Loremen Podcast - S5 Ep41: Loremen S5Ep41 - Ghosts of Gallipoli

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Alasdair takes James to Gallipoli (with layovers in Glasgow and the North East of England) for a brace of chilling First World War ghost stories. (Which are slightly undermined by James's bizarre donkey conspiracy theories.) Our source is Raymond Lamont Brown's 1975 Casebook of Military Mystery. So hop aboard Loremen Airways and enjoy the authentic 70s air travel experience. Stow your inhibitions in the overhead lockers, and yes - smoking is mandatory. This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. Come see us LIVE Again! https://www.angelcomedy.co.uk/event-detail/loremen-live-again-18th-aug-the-bill-murray-london-tickets-202408181730/ 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 Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And James, I've got some ghosts from the First World War for you today. Oh yes, Great ghosts. From Raymond Lamont Brown's book, A Casebook of Military Mystery, I hope you are ready to have your bones chilled and your blood also chilled. I don't think you can ever be ready for that,

but I'm as ready as I ever could be to have my blood and bones chilled. Then hop aboard, come this way, and listen to me as I share with you two tales of Gallipoli ghosts. Oh, blimey. Hello there, James Shakeshaft. Oh, hello there, Alistair Beckett-King. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance. Good. I mean, it's taken a while, but I'm glad you got there in the end. It's nice to finally meet you after so long.

I thought you were just making, you've been making your decision for a decade. Yeah, we're now officially friends after all these years. I thought you were like, ah, it's been 10 years and it turns out I am happy to have made your acquaintance. Touch and go there for a couple of years. Very happy to have made your acquaintance several years ago when we met. A couple of weeks ago, you told me the story of Sandford Orcas. Oh, yes. The house, not the whale.

Yes. And while I was looking it up, I stumbled across a book called A Casebook of Military Mystery, which is such a good title, I simply had to read it. It's a book from 1974 by the prolific Scottish author Raymond Lamont Brown. This guy wrote a lot of books. This guy's a book guy. He wrote loads of history books and biographies and lots of books about myths and the supernatural in Scotland and beyond.

He was also a... Is the word a Japanophile? Is that a word? Yeah, I think that's all right. Japanophile? Would you describe yourself as a Japanophile? Yeah, I like Japan and Japanese things. Answer the question, James.

Would you describe yourself as a Japanophile? Probably. Well, then you have a sympathetic soul in Raymond Lamont Brown. He was also, I'm pleased to tell you, a believer. A believer? Well, not quite. He was a proto-believer. Bieber was not around yet, so it would have taken a lot of faith to believe in him before he existed. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm just, sorry, we did a little etymology corner, which will be in the bonus episode. But so Justin Bieber is to a Belieber. That means a Belieber is just a fan of Beavers. Yeah, Belief is to Beavers as Belieb, Belieb? Belieb. Do Bieber fans say that? I Belieb? Yeah, I think that's what they shout at his

concerts. I Belieb in you. I Belieb in you. They surely don't say that? I believe? Yeah, I think that's what they shout at his concerts. I believe in you. I believe in you. They surely don't say that. Go on, Justin. I believe in you. I mean, how old do you know? He's got to be about 40 by now, Justin Bieber. No, I think time works the same for him as it does for us.

Does it? No. Come on. He didn't do that deal with the devil. Well, as well as being a believer, Raymond Lamont Brown is a believer. In beavers. In a spiritual universe. And beavers. with the devil. Well, as well as being a believer, Raymond Lamont Brown is a believer. Mm. In beavers. In a spiritual universe.

And beavers. From the foreword of a casebook of military mystery, 1974, Raymond Lamont Brown believes in a spirit universe just as real as the world of the living,

for ghosts do not all rattle chains and haunt drafty old Gothic mansions, or appear headless and wearing old-fashioned clothes. They are just as likely

to use the telephone, drive a car, play a musical instrument, or enjoy a game of chess. Obviously confuse ghosts with people. I think so, because even if you think that's true, surely ghosts are less likely to drive a car than they are not drive a car, because cars have existed for a fraction of human history. Yes. Ghosts are much more likely not to drive cars, surely. And I've got a few stories for you from this book

in which ghosts do absolutely none of those things. Not even play chess. They don't even play chess once, nor do they use the telephone. A couple of the stories we're not going to cover for you now from the contents page. A phosphorescent GI. Ooh. A potpourri of revenants really struggle to understand that apparently a potpourri or potpourri could just mean mixture not necessarily

a mixture specifically of nice smelling dried petals and leaves and things but just a mixture i thought i was following on from the phosphorant GI. There'd be like some sort of soldier that was made of potpourri. The most deadly soldier of all. I just, I don't think I would use the word potpourri in relation to revenants because I don't imagine zombies and resurrected people smelling that nice. No. Don't make me think about smelling things. No.

