Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep34 - Pluckley, the Hauntedest Village

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

It's Britain's most haunted village, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Pluckley in Kent is replete with legends and thick wi' ghosts. James leads Alasdair through your basic Pluckley hauntings, and uncovers a couple of stories that haven't had mainstream media coverage*. Plus... has James been Mandela-effected? * I.e. they're not in the Usborne Book of Ghosts.** ** Plus a BIG*** reveal about that book. *** Not that big. See the ⁠Loremen LIVE in London on Oct 15th⁠. 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

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And therefore more time For the next to And therefore more time for your Lebelings Podcasts to have With the Reve Appal Service Get that Bestll Debted

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Tracks Now on Reve. De slash shop or in the Reve app. Your Reve Appell Service. Online bestell, in market, upholding. Welcome to Lawman, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities

from days of yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. I'm Alistair Beckett King. And today, Alistair, we are going to hit the big time. Oh yeah. Yes, it's, for us, this is way too famous. We're no longer law boys, we are law men. Oh, yeah.

We're going to go to the most haunted village in Britain. Not my words. The village of Pluckley and Kent. Certainly not my words. Hello there, Alistair. Hello, James. Hi. Listen.

Okay. I expect you're wondering why I've brought you here to this. I am now, yeah. On internet telephone call. That's probably the clearest way of explaining what this is, an internet telephone call. Yes. Listen, I've picked something for this week's episode, and I'm concerned I've got on a bit mainstream.

Oh, James, are you selling out to the man? I think I am. But the people who liked us before we were cool, which I assume we will be shortly, are going to abandon us in droves. I know, they're going to shout Judas at us. Yeah. You're not going electric, are you?

Yes, we are going electric. Because, Alistair, this week, we're doing the Kentish village of Pluckley. Pluckley in Kent. Pluckley in Kent. Famously, to my knowledge, is it Britain or England's most haunted village? It is, and these are not my words, the words of Osbourne All About Ghosts, part of the World of the Unknown series. The Osborne book? Wow.

The Osborne book. This is Pluckley in Kent, which is the hauntingest village in Britain slash England. Not my quote. Actually, the direct quote from Osborne. The hauntingest village in England. The village of Pluckley in South... No, okay. This is the double-page spread.

In the Osbourne Book. Osbourne Booker ghosts is what everyone calls it, but technically it's all about ghosts, part of the world of the unknown series. The village with a dozen ghosts. Some places have a reputation for being particularly haunted. The village of Pluckley in South East England is one such place. It is claimed to have no fewer than 12 ghosts.

So they're not saying it's the most there. 12 doesn't seem like that many. But I suppose it's quite small. Is it per square meter? Is that how we measure the density of hauntings? I guess so. Yeah. So like Canada would be quite low despite,

although what was the, Prince Edward Island was pretty thick with them. Was that Canada? Or was that America? I can't comment. Sorry, North America. I'm looking around various sources. And my other sources for this,

apart from Osborne book All About Ghost the World of the Unknown I'm also in Laura the Land friend of the show I'm also in The Haunted South by Joan Foreman None of these say it's the most haunted village In either Britain or England They refer to it

Pluckley a wheeled village long noted For the number and variety of its ghost Noted A wheeled village Yeah it's the area I guess It's not on wheels That's W-E-A-L-L-D not W-H-E-E-L-E-D.

It's not a sort of... We're not in Mortal Engines territory. No, not at all. Nor are we talking about probably something from the Dark Crystal. Babiaga, by the way, is the name you're trying to remember. The Babi-A-Gar-House, but wheels. A wheelie version of the Babi-Yaga house.

Yeah, or a caravan. It's not a village that's a big... There's just a big caravan. Well, that's disappointing. But on the Wikipedia page, it does confirm that in 1989, the title of The Most Haunted Village in Britain was bestowed on it by the Guinness Book of Records. Oh, that authoritative journal of facts. Yes, of course. With 12 different ghosts reported, the category is no longer in use by Guinness. And a visiting Daily Telegraph journalist in 2008 cast doubt on the veracity of the claims.

on the basis that ghosts don't exist. I don't know what the telegraph stance is on ghosts, to be honest. I mean, it's half the readership. Zing! No, obviously, we all know about this, and everyone listening to this podcast knows about Pluckley from the Usbourne All About Ghosts, the World of the Unknown. Of course we do.

