This Paranormal Life - Hunting Ghosts in a Medieval Bone Dungeon - The Haunting of Chillingham Castle

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

LONDON LIVE SHOW⁠⁠⁠ https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cheerfulearful/2084541 How many Human Bones is too many to have in your home? If you answered anything other than ‘one’, take yourself straight to jail because that was a trick question. And yet for one curious homeowner in Northumberland, England, even getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night is almost impossible without also tripping over a human femur. That’s because Chillingham Castle, one of Britain’s most haunted buildings, has a dark medieval paranormal history of death, torture, and deceit. And while the house has been restored over the years, they have made sure to leave its bone pit intact...Time for Kit and Rory to investigate! Become a commune member to get access to bonus episodes: ⁠https://thisparanormallife.com⁠ Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Researched by ⁠Ewen Friers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the 1800s and we're in a castle on the ancient border of Scotland and England. Inside the pantry, precious silverware was hidden away and on this night a footman was standing guard to protect him. Just then, a woman approached him, pulling him out of his daydream. Oh, you gave me a fright there, ma'am. Is anything the matter? Ma'am? She stood in the moonlight with one arm against the wall, but she didn't look well. She pointed weakly to the sink. He thought she might be might be. she must be a guest. How can I help, ma'am?

Can't you sleep? Eventually, a weak word left her lips. Water. Water, of course, ma'am. Right away. It was when the footman turned away from the woman to fetch the water that he glanced at the corner of the room and the door and realized something.

But hang on a bloody second, I'm locked in here. For security, the heavy door to the pantry was locked from the inside every night. So how did this woman get in? He spun around to ask her and she had completely vanished. Legend has it, this weakened woman, gasping for air, was the ghost of a victim of poisoning. From some time in this castle's Game of Thrones' ass history, the pantry ghost is only one of many that haunt Chillingham Castle to this very day.

But why is this place so haunted? Will getting her some water unlock a kind of Xbox-style achievement? And why does Lord Chillingham sound like my MSN? username from 2004. Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Hello! And welcome, welcome, welcome to This Paranormal Life.

This is the weekly, long-running comedy podcast for every Tuesday. Myself Kit, this guy, Rory, investigate a different paranormal tale deciding whether we think it's real or not. How are you doing today, Rory? Where do we start today? Oh my God, we have only begun our investigation already. You're telling me there's a pantry ghost. There's a pantry ghost

In Chillingham Castle That sounds like the kind of lie My parents would have to invent To stop me a chubby child Raiding the pantry every night Eating 3am Oreos There is literally a serial killer There's a man inside there

Hiding by the Lucky Charms Who's going to eat you if you keep eating them Whoa Yeah Were you a snacks household Because you've heard this discourse About whether you were a snacks household or a ingredients household?

We were kind of neither out of necessity because I would eat anything. Okay. I thought it was going to be really dark and you're like, we couldn't have filled any food. I once just ate a whole bag of dry pasta. That's giving ingredients household, I will say.

Phil, are you aware whether you were snacks or ingredient household? I think we were in the ingredients household. Okay. Which is like good in the long run, but not fun at the time. snack out, though.

No, no, it's just, now you're a grown man. Yeah, we were ingredients A-F. No crisps, no biscuits. My parents would always betray us at Christmas time where you would like, you get given like a, you know, a tin of chocolates or whatever,

like roses or quality street, whatever. They would basically leave that shit by the door. It wouldn't even come in the house where then the next guest that come along, they'd be like, hey, take this with you on the way home. We don't need it. No, no, no, no, we don't need it. And we're like interstellar,

banging on the window. No, no. Please. The only chocolate. Your house growing up was kind of like an old medieval tavern. There was a couple of ghosts. Well, yeah, there was a couple ghosts. There was the door to nowhere, which kids told me I'm not allowed to talk about on the podcast.

But also, there was just always a big pot of soup going. And like every time I came. That is medieval tavern. Even if I walked in for like three minutes, your mom would kind of float in. Who kind of does sound like a ghost as well? she'd be like, Rory, will you have some soup? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I actually will have some soup. The crazy thing is that is not not how she sounds.

It's exactly how she sounds. Yeah, she points weekly to the stove. Soup. Rory. Good to see you, Mrs. Greer. I'm going to take your son to the car park so we could smoke weed together. No, please. Push past her.

Here's an ingredient for you. Rolling papers and dirtweed guys we have a huge investigation to get into into you guessed it a haunted castle at Chillingham in the north of England or the south of Scotland

depending what way you look at it but before we dive into that a reminder to head on over to this paranormal life.com to join the commune the commune is what we call the community here at this paranormal life people who've been listening to the show for years if you head over to this paranormal life.com

You can get access to hundreds of bonus episodes available only to members, hundreds of behind the scenes after party episodes where me and Roy shoot the shit every Friday and talk about whatever is going on in our world and sometimes just argue generally. And there's a ton more where that came from. News, first dibs on live tickets. There's a live show in this October, by the way, Sunday 11th, get the tickets as well. Newsletters and more. This is our haunted castle and there's rooms for everyone. Yeah. No soup.

There is no soup. Do not come expecting any sort of... There's hot water sometimes. Nutritional. Nothing to go in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because we do, we do end up using giant enormous caldrons for certain ceremonies,

which the less I talk about, the better. B.YOS. Bring your own soup. This paranormal life.com links in the description of this podcast. Let's get into it. And if you disobey us, you become soup. Sorry, into the podcast. Seven day free trial, though. What happens if you don't,

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Rory, as I mentioned, Erie Chillingham Castle sits on the ancient and turbulent boundary between two historic rivals, England and Scotland. This imposing fortress has occupied the land since the 12th century and has seen it all, with centuries of bloody battles and medieval dramas. And trust me, medieval drama is very different to influencer drama. Its history is so bloody that Chillingham is now called one of the most paranormal places in beautiful. Britain. Bill, please pull up our first image of the day just to give Rory a little taste of what we're getting into. This is an image of Chillingham Castle. Wow. Hey, this is beautiful. Guys, what I'm looking at right now is what you can imagine is your classic castle. We got the spires. We've got the center bit. We've got some walls and we got the little, what do you call that? The little zigzaggedy

bits on top. Castle toppings. I don't know what you call. those. Not turrets, but ramparts, get, damn it, I don't know. You know,

sometimes we investigate a castle. We've investigated castles even in places like Ohio. And it's like, castle is doing, the word's doing a bit of heavy lifting.

