the fingers and palms of a very large hand with many hairs on the joints and back of it clawing up and up to the top of the window which was a little open. I knew it wished to do harm

to my husband sleeping below. I knew that the owner of that hand hated us and wished harm and I knew it was no ordinary human hand. Almost unconsciously, I made the sign of the cross and I prayed that we might be kept safe. At once... Oh, next page.

Really suspenseful. Yep. At once, the hand slowly sank down out of sight and I knew the danger had gone. I did say a thankful prayer and fell at once into a peaceful sleep. So if that happened to you when you were caravanning. Yeah, I'd probably go straight back to sleep. What would you do the next day? Probably go home? Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't stay at that spot for several weeks? I'd probably leave immediately. Did she? She stayed at that

spot for several weeks, but never felt the evil of influence again. All right. That one was a dream. Yeah. They always go back to sleep afterwards, which is the evil of influence again all right that one was a dream yeah they always go back to sleep afterwards which is the kind of thing that you would do in a dream and never in real life yeah in that situation although miss forster didn't she searched the house yeah no i'm not saying that for the forsterster i'm saying that for hand tent lady the handy caravan lady yeah yes caravan cind yeah. Yes. Caravan Cindy. I don't know what her name is. She was dreaming.

Mrs. Forster, I believe every word she says. And I believe that was the last sighting of the hairy hands of Dartmoor. What I'm conjecting is that those hairy hands left Dartmoor in the 20s, probably thumbed a lift, waved down a cab.

It's one of the two things they could do. And got a lift along the coast to near Brighton and then started being spooky there for a bit, 50 years later. Yeah, they could maybe hang on the back of a lorry. Yeah, just grab on.

Or hide in a pair of gloves. Spooky hands. So that's the tale of the bleeding house. The bleeding house. Bonus hairy hands. Well, I think it's score time. So what's your first category? My first category is naming.

Well, the family's called Forster. Yeah, there's the Forsters. But is this a four star name? I don't know. I do like the bleeding house bleeding that's good mrs thine or vine miss thine miss thine sorry miss thine the argentine the argentine who heard miss thine the hairy hand the hairy hand of dartmoor. Not sure about that. Dr. Hellboy. Or Dr. Hellby. Dr. Hell.

I think it's a strong three. So it's not terrific, but all of those names are decent. All of those names sound like they belong in a good old creepy novel. They're not ludicrous. Oh, the name of the book that Mark Norman of the Folklore Podcast recommended to me on that Dartmoor was Tales of a Dartmoor Village by the Devon folklorist theo brown which is accurate but not it's not going to add anything to my naming score is it

bad bad theo brown the most excellent folklorist in the whole of devon county all right so i'm just going to settle with the three i don't want to I fear that I would only talk myself out of more. Yeah. I think I'm being pretty generous there. So next category, supernatural. Hmm. Oh,

okay. I'm discounting the hairy hands in the caravan. Cause that was a dream right out of the gate. Dream. Clearly she made the sign of the crucifix at the hand and then immediately went back to sleep because she was asleep the whole time because it was a dream yeah she because she was from the ghost yeah she was tired out from ghost no but the blood emerging out of nowhere the piano when there was no piano in the house. The jazz, where there was no piano to be found.

Yes, the jazz ghost. And you know who would be great at playing piano? Disembodied hands. Yes. Well, they would need a piano. They could play most instruments. None of the woodwind. None of the wind instruments, yeah.

The trombones, the French horns, the tubas. Unless they were equipped with a pair of bellows. Yeah. Unless they had a pair of bagpipes that someone had previously inflated. But then you need an elbow for bagpipes. You do tend to need an elbow, but they could maybe just hit him with one. I was once in a 1930s mansion. Is this how you tell me you're a time traveller?

Trying to assassinate Hitler. Have you ever seen a building-wide vacuum cleaner? No. I visited... Do you know Eltham Palace in southeast of London? In Eltham? Never heard of it. So you've probably seen it if you've watched any of the Granada Poirots.

