Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Ghosts

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

How long have people believed in ghosts?Eleanor Janega is back Betwixt the Sheets with Kate to tell us why you should always stand up to ghosts and why you might be visited by a woman with frogs sucking on her body.From improper burials to resentful visitors, they delve into people’s beliefs in ghosts and how they have changed through history.*WARNING there are naughty words and adult topics in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code BETWIXTTHESHEETS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bed twixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and welcome back to betwixta sheets. This is your fair do's warning. Fair do's, this episode is going to contain adult themes spoken about in an adult way, and we absolutely will be swearing quite a lot because it's me and Eleanor Yenegra talking about ghosts and sex ghosts and ghosts. So definitely there is adult themes at work here, and you just might not be interested.

that and don't even worry about it, I'll catch you next time. It's dark, it's quiet. You're home alone just on the edge of sleep, but just as you're drifting off, there's a thunk somewhere, a scuffle, and then maybe the hairs in your arms start to stand up. Can you hear it? Did you imagine it? What was that? Was it a ghost? Or did you just forget to put the cat out? For as long as we have been writing stories, we have been writing ghost stories. But do we believe, believe in them. Do you believe in them? Do you believe in ghosts? Well, my producers have been out and about to find out. No, because I choose not to believe, because I think if I came back as a ghost, it would be really, really horrible, and I would hate it. So I'd just rather believe that that's not a thing.

And, like, people don't have to go through that. I don't think you actually see a ghost. I think it's more like, it's fair, but it's not fair. Because, like, you can feel it's pretty. presence. It's like when you're, you know, at home and you get this cold feeling or you get this feeling that someone's watching you or about. That's why I don't think you actually see a ghost, but I believe in the presence of ghosts. No, because I've never seen one. I've never, you know, heard many stories about them from people. Anyone close to me has never said they've seen one and I've never seen one. So what does our belief, or indeed our disbelief in ghosts have to say about us as a society?

And how has that changed throughout history? What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and putting the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society and ghosts today with me, Kate Lister.

Would you agree to stay in a haunted house? Well, historian extraordinaire Eleanor Yenager did just that, and she is here today to tell us about all sorts of ghosties and goblins from monks to harlequin hunts to Romans who apparently weren't afraid of no ghosts. As Eleanor says, sex, death and the apocalypse. What more could you possibly need? Let's do this. Come back to Petricks, the Sheets. Hello! Hi, Kay. Thank you so much for having me back.

Returning champion, yay. I'm so excited to have you here. You're just so much fun to talk to. I suppose we should do some history stuff today. Oh, I mean, it's been alleged that that's our job. So, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Right, we are here to talk about today the history of ghosts.

Medieval ghosts. Yeah. Where have you got into this? Are you now like medieval ghost hunting? Is this a new branch for you? You're going into something here. Yeah, like, okay, so I've always been interested in, you know, concepts of the afterlife. So, you know, one of my areas of specialization, it's like, it's not just bonging.

Thank you very much. But, you know, I also work on the apocalypse and conceptions of afterlife and hell and stuff right that. The big trio. Shagging Apocalypse. after life. Yeah, because it's like the only things that matter are sex and death, right? And sandwiches? Yeah. You just throw that in as well. In between you get the sandwiches, yeah, exactly. So I've always kind of been interested in images of

death or stories that people kind of tell about things because that's sort of what, you know, apocalypticism is. It's kind of like looking forward to when everybody's going to be dead and how things will be. And I got quite into sort of reading medieval ghost stories within this because, you know, they've got them, which is true of pretty much every, single society on the face of the earth. You know, basically the minute people started writing stuff down, they were writing down ghost stories. Really? That's that old? Yeah. We got Mesopotamian ghost stories. No. Yeah, you name them, we got it. It's like, it's one of the first things that humans want to tell you about. And I think the first ghost story I ever read was actually in Emperor Charles

the Force autobiography. And it's really funny because I do a lot of work on him. And it's a super dry autobiography that's all about how holy he is and how he definitely deserves to be a your own emperor and like and then I went on a battle here and did this and then I did a battle here and then like in the middle of it he's got this one story where he's staying in a castle I think in Melnitz or somewhere like that and he and his homeboy are staying in this room and in the middle of the night a cup picks up from the side of their bedside table and flings itself across the room and hits the other side and nobody else is in there no one else was anywhere near the cup and then he was like it didn't get knocked down it got flung against and he was like and we got out of bed and we prayed and

we stayed up the rest of the night because we were so scared. Anyway, back to the battle. And it's a very interesting thing to me because I was like, huh, you know, it's not really something. It's interesting when an emperor is writing you an account of his life, right? It's saying these are the most important things that I want people to know about me. And he's like, no, time for a ghost story, right, right, in the middle of it. An interlude.