You've got that book. I've got that book. We all read us as children. Read along at home. When I turn the page, you'll hear this noise. I won't. It's a double page spread. You don't need to turn any pages.

There'll be no noise. But I'm going to, first of all, I'm going to give you a little roundup of what Osborne says are the 12 ghosts. And just to go back to your numbering system, yes, a very good point. Because surely, like, when you see a ghost train full of ghost passengers, that's more than 12. But that is, but is that a single haunting? Is that one ghost or is that Moldo ghost? Great question. Yeah, it's the question of ghosts versus hauntings.

I don't think we have the authority to adjudicate this, James. No, sorry, Ghost Ombudsman. We'll see him again in our dreams or our nightmares. No, I'm going to run us around the village, hop in the back of my little hatchback car, because we're in Kent. So it's a hatchback car with two spoilers, as in the part of the car, not, you know, telling you that...

Can a hatchback have spoilers? Where did the spoilers go on a hatchback? On the back, at the top of the hatch. I had a Mazda 3-2-3, which was Molto-Spoilered. Okay. And what does that do? Nothing. It just looks super cool.

Right. Okay, okay. You had a spoiler at the top and a spoiler in the middle. I call them ghost catchers. You can easily get a ghost caught on those spoilers. Oh, yes, yes. Or an urban legend very easily. So this winter, lawfolk, please check your spoilers for ghosts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're cold, ghosts are cold. It's like hedgehogs in... Bonfires, yeah, in bonfires. So first up, we're ragging it round. We're doing a wheel spin as we rip off down this Kentish country road. I think I did a robot horse. I was trying to do car. I think you ran over a horse.

That's the end of a car. That's a very smug robot horse. I was just trying to do wheel spin. Sorry. We are visiting the Colonel of the Woods. Oh. It's in Parkwood. Are we talking Colonel or Colonel Colonel?

Colonel. Colonell. Yes, the Army type. The Colonel of the Woods. The Colonel of the Woods. The Colonel of the Woods. The Colonel of the Woods. Oh, my wood.

Hey, you bush, you shouldn't be here in my woods. This is for trees only. A fir tree. A fir tree. the impact on wood. Oh, you can't park here. That's probably what the colonel would say. If people were trying to park and park wood.

Other things that Colonel of the Woods might say. It was formerly a small stretch of forested ground on the outskirts of Pluckley. Before it was promoted to Colonel. Well, no, the Colonel died in the woods. Straight in as an officer. The Colonel died in the woods that used to be there. The Colonel of the Woods. And his ghost is often seen walking there.

I see. For some reason, I thought the woods. were a Colonel. That makes a lot more sense. No, it's not Colonel Woods.

So that's Park Wood. Boom, we're going round two. Back in the hot hatch and we are ragging it round to Dickie Bus's

lane. Dickey Bus is a person, is not a bus lane. Dickie Bus is a person. Yeah, it's not a bus lane specifically for buses

that are, you know, on their way out. A little bit and, oh, we've got to Dickie Bus. So he's not wheeled, Dicay Bus. Whilst he is in a wheeled village,

He's just a regular person. And that was his actual name, Dickie Bus. And is it short for Richard Omnibus? Potentially. Potentially, he could be part of the Richard Omnibus, which I guess would go out on a Sunday, often subtitled and you can't turn him off. This was soon after World War I

and a schoolmaster died in these words and his phantom is occasionally still seen in those words. That's Dickie Bus. That's the Dickie Bus. on Dickie Buses Lane, but we don't know if the schoolmaster is called Dickie Bus. Right. Okay.

All right. So it's the ghost of Dickie Buses Lane, but it may not be the ghost of Dickie Bus. And we're going to go on to Fright Corner. Yeah, we're back in the Mazda 3-2-3. What kind of miles per gallon do you get? Sorry, just listener, by the way, I'm trying to do man talk.

