Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep24 - The Figure on the Stairs

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Welcome to Sydenham, but be warned — this ain't your grandma's Sydenham. It's more likely to be your great-great grandma's Sydenham. James takes Alasdair to a tumbledown cottage on a moonlit night, where an unwary rambler had a terrific fright. At least, according to the ghosthunter Elliot O'Donnell. From dreamland visions to the horrors of the London rental market, this episode should give you a shiver, even in the midst of a heatwave. This episode was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shakespeare. And I'm Alistair Beckett King. And Alistair, we are in the throes of a heatwave right now. So thank goodness I've got another chilling tale for you. Phew. It is the tale of the figure on the stairs by Elliot O'Donnell. Ooh, sounds fictionalized.

Hmm, maybe. Why not listen and find out? Alastair. James, I'm a little bit concerned. About what? Well, that we're recording this during a heat wave. And my fear is that the audience might listen to it during a heat wave and come off with the impression that it's very short and we're really tired and hot when actually the episode is probably of a very high quality and it's,

it's them, it's their hot ears, not being able to hear it properly. Their ears might be too hot. It's my concern. Well, I'm also concerned because we tend to do some of the most odd episodes when it's the heat on. It does seem to happen that way. I think that's when I think in a previous episode, we posited that in the second world war, American GIs were coming over here and defiling our long barrows.

British skeletons, yeah. On good, honest British skeletons. I think they're tube star skeletons, didn't they? They did. I think they did. With their silk stockings. Exactly. Yeah, perhaps that didn't happen. Perhaps that was a fever caused by a previous heatwave. But Alistair, as much as I did get you here to share in our terror at what a heatwave does to our recording, I also brought you here to tell you a little story. I'm delighted to hear that. Yeah, I'm ready. You mentioned earlier you didn't

want to get doxed. Oh, am I being haunted? Yeah. Terrible news. Wow. I've got a story from friend of the show, Elliot O'Donnell. Ah, beloved friend of the podcast. Irish liar, Elliot O'Donnell. Well, I'd just like to call us up on that because we've been presuming that Elliot O'Donnell

is Irish. What? He does claim Irish ancestry. Oh, of course. What a fool I was to believe him when he said he was Irish. But he is actually from Bristol. What? Yep.

I can't believe he's not Irish. Is that your new... It's not a product. It's not a product now. Are you sure? I can't have just thought he was Irish because of the surname. Surely not. Surely I checked.

His dad was Irish. Oh, okay. So he's like British Irish. He's like, I'm Irish. Irish. Well, that's American Irish, I think. Yeah. My great grandfather was Irish.

We should go for a pint. That's my Barack Obama. My perennial Barack Obama impression. That's brilliant. It sounds a little bit like my Dan Aykroyd. The weird thing about Americans is they think everyone with red hair is Irish. I did a skit slightly making fun of Americans and put it on YouTube. I was making fun of them from a British point of view, kind of making fun of British people

as well. And all the comments are just like, this Irish thinks he's British. Oh my, oh my god, he thinks he's Irish. Jesus. So I'm not Irish. There's nothing, I'm not Irish at all. They're like red hair. Irish. They're like, the guys who think that they're Irish also think I'm Irish. And if anything, it's just evidence that they're not very good at detecting Irishness. They are not. No, but Elliot O'Donnell claimed descent from- Apologies to Elliot and the people of Ireland.

Well, I'm going to- And America, just to be safe. I'd better not apologize too hard because that will make the subsequent accent that I do for him seem a little disingenuous. Little disingenuous. I thought you were just slipping into the accent there. A little disingenuous. I thought you were just slipping into the accent there. A little Dissingenuous. No, Elliot O'Donnell, he claims descent from Irish chieftains, including Nile of the Nine Hostages and Red Hugh.

