Loremen Podcast - S4 Ep45: Loremen S4Ep45 - The Croglin Grange Vampire

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

England's best "true" vampire story springs from the pages of the prolific hob-nobber Augustus Hare. Bleh! Alasdair tells James a blood-soaked Cumbrian legend, gleaned from Hare's (ludicrously long) autobiography. Sorry, autobiographies. The walrus-faced Hare had a gift for extracting dubious ghost stories from minor aristocrats. And tales seldom come taller than that of the Croglin Grange vampire. An isolated bungalow; a lonely young woman; and a scratch, scratch, scratch at the window... Prepare yourself for eccentric toffs, desecrated crypts, and an elderly aunt who ate someone's arm. You know, the usual. 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 Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And today, James, from the annals of Mr. Augustus Hare, I have a very sinister tale. Is it ripped from the crypt? It's from Cumbria. Yeah, chilling. Imagine that.

Yes. It is chilly sometimes. You'd forgotten your fleece. Yes. We're going to Cumbria for a terrifying tale, which is as scary as it is definitely true. Oh. The Croglin Grange Vampire Hello, James.

Hello. James, you're a rational, rational sort of fellow, aren't you? Oh, depends what we're talking about. But yeah, broadly. You know that these days, you don't get a lot of vampires. Not so many. Do you think it's global warming? It might be global warming, meaning the days are longer. I don't think that's how it works, but yeah. See, there you go. You're doing your rational scepticism again. That was a test. And you've passed. Oh, thank goodness.

Yeah. There are fewer cases of vampirism these days. A fact which was not missed by vampirologist Montague Summers. Monty Summers? Montague Summers. Who was not like a New Orleans gentleman, as the name might imply. New Orleans? Oh, New Orleans. New Orleans. Yes, that's how it's pronounced. New imply. New Orleans. Oh, New Orleans. New Orleans.

Yes, that's how it's pronounced. New Orleans. New Orleans. In his book, The Vampire in Europe, he noted the fact that after the 12th century or something, the cases of vampires really drop off. Oh. So maybe someone killed the head vampire.

And he said, cases of vampirism may be said to be in our time a rare occult phenomenon. Yet whether we are justified in supposing that they are less frequent today than in past centuries, I am far from certain. One thing is plain, not that they do not occur, but that they are carefully hushed up and stifled. Wow. The old mainstream media. It's big vampire. Yeah, doesn't want you knowing

about all the cases of vampirism that are presumably happening. It's like, spoiler alert, the Lost Boys. Yeah, exactly. And James, I've just sent you a picture. Montague Summers, I googled him.

He is the definition of the phrase, nice hair, mate. Please Google Montague Summers and see what his hair looks like, listener. It's like he's halfway to a princess Leia. He's growing it out into a Leia. He looks like he's wearing like a judge's wig, but it's his own hair. He looks like he's got hair ears. Look, I know people in glass houses should not throw stones.

Have you got hair ears? My hair is curled round in a Montague Summers-like fashion at times, yes. Mine would, but I've had a terrible haircut. Have you had a bad haircut? Haircut! Yeah. Haircut! Proper haircut.

I'll give you the bumps. You've had a haircut? James, I can't see you now. I'll turn the on briefly okay let's see let's see i hope he looks like a montague summers type no opposite what you look like terry christian it's all spikehead like the night oh he's turned the camera off before i can make more comparisons it was all 90s and spikehead it's like a it's like a miniature mark lamar yes you look like a mini lamar petty lamar but on my overly large head i've got a small mark on my haircut on a big head of course the listener has probably no idea how large james's head is it's about the size of a volkswagen i'm a two-portion man he's a a two portion man, but you've got the tiny haircut of a baby.

Yeah. It's like a normal person has got Lego hair balanced on an actual Lego hair balanced on their head. But what can you do? Cause I wear glasses. You take your glasses off. Oh, I don't know.

