Lore - Episode 181: Unsettled

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

We’ve always had a hunger for mystery stories and true crime. But for a period of time, many of those stories had a very unusual element to them—a detail that had a way of making less believable today, an so much more frightening. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

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They're honestly hard to miss. All over the British Isles, there are stone structures that have been there for thousands of years. Stonehenge is probably the most famous one that comes to mind, but there are many, many more. For example, West of Stonehenge is the town of Avebury. It's a quaint little community built around its own henge, a massive arrangement of three stone circles, the largest megalithic circle in the world, in fact. And to stand in the center of town and look around is to be constantly reminded of the ancient people who built it all. Which is why a farmer in southwest Ireland was so surprised by what he found this spring. While taking a walk through one of his fields, he came upon a flat stone embedded in the earth,

knowing that he would like to plow that soil he spent some time removing the rock to get it out of the way. But when he looked beneath it, he was surprised to find a hole. It turned out to be an ancient wedge tomb. But while most tombs of that kind are standing structures above ground, this farmer had found an exception. And it has kicked off an exciting adventure for archaeologists, especially because this particular tomb appears to have remained untouched for thousands of years. We often forget just how powerful the act of digging can be. It's right there in our language, with phrases like buried treasure and gold digger, yet we still act surprised when something significant is pulled from the ground and brought to life. But some discoveries are more

significant than others. In fact, sometimes the breaking of earth is just the first of many steps down a new road, the start of a journey, rather than the end. And sometimes the thing that's been hidden in the dirt has the power to change lives. Just not in the way you'd imagine. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Many people would have seen Isabelle as a bit unusual. When she moved to town, she brought a very young child and an even younger marriage. Church records make it clear that her baby had been born out of wedlock, but they don't answer the question of who the father might have been. It could have been her new husband William, or someone else entirely. But regardless of the

answer, it's clear that she was doing her best to stay afloat, to make something more of what many viewed as a messy life. Now, I'm not going to throw a ton of names in places at you right now. It's all there in the source material, but the important things to know are this. Isabelle and William had moved to a little town called Great Drifield, which sits between the English city of York and the North Sea to its east, and they seem to have moved into a house owned by another person who had tasked them with running it as a lodging house. So in August of 1662, Isabelle was settling in. Truth be told, there was a lot about her life that needed settling, between the new baby, the new marriage, and all the social complexities

that came with them. But she was also getting the lodging house into shape, and one day, while working in the kitchen, she dropped her knife, which landed on the floor and clattered away, before falling through a small hole. Isabelle dropped to her knees, probably cursing to herself as she did, and then glanced into the hole. She could see the blade glinting in the darkness, almost like it was winking at her. But when she tried to see if she could fit her hand inside, she discovered that the floorboard was loose. Popping it off, she easily found the knife and picked it up. But that's not all she saw. There, beside the blade, sticking out of the hard-packed dirt was a wooden stake. Curious, she gripped it and pulled, but the wood was rotten

and broke apart in her hand. So she used the knife, and then a small bowl, to dig away the top of the soil to see what might be beneath it all. And after a while, she struck a rock. Curiosity now had control. Isabelle managed to get all her fingers beneath the flat stone and pulled with all her might, finally managing to pry it free. And there, beneath all of it, was something that must have struck her as quite odd. A few teeth and the fragments of a flat, rounded bone. Almost, she wondered to herself, like pieces of a skull. But the past is the past. And just like the whispers about her child's questionable parentage, Isabelle probably told herself to leave well enough alone. So she set the stone back down,

brushed the dirt back over it, and replaced the floorboard. There was already plenty of work to be done, after all. The days that followed were a blur of busyness. It's likely that William worked elsewhere, so running of the lodging house fell entirely on her shoulders. So she probably blamed her exhaustion for what she saw one evening between the hours of 8 and 9 pm, the figure of a man walking through her home. The following night, another vision appeared, and it left her feeling a bit unsettled. A few days after that odd incident with the floor, on August 23, Isabelle found herself sitting by the fire late in the evening. I'd imagine she was tired from a day of running the house and being a mother. And the quiet would have been nice.

But as she sat there in the dark room illuminated only by the small fire, she felt the distinct presence of someone enter, and turned around to see who it might be. What she found was the shape of a human being standing off in the deepest shadows. From what she could see, the figure had long, blonde hair, and was dressed entirely in green. But Isabelle, to her credit, didn't seem frightened at first. Instead, she just assumed it was a lodger who had arrived late looking for a place to sleep, so she called out to them. Who are you? She asked. And what would you have? Without answering her, the figure approached. It's clear from her report that the figure didn't walk as much as glide to her side, which scared her enough to cause her to mutter a prayer out loud.