You wouldn't have a little bowl of zombie fingers in your bathroom. No, not even your nan would. No. You wouldn't mistake a bowl of zombie fingers for crisps in a hilarious sketch from sitcom in the 80s when Mr. Nakamura was coming around for dinner. People in the 80s were terrified of Japanese bosses, weren't they? The worst nightmare you could experience in the 1980s was being told what to do by a Japanese man. How many times did any boss come to your actual house in the past?

Did they not have restaurants in the 80s? I mean, I struggle to understand a lot of things because I've never really had a proper job. But I think growing up, perhaps as watching American sitcoms, I was under the impression that people were afraid of being fired more than they are in real life. But I don't know if that's that sitcoms are inaccurate or if that's just that America is different from Britain

because they're always being like, oh, my boss ate zombie fingers instead of crisps. I'm going to get fired. But it's like, you can't get fired for that in the UK. Like you would go to a tribunal. They do have different labour laws in America, I think. American sitcom characters need to unionise because you are getting fired for completely unreasonable reasons.

Feeding your boss zombie fingers. That's at your own home. It's not in work time. You're allowed to do that. I think that is gross misconduct and bringing the company into disrepute. It's not. It's not. It's fine. Can I tell you about a dream I had that I got hauled up in front of an HR?

Because I had a dream I was working in an office and a new person started working there. Everyone was like, oh, they've got a bit of a silly name. I'm James Shakeshaft. So I was like, I need to meet this person. You're like, guys, guys, I'll handle this. Want me to order the new fella? Yeah, it's a bit embarrassing. My surname is pronounced Serial Killer.

I was like, that's all right. It's not bad. I mean, my surname's Shakespeare. No one thinks I'm a... And then I made a gesture and someone saw that gesture and hauled me up in front of HR. That's such a detailed dream. But I really like the fact that he said it was pronounced serial killer.

Just pronounce it a different way, mate. Yeah, but it's spelt Smith. Yeah, exactly. I've just remembered in my dream, you killed someone in a car accident. Me? Yeah, you did. You've just reminded me. Let's hope neither of those were prophecies.

Yeah, definitely. Or it could have been, I might have been framed by my new work, mate. A couple of other story titles for you, James. Stone Age Refugees, just a good band title. Yes. Yeah, they were on the park stage, I think. I see them being kind of folky. Is that the way you go for a folky band?

Oh, just the new thing. They're the new thing. And finally, General Garfield's experience. Lasagna? Yeah, yeah. Probably hating Mondays. Beefing with Nermal, that sort of thing, I imagine. I haven't bothered reading any of those.

beefing with Nermal, that sort of thing, I imagine. I haven't bothered reading any of those. I'm going to tell you a couple of stories from Gallipoli, both of which have a connection to the north of England or Scotland. Now, I don't know a lot about historical battles. I'm just pausing for the listener to gasp. So do you know anything about Gallipoli? Right. Can I just say what comes to mind? This is something I am very weirdly sketchy about.

I think it's in Italy. I think, is it First World War? And I think some australians are quite involved in that one okay all right that's two out of three there james two out of three which what which one was wrong well gallipoli or gallipoli is a peninsula which was then in the ottoman empire and is now part of turkey but we spelt it wrong so it does sound a bit Italian. I think that's my county blindness rearing its head there, but on a national scale. Yeah, I'm sure there's a border. I'm sure Turkey and Italy border each other, so I can see how that happened.

Yeah, and it was the site of a famously disastrous Allied campaign in World War I, electric boogal none. There was no electric boogaling in those days. It was all clockwork. Or gas powered. Yeah, steam boogaloo maybe would be the best you could do. And it was fought predominantly, I think, by Australian and New Zealanders. And we lost.