Into the chair. And then they put that sort of, that medieval armor on you. That sort of heavy leather, which I know you know the shoulder pad yeah yeah like a little business gentleman it's more like are you trapped i kind of think it's like the bit that you get around a loo you know the little toilet oh yeah they died out a bit recently they're not as popular these days because people thought about how much we

must get in them yeah why. Why did people do... We're talking about the toilet rough. It was like a small bespoke rug, usually tasseled. It was a little furry thing. I think it can protect floors because if you have like marble, like the...

I think the acidity of human wee-wee. Let's be honest, without generalising about the old genders and the sexes out there, we are talking mostly about men here. The bewillied are more likely to splash. Indeed. And I think that the stand tinklers

Stinklers. are responsible for quite a lot of corrosion. Re-marble. I believe so. Yeah, yeah. And perhaps this is less of an issue among those of us who don't have marbled bathrooms i don't think the people that have marble bathrooms were the same people that had the little toilet rug no but the little toilet rug

like you know my gran had like a little model of a lady that went over the loo roll and also one that a whole i've told you this before a whole french lady that went over the loo roll. And also one that a whole, I've told you this before, a whole French maid that went over the hoover. I've told you that before, haven't I? Yeah, you have actually. Yeah. So, yeah, it's, you know. Did she take her off to hoover?

Or did she leave her on like it was a weird magic trick? It would have looked like a kid now being in progress. So I think by putting the roof around, you imply, could be marble. Oh. Just pop that down, protect the marble, even though we all know it's lino.

It's interesting that we bring up the idea of social climbers. Go on. Because that will come up. I suppose, in a way, vampires are social climbers. They're sort of trying to crawl out of the grave.

Yes. For being dead to being alive. Yeah, it's a promotion of sorts. Yeah. But Montague Sum a promotion of sorts. Yeah. But Montague Summers wrote that in a discussion. Cut. He was talking about the Croglin Grange vampire, one of the few true English ghost stories.

And I'm putting true in inverted commas. I could tell. You put an extra syllable in it as well. True. The ooh wasn't to indicate a ghost. Now, the Croglin Grange vampire was recorded by, friend of the podcast, Augustus Hare. Ah, now I can actually picture him.

Do you know what he looks like? Yeah, he's the sort of person you look at him and you go, moustache. Moustache. Yeah, he's the sort of person you look at him and you go, moustache. Moustache. Yeah, he looks a bit like young Stephen Fry and a little bit like Graham Chapman. And he has a huge walrus moustache, a big nose and floppy hair.

Augustus Hare is recently mentioned on the podcast because he wrote Story of My Life, the most passively, aggressively titled biography. Rejected titles included. Typical. And who's going to clean that up then? Muggins here. This always happens to me.

He wrote the Story of My Life in, James, six volumes. It's so hard to research this guy because it is incredible. That's the same number as Katie Price. Whoa. That's how many biographies she has. She's got six. She wrote six autobiographies, yeah. But to be fair, she's done more than Augustus Hare in her life.

No offence to Augustus Hare, but I've only heard of him through literally obscure curiosities from days of yore. How did he fill six? He's mainly famous for being on our podcast once or twice. Basically, I think he just started writing in too much detail. You know, like when you're doing a poster as a kid and you start doing the letters really big. And then you're like, it's too late. I'm committed now to this size of letter.

So it took him years. Right. Yeah, story of my life. Story of my life, yeah. Augustus Hare was basically interested in two things mainly, the English aristocracy and ghosts. Alive English aristocracy and dead. One group that I wish did exist.

A little bit of satire there. He was, I think he was in a small way an English eccentric, but weirdly he doesn't appear in Edith Sitwell's book of the English eccentrics but he was mentioned by her brother osbert sitwell her little brother osbert in his autobiography he managed to do it in just one somehow but he called it left hand right hand oh it's weird name that is a weird name i'm sure there's a reason for it being called that but i have not bothered to check because i enjoy the strangeness of it that's a good strange name though now osbert sitwell tells an unsettling story of a tree being felled in the grounds of a big house and all everybody coming out to see the tree being felled and as it came down to the ground as the tree fell. Bats came out. Oh.