Yeah. And so I was like, huh, well, here we go. We've got this ghost story. And that ghost story is very interesting because it's a lot like ghost stories we hear now. I was just thinking that. That sounds like the kind of thing that you tell each other around a campfire or, you know, it's like, oh, just this thing picked up and smashed against the wall. It sounded very modern when you said it. Yeah, and herein lies the rub, right? Because that's the sort of ghost story you hear from an individual, but those aren't the usual ghost stories we get from the middle ages. Okay. Because the usual ghost stories we get from the middle ages, obviously, it's like, well, who has time to write things down, right? It's like, well, the people who are literate who read and write things. Good point. Yeah, right? So it's like, that's why Charles is able to tell his little. little ghost story, no one's going to stop him, right? He's the emperor, so good for him. You can say whatever you like, Charlie Boy, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, right, exactly. But the major people who are kind of writing things down, obviously,

in this kind of world are oftentimes monks, right? So you get tons of stuff that's written down by monks, and that's really interesting because the way they use ghost stories is super different to how we talk about ghost stories now. Okay, all right, okay, hit me with a monk ghost story. Okay, so classic monk ghost story here, right? is that there are two serfs who decide to run away from their rightful landlords and their rightful landlords of, you know, being a monastery. You have some description, right? And, you know, this is very bad and very naughty, and they oughtn to have run away. And then they kind of die by misadventure in the new community that they've moved to.

And then they are, you know, buried in the churchyard. But because they're incredibly naughty, they come back as revenant dead. And they start getting out of their coffins and, like, running around tax. attacking people. That's like zombies. Yeah, like it's really common for them. It's like a revenant. What's the difference between a revenant and a zombie?

I think the difference between a revenant and a zombie is that revenants are usually kind of like animated by a spiritual thing. And that's why they've come back. And I think zombies in the popular imagination, zombies, it's usually like contagion. Or sometimes I'm in like older conceptions of zombies. Like if we're talking about like Haitian things, magic can also be involved in that. So like revenues are like, it's a dead guy, but they did something bad, right? And so the locals have to then dig these guys up, then they decapitate them, and then they bury them in a marsh. And so, like, this is a really kind of powerful form of, like, saying they're not members of our community, right?

These are bad guys, and they were very, very naughty. So this is a really monastic ghost story, because at the heart of it, it's like, don't you run away from your landlord's the church. Uh-huh, yes. Right? It's kind of like, so that is very, very sinful. And if you do something sinful like that, you don't get to be buried in hollowed ground. and it's kind of like a rinder for the community as well. So it's like a reminder for don't you run away.

And also it's saying to communities, don't accept people who do this. Yeah. Because if you accept people who do this, then they are going to, it's like a supernatural threat to you that your life is going to become awful. Then they're going to attack you. So what you have there is a kind of real world consequence for individuals. And you also have it tied into the fact that there's kind of a religious thing here, but also it kind of comes back to social norms.

right? And this is what you see over and over again with religious ghost stories where they're like, they are just like hammering home the things that you are supposed to do. So for example, you've got another trope that are called harlequin hunts. Have you ever heard of these? I have never heard of a harlequin hunt. Tell me. So this is fun. We get these especially, and there's like a guy, usually a priest, and he's coming home late at night by himself on the road and he suddenly sees like this big parade of damned people, so dead people. And they're all kind of like walk, they're having a little march down the road, but they're all also being tortured in the way that they're being tortured in hell. Okay. Like, and hell for many people big on ironic

punishments. And this guy sort of like walks up to the parade and he's like, hey, what's all this? And he starts speaking to a guy who's in the parade. And it turns out he's this night who the priest knows. And he's like, you've got to help me. I am in hell because I basically was too greedy in life. And I lent some money to a miller and then the miller couldn't pay it back so I stole his mill, well, like took his mill from him. And now I've made

so much more money on the mill. My family's made so much more money on the mill. Then the miller himself ever, ever owed me anyway, and we're still profiting from it. So I am in hell because of this. And he's kind of like on a horse and he's weighed down and he's red hot and he's being burnt. And he's like, please, please, please go to my family.

Tell my family they've got to give the mill back to the miller. And if If they don't, I'm going to be stuck in hell. Wow. So the guy's like, oh, you know, yeah, absolutely. He runs off to the family. The family gives the thing back to the Miller. They say a bunch of masses for the guy's soul, and they pray for him, and then he gets out of hell, right?