Oh yeah? Yeah. He's from Bristol, yeah. So he was, his years are 1872 to 1965. He died in the 60s? He died in the 60s. He died in the 60s. And he wrote a bunch of books. I'm going to tell you some of them. He wrote two novels, one called The Unknown Depths and my favourite, For Satan's Sake. A very weary Satanist there.

A Satanist whose little kids have just got to the end of their time. Oh, for Satan's sake. Who's moved my skulls? I had them here on the altar. Who's turned my cross up the right way? Oh, for Satan's sake. Those are his novels. And then there's a whole bunch and these are listed as non-fiction

books. However, as we've discovered previously, in fact, I think as recently as last week, his non-fiction tales of ghost stories are written in a very fiction way. Will Barron Yeah, yes. His writing is very pro-sie. He knows an awful lot about what was said in dialogue in situations that he wasn't there. He knows a lot about what was said by someone who only interacted with a ghost and then died. We're taking these stories with big pinches of salt, okay? They also might be useful to mark out a little pentangle in case you want to do something

for Satan's sake. And that's why the English phrase, a pinch of salt is better than the Americanism, a grain of salt. Oh really? That's not enough salt. Yeah, Americans are always saying, take it with a grain of salt. It's like, how are you picking that up? Tiny salt tweezers.

Don't be absurd. A pinch, a pinch of salt. I heard someone say, take it with a big grain of salt. It's like, try a pinch. The phrase is right there, a pinch of salt. I heard someone say, take it with a big grain of salt. Try a pinch. The phrase is right there. A pinch of salt. Is that like one rock of salt? Do you mean like, yeah, one of those whole, those Himalayan, those Himalayan bedside lamps, the big pink things. Just one of those. Just rub it onto your food. Or a salt lick. Like a kind of salt deodorant.

Oh, a roll on, a roll on salt. Roll on salt taste. Instead of the aerosol salt we all enjoy. Yes. It's better for the environment than blasting out salt. Exactly. No CFCs. I've got one of those for my pepper. I've got one of those old things they used to chase bees with in old cartoons.

You know, the sort of thing. It's like a funnel with a big... Yeah, like a bee puffer, I think they were called. Yeah, the things with smoke, they're all poisoning them. Yeah. Like a little bellows. It was like a bunch of cylinders with a cool handle at the back. Yeah. Oh yeah. I've only ever heard them called a bee puffer, but admittedly that was by a

German who didn't know what they were called. I mean, if a German's going to come up with a name for something, it is going to be absolutely obvious. I'm surprised they didn't put more, like, it wasn't called, like, a bee puffer, the thing that's made out of cylinders with the cool handle at the back. That apparently is one word. I'm a real pop of the German language. Yeah. Yep. Take that. Take that.

Take that to the German language. Now, Germans basically never looked at a sentence. They couldn't turn into a single noun. But Alistair, I've got a story here from his 1920 book, More Haunted Houses of London, which is the sequel to- I think I can guess to the spiritual sequel to a gritty reboot of any kind. Well, you'd think it might be this. The is the sequel to haunted houses of London, but haunted houses of London itself is the sequel to some haunted houses. Oh, that's

quite broad. Some haunted houses, a, that's quite broad. Some haunted houses. A quick rundown of his non-fictions. We got some haunted houses, haunted houses in London, byways of ghost land, the meaning of dreams, Scottish ghost stories, the sorcery club, werewolves, animal ghosts, ghostly phenomena, haunted highways and byways, the Irish abroad. Don't think that's about ghosts. 20 years experience as a ghost hunter. We've got haunted places in England, menace of spiritualism. And then we've got more haunted houses of London.

And then he came back to the haunted houses series. Yeah. Maybe the spiritualist got to him and he was like, no, I need to stick with what I know. He says that he never did any work with the society of psychical research, by the way. Although he was active at the same time as them. Who does that reflect well upon? It's hard to say them because he's obviously making it up or him because they were all horribles. It says he spent the night in a church with a name that escapes me for now from them. So I guess they might have chatted on the pews.