I'm quoting from Osbert Sitwell. A cloud of bats, hundred upon hundred of them, flew out into the, to them, impenetrable daylight and wildly sped and spun and circled, squeaking in their voices that are so high-pitched just to be felt rather than heard. That's true. With shrieks of terror as though they had just witnessed the landing of Mr. H.G. Wells' Contemporary Martians.

I love the way he says contemporary there, just to point out that this is a recent book. Not the old Martians. In those days when I was alive, the women of the party. Clasping their piled up masses of hair tightly with their hands so as to protect it. For the myth persisted that bats loved to become involved in those nests of crowning glory. Yeah, but they didn't go for clean nests of crowning glory. There were no Montague Summerses. So he describes the women fleeing a horde of bats.

And there is another situation he describes that was similar to that, which was when Augustus Hare was introduced at a party. What? So famous was he for writing his autobiographies and describing every single thing that happened to him and everyone who he met. When Osbert Sitwell saw Mr Augustus Hare, the writer, introduced,

her words created obvious panic. There ensued, metaphorically, the same tragic rush of women away, offstage, holding their hair, and this time crying, he may put me in a book. Oh, that's... He's an interesting guy. He basically went from stately home to stately home, sort of sycophantically interviewing aristocrats and recording the many, many ghost stories it turned out that they had.

Ah. In 1986, in the London Review of Books, E.S. Turner described Hare as a man who ate more hot dinners in other people's houses than anyone of his age. Nice. Not a bad lot, actually, Augustus. Why are you moaning so much with your story of my life? He did entertain people because he was a raconteur. He would tell stories like the story of the 10th Duke of Hamilton who, according to Turner, elected to be

buried in an Egyptian princess's sarcophagus which was too small for him. His final words being, Double me up! Double me up! But no amount of doubling would suffice and they had to cut off his feet. Just classic After Dinner Bants. Oh, yeah, that is a good story.

Just one of his hilarious stories. Now, Nancy Mitford wrote... Of the Mitford sisters. Of the Mitford sisters, and you've always got to check, was it a fascist? Because I can never, I can't tell my Mitfords apart. No. Not a fascist. So she wrote an essay about hair, i am quite unsympathetic towards

him as a character he does definitely deserve some sympathy and i can't talk about him on the podcast without acknowledging that he had a horrible horrible childhood he was brought up basically by villains from a roald dahl book uh so when he was born, he was given away by his, I think she describes them as attractive but feckless parents. They lived in Rome and he was given away to an ant. And they sent a letter saying, all right, here's the baby. By the way, we've got more kids if you want them. You know anybody who needs a kid?

Oh. And that ant to whom he was devoted, he called her the mother, raised him. But unfortunately, she was enthralled to religious zealots. And so he was just brought up with sort of a Victorian sadist household where everything was misery and punishment and hardship. So he had a horrible, horrible childhood. And Nancy Mitford says this odious upbringing produced a pathetic but odious personality. Oh. She describes him as a prig, a snob, touchy and irritable.

And bear in mind, he's being called a snob by Nancy Mitford. And his childhood was bad by Victorian standards. Wow. If you're trying to remember your Mitfords, she is the one who wrote about you and non-you language. Are you familiar with that? No. Well, you language, the letter U, is the way the upper classes speak,

and non-you is the way the, you know, the fuzzy toilet roof classes. Oh, yeah. The aspiring middle class. Yes. The bourgeoisie, you know. Nouveau riche. Oh, dear. Oh, it's...

It's rather gauche. Oh. You have to kind of keep your teeth together while you do it, though, don't you? Working class people are always moving their faces. That's something I've noticed. Yes, ever so much. Far too much.