Now that's a fucking castle. That's a castle. And we're really seeing some of it. That looks like where they film a season of traders, doesn't it? Yeah. Rory,

as our listeners know, strong testimonies are the bedrock of all good TPL episodes. from ideally academics, officials, law people. They all make great witnesses. But we actually trust one source above all else, our listeners. No group is more trustworthy, even if that's

just because they're so stoned. If they lie, they'll think everyone's mad at them and they'll cry. So whenever listener Ben Sharon emailed us about his visit to an extremely haunted location, we had to take a closer look. Okay. Ben writes, hey guys.

Hey guys, love the podcast. I think from that first line, we can see how good Ben's judgment is. I was wondering if you would do an episode on Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, England. It's supposedly extremely haunted. They say, if you take anything from the grounds, you'll be cursed. Ah, you know, and that's something that we have seen in a lot of different important sites before, whether it's taking things from the pyramids of Egypt to taking things from various other holy sites. if you take a piece of it, you've disrespected the land,

and often you bring a curse home with you too. Which is interesting, because we're kind of jumping ahead, but Chillingham, very famous for hauntings, less famous for the curse. So this is kind of a scoop from Ben, our listener. But his email goes on, doesn't end there. I went there with my parents as a child, and we took some firewood from just outside.

When we got back home, the ceiling in our kitchen had fallen in. Damn. Not that. That curse works fast. Because I, for a second there, I was like, is he going to say, I took somebody's BMW from the parking lot? And then next thing I know, the police were at my doorstep. It's like, you stole a car, buddy.

But this is, that's pretty bad. I mean, in his defense, maybe he didn't know about the curse originally. I don't know why you're stealing shit from an old castle, to be fair, that isn't just an old sword or something. I don't blame Ben. This is pure dad behavior. You can see it now. them go in. It's like, look at that perfectly good firewood. We should bring that home. Your mom is like, we're literally on a guided tour right now. We're trying to have a nice day out.

We've got plenty of firewood at home. Just please leave it. And he's like, no, I'm going to put it in the car. You guys go on. I'll catch up. Just ruining the whole family day. He just got that caveman DNA inside his brain. Look, dads, when they, there's times when they revert to their factory settings. Airports. They're like, give me the fucking passport. I don't trust you guys at all. Give me the fuck passports. Barbecues for some reason. Get off the grill. Step aside. You haven't got your credentials. Me, man.

Me cook meat. Yeah, me cook the meat. It might just be those two situations, actually. And then men, they always kind of pat themselves on the back being like, God, you know, man, we might not do all the cooking around the house, but we're certainly good at barbecues. And then usually if they have a wife, their wife is like, yeah, well, who bought all the other ingredients to buns for the burgers, all the salad, prepared all the sides, you know, set the table. they're like, yep, we love putting on a barbecue.

It's like, all you did was heat the meat. Every hot dog is a stick of black ash. Yeah, yeah. You're welcome. It's just like being a caveman. Time for the old guy to take a rest. You can clean up, can't you, honey? Yeah, again, such a dad's thing, falling asleep at 2 p.m.

After ruining everyone's day? On the bank holiday Sunday, yeah. Having two stella's and asleep. My work here is done. You didn't do anything. Didn't I? I saw that tweet once. It's like, children, help your mother.

Bro, help your wife. Do something. Ben concludes his email. We haven't got very far today. There are plenty of others with crazier stories than me too, so I think this would make a great episode. Hope you consider it. Thank you, Ben.

Ben has our story off to a great start, but we'll see what else we can find out about Chillingham Castle, see whether we think it's really haunted or not. Let's do it. This thing goes back to 12th century. This was where Edward I stayed before he went to war with William Wallace, aka Mel Gibson. The castle was repeatedly attacked and seized by Scottish armies and raiding parties. It was written about everywhere from Royal Archives to the works of Shakespeare.

Even King Charles, the old one, not the new one, stayed there before he got his head chopped off. But gradually the castle fell into disrepair and by the time troops were stationed there in World War II, it's. was a wreck. Thankfully, one Sir Humphrey Wakefield, who will see later on in this episode, he restored it to its former glory so that tourists can now visit it. But maybe what he wasn't expecting

is how many paranormal investigators now want to stay in it. I bet he's livid, because that is someone who does not sound like he enjoys commoners to visit a castle. Would you say this dude's name was? Sir Humphrey Wakefield. Yeah. Yeah, he's not going to be excited

when a bunch of Ghostbusters turn up on his property. Yeah, he's a pretty funny character. We're going to get to him in a bit. Look, there are many ghosts attached to this castle, but maybe the most famous spirit connected to the castle. Is the radiant boy, sometimes known as the blue boy. Okay, don't like where this is going.

In the pink room, a bedroom at Chillingham, guests have reported hearing a child crying, often accompanied by flashes of blue light, hovering above their bed. Whoa. In some cases, a boy manifests in the room. That's not good. That's hard to explain when the maid walks in.

If it's just like, housekeep, it opens up. The boy just got here. I want to make that clear. He was. I didn't bring the boy. That's where I'm with you. I think that's weird. It's like, good Lord, why is he naked?