Fighting the Turkish people who, to be fair to them, live there. Right, okay. The Allied side lost disastrously. Right. That is all the details I know. If you want to know more, you can probably look into it. Listener probably knows more than me about it. That Russell Crowe film probably.

Not, that's not a recommendation. Is it Russell Crowe? I thought it was Mel Gibson. Yes. An Australian farmer who travels to Turkey soon after World War I to find his three sons who never returned. It is Russell Crowe.

Oh, but I was thinking of the film Gallipoli from 1981 starring Mel Gibson. Well, we were both right for once. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, there you go.

Gallipoli. That's all the information you need in order to appreciate the ghost stories that I'm about to tell you. Who ever heard of a Trojan donkey? Oh, no. A budget restraint's ruined a film adaptation. Yeah, you could get maybe two or three Greek soldiers in one of those. Yeah. A surprise, yes. But not a devastating adaptation. Yeah, you could get maybe two or three Greek soldiers in one of those. Yeah. A surprise, yes,

but not a devastating defeat. I haven't really got a Trojan donkey for you, but it's close. It's close. In the 1950s, the American archaeologist Leon V. Weeks Oh, right. was investigating Troy.

Leon very Weeks. Or versus Weeks. We don't know what the V stood for, but probably Victor or Vincent. Because those are the two names that begin with V. More likely, yeah. He was hanging about the ruins of the city of Troy, which is not that far away from the site of Gallipoli.

Oh, yeah. He took a little break to explore the locations where the fierce battles had been fought on the Gallipoli Peninsula. He set up a camp. He had a very strange encounter, night after night. I'm going to read to you from the book. One particular evening, Dr. Weeks was standing at his open tent, smoking his last cigarette before retiring, when he saw a man clambering down the slopes nearby, leading a donkey. Over the donkey was slung a load, which looked vaguely human.

Intrigued by this, Dr. Weeks stubbed out his cigarette and scrambled over the rough terrain to where he had seen the man and the donkey. Yet, to his surprise, Dr. Weeks found nothing. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere in the region. Even his shouts went unanswered. Vowing not to take more than two glasses of wine with his supper in future, Dr. Weeks retired. The next evening, the archaeologist had just unpacked his supper dishes when the fa- Sorry, I can't get over people describing any meal as supper,

because it just sounds incredibly posh to me. The idea that you'd be having supper while camping. It's like, are you camping with a butler? What is this meal, supper? Yes, supper's the poshest meal, I think. That's the poshest of meals. It's even posher than brunch. Oh, yeah, big time. So as he was packing away his brunch dishes, the sound of falling rocks attracted his attention.

On the hillside above him, he saw the man with the donkey once more, but this time he distinguished quite clearly the body of another man slung over the animal's back. For the figures, leather boots eerily reflected the moonlight. Once again, he shouts out to him. He doesn't get an answer. And then evening after evening, the same spectre appears to him. That's very strange, isn't it? Yeah.

Strange encounter. What do you think's going on there? Do you think that might be a ghost, James? I think it has to be a ghost. But what scene is being depicted what could possibly explain a man leading another man slung over a donkey uh grave robbing grave robbing kidnapping maybe it's some sort of evil donkey that's kidnapped two people yes and it's just forcing one of them to do its bidding yeah to get past checkpoints. Yeah, exactly. Could be. I mean, it's not that.

Is it anything to do with the film Shrek? It's nothing. It's sadly, sadly, this is one of the occasions where I have to say, no, it's nothing to do with the film Shrek. Okay, then. Carry on. A very strange experience, but one which Weeks didn't dwell upon until many years later.

Dr. Weeks had almost forgotten his strange encounter when fate jogged his memory. It so happened that Weeks was invited to dine at the house of a British colleague while on a visit to London in 1968. Over the brandy, the conversation turned to philately. You know what lads are like. Is that the Lord of the Dance? You know what lads are like. Is that the Lord of the Dance?

You've got some philatelic bones in that body, haven't you, James? You're like a couple of stamps now and then, don't you? Huh? Like any old bloke, blokey blokes and lads together. They're like the stamps. Stamps. Stamp collecting. Oh, right.

I thought it was because stamps as well would be Michael Flatley, the Riverdance guy. Something else you would do with your feet. Yeah, it's confusing. Well, within his wheelhouse. Well, I'm going to send you an image of one of the stamps that Weeks's English colleague showed him. Now, it's not a particularly expensive stamp. You can get it for a couple of quid, I think, even today.