But it's not about the working class. I'm being unfair there. It's about the difference between the way properly posh people, aristocratic people talk, and people who are just well off. So it's things like calling it a pudding rather than a sweet and calling it a... Toilet rather than a lav. Yes, calling it a loo rather than a crapper.

Is it lav? It's lavatory, isn't it, is the proper way to say it. Lavatory or loo rather than toilet, yes. Sofa rather than couch. Mad rather than mental. Is that a real one? Yep, yep. Ice rather than ice cream.

What? That's just inaccurate. How to do rather than pleased to meet you. Chimney piece rather than mantelpiece. Looking glass rather than mirror. Now, inexplicably to me, Nancy Mitford finds his ghost stories

boring. Oh. But she does enjoy the weird deaths of his relatives. Okay, Nance. She does a quick summary of his relatives

and their many maladies. Georgiana Hair Nailer undertook to dance the clock round at Bonn and found herself having to lie on her back for an entire year after performing this feat.

Ooh. She adds, what are we to make of Edward Little, cured of typhoid by lying under a vast poultice of snow, of Aunt Caroline, who ate one of her maid's arms and part of another? What? I went to find in the book, to find out what he was talking about,

no more information. He wrote six volumes and he does not explain what happened to Aunt Caroline's maid Barbara's arm. Yep, the maid only had one arm. I think, I think what he's saying is

we were so scared of Aunt Caroline that we told each other that she had eaten Barbara's arm. The case of Esmeralda Hare, according to Nancy Mitford, the romantic,

beautiful sister of Augustus is the oddest of all. When a small child, she swallowed a wooden thimble with a copper band. The thimble dissolved with time. The copper band remained in her body, growing as she grew, until attenuated to the minutest thread. She was warned by the doctors she must avoid a damp climate and eschew vegetables.

In vain. She died, not very young, it's true, but not in the fullness of age. And her horrible symptoms were those of verdigris poisoning. Which is copper poisoning. Which is, don't eat copper. Don't eat a thing of copper. Right, good idea. Okay, fair enough.

Won't do that. None of these encounters were weirder than what happened to the mother, which was the ant who brought Augusta's hair up. In the last months of her life, she developed an unmanageable arm. Oh, I think we know how she could have got rid of that. Plays a quick call to Aunt Caroline. It began by stealing her pocket handkerchiefs, but soon threw itself upon her person,

strangling and buffeting her, and otherwise giving an excellent imitation of an all-in wrestling match. dr strange love's arm alien arm syndrome or something yeah eventually tragically the mother died and uh that began augusta's hair's life of essentially traveling around being sort of adopted by aristocrats for certain amounts of time. Lady Waterford seems to have taken him under her wing. Lady Waterford, as Nancy Mumford says, having both her arms under perfect control was a little easier to deal with,

which I think is a bit unfair. But also, you don't want to judge him by what their family do, but you might want to be careful putting an arm around his shoulder just in case he has a little bite. They have history arm-wise, yeah. Here's what she has to say about his ghost stories. They are written down at length in the story of my life and fall roughly into two categories. The figure from the dead who appears in order to warn some high-born lady that her mad butler is approaching with an axe

or that the train she is sitting in will shortly be derailed. Oh. Mad butlers and railway accidents seem to have been the ever-present dangers of those days. And the heap of human bones in the best spare room which nightly nags at the guests until the aristocratic host is prevailed upon to give it a Christian burial. Yeah.

I don't know, I've read a few of them. Weirdly, he has a website, which is, I want to say a GeoCities website, but annoyingly, it's actually tripod it's not as funny as geocities um which collects a few a hand a mere handful of the ghost stories and none of none of the ones i read fall into either of those categories i think she's being a little bit unfair hmm it's euphemism time james okay why do all of these biographers seem to not really like this guy without wanting to retread ground that we have trodden oh we might want to take some of the withering sarcasm and mockery doled out in augustus has his directions with a pinch of salt, James. He was probably gay.