Yeah, mutual sort of respect, but maybe a wariness. Sort of a, hmm, on the straight. Tilt your head back a little bit. Yep. Yep. Yep. This one is called The Figure on the Stairs. Subtitle, being a case of haunting near Sydenham. Sydenham, not far from, again, not to dox myself, but not far from the South Circular. Well, that's what I'm talking about.

Yeah. We're in South East London. But we're talking some years ago from 1920. Oh, so the ghosts are probably dead by now. we're talking some years ago from 1920. Oh, so the ghosts are probably dead by now. Ah, fingers crossed. There's a cottage, and that's midway between Crystal Palace Park Road and Sydenham, and it was supposed to be haunted. And to be fair, I think what he's done is he's kind of taken the various stories about it and kind of just wrapped it up in a narrative. No way. I mean, that is what we do on this podcast sometimes.

So, so fair enough. So one night Charles Vise was taking a stroll down and around Crystal Palace Park Road. And it says he was so buried in thought that he didn't really realize what he was going. And then he plunged into a deep rut and woke to the fact that he'd wandered off the main thoroughfare. So he fell into a hole?

Where I think he just sort of like tripped over a hole. He fell into a hole and his first thought was, I'm no longer on the main thoroughfare rather than I'm in a hole. I don't think he fell like fully into a hole. I think he might have just tripped. Wait a minute. This isn't Sydenham Road. Yeah, you're in a hole. It isn't any road. I'm in a small hole. No, I think he just sort of tripped over and plunged into a deep rut.

Right. It's a literal rut, not a spiritual career, personal rut. He's realised he's wandered off into the woods, because it's quite countrysidey around there. And it says, the night was too dark for him to see very distinctly, but from what he could make out, the lane was skirted by low hedgerows and threaded its way through a succession of kitchen gardens or allotments and fields." And he could see like a few little houses, little small buildings like sheds or outhouses. And he's just having a bit of a walk around. He's not that bothered that he's now potentially a little bit lost because

this sort of countryside reminds him of the braes and banks of Argyle and the moors around his ancestral home in County Donegal. Oh, so with this guy Irish or Scottish? I don't know. I think he just traveled, or he was American and didn't understand there was a difference. Well, I've been to this area and none of it reminded me of Argyle, but I guess there's more buildings there now. I think there's more buildings there now, because this is like many years before 1920. So I'm guessing, you know, pre even, potentially pre even the Crystal Palace being up.

I suppose. Yeah. I mean, it probably isn't, but it still, it could be, but the round crystal palace was, that was quite a countrysidey area because people would go there to take in the air, I think to escape the stench of the city. Not now the stench has reached it. And he sort of dream daydreaming or night dreaming, but awake. So daydreaming of Argyle and Donegal. And then he hears the sudden booming of a church clock and he counts it. It's 12.

It's the most amount of bongs you can have. Anyway, so yeah, it's midnight and he's out there and he thinks, I'm going to go on for a bit. I've got my key. It's going to be fine. And he comes across an old cottage that was obviously uninhabited and apparently on the verge of collapsing. So we could see the rafters, the thatch had all blown away over time. And he could see there's no glass in the windows.

Well, what glass there was in the windows was cracked and broken. And as he says here, that the trellis work, I'm going to do this in my best Elliot O'Donnell voice, that the trellis work of the porch was without exaggeration, fallen in fragments. It's like someone from Bristol was here in the recording studio covered in hay. All sort of old tweedy jacket with all holes that had just been cut straight into it by the costume department to indicate rustic-ness. You know when they do that, they get that little unpicker and just like take out a few

stitches. There you go. You're a farmer. There you go. The past. The olden days. I don't know what accent I was trying there. Just general olden days.

The olden days. The olden days. Something about the place kind of appeals to him and he decides to do a little bit of exploring. A little bit of, what's it called, urban... Exploration. Urban exploration, yes. Simply that.

