Loremen Podcast - S5 Ep35: Loremen S5Ep35 - Oxford Mysteries LIVE Part 2 (with Bonus)

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

The Loremen lived again - again! This is the second installment of the live show recorded in Oxford (famed birthplace of the comma) as part of the Saint Audio Podcast Festival. James guides our live audience around the spooky environs of Oxford, this time courtesy of John Richardson's Oxford & County Ghost Stories. In Part 2, the boys encounter a pair of workmen's ghosts up the Woodstock Road, we witness a clay-tastrophe and James manages to squeeze in a bonus story that he had ran out of time to tell in the live. The full Livestream is here: https://youtube.com/live/KUPu3MGUuUc Loreboys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

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 alistair i'm gonna drop a record scratch right away starting with a record scratch exactly because this is part two of the oxford mysteries live which just and and there's just a couple of things that i think people just need to know because this is part two of the Oxford Mysteries Live, which just, and there's just a couple of things that I think people just need to know before they go into this episode. Well, what are they, James? Well, first of all, in part one,

we talked about crocodiles. Of course we did. And you claimed that crocodiles don't get old. Yep, crocodiles don't get old. That's a fact. You can ask anyone that crocodiles don't get old. Yep. Crocodiles don't get old. That's a fact. You can ask anyone. Crocodiles don't get old. And I claimed that crocodiles could climb trees. Nonsense. Absolute misinformation nonsense. Yeah, to be honest, I'd believe me less as well.

I just sound more confident in my crocodile facts. And we recorded this in a venue in Oxford called the Old Fire Station, which is now an arts venue, but as the name implies, used to be a fire station, which led to you doing a pitch-perfect impression of a fireman sliding down a pole and then sliding back up that pole. Perfect. When it turns out that wasn't a fire. Yes, yeah, yeah. Straight back up that pole. Perfect.

When it turns out there wasn't a fire. Yes, yeah, yeah. Straight back up. False alarm. Exactly. That's how it works. With those things in mind, please enjoy part two of the Oxford Mysteries. Yeah, you're allowed to take those notes in with you, like with some GCSAs.

Mm. A-ri-a-ri-a. I've got some more actual Oxford, Oxford City-based tailage for you. Would you say Oxonian? Yeah, you could do, yeah. Mm. Oxonian, yeah. We will do.

Oxonian. We've got some more Oxonian stuff. And this is from Oxford and County Ghost Stories by John Richardson, who has the name of a comedian, but this book came out in 1977. So I think if John Richardson were to be here tonight, it would not be corporally. Corporally.

Corporally. He'd be very old, is what I'm saying. He'd be probably dead. He's very old. Unless he's a crocodile. We don't know from the name. I don't think Richardson is a crocodile surname, but, you know. It's not a traditionally crocodile surname.

He could have changed it. Actually, let me look at the preface. It says, the writer, a crocodile. The author photographed him between two trees um this i have to say this is um not not to criticize in any way the ox files but this is this is top pamph this is total pamph like it's like it's, it's not even Courier New, it's Courier, the font. It's original Courier. It's monotyped, baby. It's monospaced.

Do I mean monospaced? Thank you. It's monospaced, baby. And then for the edit, we'll fix that. So this takes place up Woodstock Road, which you won't know, but I know and most of the people here know is a road. You could have worked it out from the tone of my voice from the timber, really, couldn't you? But, you know, it's one of the two big roads that goes north out of Oxford. I'm pointing in a direction.

Right. Which could easily be the right one. There's only 360. Up Woodstock Road, in the past, there was the British Leyland plant. Now, do you know what British Leyland is or was? I've heard the name. It was a car motor conglomerate company

that made most of the cars in britain and it's like an eight for american listeners it's a british version of general motors which you can look at it two ways that name it's either like it sounds like an army guy general motors i don't know what sort of voice he'd have or it's just it's just General Motors. What do you mean, General Motors? No, Special Motors. Come on, believe in yourselves, guys. But General Motors, some of the subsidiaries,

and this is where I try to get naming category points, they include Land Rover, Jaguar, Mini Rover. And then they obviously realised they needed to kind of aim specifically at sort of the female and the male market because they also made princess and guy one of their subsidiaries was a forklift truck company and that was called the coventry climax it would be hard to ask for that wouldn't it without feeling weird this is a forklift truck um yeah um so in a former roller skating rink on on osberton road are you just doing Tom White's lyrics now?

