This Paranormal Life - #093 Christmas Special! - Cold Christmas Church

Episode Date: December 25, 2018

Merry Christmas from your favourite paranormal investigators! On this weeks special Christmas episode we investigate the haunted "Cold Christmas Church" and the legendary knight SHONKS!Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does Santa fit all those toys into his big old sack? Why are Santa's cheeks so jolly? All of these questions you can find the answer to on this paranormal life. Come in! Come in, weary traveler. Oh, hey. Hey, Santa. How did you get into our studio? We don't have a chimney. This is nuts. not in the modern day Santa sometimes has to break the windows Really? That's expect. Did you pay for that? Did you is that your gift to us the expense of that window? I think you'll find I more than make up with it with your present this year like a Furby. Mm-hmm

Yeah, I mean I get it's mint condition like not out of the box okay sleep again i don't think this is gonna cover the cost of the window boy i'm not a boy i'm a man i'm a man santa welcome everyone to the christmas special of this paranormal life oh i hope you guys are having the snuggliest little delicious christmas in the world i hope you are by a roaring fire right now drinking hot cocoa drinking hot cocoa with a little bit of eggnog and irish it up a little bit it up a little bit that's right some cocaine in there whoa that's not what that means oh really that's some naughty shit and we don't we don't talk about that in this podcast yeah but i hope you guys are having a fantastic christmas and you know what i bet you were

thinking oh if only i had the sweetest gift of all a very short podcast to listen to over my christmas break i bet you didn't think you'd be hearing from us today well here we are whether you like it or not jamming our sounds and and nerdy little voices down your chimney and we are just talking about the paranormal we are spreading suit all over your house there was a lit fire when we came down it's not lit anymore we stomped it out on the way in that's right we're making ourselves at home we're opening your presence i think someone took a shit by the tree it could been us it could not be us rudolph the reindeer went hungry last night because uh-oh i stumbled in at 2 a.m and had all the damn carrots oh yeah and the milk and the cookies thanks for that asshole santa didn't get a goddamn nibble

i flushed them down the toilet not Not letting that bitch get any credit. And, you know, you're probably thinking right now, what fun Christmas episode do these guys have lined up? Yeah. Just a regular paranormal tale, to be honest with you.

Exactly. Because the truth is, y'all been nasty little bastards this year and you're all on the naughty list. It turns out Santa's an MI.i.b agent he does not like people poking around in the paranormal uh so look our fellow naughty listers you stopped me earlier on because you said that's some naughty list shit that we don't mess around with yeah exactly but that was a test and you failed it okay we're obviously all naughty listers anyone

that spends their life investigating the paranormal is on the naughty list yes one of the just like sad repercussions is you just forgo getting presents yeah why do you think the commune is powered by coal kit it's all we get every christmas our main import is coal our main export are diamonds it's the dirtiest work of all it is really really filthy work um but let's just dive into our christmas story please our story takes us to thundridge in britain to a place called cold christmas lane what that's its real name i believe so jesus now i know that sounds insane and you're probably wondering, hey, Rory, why is it called Cold Christmas Lane?

Everyone's wondering that. Well, you see, Kit, the legend of Cold Christmas Lane is linked to a particular church nearby with a harrowing past. You see, this old church, originally known as Little St. Mary's, way less intimidating, digs all the way back to 1086 wow that is so old that's so old i feel like our american listeners do not appreciate just how old that is i actually attended a uh choral like recital the other day so i was in a church and i was just like walking around admiring the architecture and i saw a board that like listed all of the i guess stewards of the church the guys who like looked after it yeah kind of were head of that local like parish or whatever nice listers and oh absolutely

the nicest and it had you know a bit like former presidents or something it had the date or like the year and then their name and you know from 2018 back to 2012 back to you know their mid-2000s yeah and then it went through every person who did it back to the 1200s that's insane this is like in central london was it getting like more magical as well so it started off with like keith dennis richard and then you go down to the bottom and it's like sir archibald thunder dick or something like he's like a pretty sure 1358 red bilbo baggins i'm like is that the bilbo i don't know. Adam, Chris, straight at the bottom. Reginald Christopherson's Steve-lings. I'm like, how can you roll your R's in a written text?