Urban X. Urbex. Urbex if you don't have time to sort the whole thing out because you are committing a crime. So he goes up the path and he pushed open the crazy old door and stepped in, not my words, by the way, the words of Elliot O'Donnell. How crazy was the door? Mate, it was without exaggeration, fallen in fragments. Okay, all right.

He pushed open the crazy old door. I guess I've just seen crazier doors than that, but all right. That sounds, it sounds better though if you do it in the, in the camp. Fallenen fragments. He pushed open the crazy old door and stepped into a kind of passage. And he realises he's in a sort of semi-basement. The back of the house is on higher ground or lower ground than the front. This is quite common in London.

The front door and the back door are not on the same level. It is actually, isn't it? Yeah, so that has the ring of truth about it. It was, in fact, a very oddly constructed building, unlike any other that Weiss had seen. There were rooms and passages galore, and yet from the front it appeared quite tiny. We've got a TARDIS, we've got some kind of TARDIS situation. He begins walking very gingerly, because the boards are loose and rotten and

he explores the ground floor and he goes up the rickety stairs and he opens one of the doors and he's stumbled over something that slipped away from him and went scampering down the stairs. Probably one of Elliot O'Donnell's goblin friends. He's actually what the two ghosts that Elliot O'Donnell does claim to have seen were, he says that when he was five-year-old, he saw an elemental figure covered in spots. Oh. Which I've just made the connection with Mr. Blobby and I think I can't unthink that. Yeah, Blobby's always been there really in the subconscious.

Yeah. Oh no, that's terrifying. Trying to come into existence, trying to break through. Trying to blob through. Anyway, this thing that pushed past, he realized it is just a rat and he laughs and he goes on with his exploration. He found out the whole upper floor and he goes all the way. And a good old laugh with a rat on the landing. Just having a laugh with a rat. Ha ha ha!

Oh, first the door, now this. What a nutty house. As he was descending the flight of steps leading to the semi-basement kitchen, one of his feet catches in a hole and he falls backwards with a crash. And for several minutes he lays stunned and on recovering consciousness it took him some time to realise where he was and what had happened. He tried of course to get up, but found that he could not extricate his foot from the hole into which he had stepped and that his ankle, which he feared must be

badly sprained, was causing him the most excruciating pain. So he gives up trying to get out and he just sort of sinks down feeling utterly helpless and flawed. Yes, in fact, he decides to just have a nap. I'm gonna have a nap and when I wake up, hopefully my ankle will be better and I won't be in a hole. Just wait for that situation to sort itself out. It didn't work. No way. Yeah, he tried lying on his back. ALICE I guess you can't sleep your way out of every problem.

ALICE He tried lying on his back and tried putting his arm through the banisters, but the violent twitchings of his foot gave him little peace, and there's cold currents of air blowing down the stairs, chilling him to the bone. He did relapse into a kind of stupor, in which he lost cognizance of his surroundings, and his mind was a mere jumble. And then dawn breaks, and the sun starts to illuminate the darkness around him. He just succeeded in freeing himself when he's startled by the sound of a heavy thud. Alistair, this time it ain't no laughable rat. No, it's not a hilarious rat.

What is it? No, it's two men tiptoeing stealthily along the passage, facing him and halting at the foot of the stairs. And he could see their faces clearly and they've got furrowed brows and they are sinister looking ruffians. Oh, not ruffians. Alistair, their eyes are glittering cruelly.

Oh, are they? Well, he is in South London. What did he expect? He can see they're staring, but not at him. There's something behind him and turns around at the top of the stairs with a look of ghastly horror on her white face was an old woman. She was in her nightclothes and she basically looked like she'd been asleep and had been disturbed by these two people and come out to find out what's going on. Will Barron And all the while he's just lying there

with his foot in the hole. Alistair Sort of half on the stairs, yeah. She didn't look at him. She just looked at these two ruffians and one of them unclasped a murderous looking knife and puts his foot on the staircase with the intention of ascending. And the woman at this point, her jaw dropped, her eyes grew glass in her limbs stiffened, just as if the hand of death had suddenly fallen on her. Vyze cries out, like, what are you doing? Presumably. But the figures of the two men and the women at that point instantly vanish.