I don't know. He just got to here. He's up in with no clothes. Why is he blue? Ask that question. He's see-through. Oh my God. Get out of here.

You little f***. The boy's like, fuck with it, he's like dancing. No, no, no, no. He's like, what are you doing with a dancing boy? Did you pay him to dance? No! I didn't pay him to dance.

I just got here. What do you want? Here, take my soul. Take my soul. Take my money. Get out of here, kid. He's like, oh shit.

Doing like the worm. How'd you... When did you die? How do you know what the worm is? He's hitting the neney. Yeah, imagine Michael Jackson staying at Chillingham Castle back in the day,

just being like, where's the little boy's room? Dib's on that one. Jesus. I'm saying a little boy room. Sorry, I meant, they say little boy room, I meant pink room. That's where I'm staying.

He's a ghost. It's fine. No, it isn't. That's not a good excuse in court. We learned that. Who the boy is slash was is unclear. Some legends say he was an Elizabethan era spy, caught smuggling secret documents across the border.

The tales say he was either locked. walked away or murdered by the inhabitants of chilling. Damn. Indeed, something of this mystery appeared to be solved when in the 1920s they renovated the pink room. Quote, the bones of a child surrounded by decaying fragments of blue cloth were found behind the wall. Oh my god, they found boy bones? According to another source. The bones in his fingers had been worn down to nubs, indicating he desperately tried to scratch his way out.

That's horrible. That is horrible. That's like the grimmest thing we've ever said on this podcast before. We're in medieval times, motherfucker. You were just pretending to be him doing the worm, knowing full well what was coming next. At least I didn't know where this was going. He wouldn't be doing the worm. You were like, what you think that's funny?

The boy died. The boy died, you piece of shit. I just want to point out, that's a cool, creepy legend. That sounds like a creepy pasta. I don't think that can happen. I don't think your bones can be worn down. to nubs. Think about that. How would not to be gruesome, but how would you be trying to scratch your way out for so long that you hit the bone and then grind down to...

I don't know how... I don't know. But did they find the bones? They find the bones, for sure. So that's real, but the nub part... I just don't know if the nubs is real. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. Check. Greatcastles.com writes, they were given... The bones were given a Christian burial. and thereafter, the radiant boy was seen no more. Until that is, Sir Humphrey began letting out the room. Some guests complain of a blue flash that shoots out of the wall in the dead of night.

They often attribute it to an electrical fault, but Sir Humphrey is quick to point out, there is no electricity in that part of the house. Wow, to this day, it's all candlelit? Sorry, in that part of the wall. So, I don't know. Oh. I don't know. There is electricity in the room.

Right, right, okay. So, I mean, that's pretty cool. It seems like he's somewhat at peace. If he's really not appearing that much anymore, like that idea. We've seen that pattern many,

many times over episodes in the past. You give, you lay the soul to rest. And then that solves things. Somewhat. Hopefully most of the time. Yeah, he's not going to heaven,

though, clearly, which is worrying. Look, sometimes this sounds like a laugh. And sometimes it seems like I'm just making stuff up. Phil, don't show me the bones. Let's see the next piece of evidence.

Don't show me the bones. Just to show you I'm not messing around. Here is the dungeon. Here's Humphrey. A very proper dungeon for keeping prisoners in, but come through and have a look. That's the beginning of the passage, which linked up all the towers.

Maybe I'll get around to it one day. But in here, see that amazing thick door, a great sort of thick oak door, all of one piece of oak. amazingly strong. And in here you see where pathetic people have scored the wall with the days, I suppose, the days I'm staying here,

two inch long grooves in the wall and after about, invariably, after about 40 days they get paler and paler and paler. And here is sort of a treen drop and I opened up the stone channel but I find bones there and so I didn't dig anymore. What do you?

But beyond that, there's another drop where we found minimal bones. Really chilling and terrifying to be caught in here with that mighty oak door. Is this Humphrey Dumfrey? Is this... Sir Humphrey Wakefield. Oh, he's way too cool about the amount of bones in this castle. If people were watching this video, he's like, and here's the bone pit. And the camera points down into a pile of bones.

bones. It's like the Zarlaq pit. There's some monster down there. It's from going and spitting out the bones. Like, I guess if they're that old and it's a castle that was used for war, then there's not a point in... Right. The bones are fine to stay there. I guess, maybe, but it still feels so wrong.

There's something so, like, relaxing about the RP accent. If you're American, that has received pronunciation accent. This is the way the queen talks and not very many people in Britain sound like that anymore other than very, very posh people but it's so good and just be like,

in this way to the dungeon and I carved a hole out of the stone and found bones and then we dug a bit deeper and found many more bones actually. He might be a ghost

genuinely. It's so it doesn't feel his voice doesn't sound dramatic enough for what he's saying. No. Did he, because he was also talking about at one point, when he was in the dungeon, he was talking about the scores on the wall that people have marked to indicate, you know, kind of how long I presume they have been stuck in the dungeon. Did he say pathetic people?

Yes, he did. He's like, you see sort of pathetic people who carved into the wall. Those dirty little peasants that got in my way, the king's way, whoever it was, they died here, pathetic, nasty people, really. Which I think, again, is kind of a posh person flex, that I feel like that might be the actual definition of pathetic, isn't it? Yeah, I don't know if I love this guy's vibes. I feel like if I met him, I'd really want to punch him. Can you describe him? Giant old posho is probably how it's in.

Well, do you want to mention the kilt and the moon boot? Oh, yeah. He's in a, like a full-cast boot. It looks like he's hanging together with duct tape. And then he's wearing a kilt as well. And he's wearing a kilt. So I don't think I need to punch him. I think he would turn to bones if I did that.

All right. That is enough about the little boy. God love him. Rest in peace. RIP. Rest in bones. R-I-B. R-I-B.