I don't know what any of these words mean. What kind of MPG do you get on that baby, James? I don't remember because at the time, I did not care. Okay. What does it mean? No. Nobody knows.

Nobody knows. We're going to see the specter of the highwayman. There's a highwayman, and this highwayman had a special little trick. There was a hollow oak there, and the highwayman would hide in the oak till they heard a coach come a coaching down the road. They were to hop out, money of your life, etc., stand and deliver. get the money, and probably just go and hide back in the tree, avoid detection. However, one person walking along, they knew of this plan, they got the sword out, stuck it in the tree.

Boom, they pop up, yeah, they pop up pirated, the highwayman. Wow. You might say it's a case of my wayman or the highwayman. Oh, you should do. That doesn't actually make sense in this context, but we've talked about highwaymen a lot, and it just occurred to me. I'd never said that on the podcast. And now we have, so that's good.

It's your wayman or the highwayman. That doesn't work as well. It's your wayman or the stout yeoman. Ooh, good. Speaking of highways, should we hop back in that Mazda? So I just want to let you know how the nature of this ghost is that that spectral event is reenacted every night. So weirdly, this ghost is the ghost of someone that killed the highwayman, presumably. He's got his own murderer's ghost built into his ghost.

Well, he's not going to be visible. Because he's just going to be a dribble of blood coming out of tree stump. Is that normal? We could refer this question to the ghost ombudsman if we hadn't alienated him. Otherwise, I'd text the alien ombudsman, but I've been ghosting them for the course this month. So, yeah, I don't know how that works as a ghost. Presumably, this is a ghost that isn't like a ghost with a mind, if you know what I mean. This is a classic STP.

We're just going to rag it out of town for a second. Back in the Mazda. Back in the Mazda. to the road from Pluckley to Maltman's Hill, there's a phantom coach drawn by four horses. Oh, nice. And on dark nights, most nights... That's how you can tell it's night in my experience.

It's supposed to be possible to hear the drumming of horses hooves and the sound of the coach rumbling along the lonely road. That's it. Just a coach noise. Just the sound. Okay. Just the sound noise. There is the ghost of a pipe-smoking woman

who apparently burned to death in mysterious circumstances. Look, I'm not a detective, but I'm starting to put some clues together. Then just up the road from that, actually across the road from that schoolmaster ghost from earlier, a Dickie Bus Lane. Have we driven back to where we were before? There's not much to this village. In order to get all the way around it, we're going to have to go back on ourselves. I don't think we should be driving, really. We should have just parked and walks.

Well, we're switchbacking on ourselves, but we got to see these ghosts quickly. Oh, okay, okay. There's an old ruined mill, and the miller's ghost had said to wander. But only just before a thunderstorm. Oh, that's good. There is. We're going to back out of town again. We're zigzagging all over the place.

I probably could have found a smarter route. But we're going to see the ghost of the screaming man. Oh, yeah? What's he famous for? He was a worker who worked in the clay pit and brickworks that was there, and he was smothered when a wall of. of clay fell on him. His ghost, which is said to haunt the sight, screams in the same way as he did when he died, presumably muffled. Sorry. I was going to say, no, it's in bad taste,

but it's the first thing we were all thinking. We're going to Rose Court, which is haunted by the spirit of the former owner. Her ghost, though, very prompt, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, which is the time of day which she died. Then we're going up to Greystones and there's a phantom monk which haunts the grounds. And this monk is often seen with another ghost, the ghost from their house before at Rose Court. There seems to have been some sort of connection between them. What, the two ghosts hang out? Yeah. So he's, so I guess this monk is seen between four and five p.m. Because that's when she is seen. So I don't know. They're quite far away from each other as well on the map.

We would have got back in the car. Yes, unnecessarily. It's not that big. I'm looking at it on Google Maps now. And one of the streets is just called the street. But it's abbreviated to just ST. It was just the... And then we're going to go out of town to the manor house,

the dering. This is where the Derring family lives. Surrendon-Derring. Surrendon-Dering? Serendon-Dering. That's the manner of the Dering family. It is pretty cool. There's a bunch of ghosts of them.