Okay. Yeah. Okay. And this does, like, a couple of different things. Like, it shows, A, like, the communal expectations around stuff like money, because you're not supposed to be in the medieval period, like, making money off of, like, interest when you lend people money and stuff. So if you make the money back that someone owed you, you're supposed to stop. That's supposed to be like, you broke and even. So he's not supposed to be keeping the miller's mill.

Like, oh. Uh-huh. Very, very bad. Very, very naughty. But then it also does like this really Christian thing, which is like, but there's a way that you can intercede with people even if they're dead. So say like your loved one has messed up and finds themselves in purgatory. Pergatory being essentially hell, but you can get out eventually.

Like, that's what purgatory is for medieval people. But you can like get them out. if you undo the bad thing they did, if you pray for them, have a bunch of masses said for them, and it's like there's still this kind of like ongoing connectedness between dead people and the living community that knew them. And so Christianity can always like help you out,

even if it's like too late and you were dead. But this isn't just a religious thing. This is like being told to clear your debts even when you're dead. That's like, do the banks know about this? I know, right? Well, it's like, yeah, the banks are like, please don't listen. that's the baron. No, I think it's cool to own a mill.

You can come back from, that you're dead, and then you have to come back and go, I'm still in debt, please, could you pay my credit card off for me? Yeah. Fuck. And this is what's really funny, right? Is that, like, the majority of medieval ghosts that we have records of, you know, you've got Charles's medieval ghost who's just like,

yeah, throw a cup. Yeah. Fuck that cup. You know, like, which is kind of like the ghosts we expect to see. But medieval ghosts aren't like that in the majority of sources, the majority of the sources, like, they are appearing because something's gone, like, badly wrong and they need your help. Oh.

Is it just, like, debts and stuff? Or is it like... It's like debts or, I mean, so, one of my favorite ones is Arthyrion. And this is from, I think, the Antsaurus of Arthur. I can't pronounce all English. Don't ask me to. I'm not going to do it. Just say it in a slightly, Lord of the Ringssy slight of an accent.

No one knows what it sounded like. We just like to make it up. give it this kind of Germanic twist. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, for sure, you know, just like really squint your mouth. It'll be fine. Perfect. But so, homies are coming home from a hunt, as rich people do.

You know, rich people, they simply love to go on a hunt. And this big kind of storm kicks up, and it's dark, and they're in the forest. And it's bad to be in the forest in the medieval imagination. Like, the forest usually kind of signifies. Like a magic place, it's sort of like seen as lawless. It's outside the bounds of, like, ordinary human community. Dogging. Right.

And all of a sudden, this gross figure shows up. And she's like, her skin's black. She's got eyes that are glowing, like, red coals. And all over her, there's, like, snakes. And she's got these frogs sucking on her boobs. That's not good. It's not. And everyone is like, this seems bad.

I mean, I've been like, you fucked up. It's got her. It's like, oh, things have gone early wrong. And everyone is like, hey, can I help you? And she tells the story. And she's like, look, I am like, I used to be like, you, big thing in medieval dead people showing up stuff. I used to be like you. I was very, very beautiful. I was very, very rich. I was very powerful. But I was vain and took pride in my appearance and my clothes,

which is why I'm like hideous now and gross to look at. She's kind of like covered in gross rags. And she's like, and I had affairs. And the frogs on my tithes are my lovers who've also been damned alongside with me to suck that corpse titty in the afterlife as it were. Oh, dear. Which is, again, like, so they've messed up too, right? So everyone's messed up. I'm going to just change my Tinder bio right now. It would just be like, get with me.

I'll be damned to be a frog and suck my pit to me after life. That's the one for spooky season, guys. Oh, God. Well, this is my Halloween costume sorted anyway. Yeah, there you go, right? Right, so what happens to her? Okay, so it turns out, and she demands to speak to Gwynnevere, and Gwere goes up, and she's like, hey, Gwinevere, it's mum.

And everyone's like, oh, Reve. reveal and she's like guinevere live your life right don't be like me and then the normal thing please go get a bunch of masses said for me like so so bad and it's kind of like foreshadowing right because obviously guinevere doesn't end up listening to this and if guinevere goes on to have an affair with lancelot and do the wrong thing right so it's really really interesting because kind of the horror here there is this horror of you know death and all the terrible things that can happen to you after but also a huge part of that is kind of a concern about women being out of control. Oh, yeah.

So women, and you see here the normal complaints that we see about women in the medieval period. So it's like, they're vain. All they care about is their looks. They're going to be having tons of affairs. So this story as a whole kind of compounds gendered expectations and is warning against them. Fuck. Okay. But still doing that medieval thing of being like, well, someone messed up here and they need help now.

