Episode Transcript
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0:00
Hey listeners, as part of the Morbid
0:02
Podcast Network, we tell the
0:04
kind of spooky and macabre stories
0:07
that send chills down your
0:09
spine. But few
0:11
stories are creepier than the one
0:13
at the center of the new podcast,
0:16
Ghost Story. The host, Tristan
0:19
Redman, is a journalist investigating
0:21
a supernatural murder-suicide
0:24
in his own family.
0:25
Tristan would be the first to tell you, he
0:28
never used to believe in ghosts. Sure,
0:31
odd things happened in his childhood bedroom
0:33
in London. Objects that moved
0:35
around inexplicably, lights
0:38
that switched themselves on and off,
0:40
but ultimately, he shrugged it all
0:42
off.
0:43
That is, until a couple of years
0:45
ago, when he discovered that every
0:48
subsequent occupant of
0:50
the top floor of that house was convinced
0:53
they'd experienced something inexplicable
0:56
too.
0:57
From Wondery and Pineapple
0:59
Street Studios comes Ghost Story,
1:02
a podcast about family secrets,
1:05
overwhelming coincidence, and the
1:07
things that come back to haunt us.
1:09
I'm about to play a clip from Ghost Story.
1:12
Follow Ghost Story on the Wondery app
1:15
or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:25
I want to tell you a story. Well,
1:27
it's really three stories all wrapped around each
1:29
other. It's a ghost story,
1:32
it's a murder mystery, and it's a family
1:34
drama. By which I mean, it's
1:37
about my wife's family, her family's
1:39
history. And there's a chance
1:41
they'll disown me for doing this.
1:45
If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer,
1:48
then I will be sorry that we
1:51
ever said we would contribute to it.
1:59
But before we get into any of that, let's
2:02
start at the beginning, with
2:05
a thing that set all of this in motion.
2:10
When I was 16 back in the 90s, my
2:13
family moved to an old Victorian
2:15
house in London, on a street called
2:18
Queens Road.
2:20
I slept in a bedroom tucked into the
2:22
creaky top floor and weird
2:24
things would happen up there. I'd
2:27
wake up and objects would have moved
2:29
across the room, specifically
2:31
this one vase. When
2:34
I'd go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece,
2:37
and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk.
2:40
I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find
2:42
it somewhere else. Lights
2:45
would flash on and off on their own, and
2:47
I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling whenever
2:49
I was alone in the house. It
2:52
freaked me out at the time, but the
2:54
truth is, I didn't really think much of it.
2:57
I was a teenager, I had other
2:59
things on my mind. Every
3:01
now and then I'd ask my sister if she was
3:03
messing with me, but she always swore
3:05
she wasn't. I grew
3:07
up, left home, and became a
3:09
journalist for Aldozira. I
3:11
cover things like French labour strikes in
3:13
the war in Ukraine. I don't believe
3:16
in ghosts. So when my family
3:18
moved out of the house on Queens Road, I
3:20
completely forgot about the weird stuff that
3:22
happened in there. Until
3:25
that is, a few years ago, a man
3:28
reached out, an old neighbour of
3:30
ours, with a story about
3:33
that very room. I
3:36
mean, it's quite a story. His
3:38
name is Charles Benény, and
3:40
he knows everything about this neighbourhood.
3:43
You could say he's a bit of a gossip, but
3:45
you probably shouldn't. Flanders gives
3:47
completely the wrong impression. Anyway,
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this is what he told me. Charles
3:52
was walking around my old neighbourhood one day, going
3:55
door to door, collecting donations
3:57
for the local museum. I
3:59
was there rapping.
4:58
don't
6:00
believe in that sort of thing. So
6:03
I rang your father and
6:05
he said that was Tristram's rom.
6:09
So I imagine he phoned you and the
6:11
cat was out of the bag. I
6:16
promise you, and I hope you believe me,
6:18
that I don't normally find
6:21
myself having conversations like this, or
6:23
even entertaining these sorts of ideas.
6:26
But it's kind of weird, you
6:32
now have three completely unconnected
6:35
families who have had some
6:38
sort of strange
6:40
in-expericable experience on the top
6:43
floor of that house. I think it's wonderful.
6:47
It was definitely intriguing, but
6:49
it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a
6:52
story I'd tell my friends in the pub. Except
6:55
I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless
6:58
woman. And that's because
7:00
there's another coincidence, something
7:03
I hadn't thought about in years. So
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I guess Tristram and I had just started going out and
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they invited my parents round to
7:12
his house to come and say hi. I
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first learned about it when my wife Kate and
7:16
I had just started dating about 20 years
7:19
ago. My family still
7:21
lived in the house on Queen's Road, the
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one with the supposed ghost. And
7:25
Kate was staying with us. And my granddad
7:28
was in London, so they invited him over too. She
7:30
was very close to her grandfather, so my folks
7:33
asked if he'd join us.
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So granddad arrived. He's
7:38
got nice rosy cheeks granddad, like
7:40
all the men in my family. He wore
7:43
a berry every day
7:44
to keep his bald head warm.
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And then my granddad walked into the house
7:51
and
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before he said anything else,
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he said
7:56
my mother was murdered in
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the house next door.
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And I don't think we had ever put two and
8:05
two together between
8:07
where Tris lived
8:10
and this big murder that happened in the family.
8:18
To be clear, I'd never heard
8:20
about this murder before. In fact,
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Kate didn't know a lot about it either. Just
8:24
that her great-grandmother had been killed decades
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before. She had no idea
8:29
that it happened here. Neither
8:31
of us had any clue at the time that my
8:33
new girlfriend's family had any
8:35
connection to this neighborhood, let alone
8:38
the house next door. But
8:41
the details of the murder make the coincidence
8:44
even stranger. Because
8:46
just next door to my house, the
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house supposedly haunted by a faceless
8:51
woman, Kate's great-grandmother
8:54
was killed by two gunshots to
8:56
the face.
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