Get it for five Ds. The five penny. You could get it for a couple of quid, I think, even today. Get it for five days. You could get it for five dimensions in those days, five D. So that's the five penny khaki issue stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the ANZAC forces engagement in the Gallipoli campaign. ANZAC being Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. And James, do you want to describe what you can see on that stamp? Well, I can see two human men. Yep. Correct. And one donkey donkey. And one of the men is holding a lead for the donkey, and the other man

is riding the donkey, and he's got his arm around the other guy. And he looks either dead drunk or dead dead. Yes. I mean, if he were drunk, they probably wouldn't put that on the stamp, would they, James? I don't. Even Australians, we know Australians, we know they love a Foster's now and then. We know they love a Castlemaine 4X. Yes.

But even Australians probably wouldn't celebrate a soldier being drunk. He is a wounded man being led on a donkey. And there's kind of a sort of a glow coming from them. Yes, the sun is sort of setting behind them. And it does have a weirdly spectral air to it, which is in this case purely coincidental. air to it, which is, in this case, purely coincidental. In the words of Raymond Lamont Brown, on the obverse of the stamp was a prominent design of a man leading a donkey on the back of which rode a wounded Anzac soldier. And you don't get to use the word obverse very often, do you? Yeah. What does obverse mean?

It's the opposite of reverse, which is why you don't need to say it. Especially when you're talking about a stamp, being on a step we say on the stamp or on the sticky side no when you say a stamp with a picture of the queen on it or the king on it nobody says well which side was their face on it's the side with a picture on it on the sticky bit why would they put a face on the sticky bit they didn't it's on the obverse so the obverse of a coin is the side with the, also with the face of the queen or king, maybe. I mean, I don't know why I'm more enthusiastic about the queen than the king. I do.

She's dead. She's dead. She is dead. She is dead though, isn't she? The obverse is a face is the face. Yeah. But the reverse of your face would be your hair or in the case of a bald man, more face.

Yes. A featureless face. Just spare face. The very top of the face. Very, very, very top. Yeah, I suppose topographically you could map it flat, couldn't you? You'd unwrap it like a Möbius strip of face. That's pretty gross.

Yep. Let's not do that. That stamp, in fact, depicts a man named John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who hails from none other a place than South Shields in County Durham. That's not in Australia. No, it's not in Australia. He's a County Durham lad, and he's with Duffy the Donkey. Another Duffy?

We had a Duffy last week. Yeah, second Duffy of the pod. The nationality of the donkey is unknown to me. Not recorded by history as far as I know. Which one's the South Shields guy? The South Shields guy is the one leading the donkey. And during the Gallipoli campaign, he rescued dozens of wounded soldiers

and carried them on his donkey down Monash or Shrapnel Valley. Or, for balance, an evil donkey got him to do his bidding and kidnapped a load of people from the battlefield. I mean, he did get shot and die, which is why he's being commemorated on the stamp. So we probably shouldn't make fun of... Do we know that wasn't a donkey? We don't know whether the donkey was behind it.

We don't know whether the donkey survived. So he was a hero of the campaign, of the disastrous campaign. Fair play, actually. Yeah, fair play to him. Jokes aside, that sounds like he did a really good thing. That's quite brave. Even though, I guess, we were kind of invading and probably that didn't go that well.

Not a great idea. I don't know why we keep saying we as if I was involved. He was in control of the donkeys. No, he was one of the strategists behind the quite ill-considered campaign, apparently. He has a real Shrek energy. Winston Churchill. Yeah, I guess, I mean mean they're both really popular

with people who do memes on Facebook but quite kind of grumpy and gruff and yeah got donkeys to do their evil bidding

that's not even the plot of Shrek never mind the plot of Winston Churchill's life so James I ask you could what Leon V. Weeks saw

be an echo of John Simpson Kirkpatrick's heroism? Yes. Yeah, it could be, couldn't it? That's what RLB Raymond Lamont Brown thinks. He thinks what the donkey saw may have been what he describes as a kink in time. What the donkey saw? Yeah, I believe I did say that, but that's not what I meant

to say. I mean, you've also, you've got, if you do want to move from Montgomery Bonbon books into grown-up crime fiction, that's the name of your first book, What the Donkey Saw. Why do you think children wouldn't like What the Donkey Saw?