It was actually the complete opposite. I was actually remarking at how boring English names are because you go back 800 years and it's still like Rob Smith. Yeah. You know? I guess all those biblical names as well just like mark yeah matthew 100 that's a shame uh well while the construction of this church at the time seemed normal later religious generations believed it was built with the wrong alignment meaning north to south instead of east to west this is why you don't cut corners on building contractors you know

but you wouldn't think that is a big deal if it's just built on a slightly wrong alignment yeah like where it's facing i mean normally what do people care about they just care about you know does it you know does their bedroom window face the rising sun something like that but i didn't know that it mattered to churches well apparently uh to these uh early religious generations yeah building a church on the wrong alignment meant it was allegedly a sign you were worshiping the devil jesus man it goes so wrong this is the slightest the first thing this is like the religious equivalent of whenever you were in primary school yeah and you would open your crisp packet upside down yeah that either meant that you were in love it was weird because it

either meant that you had a girlfriend or you were gay like and i was like well well which one is it don't know mate don't know 50 50 roll the dice yeah it's so true i wonder how many more there are it's like if i build a church and it's like pristine yeah you know stained glass windows architecture a freaking holy waterfall at the back jesus where you can like flick pennies and make prayers yeah if i invite a priest is he gonna be like yeah this looks so is that a bronze doorknob yeah i'm like yeah yeah it is and it's like you know that satan's dick is made of bronze how dare you bring this into a holy temple you shake his peen to get into

this sacred place so i don't know what the rules are but apparently this is one of them it's kind of like a little difference you know like waving to someone is a good thing like hi okay all of a sudden you know you put a knife in that hand and you're stabbing it's not friendly anymore one little change makes all the difference i feel like there's there's probably a fantastic example of what you're talking about out there yeah let's roll with that one that's fine yeah i hear what you're saying though there are subtleties um that that can sometimes make massive differences yeah we're just not accustomed to this one anymore absolutely now as a result of this the main church building

was demolished in the mid-1800s because everyone knows nothing fixes a problem like demolishing a church yeah like that'll get rid of the bad juju smash Smash the church. They, like, knocked down one wall and, like, literal hundreds of skeletons fall out of a closet. It's like, oh, boy. And now because of this, only the 15th century bell tower remains in place. Oh, interesting. The rest was just bashed.

I guess they needed the bell. Yeah. Maybe it doesn't matter which way a bell... A bell is curved, so it faces all different directions at once. Yeah. Maybe it doesn't matter. Sound doesn't face anywhere. Think about that.

Kind of. Think about that. So already, in our story, we've got a creepy church. Yeah. Built intentionally or unintentionally for the devil. Either way, it's pretty suspicious so far. Yeah, well, that's a good question maybe we'll come back to that later could it have been deliberately built the wrong way we don't know

we don't know but this story's only gonna get creepier because the story goes that centuries ago in the surrounding village there was a winter so cold that almost all the children died oh my god that is so cold froze to death jesus man uh just the kids from what i can see no adults that's weird yeah see i mean they do say that that uh children and the elderly are the most vulnerable like if there's some sickness going on or like the weather adults are usually safest right but that's wild all the kids died i guess maybe kid i mean kids it starts snowing outside they're out there uh making snow angels having snowball fights uh uh just eating snow yeah like they're they're gonna get as cold as possible right the parents have a little bit more sense they're like i'm gonna stay inside and

keep cozy yeah yeah they don't understand though that billy and timmy are out there chowing down on liquid nitrogen it is just freezing their insides han solo style yeah they're looking out the kitchen window and they're just pressed up against the glass you know this is what the legend says yeah but i mean how cold does that have to like like, there are colder places than England, right? Like Canada. It's true. It's pretty cold. But I guess in Canada, maybe, you know, they were probably wearing like little reindeer onesies back then.

They kind of knew, whereas in England, you know, those kids were probably running around wearing like sliders, snapbacks, t-shirts. You know, they weren't prepared for the cold, maybe. Yeah. And I think, you know, from the way this story is told, this is some sort of Game of Thrones-esque winter. Right. Like one in a million years. Yeah. It just dropped to like minus 30.

It's so cold. There's White Walkers for some reason. Yeah. Weren't possible before this, but now it's that cold. Well, for some reason, after all these children froze to death, the town decided it would be a good idea to bury these frosty children in the graveyard of the church that is now known as the Cold Christmas Church. Wow.