Wow. They were ghosts, James. They were ghosts all along. And despite how painful his ankle is, Vyze hot tails it out of there. Hot foot or high tail? High tails and hot foots. His hot tail out of there. That doesn't sound good. Wow. Three ghosts. Some months afterwards, Alastair, a somewhat curious sequel to this incident occurred. So he's living in El's court. He put an advertisement in one of the papers

for two unfurnished rooms and received a letter from a certain lady B, because this is the time when they're abbreviated names. That's the letter B, not the insect. Yes. Not a lady B. I'm ever so sorry. Yes, this is not a lady B. This is lady B, stating that she, lady B, had two rooms in a house that might suit his purpose and invited him to call.

House hunting was a lot easier in those days. Just put a letter in the newspaper saying, I'm looking for a house and a place to stay and someone who had a place was like, oh, great. You can live with me. Yeah. Have a go on some of my house. Incredibly easy. So he goes there and when he gets there, the woman that meets him at the door, he recognizes her hair, her features, her height are all exactly the same as the old woman

he saw on the stairs. As the old lady who was murdered. Where on the stairs? There on the stairs, right there. So it was a premonition. A little old woman with a nightie on. Well I declare. Yeah, it's not just him that recognizes her, Alistair.

She recognizes him. She says, may the saint preserve us if it isn't he the man of my dream. And he's like, what? He's like, all right, darling, buy me a drink first. Or I'll hot foot my, I'll high foot my hot tail out of here. Oh, that ain't a Bristolian accent. This guy's not from Bristol. No, he can have any accent he wants. Jason Vale Exactly. He's got an Earls Courtian accent, which is, it sounds like me. So yeah, she tells him that for many years she used to dream of living in this weird cottage with a dark and sinister basement. And she dreamt that she slept in a room where there's a cupboard full of gold. And every night she woke sweating with terror

to hear someone trying to break into the house. Jason Vale Well, it sounds like he has no choice but to go back to that cottage to try and find the gold. Jason Vale She says that in one night in a dream more frightfully realistic than she'd hitherto experienced, she was certain that Berglis had got into her lower premises of the house. Jason Vale And she believed that her one chance of safety was to get to the hall, bolt the door from the kitchen, the door that cut off the basement, before these burglars could get up there.

So she runs down there, rushes to the stairs, she arrives to the head of the kitchen stairs, and she finds that there's no door there anymore. This is kind of dream logic, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah. Very dreamy. And she was too late to escape, because footsteps were already coming up the stairs. And she decided to go to the top step and look down and she could see these two dreadful ruffians with their evil faces and horrible weapons in their hands.

And as, and it says, and as their eyes met hers, she saw them light up with a hideous look of glee. Springing forward they were about to rush at her when a young man, of whom she declared Vyse was the living image, suddenly appeared on the stairs and barred their way. Oh! And the burglars turned tail and fled, and she was about to thank him when she seized with a sudden sense of giddyness and feints against the wall. She fainted in the dream, okay.

I think then you go into a sub-dream, usually. Yeah, I think so. sudden sense of giddyness and faints against the wall. She fainted in the dream. Okay. I think then you go into a sub dream. Usually. I think so. And it's Leonardo DiCaprio all the way down. She wakes. Yeah. So, and then she sort of wakes from that and realizes it was all of dream.