I just think it sounds a bit more grown-up. Alright, okay. Fine, What Children wouldn't like what the donkey saw. I just think it sounds a bit more grown up. All right. Okay. Fine. What the donkey saw it is. RLB, Raymond Lamont Brown, suggests that the donkey that Leon V Weeks saw might have been the result of a kink in time.

Oh. And he compares it to a case that we have covered on a previous episode. Yeah. The story of Lucy Lightfoot. Now I'm going to do a quick recap of that because he thinks the same forces might be at play. At the time when I told the story of Lucy Lightfoot, I said it was an example of fake law, a story that wasn't true. But I'll leave that for you to judge, James. Was that the Isle of Wight? It is set on the Isle of Wight.

I'll recap it now in case you or a listener don't remember. A young local woman fell in love with the effigy of the Knight Edward Esther in Gatcombe Church on the Isle of Wight. Then one day during a thunderstorm and an eclipse, she vanished in the church along with the chrysoberyl set in lodestone, which decorated the hilt of the knight Edward Esther's misery cord or dagger. Misery cord. Yeah, great name.

Yeah. The saddest cord. And the Reverend James Evans found historic documents suggesting that she had zapped back in time to the 14th century and fell in love with the real Edward Esther. Now, I would say that the Reverend Evans made it up. And so would he, because he admitted that he made it up. Yes, because he did say that. Yes, he said that he made it up. However, not to leap to conclusions, Raymond Lamont Brown has a different hypothesis. He offers a scientific explanation.

Oh, and bear in mind, however long this goes on, I've abridged this. Oh, right. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, matter itself is a kind of kink in the space-time manifold. And where kinks occur, they're in inverted commas every time he says kinks. So that's why I'm saying it in that voice. Where kinks occur, space is warped or distorted, and even time itself becomes curiously mixed up, as it were. Such kinks become very much accentuated when a sudden alteration of

natural forces occurs. That's in italics. That's why I said it like that. The abnormal events, then, of June 13th, 1831 may have set up a powerful chain reaction which swept through gatcombe church we know from the properties of crystal barrel that when grains of it explode their inner energy acts as an extra booster to its discharge power likewise we know it's really stretching we know we know that when the crystals of lodestone disintegrate under pressure they give off magnetism many millions of times greater than discharged under similar circumstances by other substances. Add all this power

of the chrysoberyl lodestone natural forces to the passionate, almost insane desire of a pubescent girl for the object of her desire. All right, Roy. And there is a force of mental chemical power so potent as to bend time and space.

Or at least this is what Einstein's line of thought suggests. Yeah? Yeah. Hmm. Sorry, Ray. I called him Roy. I meant Ray. Space-time magic and just sort of horniness explains it.

He made it up, which he did do because he admitted before this book was published that he made it up. Oh. Still, you don't know know we just don't know so it could have been it could have been that in the donkey case could have been that could easily have been that could easily have been that so that was the story of the not really trojan donkey was love yeah no not really none of the men were inside that donkey no as. As far as we know, no. My second story for you begins. An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman get on a plane in Japan. Oh, right.

Okay. It sounds like they're set up for a joke, doesn't it? But it's not. And actually, the story is quite sad. Oh, okay. But I mentioned to you that Lamont Brown was a Japanophile. I assume he was there researching one of his books. But as he was traveling back from a visit to Japan, he met Charles Richardson, a Birmingham cutlery sales executive, and Father Ian O'Gorman,

a Roman Catholic priest. Now, I don't know for certain that Ian O'Gorman, the Roman Catholic priest, is Irish. So I have been a little presumptuous there. Right. Okay. But come on. I think he is. Here's a question, James. Yes.

The joke is called an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman. But in the order of the joke, it's always Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman. Yeah. Depending on the theme, there are some a make a joke out of scots people's national stereotype of being mean with money and sometimes that's the sort of the the crux of the joke maybe there are some that end with the englishman and nobody has told them to us i think well there are some but they're usually like the Englishman says something rude about everyone else. The Englishman says something really bally funny about those two other fools.

They look jolly silly. I just can't think of anything more glamorous than travelling by aeroplane in the 1970s from Japan to England with a cutlery salesman and a priest and having an intellectual discussion, as RLB did, about the meaning of the soul. Can you imagine it? The sheer glamour. Can you imagine just the decor of a 70s jetliner? Imagine it's Dunker Sigs.