And then, when it was at her side, the figure spoke. 14 years have I wandered this place, suffering wrong three times, and seven years I have to wander. And then it added, 21 years is my time. It didn't make a lot of sense to her, but while she sat there in front of the fire, stunned and looking for the right words to say, the figure added a bit more to its greeting. Be thou not afraid of me, it told her. I will not hurt thee. And with that, it vanished. The next evening, though, the figure returned. This time, instead of green, it was wrapped in a long white cloth, like the sort of winding sheet that some corpses would be bundled in. And Isabelle found the courage to speak up at its

appearance. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, if thou wouldn't have anything, speak. It was an attempt to control the situation and maybe prepare herself for what was to come. Maybe part of her mind still wanted to believe that it was just a strange traveler looking for a bed for the night, but invoking the trinity like that, well, it reveals more than a little fear and superstition. In response, the figure spoke. My life was taken from me, it told her, between eight and nine of the clock at night in this place. And then it added, and I received my grave between twelve and one. Almost as if the effort to reveal this information had sapped the figure of all its strength, it quickly disappeared from view, leaving Isabelle to ponder the story she

had heard and what it all could mean. And even through the weeks that followed, that encounter would not leave her alone. But she also remembered the bones in the hole and began to wonder if there were enough threads to pull on to chase the clues to the truth. But to do that, she would need help. So sometime in September of that year, she dug deep for some courage and traveled to see the local justices of the peace. The two men, Sir Thomas Rennington and Thomas Crumpton, listened carefully, knotted with understanding, and then paused to confer together. Isabelle was certain they were about to tell her that she was crazy and to leave them alone, or worse, accuse her of some dark magic and have her tried as a witch. But instead, they came back with a request.

They wanted her to talk with the spirit again and get more information from it. Names, dates, a deeper understanding of the full story, anything that would help them chase down leads and bring the killer to justice. All of a sudden, Isabelle's world had changed. She had arrived as a woman with no power, but had suddenly been given a task of the utmost importance to help the authorities solve a long, forgotten murder. It wasn't an unusual request. I know it seems incredibly odd to us today, public officials asking a woman to have another chat with the ghost and see if she could pump it for information. But in the late 1600s, it was a lot more normal than you'd think.

In fact, let's take a little detour so I can show you what I mean. Less than a decade earlier, back in 1655, a man named William Morgan and his shepherd, John Rogers, both witnessed the appearance of a ghost. Both men described the figure as dressed in bright and glittering armor and were so excited by what they saw that they told every traveler passing by their farm. Soon enough, their story appeared in the newspapers in London. And it wasn't the only one. In 1675, a man named William Clark made the journey from Northampton shire to London to deliver an amazing bit of testimony. It seems he had been visited by the ghost of a murdered man who claimed that his death had occurred 267 years earlier.

It might have been a little too late to bring the killer to justice, but the papers printed it as the gospel truth. And in 1679, a ghost appeared in Lincolnshire to share the story of its own murder. This ghost blamed his own brother, a man who happened to still be alive, so the brother was arrested and questioned, and in the process buckled under his own guilt and confessed to exactly what the spirits had claimed. So, yeah, it was really odd for a couple of professional justices of the piece. People tasked with the authority to weigh in on legal matters to tell Isabel to go ask the ghost for more information. But odd or not, it was also pretty common,

and wouldn't turn nearly as many heads back then as it would today. It was less than a week later that she would get her chance. Isabel had seated herself in front of the same fire at the same time in the evening and then waited for her ghostly visitor to show up. And when it did, she led with the most important question of all. I pray thee, she said, tell me thy name. My name is Robert Elliott. So, Isabel continued, I desire thee to tell me who took thy life. What followed was the most extraordinary tale. According to the ghost of Robert Elliott, he had been murdered by not one person, but three, Mary Burton, Alice Coulson,

and Anne Harrison, who had all beaten him to death while he had slept in his bed. Seeing that she sat in front of a fire, Robert also reportedly said something else to Isabel. Blessed be the time that ever this fire was made, and blessed be they that gave consent to the making of it, for the stake is now warm at the root of my heart, as my heart was when the stake was stricken through it. And truth be told, Isabel had no idea what that meant. There were so many more questions to ask, and parts of the story to learn. But for that, she would have to wait a couple more days. Thankfully, the next time Robert's ghost appeared, he was ready to talk,