It was a carpentry climax in a former ice rink. It was the princess and the guy. Off the Osburton Road was where they made the radiators for the cars. And now, everywhere I've looked this up, it describes the fun fact that when the radiator assembly plant was first opened, none of the 10 workers knew how to use a soldering iron, let alone had ever seen one before. They had to get in a kid's toy so that they could practice with a soldering iron. I think they need to look at their interview process. And also, kids' toy sets had soldering irons in the past evidently uh this was from 1910 it's this was a very difficult thing to research because all the names are like

things that are something else so woodstock road ghosts you just get ghosts from woodstock john richardson there's also the comedian john Richardson. Child soldering kit, obviously loads of... When you look at British Leyland ghosts, it's just loads of fruity articles, blogs, written by 60 and 70-year-old men about the death of the British industrial stuff. And you feel like you're two clicks away from a Princess Diana mural.

Edit white on these things. She was the people's princess car. from a Princess Diana mural. Edit my... on these things. Yeah, just... She was the people's princess car. That was a grudging clap. She was the people's guy. And so what happened? A member of staff on night shift saw a figure in a brown garment floating

past this is in the british leyland this is in the factory yeah this is forget about princess die and stuff like that now uh we're in the radiator factory on osberton road on off woodstock road in oxford uh in the past uh and yeah uh there was a blast of ice cold air when this worker was talking to one of their colleagues in the same area. At the same place, at the back of the plant, this same man saw a floating head. Or the ghost of a floating head, I suppose, technically.

You can't be the ghost of a head. Can you? Stop the podcast. Talk louder so the microphones can hear. I believe listeners might remember the bikers from a previous live episode. I think they were featured in the bonus episode. Oh, okay. Possible non-real bikers may not have a beard

in the podcast before. You've seen a floating head. When I was a little boy in my bedroom, a floating head appeared in the middle of the day. In the day? In the day. That's not the usual time for ghosts. That's what confused me.

Just in case that didn't come out, little boy bedroom, I'm already suspicious of a dream, but floating head during the day. Is that right? I was awake. I was reading the Beano book, 1994. He was reading the Beano in 99.

Because you were reading the Beano book, 1994. Wow. The date as well. Too much information now. I'm sceptical. You've proved it too much for it to be true. It's good vintage, though. 94 was a good year for the Beano.

Great year for the Beano. Yeah, great year for the Beano. You still had the Bash Street Kids. Before they got PC. Yeah, I sound like I wrote one of their websites now. I don't mean to. I did like the Bash Street Kids. Unless they've done something terrible, in which case, no, I don't like has been cancelled i don't know i don't know so yeah there were there were footsteps

doors and unaccountable voices heard and the thing was this spot in the building i don't know if it was near your house um but it was the closest part of the building to a canal bridge where during the 60s, the 1960s, they'd installed a new bridge, and installing that bridge and removing the old bridge, they found a skeleton. And that skeleton, according to John Richardson from the book, from this book, not from Comedian, the skeleton was particularly noticeable

in that the skull was partially severed from the body. Which, yeah, you're right to look sceptical. It's difficult to tell with a skeleton the bone is partially severed from a body because... Well, if you found it in like six feet away, but then that would be more than part, that'd be stretching the word partial, wouldn't it? Absolutely, yes.

Like we don't know how long his neck was. No. It was believed to be the skelly, I've written skelly here. It was believed to be the skelly of a labourer who dug the canal. And it goes on to illustrate that when they dug the canals, the diggers, the digging gangs, were made up of rival gangs

and they used to get in fights quite often. Could they tell that he'd been clicking his fingers from the bones? He'd been intimidating rival gang finger clicks. Yeah, yes. You would probably get a shark to help you dig a canal i guess because they just know water they had these long-handled shovels that they used to dig but they'd also use them to fight like battle axes yeah so they used to they employ those gladiator things that they fight with on gladiator pugil stick is that like a giant earbud yes but this is way more deadly because instead of having two big bits of foam