Of course, there would be three or four cigarettes on the go. Per person. Per person, yeah. Each finger gap with a cigar in it. Incredible. The glamour of it. So they had an intellectual conversation to while away the long hours, as Raymond Lamont Brown puts it.

And during the discussion, Father O'Gorman recounted a story told to him by a south of england parish priest father bates now uh batesy as i think of him was uh one of your lot yes but he was stationed in glasgow acting as the dog's body to an elderly senior priest so the year james is 1920 the city 1920. The city is Glasgow and the weather is, go further, raining. It is raining. Yes. How dare you not fulfill Scottish national stereotypes? Changeable. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It's a rainy, rainy night in Glasgow. Bates has been out priesting, doing whatever it is priests do, doing his rounds, and he comes back completely soaked, and he's warming himself by the fire. When? He's satched, James. He's

absolutely satched. And as he tries to warm himself by the fire, he hears at the door, boom, boom, boom. He looks to the old priest to see if the old priest is going to get it. The old guy's pretending he can't hear it. He's just sitting in his chair, reading Hustler or Penthouse or whatever they had in the 1920s. Gentleman's Magazine. Yeah, do you read a good Gentleman's Magazine? Like

Stockings Monthly. I don't know what they had. So Bates, I suppose I'll have to answer it then. Me, the junior priest, can get somebody who goes to answer the door. Darkness there and nothing more. Yeah, just like in Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, there's nobody there. So he closes the door, goes back to the fire,

and sits down hoping to finally have a chance to dry off. Again, boom, boom, boom. RLB continues. Just as Father Bates was dozing off in the fire's welcoming heat, the knock broke the silence once more and the door visibly shook on its hinges. Father Bates threw the door open, and in the flickering light from the gas lamp across the street saw a rough-looking man with a handkerchief tied around his neck, standing, beckoning him to follow. Instinctively, Father Bates knew that he was being summoned to perform the last rites, and to the man to wait he put on his overcoat

and gathered the things he would need so he's about to perform the last rites also known as what i like to call as i'm sure you're aware extreme unction the most radical and bodacious version of unction uh i kind of i was slightly thinking it might have been a donkey kicking the door. It's not a donkey. There's no donkeys in this one. That would have been an incredible callback if there were a donkey in this story. Kicking the door. And the first time he just didn't look down.

Once out in the street, the man signed for Father Bates to follow him and started off at a pace which the tired priest found difficult to keep up. At length, they reached the docks where the vile tenement houses formed a human warren of dank alleyways and mouldering apartments. For a moment Father Bates lost sight of his guide, but at a stone staircase at the far end of the block he again saw the man waiting for him. So I don't know if this is something that people are aware of, but we don't really have flats in Britain, mostly. Most British cities didn't really build apartments and flats. No, not before the 20s and 30s. But Edinburgh and Glasgow, by contrast with England in particular, have these big sandstone

tenement buildings, which are now very beautiful and I'm sure extremely expensive. And I guess at some point in the past, fairly miserable in the 1920s. And to be fair, having stayed in them at the fringe. Oh, they're ever so moist, yes. It just soaks in the water. You're getting like Victorian damp coming through the walls. It's, you know, the rain lands on the building and just filters down to you in the basement.

Do you think that took a while though? It took a while for the bricks to fill up like a sponge. Probably. I've heard that when the tube was new, it was cool down there because the- It's groovy. Yeah, it was extreme, radical, bodacious, if you will. Apparently, yeah, the soil used to absorb all the heat, so you could chill out down there.

But now it's, I'm sure I've said this on the podcast before, now it's baked. Quite literally, the clay bits have, the clay is baked into hard clay. And now that absorbs the heat in the way an oven does. And so it's just getting hotter. Yeah. Tube chat. And Edinburgh buildings and Glasgow buildings are like that, but for wet. They're like a wet oven.

So up the echoing staircase they go. And again, if you've stayed in one of these buildings with an acapella singing group, as I have, you know how echoey these stairwells are. So that's the stairs, right? They climb up the stairs and they reach a one room flat known locally as a single end. I guess we would call it a bedsit.