So now you got a bunch of freaking little kids buried in a graveyard of a church made for Satan. This is a really bad combination. It's a terrible idea. Yeah, and all on Jesus's birthday. I know. Well, flash forward to today. We've got this old decrepit church built sideways for the devil with a bunch of graves of children.

There's obviously going to be a lot of reported paranormal activity going on in this place clearly over the years visitors have described strange growling noises black figures floating around the graveyard at night and in 1978 a woman claimed that an entire ghost army exited the tower and marched straight through her so not so not only so not only are the kids frozen to death yeah but in the afterlife they have been training in military format we haven't really talked a lot on this in this podcast about the skeleton wars the impending skeleton wars uh but i think that changes now people what we're saying this podcast is going to be very skeleton war focused moving forward uh in the afterlife they have formed some sort of militia jesus are we talking like a lord of

the rings return of the king aragorn going into the mountain to recruit the army of the dead right is this is this covers they're all children he's like oh shit this is gonna look really bad when i come back with a bunch of ghost kids like is there one adult here it's like well keith died when he was nine but he was about to be 10 like well you're still really young keith my voice broke before i died regarding her testimony she never claimed that they were children. Yeah, okay. Just an entire ghost army. But I'll tell you what, a ghost army is a, I feel, under-reported type of ghost sighting.

Because think of all the people who've died in the past who could be ghosts, right? And often we say that people maybe who are die tragically before their time uh maybe with unfinished business um maybe with negative energy maybe they're the most likely people to become ghosts in the afterlife yeah well what people are better candidates for ghost them than uh people who die in battle and england's old as hell there's been a lot of battles yeah i mean even all over hell. There's been a lot of battles. Yeah. I mean, even all over the world.

And that's a lot of people getting cut down at once. You know, you might go into battle and lose 10,000 people all at once. It's something we haven't covered yet. I'm sure there's like battlefields in France and Belgium from the First World War that are probably teeming with ghosts. Yeah, and I wonder if people there say

they saw a phantom soldier or they literally like, I saw the entire army still out there fighting the ghost horse. Yeah, I saw a ghost tank, ghost horse. Well, fair play to this woman that she didn't just go like, I saw something a little suspicious. Right. She was like, an entire ghost mariachi band flew through my body

and disappeared into the night sky. Like, she's going full on with the claims. Yeah, she's not holding back. So I appreciate that conviction. Now, while the site is very popular among tourists, photographers, and even the locals, it's also gained the attention of a few unwanted visitors. Oh. Such as Satanists.

What? Witches. Rude. and worshippers of the occult don't they have any respect i guess you know there's not that many remaining open naughty listers anymore what do you mean like all these naughty listers all these satanist witches worshippers of the occult okay you know if they want to go somewhere to hang out you know they can't just be like well this starbucks only has two stars that's pretty bad right you know they have to be like i would need to go to the church built for the devil okay okay i got you so you know these days we live in a pretty um you know bubble wrapped time to live in everywhere's pretty safe everywhere's pretty chill yeah uh it's not like the days of old when you know, bubble-wrapped time to live in. Everywhere's pretty safe. Everywhere's pretty chill.

Yeah. It's not like the days of old when, you know, dark shadowy figures lurk behind every corner and there were probably satanic churches on every street. Exactly. I hear what you're saying.

So there being a church which is either deliberately or accidentally dedicated to Satan, that's a pretty hot topic. Spicy meatball. Exactly. That's going to be your primary spot for, I don't know, whatever these guys do. Now, obviously, because this church is so old,

there are a ton of creepy and weird and legendary myths that surround it and the surrounding area. Okay. And I handpicked the coolest one that also involves the devil. Well, I really can't ask for any more than that. I handpicked the coolest one that also involves the devil. Well, I really can't ask for any more than that. I'm not trying to sway this investigation in one way or another, but, you know, church built for the devil,

story involving the devil. I'm gonna connect those bad boys together. Yeah, that's just detective work. That's good police work. This legend is the legend of 11th century knight, Piers Shonks. That's a name? I thought it was a type of the first time I read it knight pierce shonks that's a name i thought it was a type of the first time is that hunk with a s on both ends it is you know when he's like rescuing princesses from like a burning tower and they're like