it's got one big bit of sharp metal okay at the end and so they yeah they they these rival gangs would fight with these and they think that's what the guy nearly got his head cut clean off wow partially severed and i think again they really need to look at their interview process because that that's don't get rival gangs that are going to fight with axes if you're building a canal so how where are we at oh yeah okay i've got we got time for a little extra yeah i think we've got a little bit of time just up the woodstock road from there there used to be a clay pit and this is gonna this is gonna chill your bones get pop your gilets on guys your spine is gonna be dingled okay so at the turn of the century which would

have been the 1900s based on when this book was written a labourer called dennis ingram we've got the name of a ghost here this is the name of the ghost dennis ingram was employed to move clay from the outskirts of oxford to the quarry at the north end of the woodstock road on his horse and cart i don't really understand the nature of this job he seems to be taking clay from one place, digging it out of the ground, putting it in his car, moving it over and tipping it into the ground in a different place. It seems like a made-up job for games. Maybe if you did your quarry in the wrong place

and you wanted to move it, you could just very slowly dig it out and then put it over there. Dig it out and then move it and then fill the old one in. If we filled this big hole in the ground with valuable stone, that'd be a really good quarry. It'd be a lovely spot for a quarry. Yeah.

And so this tale is the last one in the collection by John Richardson, and he went to town on this. So he felt completely at ease as he passed down the tree-lined road on his last trip for the day. The warm air swirling around him. It was not long before he arrived once more at the entrance to the clay pit.

He urged his mare slowly to the edge of the pit where he tipped the load. Although this manoeuvre was routine, it still required extreme care to ensure that neither man nor beast toppled over the edge. He was turning his horse and cart round to join the other men leaving work when, for no reason whatsoever and without any warning, the cart lurched backwards. The mare reared up with fright and she tried to pull the cart forward but both the cart and the horse began to topple over the edge. Suddenly Dennis Ingram felt a tugging at his ankles. Somehow the reins had become wound round his leg. Although he screamed for help,

nobody could reach him before he too was dragged over the top to join the struggling horse in the pit below. Slowly but surely, the oozing clay engulfed the horse and its master, filling their eyes and mouths with its oozing slime. I should just point out here, I don't think any of this is true. So don't get too of this is true. So don't get too emotionally invested in the horse, the person or the cart. He tried to scream,

but only a gurgle emitted from his suffocating body. Then he disappeared, leaving only his ghost to haunt the pit. The end. That's it. But we know the ghost's name but we don't know if anyone's ever seen it

so people saw that happen they saw him being about to ride away and then suddenly he just got sucked backwards into the big old stack of clay what's your name

Danny Singer okay Big old stack of clay. Oi, what's your name? Danny Singer. Okay. He was an American. Right then. So, that's my tales. Fantastic. A round of applause for James, please. Are you ready to score me yes they were delightful stories let us score let us score so we will need a a what's traditionally known as a chat agree um but

i think these i mean we can get we can have some we've got the chat open here, but we can have a suggestion from the room if you've got a suggestion for a score. Have a think in the meantime. We will get the standard ones out of the way. Are you ready? Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay then.

Well, first up, naming. Okay. I just need to say two words. Four words. The first two words are Coventry Climax. And the second two are, of course, Juliet Waldron. In Boyford. Look, I don't care about any of those.

It's Mr. Little Child. I am Team Little Child all the way. Don't take that out of context. That's just got demonetised. Yeah, Mr. Little Child is a very, very amusing name. I enjoyed that a lot. I enjoyed Juliet, although I think a lot of that was accent work rather than name. Are there any other names that I've missed before I give you inevitably a five

based purely on the innkeeper's name? The Oxfiles! Oh, yeah. I mean, we don't do sixes, but that is a six out of five name. Excellent. It's a five out of five. Yes.

But you are sharing it with our guests. I'm more than happy to. That was wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, second category then. Supernatural. Okay.

I don't know if falling in a hole is actually spooky. I don't know if you can have the ghost of a head. I don't think that makes sense. However, you did actually see one corroborated in 1994. I think it was

1995. He tried to corroborate. My wife, she loves the Beano. Juliet was... She stayed in boyfriend. She read the Beano. It was the mid-90s. Yeah, that's pretty spooky.

A guy who goes down to his ankles and then stops. Sorry, his shins. A guy who goes down to his shins. It's great. Flo floor height change classic ghost. The rattling doors in the cellar. Rubbish. Just describing why it's annoying to run a pub more than a ghost.