And she's since that night, it says she never dreamed of the cottage again. And then vice tells her his story and they compare the dates and they come to the conclusion that the dream she dreamed had last occurred on the very night of his ghostly adventure at the cottage. Okay, all right. So did he save her from dream thieves? I don't know. Ghost burglars of the mind? He did some research, wanted to see what would happen if she went to the house and would she recognise it. So he takes her to Crystal Palace Park Road with her servant. The servant, for some reason, upon entering, declares most emphatically that it was without question the cottage she dreamed about.

How does the servant have that information? I don't know. There's a cupboard, but there's no gold. Alistair, I'm sorry, there's no gold. Elliot O'Donnell, why didn't you put gold in the cupboard to make it seem more realistic? And Fife subsequently learns that many years previously, a miserly old woman had lived in the cottage and was said to be enormously rich and was found standing at the top of the kitchen staircase one morning in her night attire, stone dead. and was said to be enormously rich and was found standing at the top of the kitchen staircase one morning in her night attire, stone dead. Okay.

All right. So he and this old woman were reliving the actual history of the miserly woman who lived there. I guess so. Is that the idea? I think so. And she was just, it was just random coincidence that those two found each other, I guess. Yeah.

You're going to score this story. I'd love to score it. Come on then. Come on then. Just give me a first category. I can't wait. Naming. Naming.

Okay. Well, I see now why you read every single title that Elliot O'Donnell ever thought of. Oh, for Satan's sake. Oh, for Satan's sake. Yeah, yeah. For Satan's sake. It's not oh, for Satan's sake, is it? You's sake. Yeah, yeah. For Satan's sake. It's not oh, for Satan's sake, is it? You've added the oh there to give it a bit of character. I did add the oh for yeah.

In the title of the recording studio you've set up, you've slightly mistyped his name to make it Alito O'Donnell, which makes him sound like the battle angel. Yes. Or some sort of Spanish. Yeah. Like elite. Yeah. The some sort of Spanish, like elite. Yeah. The top level of O'Donnell. We're talking elite O'Donnell. Elite O'Donnell. And Don also means boss in Spanish. So really quite an authoritative name. Yes.

Yeah. So it's really weak, I'm afraid. It's two. It's two out of five. Maybe that's just because I'm impatient because it's hot and the names have irritated me. Or maybe it truly was a low scoring name category. Not even 1936's Spookerisms. 25 weird happenings. You didn't say Spookerisms first time around. I didn't remember you just seen it. You saved Spookerisms for when it was most needed. Three out of five purely for Spookerisms. Spookerisms for when it was most needed. Three out of five. Purely for spookerisms.

Spookerisms. Okay then, next category. Supernatural. Hmm? Well, it's high, but also confusing. Because we're dealing with dreams, premonitions, not premonitions, but echoes of things in the past. Ghosts that intrude into dreams, psychic projection. What are we

dealing with? What is it? It's like poetry. It rhymes. Oh, is that a quote? That was George Lucas. Was that George Lucas? That was meant to be George Lucas. Yeah. Right. So, but the supernatural, come on. Supernatural. It's high, but it's unclassifiable. So I think that's going to dent it a little bit. So I think it's a four. It's supernatural, but I don't know what we're dealing with here, James. No, me neither. What is your third category, James Shakespeare? It is What Dreams May Come. Of course, a reference to the Robin Williams film, What Dreams May Come.

And Hamlet, is it? Yes. In that sleep of death, what dreams may come? Yes. You're a Shakespearean trained actor. I'm a Shakespeare guy. You're a Shakespeare trained man. Yeah, I'm one of the Shakespeare guys.

Yeah, he's a Shakespeare guy, listen. Yes, what dreams, in Summer About Death, What Dreams May Come. Summer, Summer, Undiscovered Country, which is also a Star Trek film. From Who's Born, No Devil O'er the Turns, maybe? Yep. And then the next line is the voyage home and then the search for Spock. Search for Spock, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we're pretty... Generations. ...pretty ginned up when it comes.