So like go like have some masses said for them. And, you know, obviously Gwynnevere doesn't listen. She's going to have to make her own mistakes no matter what. Why on earth wouldn't you listen to that? Oh, I mean, like, by the time your mom showed up with frog on her titty, like, that's... That's... You listen to that, don't you? I can't imagine the state of mind that would be like, nah, I'm sure it'll be fine.

I don't know how hot Lancelot was, but... It's not worth it. It's not worth it, girls. No. Yeah, like, you would think that that would, like, put her on the straight and narrow, but no. Determined. But even then, right, that's a critique of gender, too, where it's like, I don't know, like her zombie mom

with the titty frogs showed up, and she still did it. And it's like, well, you know how women are, right? And so there's kind of like that is implicit within the same thing. So it's really interesting because that is not like a monastic ghost story, right? This is for fun.

This is like a story that gets told for fun. This is chivalrous. This is really enjoyable. But you still see it doing the same things, which is like compounding societal norms, which is kind of explaining what the acceptable parameters for gender are. And at the same time being like, oh yeah, and make sure you have masses set for the bed.

Is this like what Charles Dickens was doing in a Christmas Carol? Those types of ghosts. Yeah, exactly, right? Because it's really, really similar. So when Marley, Jacob Marley comes back, he's like, yeah, I screwed up, so live your life right. And then the ghosts of future, past, present, then kind of like show him how it is that he needs to mend his life. So Dickens does this really interesting thing of kind of like using this very traditional kind of medieval form of a ghost. and then compounding it with these new conceptions of ghosts

who can take you through time and stuff like that. So it's a really interesting kind of blending of the modern and medieval there. Wow. So when do we start getting references to cups being smashed around? You know, like just like stuff that we would think of more as like that it's not this kind of zombie with frog tit. I can't get the edge out of my head.

It's like a spirit that is unhappy and is kind of wandering. When does that start to become the norm? Yeah. So this seems to be like a big modern thing. So we start to see a kind of change in this around the 18th century and certainly in the 19th century with the rise of spiritualism, which is very, very interesting, right? Because the thing about these kind of like older medieval ghost stories is they do these things where you're like, oh, I can like see culturally what you're doing here. But you have this big change as kind of science starts to take over in the concept of quote unquote science. And so you have, you know, on the one hand, this cultural like demystification.

You know, we say where it's like, oh, no, things can be explained scientifically. But you also have a reaction to that. Yeah. Which is like, no, no, no, we don't want to demystify. We want to kind of like have this particular thing. But also, you know, sort of a desire to quantify things like ghosts, you know. So there's this hope that these things can be recorded or measured in some way like that, right? And for the Victorians, you have this, like, sort of like, really big change in this period where there is a real kind of personal mourning that has, you know, a lot of people wrap.

up in it. And you have like, especially at the turn of the 20th century, you know, you'll have large mortalities like, you know, the Spanish flu outbreak or World War I, where people are bereft, you know, and they have these people who they are missing from their lives. And then there becomes this sort of desire to contact spirits and this sort of idea that you wish to make contact with people who are dead. Whereas like the medieval one is like, you don't want, like, hey, they'll come to you. Right. Like, you can't go to them. You can't be out in the woods. and be like, hey, I hope my mom will show up and show me her frog titties. Like, you know, that's not how it works.

They come to you as in when. You can't kind of seek them out. And indeed, if you do seek them out in the medieval period, you're doing necromancy. And that is like a dead people magic. And it's kind of like talking to ghosts. It's like trying to get ghosts to show up and tell you things. Right? So for medieval people, that is bad.

Like, you should not be trying to talk to dead people. Don't do that. Okay. No, like very, very bad. But the modern thing is like, let's get these ghosts. in here and like get them chatting and it's like hey what are you up to right and there are kind of varying ways of looking at the afterlife from that so you see especially for people who are running seances or leaning really heavily into spiritualism they will go super heavily into the idea that oh well everyone's

just hanging out and having a nice time in the next life and they want to tell you that you're great and they miss you but they can't wait to see you give me money you know like that that's like one way of doing it yeah but At the same time, you also kind of have this idea of when it's sort of like, I don't know, spontaneously, I guess, occurring ghosts as opposed to ones that you sort of like raised yourself. When they're in your house or something, you also see this real differentiation here, right? Because it's like, well, why is this ghost here? It's not because they did something wrong. It's because something bad happened to them.

Yes. Right? So that's like our major way of looking at ghosts now. It's not that I was a bad person, so I'm hanging out to talk to you. it's like a bad thing happened to me. I am a victim and I'm hanging out. Yeah, I can't think of any modern ghost stories that it's somebody who's come back to warn you thinking about it.

Yeah. It tends to all be sort of disembodied phantoms wandering around something bad's happened or you go to a medium and you sort of give it the old. Is there anyone here who had a grandparent, that kind of? Yeah, is there anyone with a grandparent? Anyone at all? Anyone at all?