and gave a full accounting of the events and the motive behind his murder. It seems that he had been working as an apprentice to a raftsman, someone in charge of transporting lumber down rivers on large, flat barges. Through the course of his travels, he had visited that particular lodging house every now and then, and at some point in the past, he had met one of the three women, Mary Burton, and lent her a good amount of money. So when he showed up for the last time, Mary wasn't happy to see him. She owed him money, and he asked for it to be repaid. First, she just flat out told him no, but then he promised to return with the authorities.

Then, as if the situation wasn't tense enough, he asked to lodge there for the night. After refusing for a bit, Mary eventually relented and showed him to a bed to sleep on. And of course, it was that very night, while he slept, that Mary returned with two friends, who murdered him in cold blood. Robert told Isabel Moore, Mary apparently robbed his corpse before hiding it beneath the floorboards of the kitchen. And then she took some of his papers and traveled south to his home near London, where she tricked his family into handing over even more of his valuables to her. Isabel didn't know the legal system well. She wasn't a justice of the peace or anyone with power,

but she knew desperation. She understood how a person's past can limit their future. Mary Burton needed Robert to go away, entirely and completely, in order for her crime to go undetected. And that included making sure his spirit wouldn't return to spill the beans, which we now know was a common belief. So Mary had driven a wooden stake through Robert's heart. It was the sort of thing that frightened townsfolk did to prevent a corpse from rising from the dead, known as a deviant burial, a stake like the one Isabel had found embedded in the dirt beneath the kitchen floorboard, a stake like the one Robert described being warmed by her fire.

And then, all of a sudden, Isabel saw the pieces fall into place. The stake had worked, and for 14 years it had kept his spirit silent and imprisoned. It buried the truth, but then Isabel came along, dropped her knife, and pulled that stake free. The puzzle was complete. Now all she had to do was tell Rennington and Crompton what she had learned and let them do the rest. Her cold case had nearly reached its hope for a conclusion. But even still, it was far from over. The job was done. With her head filled with all the new information about the cold case, Isabel marched back to Sir Thomas Rennington and his Esquire, Thomas Crompton, and with

the handoff complete, she returned home to the lodging house. It would be Crompton who would do the legwork now, a combination of letter writing and trips to various officials in the area. And we can't help but wonder if the supposed date of the murder was part of his urgency, because 14 years prior to 1662 was smack in the middle of the Second English Civil War. Add in the fact that York and the surrounding area where they all lived had been a hotly contested region between both sides of that conflict, the royalists and the parliamentarians, and it probably filled Crompton with more than a bit of curiosity. Could someone have been murdered in 1648 or their political beliefs? Back home, Isabel was having more encounters with a ghost

of Robert Elliott. In one conversation, Robert revealed to her that four other spirits were nearby in a similar state of unresolved tension, but whether or not they were victims of murder or even of the same killer wasn't very clear. Isabel also used her connection to the world of the dead to ask Robert more philosophical questions. One of the things she asked him was if there really was such a place as purgatory, which honestly makes a lot of sense. For a woman in a country that had tossed aside Roman Catholicism, Robert gave her the Protestant friendly answer. No, there is no purgatory. And before we just gloss over a detail like that, let me explain why it was so important. You see, in the Catholic world, a ghost was seen by many as a spirit of a dead person that was allowed

by God to return from purgatory to the world of the living. That would make it friendly and benevolent. But without purgatory, ghosts became much more questionable. Who let them out of the afterlife? And were they visiting us from heaven or hell? It's one of the reasons why the witch trials of Europe happened when they did in a post-Reformation world, because all of a sudden, ghostly visitations and spectral sightings were no longer assumed to be safe. After this, the ghost told Isabel something different. It was a glimpse into the future rather than the past. He told her that two men were plotting to murder the newly returned king, Charles II. Their names, according to the ghost, were Robert Jenkins and his son Philip,

who worked in the king's household as clerk and page, respectively. But while Isabel was having wild success in learning new details from her ghostly friend, Thomas Crompton was having a more difficult time. It seems that his letters to a few local ministers, asking for the whereabouts of Mary Burton or any of the other women mentioned by the ghost, had come up empty. One letter did come back with a glimmer of hope, although only slightly. It seemed that Isabel might have misheard a town name or confused it in her mind with another, so Crompton had been looking in the wrong place. A local minister informed him that there had been a woman named Anne Harrison in his area, but she had married and moved away over 30 years earlier,