Mm-hmm. It's a fabulous Art Deco building, on the inside at least. And it has, the vacuum cleaner is a room with a giant vacuum engine. And so instead of plugging a vacuum cleaner into a power socket on the wall and then using it with you, it has a giant suction device. And each wall just has a hole attached to it that sucks so instead of moving the vacuum engine around yourself it's in the basement sucking and sucking and sucking and you plug your little nozzle into it and then you then you just hoover the room

but it's like yeah what if a little mouse got in there or a ghost, for instance? Straight down. It's a very spooky room, the giant vacuum cleaner. Right. I mean, it sort of makes a bit more sense the more you went on, to be honest. Yeah, it's a perfectly reasonable idea. It's just that I've never heard of a house that has one giant vacuum cleaner. I thought it was like it was a room that was a vacuum cleaner. You took that room and you somehow moved that room round to clean the other rooms.

It's not as bad as that. It's like the old heating systems that were just like a gas boiler. Yes. And I guess that's what they thought. Yeah. At that time, the answer to all your questions was pipes. Oh, they loved a pipe, didn't they, in those days? Oh, yeah.

Big pipe. Really did a number on the 1930s and the ghosts could plug the bagpipes into the wall vacuum cleaner thing is what i was thinking what category were we on pipes pipes uh also very spooky ghost name from ghost watch yeah mr pipes mr pipes i think it's a five out of five for Supernatural. Five out of five. Have we talked about Ghostwatch before? I don't know if it's come up. On the record.

I don't know if we have. Did you watch it at the time? No, it was shown to us in school. What? On a bootleg VHS. By a bully that was trying to scare you all. By an English teacher. It was shown to us, and so it's English teacher. It was shown to us.

And so it's Craig Charles. Sarah Green and Matt Smith, her husband. Mike Smith. Mike Smith and Parky Parkinson. Yes. So it was supposed to be an investigation into ghosts, but it was actually a drama. Yeah. And it was billed as a real thing.

It was around Halloween 92. Let me have a look. You're absolutely right. October the 31st of October, 1992. And I remember the adverts for it. And I knew Sarah Green and Mike Smith as well. They were like kids TV presenters. I knew who they were.

I knew who Michael Parkey Parkinson was because there were only four channels. And Craig Charles. Is this pre-red dwarf uh no that's that's mid-red dwarf red dwarf so it's been on for a couple of years i knew craig charles from red dwarf and i was quite excited to watch this probably liked spooky things and i genuinely had to leave the room i was so terrified by it and i was like i'd stand at my dad's which is more flat and i went oh i've got to go and have a bath sort of try and get out of watching this terrifying program i remember hearing the last

five minutes through the wall and for listeners who i don't know about it in the last five minutes it becomes obviously a drama as all of the lights blow in the studio and tv personality michael parkinson is possessed by a ghost walks towards the camera speaking in the voice of the lights blow in the studio. And TV personality Michael Parkinson is possessed by a ghost. Walks towards the camera, speaking in the voice of the ghost. Pipes. The ghost Mr. Pipes. Mr. Pipes. Because it's English, and the ghost can't not be called something like Mr. Pipes.

Johnny Spooks. But it's quite a clever name, because he's called Pipes, because all the sort of banging in the house that this poltergeist is doing. Yeah. The children, when they say, oh, there's, oh, what's, it's the ghost, it's the ghost. The parents will say, oh, don't worry, it's just pipes. So they think the ghost is called pipes. Yeah, that's good.

It's good writing. That's clever, that. But yeah, so I didn't see the end. I just heard the end, which is way more scary than actually watching it. So I was terrified. And it did funny things like the camera pans across a room in which a ghost is present and everybody sees that. But because it's playing like a live television broadcast,

when they go back to show you it again, the ghost isn't there. Yeah. But you, having watched it, remember having seen it. Yeah. And I was 11 and absolutely terrified by it. I was fully, fully... Well, you've already got five points, so no amount of Ghostwatch scaries will add to that.

Well, okay, then my next category is bleeding ghosts. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They are, first of all, actually bleeding. Yeah. On two occasions, so that's two points right there. And the rest of the time, causing absolute fuss. Such a nuisance. A blooming nuisance.

Excuse my language. And at least one death. One death, which is really adding insult to injury. Adding death to injury, I think. Adding injury to insult. Adding mortal injury to injury. Yes. No, I think it's four out of mortal injury to injury yes no it's I think it's

four out of five for bleeding ghosts bleeding ghosts we got because I would have liked the hands to have like blood on them

the hairy hands the hairy hands yeah I would have liked matted blood or perhaps a little bit of blood running down a wall or something

or someone looking at themselves in a mirror and like blood comes out of their eyes instead of tears just the little the little things that's all I'm asking for.