I'm like, no. I shouldn't say that. I'm sure there's lots of very good medium. out there who do their thing. But yeah, we don't have this idea of somebody's returned with a warning or with a credit card, do we? Yeah, and it's really interesting because when people do return, you know, yeah, sure, sometimes they kind of want help. Like, there's this kind of idea there. Yeah. But the help is never like, please go say seven masses and also live your life. The help is never like, go give that mill away. You know, like, it's never like that.

It's always like, you know, you get someone in and they say some prayers and douse the place with holy water and bada bing, bada boom, the ghost is not, right? And oftentimes also what is kind of portrayed there is that there's kind of some confusion with the ghosts, like that they don't know their ghosts, or they don't really know where they're there,

things like this. Yeah, I've seen sixth sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you see that a lot with modern things where it's just like, they're like, well, I don't know, I'm just ghosted. Like,

I was around the house. I didn't know I was ghosts. But for medieval people, those ghosts are showing up with a mission. They're super clear on the fact that they're dead. They're like, I am, I'm extremely dead. I'm so dead. I'm like very, very dead.

And I've got a side quest for you, essentially. Wow. So, obviously, a lot of this has to do with what people want out of dead things too. Like, so for example, for medieval people, this all kind of like makes sense, right? It's like, for medieval Europeans, this is a massively majority Christian society. And they're supposed to only be like two places you can end up. If you're dead, it's like either you're in heaven, giving it large, right? Yeah.

Or you are in purgatory or hell, right? Which is much of a muchness. So if somebody shows up, you have to kind of explain why it is that they're not in one of those two places. And that explanation also needs to take into account that those two places are really the only acceptable place for a dead person to be within Christian cosmology. You can't just decide to like go AWOL. I'll be back with Eleanor after the short break. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new. podcast American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand

the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetan as he prepares for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race, I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. Let's get this obsession about burials, about people coming back because they didn't have a proper burial. I've heard that all over, the pennies on the eyes. Oh my God. Okay, so this is like the whole time,

and that's also one of the most common, like the ghosts showed up. One of the most, most common reasons is because they didn't get buried right. And we see this even in ancient texts, right? No way! Yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, when you put pennies on the eyes in order to cross the river sticks

and things like that, then that's ancient. And there is a fun ghost story that I really like that was recorded by Pliny the Younger about this. That's plenty old, isn't it? Yeah, really old. And he is writing about the stoic philosopher

called Athenodorus, and he deliberately moves into a haunted house in Athens. There's this, Everybody knows this house is haunted. People have, like, lived there all the time. But he's like, yeah, but I'm a big stoic guy. So I'm going to, like, move in there and prove a point. Come up, me, bitches.

And he's like, part of the point is that the rent is cheap. So this is electrical thing. So he, like, he moves in. And, like, the ghost comes up to him in. It's this ghost of an old man rattling chains. And Athenodorus is like, no, I'm not even scared of you. I'm busy writing. So could you just wait for a minute?

And the ghost is, like, super impressed by this. And it's like, oh, yeah, like, get to a stopping point. And then at Athenodorus. like finishes writing. He's like, yeah, now, can I help you? And the ghost kind of takes him out to the garden, and it's found that the ghost's body had been disposed of in the garden and was like wrapped in chains. And it's like people are not supposed to be just in the back garden, right? And so they then go give the body a proper burial and then the ghost goes away. And so these are really interesting ghost stories because they're doing something also for, again, the community at large,

because improperly disposed bodies are a threat. Yes. Right? Like, because they can putrefile They can make people sick. And especially ancient Greeks and ancient Romans are really, really concerned about this and they talk about it all the time. They, for example, you're not allowed to dissect humans in like ancient Roman and Greek culture. Like sometimes people get away with it, but for the most part you're not supposed to because they're like, if you cut open dead bodies, there's going to be all this gross putrid stuff like humor in there that you're going to let out into the air. And then people are going to get sick. So like don't do it.

Do not cut open humans. Don't do that. Because they're nasty. Yeah. And similarly, it's like, can't just bury bodies in the back garden. Someone's going to get sick. What if that leeches into the groundwater? Like, how are you going to do things like that?

So, if you make up a ghost story around it, it's like, ah, well, it's not just like that there's health concerns here. It's like, also, your ass is going to get haunted. Wow. And this is the same thing as, like, because sometimes I've read about it being a punishment for people to be buried improperly, like people that are buried at a crossroads or they're buried in prone burials where they're upside down. And that's like a really bad sign that something fucked up has happened here.