There was a ghost of the white lady who appears to glide through the library. Is she a derring? Pretty ghost. Pretty the start of Ghostbusters. She is meant to be a dering. We'll dig into the dering ghosts when we flip over to Laura of the land. And our journey takes us to the Red Lady at the Church of St. Nicholas, which is haunted by the ghost of another lady dering. she was buried in a gown with a red rose in her hands

and she was placed inside seven lead coffins one inside the other. Not, not split. She wouldn't split. They bo-bushked the heck out of her. So she was in seven-led coffins, one inside the other. What were they, was, why, why? What were they worried about?

Why did she, they put her in seven lead coffins? Presumably, yes. Well, we'll get to that, actually. But for the minute, all I need you to know is seven lead coffins and then one oak casket, which presumably had a reinforced bottom, and that was buried in the vault under the church. And her ghost... A bit heavy this. Yeah, we use seven lead coffins, actually.

Her ghost, the red lady walks in the graveyard of the church. And then there have also been reports of another mysterious female figure wandering inside the church. And that may be Pluckley's newest ghost. But Alistair, that's the end of the Osborne section. Just want to say, it might not be its newest ghost. Oh. I'll fill you in on that later. First of all, I'm going to go into the Derrings via friend of the show, Laura of the Land.

In 1983, Alan Bignall has listed the numerous and richly varied company of ghosts reputedly seen in and around Pluckley. Do we know how tall Alan Bignall was? Because it would be good if he was Biggnell. It doesn't specify. It doesn't say. It should say. There are some quotes for him.

It becomes more and more difficult to find anyone who will admit to having seen or heard any of them referring to the ghosts. Oh. His red lady is from the 15th century who wanders around the family chapel in St. Nicholas's church and the churchyard. So he says that's the same ghost basically as Osborne.

Osborne was already published. That was 177. Orsborn Booker Ghosts. By the time 1983 comes around, and Alan, who was big and all, comes in and he basically has conflated the two church ghosts to be the same red lady. He says that that isn't the lady

who was born in the coffins. He reckons... I think you mean buried in the coffins. I hope you mean buried in the coffins. Oh dear. No. I think he said born in the coffins. No, he says that the white lady at the Dering Home was the one holding the single red rose

who sometimes appears in the churchyard and she, her story is that she was buried in four airtight coffins, three of lead and one of oath. Oh, that's hardly any. And the reason she was buried like that is because she was ever so beautiful and she died young

and her husband wanted to preserve her beauty. Weird. What? Oh, I mean, I get that you're obsessed and everything, but don't be creepy about it and what is the third lead coffin going to do? I don't know.

But the first two didn't. And apparently mysterious lights, hammering sounds and wailing voices have been reported as coming from the Dering Chapel. Do they sound like, why did you put me in lead coffins? It's weird. It's creepy.

Oh, it put me in a Tupperware or something. And in the 1970s, a group of psychic researchers spent a night in the vault in order to, you know, see what was going on. It doesn't seem like they'd turned up much and in the morning they told the vicar they'd the night had been quite boring

and they were actually quite glad that the vicar let his dog come in and play with them I don't have a dog I'm not a vicar I'm not the vicar I am a dog he said and they realized that he was the dog I'm the vicar dog ombudsman it sounds like you fell over when you said that I did fall over with the weight of that reference back reference hold on While you were dropping things, James, I was just looking up the derrings. Are you going to tell me about the daring manuscript? No. Apparently, the earliest copy of a Shakespearean manuscript of a play is the daring manuscript

and was found in the Daring House, as they did basically like an amateur production of Henry VIII. Huh? Part one. And two. Whoa. Yeah. That's a lot of lines. That's a lot of lines learned.

And what's delightful about it is it's all written by hand and Daring cut absolutely loads of it out who was just like, no, no, no, don't need that and seemingly wrote some of his own lines in to just sort of just, I just love the way the first copy of Shakespeare is a guy going like, I think there are a few improvements

we could make out. This is good, I could do better. It's a great first draft, well. But you've got to tighten this baby up. Wow, Zers. Yeah. It's written by Daring and a second hand but apparently I think we don't know

who the other person is who wrote it. Did Shakespeare? You reckon it was Shakespeare? I reckon it was probably Shakespeare. Had a hand in it. I'm sure he was involved in like he came up with the idea for the play and stuff. From an original story, an idea. Well, no, actually, I wasn't going to say about that.