A lorry load of hay that spontaneously caught fire. It was probably a warm day, like the day the guy was delivering clay, and it just, he probably rode past another truck carrying lenses. And they stopped for a chat. I've got to say, yeah, the floating head's pretty good. The real floating head is pretty good. Crocodiles are not ghosts.

No. But they are encrypted if there is a family of crocodiles living in Chipping Norton and the Chipping Norton area to this day. I don't think

that that's true. First of all, I don't think there's a family of crocodiles living in Chipping Norton and also, if there were,

they wouldn't be encrypted. They would still be crocodiles. Oh yeah. So that's not supernatural. Just be holidaying crocodiles i'm going to say i'm going to say it's a three for supernatural and a lot of that is is ghost head okay thank you or the coventry climax as it's that scene from ghostbusters they don't show when they play it during the day.

Excellent, excellent. Okay, do we have any suggestions? You can win a sticker. Of a Japanese baseball player. Of a Japanese baseball player. Fire? The fire? Fire? Fire?

Exclamation mark? I'm guessing. Well, don't shout that here. It's very poor taste. You're literally in a, I don't want to say crowded theatre, but moderately busy theatre. Have we got any from the chat here? Okay.

All right. I'm sorry. This is from Lucy. Spontaneous combustion. I'm sorry this is from Lucy spontaneous combustion spontaneous combustion great category wonderful

great category yes yes I'm going to go with that spontaneous combustion well it only happened once so what Lucy

cheers Luce no They only happen once, so one. Lucy. Cheers, Lucy. No, no, to be fair, if we use this category to cover all fire-related things, there was certainly an effort to link all of the stories back to the idea of a fire station. Half of the stories. And then some of them just happened in Oxford. So how many fires were there? There was the spontaneous combustion.

There was the spontaneous combustion. There was the sad story of the horsies. Oh, yeah, bad times for horsies. And if you got a crocodile stuck up your tree,

who do you call? Ghostbusters. Yeah. Ghostbusters. the ghostbusters um yeah well I've counted the number of times fire appeared

in those stories as you were talking and it's looking like a two to me which is twice as good as the one I was going to give

what do you do with clay don't open the books again James what do you do with clay you fire it thank you

if if if you are making earthenware. And? But not if you're just throwing it into a hole. What?

And what do you do when a night shift employee starts saying that there's a floating head? What do you do with them? In the 60s?

Okay, I would fire as that employee. What would you do if you were interviewing for a workshop? Really, the job really relies on using a soldering iron, and the interviewee is not able to use a soldering iron? You'd hire them in that case. That doesn't really work.

That doesn't really work. But if you didn't know how to use a soldering iron, what's the real danger? Fire. If I gave you five, it would be the most tenuous five we've ever had. I think I'm going to have to throw it to the crowd. Is it a five?

No. Okay. I thought they were with you, honestly. A very weak no. Oh, ouch. I've never heard an audience all just with you, honestly. A very weak no. Oh, ouch. I've never heard an audience all just say no simultaneously. I didn't even count them in. They just did it in sync.

In a gruff Scottish accent as well. Oh, no, no. Okay, still in a gruff Scottish accent. Is it a four? No. We're listening for aye. Okay. Is it a three?

Okay. It's a three according to the gruff Scotsman who for some reason have come to the show. Okay. For spontaneous combustion. Which I blooming love, Lucy. I'm sorry. If the category were good category name, that would have been a five.

But that's not the game we're playing. Well, maybe I'll win that category with my final category, which is... I'm Waldron here. Yeah, all right. It's five out of five. Rizzo Ratso.

Jenny Waldron? What was her name? Juliet? Juliet Waldron. Juliet. Juliet Waldron. From the south side. I don't know of where. They call her Joliet Juliet.

Joliet's a prison. I thought she was so good they named her twice. This is a New York New York thing. Yeah. Thank you very much, Matthew, for having us at the festival. Matthew is an American person and all I can do is apologise for my actions at this point. It's like I was at home. Matthew, please.

Don't interrupt the recording. We appreciate you having us, but this is our time now. It's like listening to a mirror. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Well, thanks. Thank you very much, folks. That was lovely. I had a lovely dear. Well, thanks. Thank you very much, folks. That was lovely. I had a lovely time.

Yeah, me too. Thanks. Thank you very much. I suppose all we can do is say thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us on the live stream. Thanks, Lucy. Preemptively, thank you and apologies to Joe for the edit.