Yeah, something's gone. Yeah, so we call those atypical burials or sometimes deviant burials, but we've kind of like tried to shy away from the term deviant burial, because deviant burial makes it sound like the people are deviant. And what we're kind of saying is that it's not typical. I just love the idea of loads of ghosts in the afterlife being like, excuse me, I think you find that deviant burial is it's not PC anymore. Yeah, exactly right.

Like, it's an offensive term. It's an offensive term now. Covered in frogs. Right. I bet, like, what it does, right, is it underlines the fact. that there is a right way to bury people. Yes. Right?

Like most cultures have a right way to bury people. And medieval culture that way is like, you know, in the hollowed ground, you know, you got your little place. It's also interesting as well because churchyards are super oversubscribed, shall we say, in the medieval period. And so medieval people are a lot more used to kind of like, you know, you dig a hole and it's like, oh, there's some other bones. And you might remove those bones and have to put them in what's called a charnel house for a while. But they stay kind of like in the churchyard area and there's this way of doing it. right? Right. So we'll find these people who are buried, yeah, upside down, or buried decapitated with their head between their legs, or sometimes buried with a stone in their mouths,

or oftentimes like buried in waterlogged places, that's a big one. If like a bury them in a marsh. Right. Okay. Where you're like, this is like some crap land and like we're burying you here instead of a churchyard. Or sometimes like just outside church walls. That's a burn, isn't it? Yeah, just on the outside. Yeah, it's a real burn. Yeah, it's like, were you excommunicated when you died? That'd be one. Or if, you know, you died doing something sinful or people know that something's gone wrong,

then that will happen. And then, you know, that's reinforced by stories about the Revenant dead. So, like, most of the ghost stories that involve, like, Revenant dead and things like that, usually the way that you solve it is by burying them in a worse place. Yeah. Like, you accidentally buried them somewhere where they have no business being because they're actually really sinful and they're bad. And so you need to then, like, put them at a crossroads.

You need to put their head between their knees. You need to do this and that. And, you know, that persists. So there was a lot of talk a few weeks ago. In Poland, they found some early modern graves. So kind of like 17th century. And these people were buried with sides over their throats. Now, that's not a good sign.

Yeah. And so that indicates that's a kind of concern for vampirism. So if they got up, it will cut their throat. Cut their heads off. Yeah. See, there's method to the madness. Yeah, and it's a really interesting one because we don't see a lot of reference to vampirism

in medieval stuff. It's much more kind of like early modern that becomes a much larger concern, especially kind of like in Central Europe and places like that. But we do kind of see the same desires to stop the dead from coming back and doing things. So it's like for medieval people a lot of time, it's a stone in the mouth.

Like, yeah, like get out of that one, dead guy. Right? Like, you know, things like, things like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like, to be fair, they're not really like saying that those people are going to come out and like suck all your blood out. But they are like, they may bite you.

Like, I don't know, like, it's not like a concern about like ex-anguination, but it is like a concern that you might be attacked or bitten at some point in time. Which is kind of weird is that like on one hand they have stories about people coming back as ghosts because they weren't buried properly. And then when they've got people that they really, don't fucking want to come back, they go and bury them improperly. Yeah. That seems like counterintuitive.

Yeah, it's quite funny because what that does is it's kind of re-compounding religious stuff. So it's like, if you bury someone who's good improperly, then you need to go make sure that they are buried well. If you bury someone who's bad properly, well, that's technically improper because they're bad. Oh, there's some mental gymnastics here. Yeah, and it's like a lot of the time it'll be people.

who were explicitly, like, they weren't getting on with the locals, right? So, you know, you've got the story about those serfs who ran away. It's like, well, who are these guys? Are they even part of the community? You have that on the one hand. Or sometimes it'll just be, like, people that, like, nobody liked. And they're like, yeah, he was an asshole, even when he was alive. So we're just going to damn him forever in the afterlife. Yeah, well, he's coming back and messing with everybody. So, I see, I think that that sounds harsh. But recently, I've joined a Facebook community group that's local to my area. And the level of anger and vitriol, in this particular group, I think they would bury their neighbors with a stone in their mouth.

See, there you go. Like, that's the thing is the minute, all you got to do is get on next door and you're like, okay, maybe. That simply makes sense. Yeah. But speaking of ghosts, I understand that you very recently spent the night in the most haunted castle in the UK, which is appropriately called Chillingham Castle. I know. Isn't it funny? Like, it sounds like I've made it up. It sounds like this is specifically me going, oh, yeah, like Chillingham Castle. I do have to double check that of just like, what, Chillingham Castle. It's not like Spoo Collum Castle or something, but no, Chillingham Castle. So tell me, why did you do this? Okay, well, in the first place, because I'm stupid.

