Episode Transcript
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0:00
This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.
0:06
Hey listeners, it's Tim and Lance. There's a
0:08
new podcast we think you're really
0:10
gonna like, and we gotta tell you about it. It's
0:12
called Ghost Story, and journalist Tristan
0:15
Redman is going where no son-in-law
0:17
should ever go. Deep into his
0:19
wife's family history, digging
0:21
up the cold case of his wife's murdered
0:24
great-grandmother. And he's asking questions
0:26
no one in the family wants answered. Oh Tim,
0:28
did you mention that he's also looking into
0:31
whether the murderer was actually his
0:33
wife's great-grandfather, the
0:35
beloved family patriarch? Oh
0:37
boy. Well, this all started with
0:39
a ghost. That's right, a ghost. Growing
0:42
up, weird things would happen in Tristan's
0:44
bedroom. Objects moving around
0:46
with no explanation, lights switching
0:49
themselves on and off. But ultimately
0:51
he shrugged all of this off. Until
0:53
a couple of years ago when he discovered that
0:56
every subsequent occupant of his old
0:58
room was convinced they'd experienced
1:00
inexplicable things in there as well.
1:03
From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios
1:06
comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family
1:08
secrets, overwhelming
1:09
coincidence, and the
1:11
things that come back to haunt us. We're
1:13
about to play a clip from Ghost Story, and
1:15
follow Ghost Story on the Wondery app or wherever
1:18
you get your podcasts. Binge all episodes
1:20
of Ghost Story ad-free right now
1:22
by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery
1:24
app or on Apple Podcasts.
1:34
I want to tell you a story. Well,
1:36
it's really three stories all wrapped around each
1:38
other. It's a ghost story,
1:41
it's a murder mystery, and it's a family
1:43
drama. By which I mean, it's
1:45
about my wife's family, her family's
1:48
history. And there's a chance
1:50
they'll disown me for doing this.
1:54
If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer,
1:57
then I will be sorry that we
1:59
have not been able to do it. and we would contribute
2:01
to it. But
2:09
before we get into any of that, let's
2:11
start at the beginning with
2:13
a thing that set all of this in motion.
2:19
When I was 16 back in the 90s,
2:22
my family moved to an old Victorian
2:24
house in London on a street called
2:26
Queen's Road. I
2:29
slept in a bedroom tucked into the creaky
2:31
top floor and weird things
2:33
would happen out there. I'd
2:36
wake up and objects would have moved
2:38
across the room, specifically
2:40
this one vase. When
2:43
I'd go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece,
2:46
and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk.
2:49
I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find
2:51
it somewhere else. Lights would
2:53
flash on and off on their own, and
2:56
I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling whenever
2:58
I was alone in the house. It
3:01
freaked me out at the time, but the
3:03
truth is, I didn't really think much of it.
3:05
I was a teenager, I had other
3:08
things on my mind. Every now
3:10
and then I'd ask my sister if she was
3:12
messing with me, but she always swore
3:14
she wasn't. I grew
3:16
up, left home, and became a
3:18
journalist for Al-Dazira. I
3:20
covered things like French labour strikes and
3:22
the war in Ukraine. I don't believe
3:25
in ghosts. So when my family
3:27
moved out of the house on Queen's Road, I
3:29
completely forgot about the weird stuff that
3:31
happened in there. Until
3:34
that is, a few years ago, a
3:37
man reached out, an old neighbour
3:39
of ours, with a story about
3:41
that very room. I
3:44
mean, it's quite a story. His
3:47
name is Charles Penely, and
3:49
he knows everything about this neighbourhood.
3:52
You could say he's a bit of a gossip, but
3:54
you probably shouldn't. Slandris gives
3:56
completely the wrong impression. Anyway,
3:59
this is what he told me. Charles
4:01
was walking around my old neighborhood one day going
4:03
door to door, collecting donations
4:06
for the local museum, and
4:08
definitely not gossiping. Eventually,
4:12
he gets to my old house and knocks on the door. A
4:23
woman answers, she's the mother of the house.
4:26
After chatting for a bit, she invites him inside
4:28
and she tells him a story unlike
4:31
anything he's ever heard before. The
4:33
story goes, Americans swans up with
4:36
a halo and… Here's what she tells
4:38
him. One day, the woman is at home
4:40
at my old house. She looks out
4:42
of the window and she sees a man
4:44
standing on the driveway. So the
4:47
mother of the house opens the door. It's
4:49
someone who used to live in the house, an
4:51
American man who'd live there with his wife
4:54
and two children. The American
4:56
says to her, I'm so sorry
4:58
to bother you, but I just have
5:01
to know. Do
5:03
you still have that ghost in the top bedroom?
5:06
Straight like that.