I was going to talk, I was taking us over to the Haunted South by Joan Foreman, published in 1978, this edition, published by Gerald in 1989, one of my favorite publishers of spooky-based boots. Oh, yeah, Gerald. Gerald! It sounds like, you know, in the world where David Bowie's played by Harry H. Corbett? Yeah, yes, the world of this podcast, yeah. That sounds like what his character name was in that world's version of Labyrinth.

Oh, Gerald. Oh, Gerald. The Govlin King. Oh, Gerald. Anyway, this is more like a road trip. book by Joan Foreman is basically the on the road for the 1970s hortology generation. Oh, that sounds great. She drives around the south of England looking for ghosts in very much a Hipsley Cox manner, who also did a book that's basically a travelogue book for going to ghosts.

As I mentioned earlier, she describes Pluckley as the wheeled village long noted for the number and variety of its ghosts. And her voice is very strong through this. She goes, famous, more likely, for Pluckley is featured in a television program and more than one book. Well, then we're going to agree with that. She comes to the conclusion, after talking to some of the villages inhabitants, that the Red Lady, the Screaming Man, the Watercress Woman, and their companions no longer walk if they ever had. And this is 1978.

Have I forgotten about the Watercress Woman already? I don't know what the Watercress Woman is. I can't find the Watercress Woman anywhere else. Watercress Ombudsman. He's checking out some rocket. He's checking out some mislabeled lambs lettuce. A bit of alfalfa. It's just not peppery enough.

Yeah, and this is only 1978 that these tales are being called into question. Really? As she goes on to say. However, the legendary coaching horses, in this case a coach in a pair, which is said to occasionally thunder down the main street, has been seen in comparatively recent times. Once, by a racing driver, once by a local farmer. So I'm thinking they've got both sides covered.

Racing driver, for the car bit, farmer, animal bit. Yep, absolutely. I know what they're talking about. Yeah, the Yun and Yang of Kent, a racing driver and a farmer. She does say that she spoke to a local man called Mr. Coles, or Cowles, C-O-W-L-E-S, who told her two authentic stories of ghosts in the district. So first up, Alistair, do you want the real story of the Pluckley ghosts? Yeah, can I get some real ghosts?

No more of this propaganda, please, James. Okay, so a man, his wife, their son and a stepdaughter, presumably one of theirs, took a small cottage outside the village, and then they each saw, in turn, the figure of a young girl dressed in the costume of the late 1890s. And the girl seemed to be about the same age as the stepdaughter and was often mistaken for her. And she says, the curious factor here is that apparently the members of the family saw the ghost independently and did not confide in each other about their experiences. Ooh.

And it was not until the stepdaughter... Like a bit of independent corroboration. Well, yeah. Now, the stepdaughter started dying of tuberculosis. That sounds like a bad way of saying it. The stepdaughter died of tuberculosis. And when she was on her deathbed, she told her mother what she had seen. And then all the stories came out.

And after the girl's death, the family seems to have left the district. So further details are unfortunately unobtainable. That's the first ghost story. The second one concerns a well-known writer whose name he preferred not to give me, who lived in a small village on the outskirts of the village. Now, this man just lived with his aunt, who lived with him and acted as a housekeeper.

Here, what happened? A collector for the RSPCA called the cottage, and as she was going, she casually says goodbye to the elderly lady seated in the armchair in the sitting room. Oh? And very much like the vicar from earlier. It was a dog.

No, the vicar was a dog. There was no lady sat in the armchair in the sitting room. So that was a bit of a surprise to him. Also, there was, I don't know what this old lady was bench pressing, but there was a big strong ghost upstairs as well. I don't know if it's the same ghost. Do you even lift old lady ghost? Or it's a different ghost.