which would have put her out of the murder's timeline. When Crompton informed Isabel of these dead ends, I think it's safe to assume he was frustrated and more than a little embarrassed. Here was a public official who decided cases at all sorts of important levels of society, and he had been chasing imaginary people on the recommendation of a ghost, so he asked her to explain herself. Isabel's response was to suggest he speak with the ghost of Robert Elliott himself and leave her out of it. But when she presented this idea to Robert, the ghost refused to leave the house and talk with the man. The only option, according to the ghost, was that Crompton would come to him to visit him in the dark house between the hours of

8 and 9 p.m. Ultimately, though, the trail would come to a dead end. None of the women accused by the ghost had been located or even placed in the town at the right time. It was beginning to look like all the information was incorrect or possibly even faked on purpose, but Isabel wouldn't back down. She knew what she had been told, and she was going to stand by it. So, she told Crompton about the other spirits that the ghost had mentioned. There were four other victims, she told them, buried right beneath her kitchen. So, Crompton brought in two of the wardens from the church in town and tasked them with digging for the proof. Over the course of two separate explorations, they pulled up more floorboards

and dug through the dirt beneath them. But try as they might. Nothing was found. No graves. No bones. Nothing that hinted at old forgotten burials. Nothing, of course, other than the few fragments of bone and teeth that Isabel had provided as proof of her original story. It's not a satisfying ending, I know, because people tend to be hopeful. All tales like this offer a chance to believe, no matter how far-fetched the reasons might be. Still, Isabel's story does teach us one important lesson that's still relevant today. No matter how much digging we do, some cold cases will always stay that way. It's human to want to dig into things, whether it's the ground beneath our feet

or a mystery from the past. We've always been fascinated with digging, and true crime is one of the biggest examples of that passion. For centuries now, any time a new medium has appeared in the public space, it's quickly become home to stories about unsolved crimes. In the Victorian era, for example, when penny newspapers were all the rage, dozens of crime-related publications popped up in London alone. A century later, they filled the radio waves, and then television. Even today, we're popping in our earbuds so we can hear the latest story of unsolved crimes. But through it all, we've learned to deal with disappointment. Some cases will never be solved,

and while that's not ideal, it's certainly a harsh reality. Yes, stories like Isabel's have a way of leaving us feeling unsettled. After all, we prefer neat and tidy endings. But that's life, isn't it? Isabel Binnington never got to see her mystery solved by the authorities. In fact, there are no higher court documents to prove that it ever moved on from the investigation stage, and that sort of leaves us wondering what the final verdict was in the minds of men like Thomas Crumpton. Because from his point of view, it probably felt like a lot of running around for nothing. It's possible that everyone believed Isabel about the ghost, but because of their new Protestant views on the potential evil of such spirits, they chalked it up to her being tricked

by a mischievous demon. Or they looked at the lack of confirmation in the names and dates, and simply wrote it all off as fantasy. Either way, the matter was left unresolved. Interestingly enough, centuries later, historians did a bit of digging in an unlikely place. The household records of King Charles II, and when they did, they uncovered something surprising. Right there in the records of promotions among the staff were a father and son pair, one, the clerk of the bakehouse, and the other serving as a page of the cellar. And their names? Robert and Philip Perkins, exactly what the ghost of Robert Elliott had revealed to Isabel all those years before. Oh, and one last thing. Crumpton might very well have been the sort of

person who has a difficult time letting go of unsolved puzzles. We know this because many weeks after the events of the murder mystery came and went, he was still documenting new revelations and discoveries. And one of them seems to put an end to the speculation that Isabel had been making it all up. How do we know? Because Crumpton himself wrote down a note that Robert Elliott's ghost was seen again on October 3 of 1662. More importantly, he makes it clear that the ghost was witnessed by a number of people in town, all of whom swore that their statements were true. And the most surprising aspect of the report is one small detail that Crumpton felt compelled to include. Isabel Bennington wasn't present at the time.