What dreams may come? Because they... Oh yeah, what dreams might come? I've got a feeling some, or if not all of the Australian stuff is going to go in the bonus. All right, well, I just want to listen to know that James has cut out a huge bit where we did all of, where we reconstructed Star Trek The Next Generation with Australian accents. So if that isn't a reason to sign up to hear us talking about things in... I'm so tired. So if that isn't a reason to sign up to hear us talking about things in... I'm so tired.

So tired. If that isn't a good enough reason to sign up for the Patreon, I don't know. No, I don't know. If you can't believe that hasn't made the episode proper. If that doesn't entice you to hear the bonus episode, then nothing will. And if that has stayed in the episode, imagine the quality of the stuff that wasn't deemed as good as that. But Alistair, what dreams may come? It is literature worthy of Shakespeare for a start. It is basically a series of dreams because the man even admits that he falls asleep on the stairs.

Yes, he has kind of a dream. She has a dream, but the dream is an echo of the moment of death of that woman. Exactly. And what dreams may come in the Shakespearean reference in the Hamlet is referring to death. And this obviously features a death of that lady, the old, miserly old lady with a cup of full of gold. Yeah. And like Robin Williams, I found the story quite funny and sometimes a bit more. Hmm.

Or some great accent work from me. Yeah. Yes. Also, yes. You really vanished into the character of a Bristolian man. Of a Bristolian person. So what are we talking? I think it's five out of five. I don't want the listener to think I don't know anything

about Shakespeare. You definitely don't want them to think you know nothing of Star Wars. Star Trek. Oh, God. Oh, God. We did also talk about Star Wars in a bit that's also probably in the bonus. Yeah. Okay. My final category. Hit me. Don't go there. Because? Because? You shouldn't have. you shouldn't have gone into that cottage. Well, I mean, he's trespassing in the very first place, round a rickety old house.

He shouldn't have gone on the stairs. No, because then you fell down them stairs. The burglars shouldn't have gone there. They shouldn't have gone there. Because burglaring shouldn't have gone there. They shouldn't have gone there. Cause burglars not cool. And, and when it comes to the move to murdering an old lady for gold, Don't go there. Don't go there.

No. In a way the old lady that went to bolt the door, but then found the door had gone and then took a step onto the stairs. Thus seeing something that made her died. She probably shouldn't have gone there. Yeah, that's a bit of a weird one, but yes. Maybe she should have just run away. I'm not sure why that old servant was there and how come they knew exactly what was going on. Very weird. Yes. They certainly went there.

You're right though. They did go there in the end. They did go there. And this category, James's, don't go there. Oh. Well, don't go there. Don, well, don't go there. Go there. Into a sort of inflection. I did.

So I, so I'm afraid it's a four out of five because after they went there, they did then go there. I shouldn't have. Well, I did. I went there too. So it's a four. Darn it. Talk to a spooky severed hand.

Talk to the hand of glory. Yeah. Because that would have made everyone fall asleep in the house and they could have burgled without frightening that made up old lady to death. Yeah. And all of this stuff that didn't happen would never have happened. Exactly. Hmm. What a truthy, definitely true, actually happened tale that was James. Yes, and definitely exacerbated by the fact that we're both sweating while recording.

Yeah, yeah. Try not to think about that, let's not. Sorry. If you would like to hear that Star Trek stuff, do go to the patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod where you can sign up for all the bonus episodes and you get access to the Law Folk Discord. Thank you very much to all the people who already do support us there. Thank you very much to Joe for editing this.

I'm sorry, I'm still trying to think of Australian nicknames for the different alien races in Star Trek, but the problem is they all sound really racist, but you can't just take a race and then put an O on the end of it without it sounding offensive. Klingos. The Klingos. The Romulos. Oh, the Romulos are uncloking. There's a Romulio warbird uncloking. I only mean, you know, those two, what other ones? What was the one with Borgow? Sounds like they're mates with it, doesn't it? You've actually made it longer. Yeah.