The little things. The little things. And I just felt that it did not... It was very, very good, but it didn't go that extra mile. What if your granddad had someone playing jazz piano? He would have hated that. He would have been furious if he'd heard jazz at any point. And then told it was a ghost.

He'd be, oh, bleeding ghost. Do you think my granddad was blakey from on the buses for maybe yeah it's for blakey from on the buses as who we're referencing as well with that and it was a bus that rolled is that not somehow translate into an extra you know full well it was a catabang a catabang and they don't have they don't have conductors. Otherwise, he'd be in the grass, going, oh, bleeding ghost. And that would have been five. In lieu of a Blakey situation, four. Damn it.

Fair enough. I'll take my four. And then my final category is blowing soldiering on. Explain. Us two are very ill. Yep. Yep.

And yet we are soldiering on. We are a little pair of hard-working boys, aren't we? And if you were just a pair of hands, the old gumption of those pair of hands to pull themselves up by their bootlaces, their useless bootlaces. You could zip line if you had two hands and a bootlace. Yeah, that would work if you were trying to get along the coast.

Yes. Those are the little hairy hands that could. A hundred years later, they're still being talked about. If you were reduced to just a pair of disembodied hands, I wouldn't blame you for thinking, that's probably it for me. My media career is over. That's probably no more podcasting for me, you might think. And yet, here they are, still appearing in a podcast.

When I was doing a little Googling around them, if you look on their Wikipedia or whatever, in popular culture, and it's just like, Josh Widdicombe's mentioned them about five different times. To have worked your way into the stand-up comedy of popular comedian Josh Widdicombe. I mean, not popular with my dad,

but very popular. Is he like, Bleeding Widdicombe? He can't say, I saw that Widdicombe on the TV, bloody furious. That's not how my dad talks. Is your dad also not plaguing from on the buses? Why ain't you just Widdicombe? Doesn't like him.

Oh. I think I like him. I don't know why my dad feels that way. I like him. I've got a lot of time like him. I don't know why my dad feels that way. I like him. I've got a lot of time for him. And knowing that he's such an expert on the hairy hands of Dartmoor, I'd like him even more. So I think it's five points for five little soldiers.

You, me, the left hand, the right hand, Josh Willikam. Yes! Five little hard workers. Good on us all. That was a really spooky story. I think that's the spookiest one we've done so far. The bit where the little old lady comes at her. Yep.

Yeah. With her hands clasped together in front of her, bent forward across the room. Well. Well done us. Well, I think well done us well well i think well done us yeah because we've both got minor head colds if you would like to contribute to our health care you can do so on patreon.com forward slash lawman pod it's less keeping the podcast alive and it's become just keeping us healthy yeah or you can review the podcast on itunes or wherever you get it yeah or just on a school desk yeah if you've got a compass there, by the way. Did you?

Yeah. Haircut, haircut. Haircut. Haircut. But you probably don't get haircuts. All right, yeah. Now I don't know loads about barbers. But what they do is they sort of, at the end, they...

The barber-surgeon. They, um... With their stripy poles and their sore bonzes. about barbers but what they do is they sort of at the end they the barber surgeon they um with their stripy poles and their sore bones yeah they still did surgery when you last went yeah exactly just bite on a piece of leather so they they move a mirror around the back of your head when you're finished to check you aren't a vampire yeah check the back of your head to not a vampire yeah and as a thinning on top man they and they sort of angle it in such a way that you can't see where you're thinning oh do they that's yeah i definitely haven't been to the barbers since that was a prospect and i up until today i thought oh that's nice they're sparing your blushes but today i realized no they're saving

their business yeah because as soon as you know you're bald yes you don't need a barber anymore yeah gone are the days of barbering it's freestyle you either go mad and go for a comb over yep buy a wig which does not need upkeep or or just go shaved. Shaven. Yeah, so really, yeah, they're lying, but they have to. Ironically, by showing you a second reflection, they are actually looking out for themselves. Very profound.

Because when you point a finger at a hairdresser... A barber. A barber. When you point, then the reflection of that finger... Points back at you. Just two of them. And so there's a lot of pointing yes