We'd call it a fully furnished living accommodation space. Yeah, I mean, obviously we live in London. Sorry, you don't. We both lived in London, so we would call it an incredibly spacious living opportunity. And the priest's guide reveals to him a man lying dying in a bed. The guide goes over to the bed, bends over the dying man and seems to whisper something into his ear.

And then, what do you think happens then? It's definitely no donkeys. It's not going to be a surprise donkey. I'm not double bluffing you on the donkey thing. He bends over the dying man, whispers something in his ear and then he... Vanishes. Vanishes.

Yes. The one with the handkerchief or the man in the bed? The man with the neckerchief. The man with the neckerchief vanishes, leaving just the man in the bed alone. So remember, this is like fourth hand. So this happened to Father Bates. Father Bates told Father Ian O'Gorman.

Oh, right. Ian O'Gorman told Raymond Lamont Brown, he told me and I'm telling you. So this is solid gold fact. The man vanished in front of his eyes. The priest goes over to the dying man, somewhat startled, and speaks to him. This is quite spooky.

It's very serious. However, I am going to do it in, I'm going to do it in a Glaswegian accent, which is not meant to be taking the mick. I hope that it doesn't sound bad. Oh, father, gasped the man lying in the bed. You've come at last. Archie Moore told me he would fetch a priest and he's kept his word. But where has Archie Moore gone? Asked the still puffing priest. He died at Gallipoli 10 years ago. But, father, listen to me.

I'm imagining he's probably pulling on his dog collar here. You'll understand when you hear my story. Archie Moore and I were school pals. We were both orphaned young and roamed and thieved together all over Glasgow in the old days to keep alive when we ran away from the orphanage. Somehow, there was a blood pact between us sealed by the dangers and the suffering we had encountered together. We even went out to

Australia together and joined the 29th division at the same time and were both sent to Gallipoli. In the last week of April 1915, the 29th landed at Hell's. Or is it Hellers? I don't know how it's pronounced. Sorry, Gallipoli. So I mean Gallipoli. Landed at Hellers. On landing, we all scrambled through the water and faced a murderous hail of bullets. Archie fell on the beach, mortally injured in the chest. I saw him fall and rushed over to where he was lying. He had not long as the blood was oozing out of him with every breath he took. Archie's hand gripped mine. Do one last thing for me, mate. Fetch the priest.

I stumbled away and found a Roman Catholic paddary for Archie, who had been a lifelong papist, more pious than myself. The priest gave my pal the last rites, and Archie's last words to me were, Thanks, Jimmy, thanks. When it comes to your time today, I'll do the same for you. So father, that's why Archie Moore came for you tonight. And that, James, is the story of Bombardier Moor's Promise.

It is spooky. Did the accent detract from the spookiness? It did, because I'm also thinking of donkey, so it's very Shrek. It did, because I'm also thinking of donkeys, so it's very Shrek. I forgot that. Were you just holding out for a donkey appearing in that story all the way through? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Would you like to score these tales of ghostly Gallipoli, James?

Absolutely. Okay. Well, my first category for you is, I'm going to say names because I don't know, you didn't seem very impressed by Father Ian O'Gorman. I did. Because I thought it was Ian Ogle's man. I was like, oh, Gorman. I did like that. I've just realised that Roy Lamont Brown that. I've just realised that Roy Lamont Brown sounds, was kept reminding me of Roy Chubby Brown. It's Ray rather than Roy. Oh, Ray Brown. Raymond Lamont Brown. Oh, well, that's fine then.

I don't know whether he was chubby or not. Sorry, I think he's still alive. I don't know whether he's chubby or not. I like the name Ray Lamont Brown. That's a good name. And his titles were stories. General Garfield's Experience, Stone Age Refugees, A Phosphorescent GI. General Garfield Experience. Private Kirkpatrick and His Ghostly Donkey.

I didn't actually tell you that title, but as you can imagine, I read it in the contents and went straight to it. Absolutely. Yeah, all great. All great. Not many like double entendre hilarities, but just a lot of solidity. No, but that's because you thought the priest was called Father Ogle's Man.

Yes. Yes. So that set a bar that no real name could ever reach. That's true. So three. Three. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. But they're good. Good short story names in that. Second category. I'm hoping to pull back a lot of points here. Supernatural.