And there's a lot of euphemisms being thrown around, very much like Horace Walpole. Oh, from Strawberry Hill House. From Strawberry Hill House. E.S. Turner sort of ironically says he was not the marrying kind. Nancy Mitford was very unsubtle in her sarcastic remarks. Blackwoods magazine described him as being neither male nor female. But I do think part of the contempt and mockery from his contemporaries

is reflecting that. Right. I wouldn't want to add to it. Yeah, no. But I am going to go and continue to mock him for vampire-related reasons. Yes, that's fair game. The thing is, like, if you remember the Ham House ghost story, it's nonsense, and he's the only source for it.

And what's weird is that that pattern keeps being repeated. It was obviously known in his time, and I think basically it kind of looks like there was a game on to see how ridiculous a story you could get into one of Augustus Hare's books by telling it to him. Oh, right. If that was a game, it has been won by Captain Fisher Rowe of Thorncombe in Guildford. Oh, go on. Formerly, of course, the Fishers were of Croglin Grange in Cumberland. Croglin. Croglin?

Croglin, like a boglin. But a crog rather than a bog? Yeah. Is that a posh toilet? Or a less posh toilet? Is it right to say crog or bog? Cumberland, of course, is now Cumbria, which is annoying because Northumbria is now Northumberland.

Come on. They've switched. That's just really irritating. That's not neat. Croglin Grange itself was a one-storey house. They've switched. That's just really irritating. That's not neat. Croglin Grange itself was a... It was a one-story house. What a story. The end.

Captain Fisher's family had left it because, you know, they were moving up in the world. They went off to Guildford or something. Fancy. And they let it to some tenants, two brothers and a sister. It was a blazingly hot summer one year, the first year that they were living there. And the sister couldn't sleep.

She hadn't even closed her shutters because it was so hot. And I'm going to read you the story in quite a lot of detail because it's pretty good. But feel free to jump in with gags if you get the opportunity. Certainly. When they separated for the night, all retiring to their rooms on the ground floor, for as I said, there was no upstairs in that house.

It's a bungalow. The sister felt that the heat was still so great that she could not sleep, and having fastened her window, she did not close the shutters. In that very quiet place, it was not necessary. And propped against the pillows, she still watched the wonderful, the marvellous beauty of that summer night. Graduallyually she became aware of two lights, two lights which flickered in and out of the belt of trees which separated

the lawn from the churchyard, and as her gaze became fixed upon them, she saw them emerge, fixed in a dark substance, a definite ghastly something, which seemed every moment to become nearer, increasing in size and substance as it approached. Every now and then it was lost for a moment in the long shadows which stretched across the lawn from the trees, and then it emerged, larger than ever and still coming on, on. As she watched it, the most uncontrollable horror seized her. She longed to get away, but the door was close to the window, and the door was locked on the inside. Oh. her she longed to get away but the door was close to the window and the door was locked on the inside oh and while she was unlocking it she must be for an instant nearer to it she longed to scream but her voice seemed paralyzed her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth it comes closer and closer

james a horrible thing with its nasty little face and its flaming eyes until she hears scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window. Scratch, scratch, scratch. I mean, it's a bit like that other story of Augustus Hare with the scratch, scratch, scratch. Yeah, with the scratch. He got into a scratch in. Yeah.

He had a pet donkey as well. She felt a sort of mental comfort in the knowledge that the window was securely fastened on the inside. Suddenly the scratching sound ceased and the kind of pecking sound took its place. Oh. Then in her agony, she became aware that the creature was unpicking the lead. Of course, it was the olden days. So it's one of those leaded windows with little diamond-shaped pieces of glass. Yeah, it picks away the lead and the tiny diamond-shaped pane of glass falls into the room.