5:09
What the American man proceeds to tell
5:11
her, the things his
5:14
family experienced on the top floor,
5:16
it makes her go completely white,
5:19
because this isn't the first time she's heard of something
5:22
going on up there. She
5:24
just never believed it before.
5:29
This struck a chord since the daughter
5:32
had always insisted that there was a ghost
5:34
in her bedroom, which would manifest
5:37
itself on occasions and sit on her bed.
5:40
The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10,
5:43
began complaining about a ghost visiting
5:45
her room at night, specifically
5:47
the ghost of a faceless woman.
5:53
She said to me, oh yes, my
5:55
daughter told me about some
5:57
goings on, some sort
5:59
of faceless This woman who comes and sits on
6:01
my bed, and she said,
6:04
I always batted them away
6:07
on the basis that we don't
6:09
believe in that sort of thing. So
6:12
I rang your father, and he
6:14
said, that was Tristram's room. So
6:18
I imagine he phoned you and the cat
6:20
was out of the bag. I
6:25
promise you, and I hope you believe me,
6:27
that I don't normally find
6:29
myself having conversations like this, or
6:32
even entertaining these sorts of ideas.
6:35
But it's kind of weird, right? You
6:41
now have three completely unconnected
6:44
families who have had some
6:47
sort of strange
6:49
inexplicable experience on the top
6:51
floor of that house. I think it's wonderful. It
6:56
was definitely intriguing, but it probably
6:59
wouldn't have been anything more than a story I'd
7:01
tell my friends in the pub. Except
7:04
I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless
7:07
woman. And that's because
7:09
there's another coincidence, something
7:11
I hadn't thought about in years. So
7:15
I guess Tristram and I had just started going out, and
7:19
they invited my parents around to
7:21
his house to come and say hi. I
7:23
first learned about it when my wife Kate and
7:25
I had just started dating about 20 years
7:28
ago. My family still
7:30
lived in the house on Queen's Road, the
7:32
one with the supposed ghost. And
7:34
Kate was staying with us. And my granddad
7:36
was in London, so they invited him over too. She
7:39
was very close to her grandfather, so my folks
7:41
asked if he'd join us.
7:43
So granddad arrived. He's
7:47
got nice rosy cheeks, granddad, like
7:49
all the men in my family. He wore
7:52
a berry every day to keep
7:54
his bald head warm. And
7:57
then my granddad walked into the house.
7:59
And before
8:01
he said anything else,
8:03
he said,
8:05
my mother was murdered in
8:07
the house next door.
8:11
And I don't think we had ever put two and
8:13
two together
8:15
between where Tris
8:18
lived and this big
8:20
murder that happened in the family. To be clear,
8:22
I'd never heard about this murder
8:24
before.
8:26
In
8:30
fact, Kate didn't know a lot about it either. Just
8:33
that her great-grandmother had been killed decades
8:35
before. She had no idea
8:38
that it happened here. Neither of
8:40
us had any clue at the time that my new
8:42
girlfriend's family had any connection
8:45
to this neighborhood, let alone the house
8:47
next door. But the
8:50
details of the murder make the coincidence even stranger because just next door to my house,
8:55
the house supposedly haunted by a faceless woman,
8:59
Kate's great-grandmother was killed
9:01
by two gunshots to the face.
9:07
After 12
9:11
years of searching for the Long Island serial killer, a suspect was finally
9:13
arrested on July 14th, 2020 using
9:16
DNA evidence and cell phone records.
9:20
And the LISC Podcast team has been investigating these
9:22
horrific murders since 2017, diving
9:25
deep into the case while interviewing the
9:27
victims' family members, friends, and law enforcement. LISC
9:30
has been vital to raising awareness and
9:32
spreading the victims' stories. And now that an
9:35
arrest has been made, host Chris Mass is back on
9:37
the scene learning all he can
9:39
about the killer as new information is uncovered
9:41
each day. He got to binge the
9:43
whole podcast to learn about the 10 victims
9:45
and the decade-long investigation. Or
9:48
start with a newer episode, such as The Case Against
9:50
Rex, that details all of the evidence against
9:53
the suspect. And dives into how this murderer
9:55
evaded police by continuing to
9:59
continuing his usual routine and suburban
10:02
family man life. Listen to Lisk,
10:04
that's L-I-S-K, the Long
10:07
Island serial killer, to get live updates
10:10
and inclusive insight into the
10:12
murder investigation of the decade
10:14
as justice is finally served to the
10:16
Long Island serial killer. Hey listeners,
10:18
this is Tim and Lance here. Have you heard about
10:20
Missing and Crawlspace Premium? We
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offer a premium feed of this show that
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10:33
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sign up. You can use code missing for
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10:40
Apple users can subscribe right in
10:42
the Apple Podcasts app by clicking
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try free right at the top of the feed.
10:47
We
10:47
hope to see you there.
10:48
This is the Glassbox Media
10:50
Podcast.
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