And please say hello afterwards and um i think we might for the edit want a clean spontaneous round of applause oh at least one thank you very much. There you go. There it was. You know, I would definitely come to these lives if I was a listener. It's clearly a great experience. Well, there might be another one in the pipeline. We haven't got the exact details just yet.

I suppose I'll just watch this space or listen to this can you listen to a space yeah okay but alistair do you know what i want to do what i want to do another record scratch no you've bookended the show with record scratches what i've got a whole bonus bit of a story that we ran out of time during the live to-do. Oh. I think that's a sentence. I've got a bonus bit of a story that we ran out of time during the live to-do. Is that real? Checks out. Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Yeah? Yeah. Could you hear the commas? I love a lot of commas. There were. Laden with commas, that sentence. Do you want to hear it, the story? Yeah, tell me now.

This happened in Wolvercote, which, as Oxford map people would know, is very near the location of the previous two stories that we've just talked about. It's up the end of the Woodstock Road, near where that clay pit probably was, or the pit where they were putting the clay in. Ooh. Very confusing. This story dates back to 1744 and is told, wait a minute, according to this pamphlet,

it's still told about a vicar of Wolvercote. Well, you are telling it now, so that checks out. Oh, yeah. How did the pamphlet know? I suppose the pamphlet's telling it in its own way, isn't it? So they could actually put that on every story that is in the pamph anyway what happened was one night the vicar was returning late from oxford and he had a lantern you know your old school lantern yeah hurricane lamp type and it went out

and he carried on in the dark he's a brave vicar and then he heard a sound of a child weeping. I can't do it. That sounds a bit like laughter. I think, yeah, it's not really working. Not as good as your fireman's pole impression, I'd say. It's not as good as my impression of a fireman's pole. Sorry. But then, for no apparent reason, the lantern came back on again. Did you tell me that the lantern went out?

Yeah. Oh, I missed that. All by itself. Hold on. Now, I missed that. All by itself. Hold on. Now that I know, I'll gasp. So yeah, you can use that in the edit wherever you want. Just drop that in every time you say something, I'll just react. I'm going to use that in all edits.

Yeah, in all... Herein, you can use that whenever you want. I'm going to use that as my text alert. Whenever I phone you. So the lantern shone again, and it lit up another lamp on the ground. So the lamp lit up a lamp that was on the ground. And then the vicar, for no apparent reason, went and got a spade. Yep.

And dug that bit of ground up and found the skeleton of a little child. Right. That follows a sort of weird dream logic. Yeah. And he also got a free lamp into the deal. Yeah, bonus lamp. Bonus ghost lamp. Free lantern.

That's not bad. They gave the child a Christian burial in the church yard in wolvercote and the story goes that the the child's ghost is the ghost of a child that was shot in error by guards of the king's army oh no that were defending ox a hundred years previously. Hmm. Hmm. Not defending them from children, presumably. I guess not, but presumably defending them from smaller bad guys, and that's how they mistook a child for one of these baddies. What a weird, sad, and horrible story.

Yeah. And that fulfilled my triptych of tales that were both set in oxford and both called into question the rigorousness of the organization's interview processes i see because i think those guards were bad guards so there you have it a little bonus tale there that we ran out of time for thank Thank you very much. And it also featured a skeleton underground, which kind of ties in again the last two stories, which involved a skeleton and going under the ground because he got sucked under the clay.

Yeah. What a thematically coherent episode, James. It would have made so much sense at the time. Oh, yeah. Unscratch the record, everyone. Oh, we're going again. All right. We're back again.

So thank you very much, everyone. Thank you so much to everyone who came. Thank you for coming. Thank you to all the people who are our Patreons on patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod that you can join. And thank you sarcastically to people who didn't come. But they could come again in the future

if it happens again. I retract that, I'm sorry. And thanks to all the people that watched it on YouTube Live. Yeah, oh yeah, thank you. Go and subscribe to our YouTube and you'll get alerted when we do other lives

because they're always very ad hoc. But be warned, the alert noise is... Like in Star Trek. noise is like in star trek yes like in star trek when they fight with axes in star trek thank you thank you very much thank. I can't repeat the words, not because it's offensive, but because I don't understand.

It's an ong woon. I have a feeling this is not going into the edit anyway.