But this writer was going up to his bedroom and he heard the sound of footsteps within. He attempted to open the door, but it appeared to be locked from the inside. inside. So he's like, right, there's a burglar. He's rinsing my stuff from a bedroom. Let me in, you burglar. He grabs the only weapon close to hand, a cricket bat, and he slams against the door. He shoulder barges the door. The door pops open. He half falls in. Only half falls at this point. Then he fully falls onto the bed as he's thrown by an unseen force. Wow. You threw a whole guy. Yeah, threw a whole writer with cricket bat. Actually used his own strength against him. Maybe, yeah, maybe she was a Tai Chi old lady.

Yeah. So, as it says here, not surprisingly, the occupants did not remain long in the house and they left. And they were visiting the village sometime afterwards and the writer called in the local shop and he must have mentioned what happened because the shopkeeper... Said, oh, yeah, that's all Bill, the tossing ghost. Oie, stop reading ahead.

Is that it? No, not close. The shopkeeper said that there had been... been a similar encounter, a teenage daughter of a previous occupant had been tied up in the blanket and chucked around the room. Oh dear. And a local man overheard this conversation commented, oh, that'll be Billy Bandon, the poor law man. He finally went potty. He was called Billy. Billy the tosser. Wow. Yeah, the poor law man. Billy toss. Mm, Billy tosses. So, Alistair, that is a whistled stop tour of the ghost that we all know of Pluckley.

we hardly had time to whistle there were so many stops. Yeah, those are the ghosts of Pluckley that you've heard of and a little couple I think you might not have. Yeah, I appreciate you doing some sort of underground ghosts.

Ghosts are just starting out. You know, they don't have the PR. They don't have, yeah, they don't have the suits behind them. They've just got the love for bundling people up and tossing them around in a room. Exactly.

You know, and I just want to bring that to a bigger audience. Yeah. Good for you. I was going to say, you're like a Radio 1 DJ, and then I thought about how many of them have been prosecuted, and I've decided not to say that. Good. Because the other one's Noel Edmonds. Yes. Yeah.

Silla and Chalibdis. I don't know how you pronounce their names. I've only read the book, but yeah, the whirlpool and the sea monster. How do you choose? Come and then, hit me up. Hit me up with some scores for naming. Well, I was very pleased that that ghost was called Bill. Somehow I knew it. It just came to me, James, the name Bill. I was getting a name. There's Dickie Bus. I'm impressed with myself there. Dickie Bus. I liked Dickie Bus. I liked the street. It could be called The Saint. It could be the same. It's also a 70s TV show. The Red Lady. The White Lady. The Monk. We've got a power range as worth of differently coloured people, yes. Yeah, I'm assuming the Colonel is going to be in khaki, or green.

at least. The miller's called the black ghost of the miller. I'm afraid the smoking woman is potentially yellow. The clay pit guy's probably reddy brown. The Lady of Rose Court. She's pink. Of course, yeah. Greystones man, monk. So yeah, we've got the full, might save that. Yeah, I remind you this category is names and that counts in no way towards it. Just remember all those things and we'll come back. to them again. Names. Yes, Dickie Bus. Dickie Bus. Okay, Dickie Bus is carrying a long way on the Dickie Bus.

Bing, Bing. It's big and all. Yeah. And yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. The Weald Village. The Wheelbillage. It's a three. It's a fair, a fair middling three for names. Yeah, a lot of them don't have any names at all. That's fair enough. Okay, second category.

Supernatural. Well, there were a lot of ghosts. And I have to say, yeah, the last two I'm most impressed by, because they seem like real ghosts, not just a man who screams like he screamed when he was drowning in mud. That doesn't make any sense. Mm-hmm. So they thought those ghosts through. Phantom coaching horses. That is corroborated by a racing driver and a farmer. Yeah, racing driver and a farmer who would never normally agree. Well, I mean, how could I give it fewer than five points, James? It's the most haunted village, according to, as far as I can tell, itself.

1989 Guinness Book of Records, which has got to be peak Guinness Book of Records. Everybody knows, okay, look, I don't know if I'm slandering the Guinness Book of Records here, but everybody knows the way it works is you just pay the Guinness Book of Records, and they just come to you and say, like, yeah, it's you. As long as you do it. That's, it's basically a, yeah, you've got to do, you have to do the thing. But, like, ghosts aren't real, so they just, it's just a scam, isn't it? What?