Okay, that's number one. So let's get that right out of the way. But so I've got this a very exciting show about ghosts coming out on history hit end of the month, especially for Halloween. So, you know, where I've got a lot more ghost stories, we go look at some places, right? And we were like, well, you can't make a show. show about medieval ghosts and not go to a haunted. Come. No, you can't. Come on. Like, I'm not made of stone, right? So we started looking into, well, where's a haunted castle? And answer, all of them.

Are there any castles that aren't haunted? Are any castles? It's like, no, we've got nothing. Yeah, like, it's basically, there was kind of like a ghost off where we're like, who could do what. But Chillingham claims to be the most haunted. And it's up in Northumberland, really, really gorgeous place. But also, it had the benefit of you can stay the night there. And my production team likes to torture me, but also sucked in. because they had to stay there too. So, so neat. Like, whose problem is this now, right?

And it's a really interesting place because it is right, kind of on the border with Scotland, obviously, and it was really involved in a lot of wars back and forth around Scotland. So it's where, for example, the campaigns against William Wallace were planned from. So Edward, the first state there and things. And it's quite old. So some bits of it date back to kind of like the 12th century, 11th century. There's modern bits in between, but, you know, it's quite old. And because they are so important militarily, you have like kind of all sorts of people that

camp through and you have these classic things where we would go, oh yeah, like that makes a ghost, right? Because they have like a torture chamber. No. They have like a dungeon. And it's fairly usual to have a dungeon in a castle. That's pretty usual. Okay. Yeah.

That makes sense. But like a torture chamber is like there isn't all that much need for torture generally as things go. And, you know, sometimes people really overagged the amount of torture that actually went down in the medieval period. But, you know, in this case, the border wars, with the Scottish, did get quite toasty. Had times.

Enough to warrant a special room for hurting people. Wow. So it's got like these things, right? Interestingly, like about the castle. So it's like it's haunted as the days long according to everybody who lives there. I didn't see anything. But of course, I was looking.

You didn't see anything? I didn't see anything. Although, obviously, I was freaked out anyway because... Because you just are. haven't you? Even with your huge skeptic head on, it's like you are in a castle, for God's sake. That's just spooky. Yeah, and it's like, okay, so when we were like done filming, right? Because, you know, we were filming and we'd film, film, film until like 10 at night or whatever.

And then it was time to kind of like go up to the apartments where we stayed overnight and heat up dinner and drink several glasses of red wine, if you're me. And my production team were like, okay, well, we're going to go get the lights in from the courtyard. And I'm like, okay. We'll be fine here then. And they're like, Eleanor. why don't you go up to the kitchen and you can start

getting the like dinner heated up and I'm like, okay and I'm like up in the you know they're like the modern bright clean cutey little apartment and I was just like you know felt like I was being watched you know but I was probably doing it to myself and I was just like

conspicuously being like I am not scared I'm having a wine I'm turning the oven on I'm making a fire I'm not scared like Athenaeus just like do you mind I'm just in the middle of something ghost. Yeah, I was giving it large like that. But you know, like, you've done that to yourself. Like, I was just kind of, like, freaked out of that bite by myself.

Yes. Now, there was a ghost hunter at the castle, and he has, like, dowsing rods, divining rods that he says he says he can use to kind of communicate with ghosts. Okay. And he also has, like, I don't know what it's called, like, some kind of, like, little handheld electronic device that he says picks up on electromagnetic fields. A ghostometer. A ghostometer. Right? And he's all like, oh, yeah, there's ghosts around. And I'm like, I don't know. You know, like, I don't know.

But the stories are good, so I'm not sure I care. It's sort of like... Oh, tell me some of the stories. What ghosts are there? Okay, so he's like tons. And it was hilarious. Okay, and I also interviewed the guy who owns it, who is, you know, like the most perfect sir you've ever met in your life.

And he's like, well, you know, I bought the place. And you know, it's a bloody full of ghosts. So I got my cousin. I said, well, get my cousin, we'll get a man in to get rid of them. You know, so get rid of the bloody things. But, you know, my cousin's a priest, so I got a man, he says, this is our chap, there's just too many of them. I was like, word, word.

So my favorite story that the ghost hunter told me is he said that there is three ghosts there who claim to be from the 12th century, one of whom is French and two of whom are Scottish. And they kind of like were captured and died there. And this makes sense from a historical perspective. Because the French and the Scottish often teamed up against English people. In order to do a pincer movement. So like, it makes some historical sense. And you're like, okay.