Let's move on to ghost number two. A more sinister spirit, somehow. The ghost of John Sage, aka Dragfoot. Oh. Sage was a minute. It's him. It's the guy with the boot. Damn, how'd I miss that?

That's crazy. You saw him. Shit, he's a ghost. Sage was a military lieutenant under Edward I, serving in the late 13th century. Having suffered a severe spear injury to the leg, crazy, rendering him incapable of battle, he found work as the chief torturer at Chillingham Castle. Chief torture is a job today only held by GP surgery receptionists. Hey you.

Now, a frustrated and debilitated man, Sage's cruelty was legendary, earning him another nickname, The Butcher of the Scots. The paranormal website, Little House of Horrors.com, describes how John Sage was a cold-blooded and ruthless torture and executioner

who had the time of his life in the torture chamber. Okay, yeah, not nice. He tortured more than 50 people a week for over three years. He probably tortured and killed over a thousand people in the castle. Oh, God. And actually, a reconstruction of his torture chamber, complete with gruesome interrogation devices,

is on show at the castle today. Phil, I think you can show a couple of images while I tell you what's going on. Oh, look at that, a lovely little rack. The rack. What a lovely rack. For those of you who don't know what the rack is, probably one of the most famous medieval torture devices,

which kind of looks like a wooden bed with ropes attached to an individual's arms and legs. and the ropes tighten and pull the guy apart. Yeah. It's pretty much simple as that really, isn't it? Yeah. Starting to think the boy got off light. A medieval history writer, Ali Templeton described Sage as a vile character who reveled

in his role as chief torturer. His reputation grew so fearsome that prisoners would try to commit suicide rather than face torture on his hands. Another little bit of torture device for you, Roy? Spiky chair. Yeah, classic spike chair. I don't think this is an a... an original spike chair from the 1500s.

I think they've put some spikes in a chair. God, I hope not. Yeah. But I like the attention to detail. They added some blood on it. That's good. Yeah, that was actually the moving guy from IKEA. He got it in there and he was like, oh, I'm so shattered.

I'm just going to see. Very loony tune style. Let me take a break. Yeah. It's unclear exactly how Sage died. But the two theories are pretty equally gruesome. He was either murdered by the. father of Elizabeth Carlton, a woman that Sage killed, or he was publicly executed when the

locals became fed up with him. He was deeply hated and I'm sorry, pause or fast forward if you're eating right now. The public cut off his fingers, toes, nose, lips and balls when he was still, sorry, genitals, well he was still struggling for breath. Ah, poetic justice, I guess. Did you wrongs make her right? Yeah. And modern visitors claim to hear Sage's

signature, step, drag, step, drag as his limping ghost passes through the castle. Okay, that's cool. Others hear his sadistic laughter over the strained cries of his torture victims. Less cool. We don't usually do a story as dark as this. I'm quite enjoying it. Yeah, I thought it was going to peek in the darkness at boy in the walls. Yeah. But now we've got a guy who's killed thousands of people inside of a torture dungeon.

This is haunted castles, guys. This is a lot of the time, what you're going to find is they have pretty bloody, horrible histories. Look, what were buildings used for back in the day, guys, it can't all be, it wasn't a ancient Holland and Barrett, was it? Right? It wasn't people buying vitamins. Yeah. It was torturing people, cutting their hands off. But these are only a couple of the most famous ghosts.

There's more we'll talk about later, but I didn't want anyone to get it twisted, that this is just some tourist attraction opened by Sir Humphrey or that there's just, yeah, a plaque with some of the names of some. regular degular ghosts and who knows if anyone's even seen them. There are ghost sightings not just from 80 years ago, but also check out this experience posted to Reddit only seven months ago by user OUU. Oh, you. Hello all. I stayed in Chillingham Castle these past two nights.

Craziest experience ever. The castle and its grounds are mesmerizing. We did the ghost hunt last night, and while it certainly was creepy, nothing compares to what we saw tonight. My brother and I decided to take a walk around the castle grounds, in the dark. Brackets, idiots, I know. It was like something out of a horror film.

We wandered around for a while and walked on the outskirts of the hanging trees. I turned to my left and saw a bright, shadowy thing on all fours walk down the hill to my left. What the hell? I asked my brother, What the fuck is that? He turned and saw it immediately. As we were looking at it, it stopped and looked at us. staring contest.

Not even five seconds later, it turned and floated, yes, floated away. Okay. I have never seen anything like it. We took maybe five steps after this and smelled this god-awful smell of something rotten. Was it sulfur or cabbage? We still have no idea. It was beyond nauseating. We made a speedy dash out of there and went back to our apartment.

Wow. We've tried Googling anything about animals roaming about at night and there's nothing Can anyone give me an insight into what it could have been? Other than that, we spotted a few creepy figures in our photos, I'll include them. I had the most wonderful experience of speaking to Sir Humphrey himself. He walked into the room behind us and sneaked up on us and started telling us about his castle and its history. Lovely man he was.

Make sure you look him in the eye when answering his questions, though. Great experience. Well, now I feel bad saying I'm going to punch him for sure. He gets a lot of good reviews. People really like him. Okay. I'm sorry, Humphrey. I jump to conclusions.

Look, before I pick up the phone proper, we don't know photos of the beast. Okay. But they did attach two photos, please, Phil, coming out next. Taken on the ghost tour, I guess. You might need to zoom it. Okay.

This is one of the photos we're slowly zooming into a window of a castle. I don't see... I do not see what they're talking about. You know, I didn't before, but now I'm kind of like, I guess it does look like a face with kind of like a almost like a... Not a hood or, what do you call it, almost like a veil, like a bride.

It's almost like wearing a little hat or a veil or something. This only worries me if they show this photo and they're like, here's one of the shadows we saw. And I'm like, okay, so this is nothing to me. And so that doesn't necessarily reflect well on the fact that you also said you saw a shadow creature. I also like to the side of that in the next window, it looks like there's the shadow of two hands going like this. Yeah, given the finger.