Blink. And then a long bony finger of the creature came in and turned the handle of the window. And the window opened and the creature came in and it came across the room. And her terror was so great that she could not scream and it came up to the bed and it twisted its long bony fingers into her hair and it dragged her head over the side of the bed and it bit her violently in the throat. I honestly thought she was going to get away.

Yeah. First time I read it. She really doesn't. Eventually she does manage to scream. The boys hear the scream they come pounding in the door's locked they kick down the door the creature i assume it goes in some way shoots back out the window and disappears into the night right uh she's in a swoon completely passed out eventually she wakes up and uh and I think this demonstrates Augustus Hare's gift

for natural dialogue. She wakes up and immediately says, What has happened is most extraordinary and I am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable but of course there is an explanation and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic has escaped from some asylum and found his way here. Fair enough.

Fair enough. Doesn't sound like she's in shock. She sounds fine. So naturally they go to Switzerland to get away from croglin grange for a bit and allow her to recover she seems fine after a while she insists that they return to croglin grange just as a little aside the r and r in the past was way more flamboyant just going to switzerland yeah yeah like now if i feel a bit ill it's like i might spend a day watching the telly under a duvet on the sofa you wouldn't go to switzerland and dry plants make sketches and go up mountains which is exactly what she did unlike to recover

from vampire attack although to be fair i've not been attacked by a vampire so i don't know how that would affect me well like you james she was level-headed and brave and decided she had to return we have taken it she said for seven years and we have only been there one and then she goes on to say they'll have difficulty letting it because it's only one story high so we we'd better return after all she reasons lunatics do not escape every day. Uh-oh. I've got a feeling. You've got a feeling? That might be portentous. Well, they return to the house.

Did she say touch wood at the end? I think she turned to her other side and said, I definitely won't be attacked by a vampire again. Cool. Crossfade. It's March. She's getting ready for bed. Now, of course, she's not superstitious but she's care

she's cautious she closes the shutters but um they're the kind of shutters that don't go all the way up to the top it was peekaboo shutters in the following march the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too well scratch scratch scratch upon the window and looking up she saw climbed up to the topmost pane of the window james it's it's the vampire again oh god i'm sorry to inform you it's the vampire again in it comes kapow but this time they're ready for it the door isn't locked the brothers have moved closer two rooms so they're in there in time they're ready for it the door isn't locked the brothers have moved closer to rooms so they're in there in time

they're sleeping James with a pistol under their pillow so they come in USA style you know kapow pachoo

ting hold on I've got to reload one of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg but still with the other leg it continued to make way scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault, which belonged to a family long extinct. The next day, the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange, and in their presence, the vault was opened.

A horrible scene revealed itself. The vault was full of coffins. They had been broken open and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered all over the floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there, brown, withered, shriveled, mummified, but quite entire was the same hideous figure which had looked in at the window of Croglin Grange, with the marks of a recent pistol shot in the leg. And they did.

The only thing that can lay a vampire. They burned it. Oh, okay. It's not the only thing as far as I know. Yeah, I know. At least there's a,

I can think of at least three others. And she specifically didn't invite it in. It doesn't quite fit into the vampire mythos. But maybe that's what makes it more realistic. That's what makes it so definitely, definitely true. And I will just add the little footnote that Charles G. Harper, of Haunted Houses fame, went there and it's clearly not true. Oh.

There's not even a place called Croglin Grange. What? It's such a great name. There are, says Charles G. Harper, Croglin Grange. What? It's such a great name. There are, says Charles G. Harper, Croglin High Hall and Low Hall, both are farmhouses very like one another and not in any particulars resembling the description given. Oh. Croglin Low Hall is probably the house indicated,

but it's at least a mile distant from the church, which has been rebuilt. The churchyard contains no tomb, which by any stretch of the imagination could be identified with that described by Mr. Hare. Uh-oh. Charles. Chuckie G?