oh brave sir knight please tell me the name of the the beautiful brave sir that has rescued me from my tower with pleasure peers shanks shanks's tomb is lodged in a wall of saint mary's church really and the inscription above it tells how shonks i can't there's such a mad name tells how shonks died according to the lore there was a dragon oh that hailed from a nearby village of barkway and terrorized the local people breathing fire stomping on things burninating the countryside and the thatched roof cottages now obviously shonks being being the legendary knight that he was he was nominated to handle the problem yeah you know you got a whole crowd going shonks shonks shonks shonks is he like we believe in you shonks as he rides out

and he's like oh i will fight the beast. So he set out with his sword and his shield and a whole pack of hunting dogs. Hell yeah. I mean, I don't know how much dogs are gonna be good for dragons, but I guess they might distract the beast for half a sec. Nibble the ankles while you slash at the jugular. Long story short, Shonks went to town on this bad boy.

He slayed that bish, like I think maybe dived out of the clouds, sword in his neck, and then drag it all the way down. Yeah, and we're talking like a 18-foot Final Fantasy-level sword. Oh, yeah. Just holding on, as you say,

just while tearing through that dragon's neck like a curtain. And this dragon is like spewing flames. The dogs are barking, I guess. Yeah, everyone's going wild. And finally, it says serpent here, which is kind of leads me to believe... A different thing than what we were led to.

The first couple of times it says dragon, dragon, huge beast, and serpent. Once I found it to kill it it's a serpent yeah and then it's gonna be at the end it's like so we took the snake skin back to well hang on hang on now you're saying it's a snake you said sir you said dragon he took the newt skin and yeah by the way if people are listening not from from England, there's not very big serpents in England. No. We're talking maybe a garden snake, maybe a little lizard. That's it.

You're not getting my, I mean. There's no Komodo dragons. Absolutely not. However, in the process of killing this enormous dragon, the devil himself appeared. What? And vowed as revenge for the death of his creature that one day he would come for shonks his soul he and he and the devil said shonks i will get your soul whether you're buried inside of a church or outside of a church wow what a terrifying

accent he had yeah well i'm thinking like southern devil who you know spooky i guess so that's kind of like that's not good because those are the only two places that exist yeah really well on shanks's deathbed he drew it this is mad he drew his bow and shot pronouncing that he would be buried wherever the arrow landed. The arrow landed directly in a priest's head. Who was inside a church, by the way. At the local church, yeah. So his soul was just claimed immediately, like ripped from his body.

I like the idea of him being like, I'm just going to fire this randomly into the air and wherever it lands, bury me. And he deliberately aims as hard as he can into the church gates. It's like, we see what you're doing. You can just ask to be buried there. It's fine. Apparently, the arrow went through the south window of St. Mary's Church and struck the north wall, burying itself neither inside or outside of the church, but in an alcove.

Oh, they screwed over the devil. He didn't think of that. He's going to be so mad when he finds that out. You know the devil's going to show up and he's like, you know you're still inside of a church. You shot the arrow in the church window. It's still inside. Oh, devil, you silly, silly bastard.

I got buried in a gazebo. Good luck with that one. You said you could get my soul inside a church or outside of a church. I fired that arrow into a Starbucks and there I will remain. Imagine like going to get an ice latte and you're like why is there like a medieval knight's coffin just in the middle of it's like oh that's shonks i'm gonna leave yeah i don't want my coffee anymore this place is weird so like outside and the devil's just pushed up against the window like waiting to get in

you look up at the sign behind you it was called shonks bucks all along like oh my bad it makes a lot of sense so there his soul forever remains escaping satan's clutches the coffin is apparently elaborately carved in from a black marble slab and depicts a dragon breathing fire at shonks but the flames are deflected by a cross that's so badass while he's being raised to heaven by an angel dude that's pretty baller that's what i want to go out well like deflecting a dragon's flames with a cross while like giving him the middle finger to the devil yeah as an angel like lifts your fat ass to heaven i think i'd like to live like a full life and then at age 90 they gear me up with a sword

and shield yeah that's a good way to do it that's a good way to go to be fair you enter a retirement home and they start training you how to use a battle act immediately yeah you're gonna need this where you're going so friday night is just a senior citizen movie night we'll have that um then uh on the middle of the week we have bingo and then uh friday night you better buckle up your oap because we're gonna fight a dragon we're wheeling a kaiju into the grounds of this uh home now i am not claiming that the legend of shanks is real yeah uh i'm just throwing that as a bit of a backdrop to add some color into the history of this cold christmas church yeah

there's a lot going on here i will state that the deaths of those children has never been claimed never been proven yeah i mean there, I think there are children's names probably in the graveyard, but like children die all the time. Like anyone else, everyone dies all the time. Yeah. So what are your thoughts? This is nuts.