They don't actually, like, the Guinness Book of Records didn't check every other village in England. to see how many ghosts they had before crowning Pluckley did they? I don't know. I don't know with their methods. I'm telling you, I don't believe they did. I don't think you get to be in every kid's stocking in 1989 without doing some sort of rigorous fact-checking of your ghost stories. You reckon?

That's what I'm, that's what I'm reckoning. All right. If only there were some kind of ombudsman, we could ask. Finally, after however many years we've been doing this, seven or something, we've worked out what the dynamic is. you are a believer in the Guinness Book of Records, whereas I am a Guinness Book of Records skeptic. Are you saying that guy with the nails, their clip-ons?

No, I'm not saying that the guy with the beard of bees didn't really have a beard of bees. You're going to tell me their wasps. He just used sugar pox, James. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that none of the stuff in the Guinness Book of Records happened. I'm just saying I don't think it's actually an authoritative document of reality.

Wow. Well, we couldn't check it back in them days because the internet was a madman's dream, a Guinness Book of Recordsman's nightmare. Yeah, the only way to get facts was in those book of quotes and facts, which now we realize it were 90% wrong, or the Guinness Book of Records,

or bad Christmas crackers that didn't have jokes in, but would have a fact. Or the monthly series tree of knowledge. Oh. Which is where you would get the internet sort of delivered to you in pamphlets and then you put them in your big binder.

Was it tree of knowledge? I don't know. I had treasures of the earth. Ooh. Did you get gold? I think you got a very small amount of gold. Yeah, topaz. There's lots of topaz, tigers eye, iron pyritees, or fools gold, of course. Plenty of that.

Fools gold is very useful for starting a fire. Is it? Yeah, bang a bit of flint against that, mate. Oh. I didn't know that. I knew that you could quarts and quarts and you created sparks. Yeah, but no, yeah, Flint and Fools Gold, that's, they found a guy in a, one of them bog men. They found a bogman. That people, you know the bogman, they'll probably, I bet, you love getting sent pictures of the bogman because they all had ginger hair, right?

Yeah, yeah, they all look exactly like me. Well, the bogman, one of the bogmen had a little satchel, and in his satchel was, yeah, Fools gold and Flint to start. fires. It looks so relaxing to be in a bog. They always look just lying down with your face like a deflated rugby ball, just all squished. Oh, I've really nice little bog nap. I suppose maybe it's like a mud bath, but it got out of hand. It's just, but you can tell he wasn't screaming as as the Pete covered him because he was relaxed. Otherwise, you would hear the ghost's noises. I'd love a little nap in a bog. So in conclusion, five out of five. It's five out of five for supernova. Yes. Okay. This category is the Mandela effect, or in this case, the Osborne-Uzborn effect.

Right, which I'm sure we've brought up on the podcast before. It's where people quite wrongly believe that they've slipped into a parallel universe because they prefer to believe that than believe they had misremembered or misunderstood an event from the past. Or yeah, or read something wrong on the internet. See, Alistair, I don't want to hark back too far to this because I don't want to have too much. slander in the main episode of the podcast. But if everyone just read the Guinness Book of Records, we wouldn't have these sort of misrememberings. Everyone would just have the same amount of knowledge. See, what you're saying at this point is you're against the proliferation of knowledge in general outside of the Guinness Book of Records. Yes. Tallest man, that American guy with the glasses, so on. Don't look at the Chinese guy that saved the dolphins. So,

So, yeah, Berenstain Bears, Bernstein Bears. Just the whole title of it, apparently the official title is all about ghosts, the world of the unknown, when everyone knows, its name is the Osborne Book of Ghosts, or the Usbourne Book of Ghosts. Yes, of course, yeah. It was one of the

very first books from Usbourne, by the way. This is what made the Osborne empire. Hmm. The next is the fact that every account of the amount of ghosts in the town undermines the ghosts by saying

no one believes in them. There are 12 ghosts in this town, no one believes in them. Nobody believes in them. That feels like a dislocation of reality there. And then the final one is, of course,

the Watercrest Woman. And because she appears in one of the accounts, but not in any of the others. She's referred to as if that's, you know, the bit that everyone knows. I think some of those

are stretches as examples of the Mandela Effect, James. So I'm going to say it's three. That's not how I remember it. Don't you, The Simpsons Japan episode, me about this? That was, well, they never went. The Simpsons never went to Japan.