And he's like, yeah, so there's that guy. There is in the chapel, a little girl named Eleanor. Oh, that's appropriate. Yeah. And interestingly, so it's like, there's the chapel, but they found a bunch of skeletons in there. It's just like, they just be finding skeletons that's in the walls all the time. They're like, oh yeah, I found another skeleton, and it's like thumbs down, right? But like her ghost kind of shows up, and I'm sort of like, well, why was there like a ghost showing up?

Like, you know, she's in consecrated ground and it's like, oh, but at the time it wasn't a chapel, because like the chapel moves back and forth. And then later on, because like a bunch of these ghost stories were first recorded, at the turn of the 20th century by Lady Leonora, who's the lady of the castle. And she was using that chapel as her writing room. And then they decide to kind of like do something. and they find like a bunch of skeletons in there. And she's like, oh, but I've only ever, like, seen the ones. She's like, why is that when there's kind of like three skeletons in there? But then they find out that it was a chapel.

And she's like, oh, well, that's why those other ones weren't haunt in my ass. But, like, the little girl ghost, they say is, like, tactile. And they say she'll, like, trace her finger on your back and stuff. And I was like, no, thank you. No, she will not. Now she won't. I was like, I'm not going in there. I was like, I'm not going to go out of dark.

You're not going to catch your girl slip. And there's only one Eleanor in this. right now and it's your girls. So that's what they say about her is that she's actually tactile. And then there is one in the bedroom, they say, where King Edward I first stayed. So they called Edward the first bedroom or whatever. And they say that he's like a bad news guy and that he makes it smell. And if you sit in chairs and stuff, he'll like sit on you and make it hard to get up and

he's just like a bad dude. So they say that about him. And then so here's the thing, right? I'm kind of like, you know, I'm interested in the cultural phenomena of ghosts. I'm obviously interested in sort of like the social factors that surround them, you know, as I say, like, why do we tell ghost stories and things like that? So to me, the interesting thing is like that we tell ghost stories, right? Yeah.

But, you know, I'm trying not to freak out too much about like staying in this castle overnight or whatever. And, you know, like remains suitably skeptical, like, you know, someone who, in theory is a public intellectual, right? In theory. So within that, though, I'm chatting to the woodsman. and his wife who kind of looks after the castle. Apparently at some point in time, his wife had been up in the bedroom, and she's like, don't care for this new mannequin

that's been put in the edward in the first room, and she goes to Sir Humphrey, the Lord, who owns the castle, and she's like, dude, like, let me know when you're putting new mannequins in the rooms because, like, I came around the corner and got well freaked out, and he was like, excuse me, new mannequin? Oh, man. No.

And they went back, it was not there. And she'd, like, fully seen a person. And she was like, oh, it must be a mannequin, because it's not. And like no one else is around, right? And so it's like when it's the people who live there and who were Matt the woodsman who was cool as hell, like shout out Matt, a cool guy who let me pat his dog. He is like, yeah, I never really believed in ghosts before I moved here. And now like I just see stuff all the time and I don't really have an explanation for it. But part of me gets down on saying that as well, right? Because, like, the medieval way of looking at, for example, magic is really

similar to this, right? Because for medieval people, magic is sort of like, when you've got an observable phenomenon, but you can't explain it. So medieval people will be like, electric eels, those guys are magic. Because what are they doing? What are they, like, how are they doing this right now? That's crazy, you know? So medieval people will be like, that's magic. Or they'll be like, magnets are magic because, wow, they sure do attract stuff. But like, who knows how that happens? but it's an observable phenomena that they can't really explain, so they just go, I don't know, magic, right? So maybe if there are these observable phenomena that people are seeing in places like Chillingham, maybe it's just like eventually we'll get to the point where we can say, there's an explanation for this,

and we'll figure out what that is. If it's dead people, I'm not necessarily saying if it's dead people, but it might just be something that we don't know yet. And I think that that's kind of an interesting way of looking at it. It connects us up with medieval people, and then it allows us to freak ourselves out. if we want to in, you know, October for the spooky season. Oh, Eleanor, it's been so good to talk to you and all of the ghosts as well. And if people want to know more about this program,

if they want to watch you sight inside Chilean Castle going, I'm a grown up, I'm a grown up, I'm a grown up, I'm a grown up, I don't believe in ghosts. Where can they find this? Yeah, it will be on HistoryHit. So definitely check us out at HistoryHit.com. You can obviously sign up and get lots of videos other than. than just me freaking myself out about ghosts in a castle. There's a lot more to see just than that.

But, you know, if you want to see it, that's the place to be. You've been so amazing to talk to. Again, thank you for joining me Betwixt the Spooky Sheets. These are some spooky-ass sheets, girl. Spooky-ass sheets. Right, where are the frogs? Let's go. Thanks for listening, and thank you so much to Eleanor for coming back.

And if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Join me again between the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.