What a cool legend. I mean, the legend of Cold Christmas Lane was quite interesting already, but then to back it up with this also local legend of Shonks. Shonks. Is what you were going to also local legend of... Shonks. Shonks. Is what you were going to say. The legend of Shonks, which is ironically the working title of Shigeru Miyamoto's Legend of Zelda.

Honestly, dude, I'm not even sure if the church is real, but Shonks? That story rang true to my heart. I guess whilst the legend of Shonks is a very badass tale and a very cool tale um it sounds like a video game you get for like a video game console you find it a car boot sale like for the splintendo yeah like this is a splintendo 98 like your your uncle when christmas tells you he's gonna buy you a nintendo you can't contain your excitement then on the big day he unveils the splintando the legend of shonks brand new game you like you're like well i guess i'll give it a whirl you turn the game on plug in your controller you're like this controller doesn't seem to be doing anything it's like this is a just a dvd to be honest with you doesn't control shit shrongs gets killed by the dragon either way almost immediately

you just have to tap a to get the angel to lift into heaven quicker yeah it's like a really christian game it's like you you can't control your fate you just have to hope you get into heaven yeah shongs dies in the prologue and then the main game is really just trying to get him to heaven because he also did a lot of really bad shit on earth like it's kind of the backstory the problem with the legend of shanks of course is that we as of yet don't have any historical evidence for the existence of dragons or the devil or um really anything to do with that tale that's true um but if he is buried there in marble uh in the church i guess he was real maybe there was something to that tale once upon a time not really enough to go on it does reflect a definitely paranormal vibe onto the original story of cold christmas lane yeah the

only problem is as you say we don't necessarily have proof of a mass grave of children that might cause this place to be paranormally haunted um so could we just be dealing with a couple kids who died of the measles one christmas and then this got blown out of proportion yeah i think this is a story where almost every aspect of it has been blown out of proportion. The church was just built a weird way. I don't think for any in particular reason. There's obviously not a mass grave for children or I wouldn't be doing this story. Right.

If that was actually true. Shonks isn't real. I think he's a real person. I don't think he fought a dragon okay it's easy to let you know how invested i am in this story by letting you know that halfway through my research i almost abandoned it to see if i could just do an episode on whether santa was real and when i realized there wasn't enough evidence i went back to shonks to finish to round this one off it's kind of funny to think

that back when we were kids and we were told that santa was real um you know we accepted it first of all and then you know as we grew older if we ever wanted to look into that fact we didn't really have too many tools at our disposal yeah kind of just an encyclopedia if we really wanted to look. Kids these days can kind of just YouTube Santa footage to presumably have their curiosity satisfied. Oh, absolutely. I mean, just this week, like you say, I saw footage of New York City, about 12 Santas beating the shit out of each other

in the middle of traffic. Yeah, the magic kind of is is gone i think from that uh so what do you think of this one uh look let's get right to the point because it's christmas day and frankly my family are wondering why i left christmas dinner to go into a room with you for 30 minutes my family are wondering if i'm still alive it's a no it's a no from me this week awesome merry christmas folks double no that's your christmas present because you've been naughty you little naughty bastards naughty listeners we're right there with you on the naughty list yeah all right that just about wraps it up for the this

paranormal life christmas special ho ho ho thank you so much for listening to the special uh we're not going to do any uh podcast thank you shout outs this week because as i said i think literally my family are wondering why i have no presents under the tree granted that's unrelated to us doing this podcast i just didn't buy anyone a gift this year yeah of course but still need to go in there and explain that to them so thank you so much for listening to the podcast special. I hope you have a fantastic Christmas, a fantastic paranormal new year. And we will see you folks in 2019. Oh my God.

The year of the ghoul. Year of the shonks. Year of the shonks, baby. All right. Remember, folks, in 2018 all the way to 2019 to live fast, investigate and die young, baby. Merry Christmas, motherfuckers.