Chuckie G? You've ruined it for everyone. You've ruined the vibe. Or is he in the pocket of Big Vampire? Of Big Vampire, yeah. Yeah, I tell you what. Is that the sound of something being carefully hushed up and stifled? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Guess we'll never know. Not even a house called it. If there was a house, it would be a mile away from the church. Yeah. I think that Charles G. Harper doth protest too much. Mm-hmm. You know, this place goes all the way to Charles G. Harper, James.

You know, this place goes all the way to Charles G. Harper, James. So that's the story of Augustus Hare and the Cronlin Grange vampire. That's a great story. I love that. I mean, also credit to Captain Fisher for making it up. Yeah, yeah. For obviously inventing it and telling it to a credulous hanger on. Still good, though.

Good work. Yeah, it's good. Thank you. I'm happy to take credit for that yeah yeah yeah james are you ready to plunge face first into a vat of schools yes i am like someone who's been who's tried to expose the secrets of big school being silenced in an ironic fashion yes okay my first category is i really hope i haven't undermined this by saying that it was definitely a made-up story supernatural ah now then a vampire in cumbria hold on one second i just let me just grab this book. Now, I actually have to hand my copy of Haunted Houses by Charles G. Harper. Oh, that's a coincidence. When you said the book, I thought you were, like, going for the Bible.

To be like, you know what, that reminds me a little bit of Jesus. Not a lot of people believed in him. I know a man that people used to not always believe his stories. But he was very scary. Okay, yep, you're okay. I'm a little bit nervous, but go ahead. This is literally the first bit of that book in the preface. Do you believe in ghosts?

Asked a gentleman of Madame du Defond. No, replied the witty lady, but I am afraid of them. Hmm? Hmm. Yes, a very, very good quote. That's the same person who went on to go, yeah, but this vampire story is not even true. Does it really exist?

Yeah, so that vampire story may not be true, but it's scary. The little diamond, a little diamond a little diamond blink pick pick pick yeah that's really good yeah it is isn't it very scary i liked it and he wrote hundreds of others which i haven't even included in the episode in case they're useful for another episode in the future that's wise wise there was just a random bat attack as well. Yeah, I just threw that in for symmetry. Bit of colour. Yeah. I think it's high because it was so effective. I'm giving it, I'm gonna give it a four. Four, okay. Even though someone ate a thimble. Fine. That was peculiar. And someone had a possessed arm. Yeah, they did have alien arm syndrome, or Dr. Strangelove syndrome,

as it's also known. But yeah, that's it. that's it sticking it for i accept that's pretty good considering the story is not true so my next category is names ah yes the category the naming do no do no the category do no the category croglin grange croglin grange the croglin grange um croroglin' Grange. Croglin' Grange. Croglin', Croglin', Croglin'. Keep those vampires crogglin'. All right, James, can I ask you this question? Because this has been troubling me. Uh-huh. Rawhide.

Yeah. Are you familiar with the theme tune from Rawhide? You were just singing it there. Yeah, rollin', rollin', rollin'. Keep them doggies rollin'. I think by doggies it means cows because he's not like the cattle right right yeah they're not dog boys yeah and there's that lyric where it says um don't try to understand them just rope them throw them brand them do you

think people spending too long trying to understand the cows was a real problem like you know the old cowpokes out there were like, what are you doing, Ken? Are you trying to understand the cows? What did I specifically say in the theme tune? Don't try to understand them. Just rope them through

and brand them. Soon you'll be living high and wide if you weren't so busy trying to remember trying to understand cows. Just a little bit of observational humour about the theme tune to the TV show Rawhide. I mean, it's solid. It's a good point as well.

Yeah, I assume the kids who listen to this podcast will enjoy that. Yeah. I'm sure the spooky teens will appreciate that. And again, by rolling, they mean walking. Walking, walking, walking, walking. Keep those cattle walking. Don't communicate with the cows. Don't get emotionally attached to the cows.