Yeah. All right, next picture, please. Phil. The next one's even worse, I feel. It's a screenshot from like Snapchat or something. Well, I mean, that's, what are you talking about? That's creepier. Yeah, it's creepy. But then, I don't know.

It looks like a Rembrandt painting or something. It's quite dark and moody. Yeah, it looks like a photo of a dark doorway, but it seems to be like faces and hands maybe or something. Yeah. Look, you know, we're not going to dwell on as too long. Is the Paradolia effect happening here? sure, do humans see faces where there aren't faces, sure. But yeah, like if you glanced

out of the corner of eye, you saw that, that's two people out there. Yeah. Yeah, if you squint. Yeah. Pity, we don't have a picture of the night beast that floated away. But pretty cool that someone like two people took to Reddit to be like, what the fuck was that? And they saw something mental. It was disappointing as well, because the way you told the story, you were like, we saw this creature standing in front of us. So we took about five steps in the direction. I was like, no photos. Okay, I thought that's where you were going.

But it's cool to know that this is a castle that it sounds like you can still visit and get haunted tours. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. They are open for bees. You're staying in the boy room. What? I'm not going in the boy room.

Oh, the boy's going to have it in for me now. I'm going into the room going, please don't be naked. Please don't be naked. So look, the radiant boy, dragfoot, the pantry ghost. These are three pretty distinct spirits, but it doesn't end there. Chillingham Castle is seemingly riddled with a whole army of other known ghosts. These include the minstrels, a band of merry musicians who can be heard performing in the banqueting hall. Damn.

That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. That you could just be tucking into a, you know, Renfair-style meal of turkey legs. And you just hear in the distance, get around, get around, get around, get around. I was like, what the, a whole band? That's, what happened to them? Yeah, bro, it can't be good.

Yeah, what? Trap door. You were shit. They hit one bum note, trap door. Yeah. Into the dungeon. I'm sorry, sire. We don't know.

No, any chapel rhone. Turn to bones. Turn them all to bones then. Pathetic. Crazy thing is, that was Sir Humphrey did that. That's the worrying thing about Sir Humphrey, is he's not not giving. He's locked people in the dungeon.

Yeah. You were a gardener that did a bit of a half-arced job. He's like, Pathetic. Let me show you an interesting corner of the castle, old boy. Posed the door. We also have Lady Grey, the ghost of the jilted Mary Berkeley,

searching for her cheating bastard husband, Lord Grey. Many of the bumps, bangs, noises, and indeed other more violent experiences like shoves and hits are attributed to a poltergeist called Timothy. I didn't see that one coming. Many of the voices screams and cries. That's like the way if you're in prison, you've got to worry about a guy called Tiny.

Yeah, oh my God, yeah. Many of the voices screams and cries are attributed to a spirit named Eleanor, a child spirit who interacts predominantly with women visitors. But very interestingly, for our listener and emailer Ben, there is one ghost known as the Spanish witch. How are they fitting all these motherfuck in here? This is crazy. I said 12th century, 800 years of huntings.

That's insane. And murder. The Spanish witch was allegedly executed in the dungeons quote, murder pit. The witch is supposedly the source of the curse. It said that right before she died, she cursed the castle. Anyone who would take anything from the castle would experience bad luck. Ah, okay.

Which is crazy if Ben didn't know that when he emailed us. That is insane. That we've solved it. It's also good to have a bit of a paranormal history here, you know, that it was a witch who was killed and, you know, and suffered ill fate here. put this kind of paranormal curse on the building. Because who knows, that could also just be the reason why there are so many ghosts.

Because a lot of locations have had bad things happen there, but there isn't this level of reported ghosts. Maybe that was it. It was like placing this curse on the building just means it's also cursed all the souls of the people who died here. It's definitely possible. Poor Timothy. He didn't want this.

Does he even haunt people or does he just? Oh no, you said he, he rough. He's the psycho. He's the psycho. I fell for it again. Yes. I was like, little Timothy wouldn't hurt us. He just chokeslammed an old woman into a cobblestone step. Imagine all the other goose having like an intervention, just being like,

being like, we need to have a house meeting. All right, everyone take a seat. Timothy's like, what about? This is obviously about you. You're going way too hard. We've all agreed on the code of conduct, all right? Owing. Who?

Yeah. You know. Appearing for a split second and then disappearing. Timothy threw a woman against the wall like Ftanos the other night. An old lady. She broke her back, Timothy. It's not all right. You can't be doing that because Timothy, they're going to knock down the castle if you keep doing this because it's a dangerous place.

You're going to make us all homeless here. We can't have it, Timothy. You wedgied a 90-year-old man. He had a heart attack. Are you happy, Timothy? He's sitting beside you now. He's a ghost. He's joined us.

You were a bit rough, Timothy. Timothy's like It was this time to go Timothy punches a hole through his head Oh Timothy He just gone here You are right though Rory

On this part of my life At the end of the day We do always have to come down A conclusion which we'll do in a little minute About what we think about a given case But it does help things To have some paranormal internal logic To how the whole thing operates

Yeah You know As you say You know Having dead people is fine Helps us understand why there might be ghosts, but even better to have a kind of, you know, a cause and effect. Did it, was there a voodoo doll of a person?

Was there a spell cast? Was there a cursed amulet? Yeah, yeah. Well, now that we have uncovered the concept of the curse, interestingly, the murder pit, which... Just stop there. Which Sir Humphrey didn't say it was called that. He was like, oh, yes, don't look down, old boy. Don't peek in my bone hole.

Okay, let's keep going. the murder pit. It now contains, quote, numerous objects that were taken by visitors and then they returned with the object. I'm like, fuck this. And they returned it to the murder pit. Did they take it from the murder pit? No, they took it from the castle and then they like threw it down there.