Everyone loves a good ghost story. And for lovers of true crime, it's always fun when those stories cross over into the world of murder mysteries. But the story of Isabel Bennington and her conversations with Robert Elliott's ghost do something else. They bring spirits into the legal system. And surprisingly, it's not the last time that's happened. In fact, I've tracked down one last amazing story that I think you're going to love, where spectral events become the center piece for courtroom drama. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. The ship's log started off simple enough. Tuesday, May the 13th, it began. This day, the wind was south by southwest. And a little before four in the afternoon, we anchored in

Mansour Road to Load, where lay Captains Bristo, Brian and Barnaby, all of them bound for Lucera. It would have been a welcome sight. Four English vessels traveling east of Gibraltar, somewhere in the Mediterranean, and arriving at a port in Italy at the same time. We don't know if the men knew each other prior to this moment, but they all certainly welcomed the company. I have to imagine they had a few drinks together that evening and shared stories of their adventures. It was 1687. The open sea was a busy place, with European exploration and settlement in full swing from a number of countries. But there was also the constant threat of pirates. So when these four captains prepared to set sail the next day, they decided to do so together.

Safety in numbers and all that. It seems they were all headed back to England, but planned to make a small detour first to the volcanic island of Stromboli. After anchoring off shore, each of the four ships sent a rowboat toward land, including the four captains. Their plan was to harvest some sulfur, which was a valuable resource used to make gunpowder and antiseptic, among many other things. While the sailors marched off in search of the yellow substance, the four captains stood on the shore near their boats and talked. But around the time they were ready to leave, two figures came running through the trees and undergrowth, one seemingly chasing the other. The figure in the rear was dressed all in black and almost

resembled the stereotypical figure of the Grim Reaper. The man in front, the one being chased, was running for his life, dressed in gray clothing with ornate buttons clearly visible. As the captains watched, the pair of running figures dashed past them, heading straight up the hillside toward the volcano's peak, a peak that they claimed was on fire. And as they vanished into the flames, all of the captains noted a terrifying noise that was too horrible to be described. Lord bless me, cried out Captain Barnaby. The foremost man looks like my next door neighbor, Old Booty. And yes, the old neighbor's name was Booty. It's funny, I know. I think we can all have a good laugh and enjoy the wordplay.

But it's also memorable, and that's important, as we'll soon see. It was such a strange sight that one of the captains urged the others to pull out their pocketbooks and jot down the time of day so they could enter it into their ship's logs accurately once they were back on board. An hour or so later, once the sulfur had been transported to the ships, they pulled anchor and set off. It would take them some time to cross the rest of the Mediterranean, pass through the strait of Gibraltar, and then make their way north to England. So when they finally pulled into port in October of 1687, they were ready to be home, and right there waiting for them was Captain Barnaby's wife.

They probably kissed. They certainly smiled and caught up on everything he missed at home. And at some point in their conversation, she looked at him with sadness in her eyes and said, my dear, I have got some news to tell you. Old Booty is dead. At which point Captain Barnaby cursed and then told her what they had all seen back on Stromboli. We all saw him run into hell. What happened next might even sound at home today. Mrs. Barnaby, of course, told many of her friends about this amazing coincidence, and those friends told others. And it wasn't long before Old Booty's widow, Mrs. Booty, heard the rumor that her husband ran straight to hell

and took offense at the insinuation. So she took Captain Barnaby to court, looking for a thousand pounds in damages, roughly $300,000 today. The trial was a circus of coincidence. All four of the captains showed up and testified to what they witnessed on that volcanic island. They noted the exact time and day and described the man's gray clothing and ornate buttons. And when Mrs. Booty's defense was asked to describe her husband's time of death and the clothing he was wearing, all of it matched up right down to the minute. It said that the judge was so overwhelmed by the sheer unexplainableness of the coincidences that he closed the case immediately in favor of Barnaby. A normal case of slander had been

brought to the courts against the captain, and yet it had been settled and put to an end by a ghostly vision from thousands of miles away. All these years later, historians have become understandably intrigued by this story and have tried to chase it down to its original source. And while many inaccuracies and mistakes have been added to it over the centuries, it's become clear that the core of the tale appears to be true, as far as anyone can prove, at least. Sometimes our digging can uncover something new, a fresh mystery or adventure that awaits our determination and hard work. With the promise of resolution or definitive answers, our search will build the story, helping it come to life. Another times the full adventure is already

there, and digging is the only way to know for certain if it's actually true. By looking closer, we might be forced to toss out whole portions of the story, all in an effort to find the truth at its center. Either way, they always leave us feeling just a little unsettled. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Carl Nellis and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast, there's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. you