Actually, that is good advice, probably, for a cowherd. For a cowpoke. Don't invest. They're cowpokes, not cowwokes. Ha ha ha! they're cow pokes not cow woke so what's the score for naming uh massive fives it's gotta be i mean there were loads of good ones i can't even remember any of them because of all that rawhide business yeah me too but they were definitely loads yeah my third category i'm tempted to go with double me up, but twice zero is zero.

Ah. So I'm going to go with there's no arm in it. Very nice. Very nice indeed. Because there is no harm in going around telling ghost stories, even if they're not completely true. But also, one of the characters had their arm eaten yes that's the other thing or may have had their arm eaten there's no harm in telling someone a

silly story if it's quite entertaining i agree yeah well i mean there was quite a lot of harm in an extremely sadistic upbringing but ignoring that and maybe that's minus one point and there was a bit of harm in the woman whose arm used to beat her up yeah yes that's a yep that's minus one point and there was a bit of harm in the woman whose arm used to beat her up yeah yes that's a yep that's a good point um oh i forgot her his relative sarah hair died from eating too much ice cream oh too much ice sorry too much ice which is how nancy mcpherson says it i just changed it in my notes to ice cream so I wouldn't get confused so there is a little bit of harm in this is a really bad category yeah I think it's got to be just a 3

you don't want to double me up to 6 double me up I'll cut your feet off no it's a 3 that's fair because there's an amount of things that there isn't any harm in.

Yeah. And there were several things that were really quite harmful. Who's halfway to not having an arm. I fell into a classic Shake Shack trap of thinking of a pun and committing to it in the scoring section, not realising that that pun was about to betray me. Yeah. You've been hoist by your own pun-tard.

Ah, just the sound of the axe falling on the podcast there. Over, dead, gone. Hoist by your own pun-tard. So my final category has a lot of pressure on this one. I haven't really put enough work into it. I didn't expect it to be unpicked on the previous category, like the leading around a window pane by a vampire. My final category, just hair.

Just hair. Hair. That's good. Because we had about nine, just hair. Just hair. Hair. That's good. Because we had about nine people called hair. Yep. And then we had Montague Somers' hair at the start. Haircut. You had the bats going for the hair.

Haircut. Yes, the bats going into the ladies' hair and the ladies running away holding their hair when they met Augustus' hair. when they met Augustus Hare? Yeah, I thought Osbert Sitwell could have made more of the fact that they were running away because they didn't want stuff getting into their hair, but then they didn't want to get into Hare's writing. Like, I don't know, I'm just... That's a good point, yeah.

I'm just seeing potential there for something. If this were a writer's group and Osbert Sitwell were asking for feedback, that would be really helpful. You'd be like, ah, that would be really helpful. You'd be like, ah, you've missed something there. I think there's a thematic link there between people being worried about getting stuff in their hair. And then they don't want to get in the hairs. Because his books are crazy.

They don't want to get in them. They don't want to get in them. And, of course, he had a big moustache. What's a moustache made of? Hairs. Also hair. Massive hairs. Yep. It is a big hair day here today. It is five out of five. Yes! Oh, and the

final tale was hair raising. Oh, perfect. Well, well, well, well, well, James. Well, well, James. Well, that was great. You won't sleep easy in your bed tonight. No.

You old, you old sceptic, you. I'm going to double check the lid on my windows. Yeah. And I advise the listeners to do the same. Or have your butler do it. When the listener has finished securing their shutters against creatures of the night how can they support the podcast well in order for us to maintain the upkeep of our lead and windows

they could help us by chucking us a couple of quid via the medium of patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod which will give them access to bonus episodes, sneak peeks of videos and stuff. And the Lawfolk Discord, wherein it regularly kicketh off. Oh, it does. Hold on one second. I just... Let me just grab this book.

What book is James grabbing? Is it the Bible? Imagine if we pivoted to christian propaganda at this point