What are you on about? So it's a three. It's a three out of five. So it's a five out of five. That's great. Final category, Alistair, is all the colors of the rainbow. Whoa, James. This one's coming out of the blue, you might say.

That's just one of the colours. That's one of the colours that is not represented today. It's one of the many colours you won't be hearing in this list of the colours that we thought of earlier. Yeah, just to redo that again, we've got the green kernel, we've got the red lady, we've got the white lady, we've got a rose lady, we've got a monk from greystones, we've got a clay pitman, we've got the black ghost of the miller, we've got a charred woman. And... Not a charwoman. No. That's all the colours of the rainbow, right?

I don't know that it's all of the colours of the rainbow. It's many... It's many colours. But is it all the colours of the rainbow? According to the song, red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. It's purple and violent and blue? What would orange be...

Purple and orange and blue? Is that what people are saying? That's what we're singing when we're playing car rainbow. Sorry, you're saying purple, orange blue? In the spectrum, why would orange be there? Between purple and blue? It's like, imagine the alphabet song. Yeah.

But it goes... In a different order. A, G, B, 7, F and W. Is this... Do people actually... Are you just trying to get more points for Mandela Effect retroactively? Purple and orange and blue. It's purple and violet and blue, which, to be fair, are all basically the same.

Rare and yellow and pink and green. Purple and orange. Red and yellow and pink and green. Purple and orange and blue. Pink obviously isn't actually in the spectrum. obviously. But this is the car rainbow. It's just pale red.

What do you mean the car, the car rainbow? You know, when you go along, you have to see all the different colours of the rainbow in cars. Well, you could have a violet-colored car. Nobody's got orange cars. Yeah, they do. A surprising amount of people do.

More people than have pink. There's a lot of orange about. Hey, when I was in school, it was red, red and yellow and pink and green, purple and violet and blue. The rainbow song, I can sing a rainbow. I can sing a rainbow, James. Not in key.

Oh, I can sing the rainbow. I wouldn't sing orange. I mean, all of them are, all, everywhere's telling me it's orange and purple and blue or purple and orange and blue. Orange and purple and orange and blue. Yeah, Silla Black even sung it and Silla sings a rainbow. And she was originally Silla White. Priscilla White, yes. Before she was sucked up from the ground by a bowerog.

I think this is Lord of the Rings. I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I'm doing Lord of the Rings. Although he was grey and became white. And she was white and she became black. I don't know. It was in the film Pete Kelly's blues. Again, the music rather than the colour.

And it was written by Arthur. Well done, Arthur, for thinking of the names of some colours there. Great work. Well, I was minded to give you a four because it wasn't really all the colours. But now... But now you're telling me the list of colours is different to how I remember it. I feel like I owe you an extra point for the Mandela Effect category. So I'm going to have, I didn't, I didn't give you five, but now I am going to, and it's five.

And five for rainbow? And for the first time, five for rainbow. Yes. For all the brackets, all the colours of. Thank you very much. You're very welcome, James. Well, I think, even though it's quite well known, I think we brought a little bit of Lawboy Jenny Sayquhar. I think we did. We certainly did.

If you would like to hear some bits of bonus, and if you enjoyed that bonus episode that goes out on Patreon.com forward slash Lawmenpod. Some people might call it outtakes. Some people might call it the bad bits. We don't listen to those kind of voices. We don't listen to that kind of feedback. You also get access to the Lawfoke Discord where you can chat with the like-minded lawfogga. Thank you very much to everybody who already does support us. in that manner. Hey, thanks to Joe for editing this episode. Cheers, Joe. And thank you, the listener, for listening.

Bye. See you next time. Are you saying Usborn or Osbourne, James? Usborne. I invite the listener to go back and see if that is what James was saying, because I don't think so. But, hey. Osborne.

Osbourne. What are you saying Osbourne? Yeah, because it was spelt with an O. Is it? Right up until Nelson Mandela was assassinated in prison.