Oh, very. Ever so. Ghosts vanishing before your very eyes? That's, I mean, that's how you tell they're ghosts and not just a human driving a car or playing chess. That's one of the main ways that you can tell that something is a ghost. Because you can't tell they could be playing chess for all you know, or using a telephone.

Next time you see someone using a telephone, ask yourself, are they a ghost? Are they alive? So you see someone cheating on a pub quiz, they're ghost. The other one, the work,

the reveal of the stamp and the, the ghosts that that guy saw, donkey ghost, helpful man ghost, and wounded man, or maybe man ghost, because it could have been a different- Could have been a different man each time, yeah. Person each night, yeah. Ah, yeah, it's good. It's good.

I've got to say, if we were playing the pub game with this stamp, I would be coining it in. We've got the donkey. We've got two men. Yeah. That's good. It's good. I've got to say, if we were playing the pub game with this stamp, I would be coining it in. We've got the donkey. We've got two men. Yeah. That's eight. That's at least eight. That is, yes.

Yeah. I think it is a five. It is the amount of Ds that that stamp was worth. Five. Yeah. The five for the five penny khaki. Thank you. My next category then, James, is ghost stories are like onions oh yeah i'm trying to do

shrek's voice there because in shrek he says ghosts he says ogres are like onions right they have layers and i'm saying ghost stories are like onions because the ghost stories have layers but also basically i want you to just give me the number of points that there are shrek films but there's a new one coming out. Yep. Shrek 5. Shrek 5. Shrek 5, yeah. It's been announced.

And the Puss in Boots spinoffs. Well, if we're including the spinoffs. Did he not say the ghosts are like, does he say, because these ghost stories are like onions because they're multiple layers. They are. Because there's layers i'm telling the story that that he was told directly to raymond lamont brown i'm now telling it to you bait baits told father ogles man and the second one was very moving in fact like an onion it made me cry oh did it a little bit yeah but so i put a spoon in my mouth because that's what you're

supposed to do it says on the internet to avoid crying while cutting onions or just in all emotional situations it's going to be hard in the middle of a really emotional argument i guess it's something to do with the onion rather than just to you know just to keep that stiff upper lip so in that case yeah it's got to be fine the amount of layers that this story went through to get to me, I think, is probably five. Okay, five points, one per Shrek film, including the announced but not yet made Shrek 5. And finally, a somewhat related category, a potpourri of donkeys. Smells like donkey. Or potpourri of donkeys.

Don't really know how to pronounce it. Potpourri, we called it when I was a kid. Potpourri. But we pronounced the T. But as an aspirational middle-class person, I've dropped in and tried to say it all French-like. Potpourri. Potpourri.

Dublotard. Potpourri of donkey. It's raining quite heavily here. I don't know if you can hear that. I don't know if that's coming out on the recording, but it's raining like a haunted Glaswegian tenement. I've realised now that I've said that. A potpourri of donkeys.

I mainly wanted to say a potpourri of donkeys. There was actually only one donkey. Well, we don't know. It could have been multiple donkeys. He could have been getting a fresh donkey, a fresh ghost donkey every night, for all we know. Yeah, you're right. The donkey Duffy wasn't, as far as we know, shot.

So why would the donkey be coming back as a donkey? He would have to get a loner. Yes. And if we've learned anything from this episode, is that you can't trust a donkey. So for fear of donkey reprisals, I'm going to give you a high score for donkey potpourri. I'm going to give you a four.

A four. I mean, I think that's generous. Don't want to. Honestly, I think that's too much. i don't want to assume anything about them because that will make a donkey come for me in the night that's what they say isn't it yeah never assume or a donkey will come for you in the night let's donkey vengeance strike oh that's the last thing you hear oh there you go James I hope your is your blood chilled

absolutely chilled and your bones yeah very much so good what could the listeners do if they want to hear more of that Alistair I would suggest they hop on over to patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod

and support the podcast and in exchange receive access to the Lawfolk Discord and also get bonus episodes. But thank you very much to those people that already do support us and thank you to you, the listener, for giving us a five-star review. Go on. Thank you very the listener, for giving us a five-star review. Go on. Thank you very much to Joe for editing this episode. And thank you. I'd run out of people to thank.

Thanks, donkeys. It does sound like the psycho music. It does sound like the psycho music. It does sound like the psycho music, doesn't it? A donkey was forced Hitchcock to make that film. He was forced at donkey point.