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I'm Tristan Redman, a journalist and

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host of the new podcast Ghost Story. Ghosts

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aren't real, at least that's what I've always believed.

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Sure, odd things happened in my childhood

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bedroom in London. Objects that moved

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around inexplicably, lights

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that switched themselves on and off.

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But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That

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is, until a couple of years ago, when

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I discovered that every subsequent occupant

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of the top floor of that house is convinced

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they've experienced something inexplicable too.

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From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios

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comes Ghost Story,

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a podcast about family secrets,

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overwhelming coincidence, and the

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things that come back to haunt us.

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Here's a clip from the show. Follow

0:42

Ghost Story on the Wondery app or wherever

0:44

you get your podcasts.

0:53

I want to tell you a story. Well,

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it's really three stories all wrapped around each

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other. It's a ghost story,

1:00

it's a murder mystery, and it's a family

1:03

drama. By which I mean, it's

1:05

about my wife's family, her family's

1:07

history. And there's a chance

1:09

they'll disown me for doing this.

1:13

If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer,

1:16

then I will be sorry that we

1:19

ever said we would contribute to it.

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But before we get into any of

1:23

that, let's start at the beginning, with the thing

1:25

that set all of this in motion.

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When

1:31

I was 16 back in the 90s, my family

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moved to an old Victorian house in London

1:36

on

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a street called Queen's Road. I slept

1:41

in a bedroom tucked into the creaky top of a building.

1:45

on a street called Queen's Road.

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I'd

1:55

wake up and objects would have moved

1:58

across the room, specifically.

1:59

this one vase. When

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I go to bed, it'll be on the mantelpiece,

2:05

and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk.

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I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find

2:10

it somewhere else. Lights

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would flash on and off on their own, and

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I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling whenever

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I was alone in the house. It

2:20

freaked me out at the time, but the

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truth is, I didn't really think much of it.

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I was a teenager. I had other things on my

2:27

mind. You know and then, I'd

2:30

ask my sister if she was messing with me, but

2:33

she always swore she wasn't. I

2:35

grew up, left home, and became

2:37

a journalist for Aldozira. I

2:40

cover things like French labour strikes and

2:42

the war in Ukraine. I don't believe

2:44

in ghosts. So when my family

2:46

moved out of the house on Queen's Road, I

2:48

completely forgot about the weird stuff that

2:51

happened in there. Well

2:53

that is, a few years ago, a man

2:56

reached out, an old neighbour of

2:58

ours, with a story about

3:01

that very room. I

3:04

mean, it's quite a story. His

3:06

name is Charles Penelis, and

3:08

he knows everything about this neighbourhood.

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You could say he's a bit of a gossip, but you

3:13

probably shouldn't. Flanders, it gives

3:15

completely the wrong impression. Anyway,

3:18

this is what he told me. Charles

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was walking around my old neighbourhood one day, going

3:23

door to door, collecting donations

3:25

for the local museum. I

3:27

was there rattling a tin. And

3:29

definitely not gossiping. Well,

3:31

I mean, it was just Sensei who's still there

3:34

and Sensei's moved out and they've had a divorce

3:36

and all that sort of business. Eventually

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he gets to my old house and knocks

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on the door. A woman answers.

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She's the mother of the house. After

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chatting for a bit, she invites him inside

3:48

and she tells him a story unlike

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anything he's ever heard before. Here's

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what she tells him. One day, the

3:58

woman is at home at my house. old house. She

4:01

looks out of the window and she sees a

4:03

man standing on the driveway. So

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the mother of the house opens the door.

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It's someone who used to live in the house, an

4:11

American man who'd live there with his wife

4:13

and two children. The American

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says to her, I'm so sorry

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to bother you, but I just have

4:20

to know. Do you

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still have that ghost in the top bedroom,

4:25

straight like that?

4:28

What the American man proceeds

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to tell her, the things

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his family experienced on the top floor,

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it makes her go completely white, because

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this isn't the first time she's heard of something

4:41

going on up there. She just

4:43

never believed it before.

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This struck a chord since the daughter

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had always insisted that there was a ghost

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in her bedroom, which would manifest

4:56

itself on occasions and sit on her bed.

4:59

The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10,

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began complaining about a ghost visiting

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her room at night, specifically

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the ghost of a faceless

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woman. She

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said to me, Oh yes, my daughter

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told me about some goings

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on some sort of faceless woman

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who comes and sits on my bed. And

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she said, I always

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batted them away on the basis

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that we don't believe in that sort

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of thing. So I

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rang your father and he

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said, that was Tristan's room. So

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I imagine he phoned you and the cat

5:39

was out of the bag. I

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promise you, and I hope you believe me, that

5:48

I don't normally find myself having conversations

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like this, or even entertaining

5:52

these sorts of ideas, but

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it's kind of weird, right? You

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now have three completely unconnected

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families who have had some

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sort of strange

6:08

inexorable experience on the top

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floor of that house. I think it's wonderful.

6:15

It was definitely intriguing, but

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it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a

6:20

story I'd tell my friends in the pub. Except

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I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless

6:26

woman. And that's because

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there's another coincidence, something

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I hadn't thought about in years. So

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I guess Trist and I had just started going out and

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they invited my parents around to his

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house to come and say hi. I

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first learned about it when my wife Kate and

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I had just started dating about 20 years

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ago. My family still

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lived in the house on Queen's Road, the

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one with the supposed ghost, and

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Kate was staying with us. And my granddad

6:56

was in London, so they invited him over too. She

6:58

was very close to her grandfather, so my folks

7:01

asked if he'd join us.

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So granddad arrived. He's

7:06

got nice rosy cheeks, granddad, like

7:08

all the men in my family. He

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wore a beret every day

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to keep his bald head warm.

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And then my granddad walked into the house

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and

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before he said anything else,

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he said,

7:24

my mother was murdered in

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the house next door.

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And I don't think we had

7:32

ever put two and two together

7:35

between where Trist

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lived and this big

7:39

murder that happened in the family. To

7:46

be clear, I'd never heard about this murder

7:48

before. In fact, Kate didn't

7:50

know a lot about it either. Just that

7:53

her great-grandmother had been killed decades

7:55

before. She had no idea

7:57

that it happened here. Neither of

7:59

us had any clue at the time that my new

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girlfriend's family had any connection

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to this neighbourhood, let alone the house

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next door.

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But the details of the murder make the coincidence

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even stranger, because

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just next door to my house, the

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house supposedly haunted by a faceless

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woman, Kate's great

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grandmother was killed by two

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gunshots to the face.

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Watch all episodes of Ghost Story and

8:31

Free right now by joining Wondery

8:33

Plus in the Wondery app

8:35

or on Apple Podcasts.