Oh. Because they got cursed. Damn. That's a thing that's happened, hasn't it? I believe, this is courtesy of friend of the show Dan Schreiber who we had on the podcast a a long time ago. He talks about how, I believe, I'm sure there's lots of places where this happens. I think he was talking about Uluru in Australia, the famous spiritual kind of indigenous homeland, a beautiful mountain, used to be called Ayers Rock before they went back to its real name.

And they had to make rules around it. You're not allowed to climb it and all this stuff. And they would always have to be telling people, don't take anything from it. It's a classic problem with like holy sight. People are just, they want a piece, they want a souvenir, to grab a rock, take it home.

And I believe Uluru had such a problem with this that people would take it knowing they weren't supposed to and then they would find the loads of bad luck happening to them. Wow.

Then they're like, it's because I took the fucking rock. So then they had so many people coming back to return rocks that they took that then the groundskeepers and the, you know, nature wardens

had to be like, please, if you've taken a rock, just keep it. Just keep it. Because you guys are f***ing up the ecosystem. You're taking rocks. You're holding on to them wherever you live. And you're bringing them back and they're all covered in like, you know, German bacteria, Japanese bacteria. Of all the places where you've been, you know, there's microbes, there's different things. Like, you're bringing it back to Australia. Yeah. What if you accidentally, you know, bring back some weird species that isn't supposed to be here? Damn. So people are feeling the burn of the curse so much that they're fucking up.

the ecosystem. And this isn't even like holy sites or locations like this because we've covered on the podcast before whenever people have returned artifacts or treasures to museums or their places of origin because of the bad luck that's befallen them. So true. It's a common thing, more common than you think. That's why we say, don't take anything. Don't touch. Yeah. Unless you're professional, like me and kid. And then you can take whatever you want. It's fine. Don't worry about it. The bad news is for Ben, he stole firewood. I don't know if that wood is still here. Oh, you think he burned it? It's firewood. What do you think he did with it? You think he stole, Ben, did you steal firewood? Ben didn't do anything. I'm telling you, it was his dad. It was definitely

his dad. Oh, you think he, his dad did it? There's no way Ben did. No young person is like, that's good firewood right there. I'm taking that home. Do you know how old Ben is? I was there with my parents as a child. Oh, no. So his dad took it. So his dad took it. Oh, Jesus. Has to be his dad. Now, it could be him as a little kid. But just when he said, not to get in the weeds, pun not intended, but because he said firewood, the word firewood just means would you intend to burn. Because if it wasn't going to be burned, he would have said, we took a stick. We took some wood. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's not good. Imagine you like you light a match and light the fire like, oh, that's brilliant.

Imagine that free fire. You see your, yeah, Timothy's spirit, just appearing behind you with a baseball bat. Fools. That's rough. That's rough. When your fire calls you a fool. Look, with what appears to be an endless cast of spirits haunting this castle, we have tons of anecdotal evidence online too. Thousands of comments accompany the many articles and video invents.

investigations of Chillingham Castle over the years. Commenters are quick to share their own eerie, miniature experiences of visiting the castle. The sheer amount of anecdotes is pretty impressive, but these accounts are largely unverified. And like a lot of ghost cases, there's next to no hard evidence, aside from the images we've just seen. That's tough. I did take a pretty deep look online to see if I could find any other images that people have shared online about their experiences. Phil, can we see one last photo taken by a visit? What the hell?

What am I looking at here? I don't know. When was this? What did you? Tell me something. When was this taken? Who took it? Someone shared it on like Reddit or Kora or a website.

Okay. I think Facebook actually. Well, that's incredibly disturbing. Pretty creepy stuff. We got to explain it. I mean, you wouldn't be happy if you saw that, would you? I mean, it's just a photo of a ghost for sure. It looks almost like a double exposure, like, because this does look like an all-timey photo.

Of a person? I don't know. Creepy. Yeah. It's creepy. It is creepy. I see the firewood. But look, of course, we should, that's true.

There's shit loads of firewood. That's so true. You can take some of that. I'd see why they took it now. There's loads. One time, I was with a bunch of friends from school, like after, like post-school years, and we went to his Mexican restaurant. Yeah.

And you stole a burrito. Some of, you know, the Mexican restaurant had like, you know, they stack up stuff around the place. you know, a bit like this. And one of the people we were with, she was like, oh, that's so fun that they just like leave out boxes of avocados for you to take.

And we're like, we're like, why did you take an avocado? She was like, well, there was like a box lying there of avocados. Like, it's free, right? And we're like, no. What did you talk? They were just storing ingredients

to make guacamole. She was like, oh, it's like, what are you going to do with a single avocado? What? No restaurant has ever done that ever. Just giving away free avocados at the door. That's so insane to fit to jump to that conclusion. I love that free avocado place.

Not a real place, not a real thing. It's insane. I'm kind of even weirdly related news. Actually, this isn't that, sorry, but I ordered delivery last night from this Lebanese place. I wanted to try it out. It looked good. Got this whole like falafel situation going. Came super quick.

Food was very good. But whenever I like unpacked it. It came with a free moped because I'm really. mug the deliveroo driver. There was a brown paper bag in it that said, you are loved. That's sweet. And in it was an orange. Oh, that's, well, that's, that's fine.

They've gifted you an orange out of love. I was like, I don't feel loved. I'll be honest. I was like, all right. Because I'm alone in a hotel room by myself eating Lebanese take away. There's just, I mean, I don't want to look a gift source in them. But it wasn't that nice looking of an orange. I'll be honest, it was a little small, it didn't look super juicy.

You are liked. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like maybe just a simple thanks. Right. Would have been more appropriate rather than I love you.

And then it would be great if you took the bags upstairs and then saw the message. You were like, this is actually really sweet. And then 10 seconds later you get a phone call and it's like, hey, we gave you someone else's order that was supposed to go. my girlfriend. Yeah, you, you're not loved, bro. But look, I think before we go anywhere, we should acknowledge all the ghost hunting that goes on at this location to this day,

and I think we can get a clip of what is going on there from, I think it was a documentary that was made about Chillingham Castle. So, Phil, let's cue up our last little video on Chillingham, dude. Got a lot of equipment out, ready to rock and roll. This device is,

wonderful bit of kit. It's called a REM pod, a radiating electromagnetic pod. And it's a proximity detector. I believe that guy's the in-house expert on ghosts. Yes, I didn't move them rods. These guys got some delzing rods, a bunch of different paranormal hunting gear. All sorts of variety of ghost hunts and I leave it to professionals ready. Edie, do you remember anybody's name in this room if you've been listening? Max, I think. They're still going. They're getting something.

Please give us some major sign that you are with us. There's something behind me. I was like someone's punching in the stomach. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah, sorry. He said something was punching him in the stomach while he was standing there. I believe what you're seeing there is I can't remember the name of the gentleman with the ponytail,

but I believe he's like the in-house guy. Yeah. So if you want to, if you go as a visitor. and you're not a paranormal expert, he'll take you. That's pretty good service. He takes around with a briefcase with REM pods, dowsing rolls, all that type of shit. I want to make an apology to Humphrey.

I do. I feel like my distaste for posh English people, man, I came at you a little bit aggressively. But seeing you now, seeing how you're taking care of this place, seeing how much you're excited by the idea of paranormal investigators coming into your space,

I respect that. I think you're doing a great job. I apologize, Humpherson. All it took was him to be nice to Rory's people. That's all it took. He was like, he was like, I don't really mind Parolemon Investigators. Roy was like, you're a good guy.

You're an awesome guy, actually. It does, as we end our episode here, it does put us actually in an interesting, almost difficult position. When somewhere is so haunted, they start running ghost tours. It's a little tricky because it creates a situation in which

they're financially incentivized for there to be as many ghosts as possible, for people to talk about as much as possible, for them to share the information, share the evidence as widely as possible. They're literally charging people to see the ghosts. So, you know, it's a bit weird.

One of the skeptical things you could say about Chillingham Castle is whenever you go round it, and we've got a sneak peek of it looking at the videos there, is it's full of antiques and artifacts, suits of armor, old pieces of furniture.

The place was a wreck. You know, it's important to remember Sir Humphrey did a brilliant job at restoring it, probably spent an absolute fortune restoring it to its former glory. Yeah. But everything is, it's not new. It's all old stuff.

But it's stuff from his collection, stuff he's sourced and collected. Right, right. So, you know, sometimes it's like, and even the torture equipment, that's not the original torture equipment. Very likely. Well, hopefully not. Yeah. You know. Yeah, which, who's to say if that's going to please or anger the spirits there?

Yeah. If you're bringing in all this like, this cosplay gear to put up on the wall. and they're like, well, that's just mocking me at this point. I actually died down here and you're buying like a torture rack off T-Moo and installing it down here just so you can sell tickets so people can come and laugh at how I died. That would kind of annoy me, I guess. Well, look, Roy, at the end of every episode of this paranormal life, we have to decide whether we think our case is paranormal or not.

We've talked a lot about the various ghosts involved. There's quite a few that have been seen by different people. A billion of them! interesting characteristics. We do have kind of witness testimonies online and interesting stories from through the years, quite low on first-hand evidence. We do have a couple of photos,

but nothing that really bold us over. That being said, you know, they are in there all the time, as we saw at the end, taking new evidence. But I don't know that there's anything really, really groundbreaking.

I did see that the Ghost Files guys went there and did a whole episode on it. And they liked it a lot. I don't know that they got anything absolutely nuts. I kind of took a little bit of a look through the evidence they got. And I don't know how night and day it was. They didn't see the shadow wolf. I don't think that's all the shadow wolf.

What are you thinking, where's your head at? Hey, listen, I like this story. I've got a soft spot in my heart for a haunted castle. I actually... Now that you and Humphrey are best friends. Now that me and humpdog are hanging out. I actually covered a haunted castle. That was in Scotland not too long ago on this podcast.

Castle Glams. True. Which some people might remember, as the episode where I, from start to finish, called it Castle Glamis. People didn't let me get away with that one. But if you can stand an hour of me calling it Castle Glamis, I would definitely recommend checking that episode out. It was really cool.

And the conclusion? The conclusion was double no. Right. But Kit was not very excited about the main plot point of the story was that there was a secret tunnel in the castle that was hiding something. And I refused to tell him what it was for the entire episode. And it was not happy about that. But it's a really cool case.

And I think at one point we were like, this is so cinematic that this could be a movie. is a really, really interesting story. So look into that, Castle Glams and the secret thing that's hidden in the castle. If you want to get your blood pressure up, yeah, listen to that one. Back to this one, though.

Right. This one is insane. There's so much going on. I really don't even know where to start. The boy, Timothy, limp foot, jealous lady. There's just so many ghosts. the Shadow Wolf, the Shadow Wolf could be its own thing, you know. I sort of, you know, I don't want to be glib about the whole thing, but, you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence we have given, sorry, you've given nose to cases with way more evidence than this, you know, episodes like the Queen's House, which we went in person to go investigate. You were happy about that one.

You know, it is considered the greatest photo of a ghost ever taken. By kit? No. Considered by kid? It's widely considered. One of the most proven, not undisproven photos. There was a monster in the walls. I'll tell you that right now.

Unfortunately, what did me out of a double yes when we did the Queen's House was my mistake was we shouldn't have gone to the Queen's House. Because the whole history is that there's this amazing photo of real. ghosts there. And then we went and tried to recreate the photo and we didn't see anything. So then it was like, well, we can't really with a good conscience give it a yes. I give it a yes anyway. I can give it a yes in bad conscience. It's fine. My point is that even in cases with really good photos, sometimes it ends up being a note for ghosts. We have kind of next to nothing in terms of good evidence here. Can we stay the night here? Is that an option in this place? I'm sure it is. I would like to.

I would do that. I would know. I would like to, stop it. I would like to spend more time in haunted locations. I feel like we visit a lot of haunted pubs. Enjoy that. Because it means we can expense pints on the work card. And we pass by a lot of haunted locations.

But we don't, we don't get in there enough, into the filth, into the murder pit. You know? Whenever you grew up in one, you're not really that fuss, but yeah. No, that's true. That's true. There is places we could absolutely do it. Something to think about. The people have been, you know, talking about it for years.

We've been teasing them for too long. There's a long list of places we've said we're going to go. Yeah. We said we're going to go to Spike Island and a bunch of haunted locations. Yeah. It turns out we went way too hard. We went straight to Area 51 in the desert. Now we're not allowed anywhere.

Now we're not. Yeah, the government has ankle tags on all three of us, unfortunately. Look, I'll take the lead today because I think I can see where this is headed. I'm going to give it a no. I don't think there's enough evidence to say that these ghosts are really, well, for us to even pin down really any of them, let's be honest. Yeah, it's going to be a no from me as well, but I'm happy to change my mind. If we can make it there and check this place out for ourselves.

Can't say more fair than that, guys. Humphrey, my boy, hook us up, brother. Get us down there, man. I would love to see this place out. Lori goes to dapp up, Humphrey. It's too forceful. He falls down a spiral staircase. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of This Paranormal Life.

Hope you've enjoyed it. Roy's given you a couple of tips of other episodes to listen to, such as the Castle Glam's, glam rock episode. But you know where there's a ton more ghost cases and some really fantastic ones? It's over on This Paranormal Life.com. Shout it out earlier, but that's where the commune can hang out. You can drop comments on episodes. Hundreds of bonus episodes.

Check it out. Yeah. Head on over there. Because if you don't, bones. soup, murder pit. These are just some of the options. It's kind of like a three...

It's kind of like a... Like one of those horror movies where there's like a bunch of doors and you have to pick which one you want to go in. And it's like there's one option and me and Kitter are standing in the doorway like, come on!

Come on, and all your friends are in there and it just says commune above it and it's a great place and you can get all this extra cool stuff for just a little bit of cash. The other ones are titled Soup Boat. murder pit. Those are your other three options. You can pick those doors if you want, but I'll be

honest, they all just lead to the murder pit. It's just one big hole carved on the other side of all those doors. And every summer on the longest of the year, on 21st of June, we midsummer someone. So that's good. But he also went up on the murder pit. And, oh, and yeah, this paranormal life.com, remember, seven-day free trial to check it out. If you want to check it out and sign up or you can just sign up for free. There's even stuff to see for free. Pretty cool. Links in the description. And also tickets to our one and only live show in London this October links in the description. Go check out. We're going to have an amazing party in October. Get involved. But before we round out, we do have to do a few shoutouts right here to shout out people who have

supported us on thisparanolife.com recently. That's one of the cool rewards you can get over there. A personal shout out at the end of the episode. So, guys, a very special thank you to Junie. Oh, Junie! Oh, well, you'd be a perfect person to join this June for our special... I might have said too much. We have a special festival coming up called Midsommar. And I think Junie, that's a shoe in, right? That would be perfect. Yeah, I think you're going to have a great time. Just make sure you consume all the bonus content really quick. Yeah. Really quick. Just get your money's worth. Yeah, let me just see... Before the festival.

Oh my God, Junie has blonde hair. Okay, sorry, not a lot. get too excited. Damn. Yeah. And how do you feel about wearing kind of a headpiece made entirely of flowers? That would be great for us. It would really work for Junie. It would really be great for us. It's going to be a good harvest in the commune, guys. Thanks to Junie. Thank you also to Tori Ritter. Tori Ritter, also known as the gory Ripper. That's right. We have another torture slash slash executioner on our hands. I can barely speak because of what she did to me down in the dungeon. Um, really ruthless.

Makes every ghost in today's story look like a saint. Do you think of the Tori, sorry, Tori, not Tori. Um, yeah, because I was going to- Oh, Tari? Because I was going to say Tari. Oh, Tari's fine. Tari's, I thought you were talking about Tori. Right.

Ritter. Well, it's, well, no, it's Tori Ritter. It is told. God, it is. Tarry Ritter, tars and feathers, people. That's bad. Which is messed up. That's really messed up.

But we do need someone to do that in the commune. Our last tar and feather guy just got Midsommert. So we need someone to take up the job. Thanks lastly today to Nick. Oh, Nick is the worst of all. Oh, Nick, Nick, put your head on a stick. God damn, he's cruel. It's like Timothy. It's like the names that are just boring and short and simple. You think they're going to be just the chillest ghost of all time, but Nick is a bastard.

Yeah. I mean, you know how the old English nursery rhyme goes about Nick. Nick, Nick gives a kick to your balls into your neck. He kicks your balls up into your neck. I hadn't heard that. First of the little children have been singing around England for generations. I also don't know if the little child voice was necessary. Like I understand. Kick to your balls into your neck. It says it all to be frank. Oh, Frank?

The worst of them all! Let's not be frank. We can't even talk about Frank. Frank, Frank. Give us a spank on your balls until you wink. Oh, just end it. Just shut it down. Thank you for tuning in this week's podcast.

We'll be back on Tuesday with the brand new paranormal tale. I'm back on this paranormal life.com this Friday with more behind the scenes goodness. Check the link in the description. Have an amazing week. Ciao. Love you.