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This is a Halloween podcasts for 2022. An attempt by the  British Society of Psychical research (SPR) to explain paranormal activity. 

Phantasms of the Living was to be the book published by the SPR that was to explain the reasons for people seeing ghosts. 700 case studies were given to try to prove that thought transference, called later telepathy was the reason for people seeing ghosts. 

Telepathy allowing one to communicate with others non-verbally through thought not to be confused with  ESP  (extra sensory perception) which refers to heightened senses and intuition.
This podcast gives a brief background to the book, the personalities and politics of the SPR and a couple of case histories mentioned in the book and the reasons that the book was criticised. The book published in 1886 and recent copies are available today on internet sites. The book is interesting to dip into but I would think would be impossible to read it through.

 Warning , recorded in one take, Lip smacking out of control today, even though my microphone is supposed to prevent this and there is a dog in the room. Please do not listen if you are expecting a professional delivery. I am also known for mispronouncing words.  I am away for about six weeks, I will try to post a couple of podcasts over this time, I will be back in December. 

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This is a true life horror story on the banks of the river Thames;  set in the days just before Queen Elizabeth II was crowned queen in June 1953. Two teenage girls were murdered as they made their way home on the last day of May 1953. The police files were said to be closed until 2049 but for some reason the files were made available to be examined by the public in 2006. The story is upsetting.
This podcast has been recorded in one take and is not a professionally produced podcast. On the upside, I don't have a team of lawyers telling what to say and what not to say.

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This is Part 2 of a two part story.
The William Crookes, Florence Cook affair  was the major scandal regarding spiritualism in the UK. Cook was a fraudulent medium, trained by her family to make money from spiritualism. For a number of reasons Spiritualism had proved very popular in the English speaking world since the mid 19th century.

The spirit guide/control that Florence Cook was relying on up until June 1874 was Katie King who was claimed to be a spirit guide/control for a number of other mediums. 

After being exposed during a séance in December 1873, Florence was grabbed by a sitter while she pretended to be the spirit Katie King, they turned to Crookes who was a pro-spiritualist, famous scientist who had claimed to have discovered another medium, D.D.Home as being gifted with special powers. No other scientists believed Crookes although he was popular with spiritualists. The Cook family hoped that he would ‘prove’ that Florence Cook was a genuine medium.

Crookes investigated other young female mediums. Crookes would not have been guilty of any crime in 1974. The age of consent was 12 until 1875 when it was raised to 13 in the UK! Cook was 17 when she was first investigated by Crookes. Crookes was infatuated with Florence Cook, or perhaps with the spirit of Katie King. Crookes was manipulated and played by Florence Cook.

Crookes who was vain, intolerant and ego-centric refused to believe that he was being made to look a fool. There were various other scandals interwoven with the Crookes/Cook entanglement. This all to the backdrop of the spiritualist media and the main stream media trying to establish the truth of the new Spiritualist movement.

Few people came out of the scandal with their reputations intact. One who did was the pro-spiritualist Edward W. Cox. Many spiritualists seemed to be delusional but Cox, who was a friend of Crookes, was a reliable witness.

There was false information and cover-ups. Crookes later became president of the Society of Psychical Research (SPR) and rather disappointingly the society never had the courage to question him about his work on investigating spiritualism, instead it seems that the SPR destroyed the files on the Crookes investigation and any other files that reflected badly on previous Presidents.

Cook did not have a particularly long or happy life, dying in poverty in her 40s. Crookes died in 1919 as the grand old man of British science aged 86. Although there is no doubt that he was a brilliant scientist, his character was suspect and hypocritical.

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This is a well known scandal from the 1870s. Florence Cook one of the best known materialisation mediums of her day had been suspect of fraudulent behaviour (not being genuine). To restore her reputation she tried to get the famous scientist William Crookes to investigate her and prove her genuine. 
Crookes had already investigated D.D.Home and found that he had powers unknown to science, this may had caused some ridicule from the scientific community, but Crookes was famous, he had discovered one of the elements listed in the periodic table and was a member of the Royal Society. Would Crookes be able to prove that Florence Cook was genuine and at what cost to himself?
This is part 1 of the story which also includes other stories intertwined, including that of the ruthless Cook family who intended to achieve financial security by milking gullible supporters of spiritualism.
The original inspiration for this podcast was the book by Ronald Pearsall 'The Table Rappers' although many books and periodicals have been read to produce this podcast, to name but two: Trevor Hall's 'The Spiritualists' and various publications of the Society of Psychical Research. I will post part 2 within the week.  

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This is an unsolved murder from May 1967, a shooting in Mayfair, London at a gambling club. No one was convicted but it was to become clear that a fellow gangster was responsible for the shooting, the shooting of a gangster probably employed by the Kray gang, Jack Buggy. By the end of the podcast you will know who the murderer was. I lived on the Sussex coast in the past and had heard of the Buggy case but there was no information about it, even now I don't think there are any podcasts on the case.
This podcast is long and often something of a ramble. I dont give any opinions and  the podcast was made in one take based on rough notes , I stumble after words and there are background noises, dogs and chickens. It is also quite long, I was going to make it in two parts but I am now trying to make the story in one take. I also go off on tangents but try to get back on case as soon as possible.

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This is part 2 of the story of the murder at Tarrant Keynston.
The podcast is recorded in one take without editing.

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This is an unsolved murder, or perhaps two involved murders that happened in an isolated Dorset village about ninety years ago.  This podcast is part one, part two will be uploaded within a couple of days. There are some unexplained aspects to this case and a village that was accused on not cooperating fully with the police investigation. It was suggested that villagers wanted an inquest verdict of accidental death or suicide, but two similar deaths within a couple of years of young men seemed too much of a coincidence.
A word of warning, this podcast is recorded in one take and there may be some background noise. I do have a recording studio but the window is left open and there is a dog in the room and I often stumble over words.

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A Recent case from 2022. I am not sure if  it is county lines but young people and drugs are involved in the murder of a young man in a sleepy Dorset town. The story is a ramble, as all the best are. I remember some years back being in Christchurch in late August after GCSE results and the teenagers celebrating at the beach. It seemed a happy place, parties on the beach.
At the time I was working at a Pupil Referral unit in the area and also saw some of the damaged youngsters that lived in the area.
This is a recent case, some time after my time , but I recognise the attitudes that existed when I worked there. I may have known Christchurch or Bournemouth, certainly people like them. What I did recall was that the children at the PRU were proud to be travellers and even those that were not, claimed to be be as it was 'cool' to be a traveller. I 

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This is the first Strange Stories podcast (without the UK). Since I started podcasting in June 2018, I wanted to call my podcast 'Strange Stories'but the name was taken at that time. I think it is available now, so welcome to Strange Stories. This is a short one, cryptozoology, so doomed to a low download, but I hope you enjoy it. This is the last podcast of series 4, I will be back at the end of August. Happy Holidays.

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This case was investigated by the Society of Psychical  Research (SPR) by Frank Podmore in 1885 and published in the Journal for the SPR in September 1886. It was one of the cases that was being investigated for the book to be published by the SPR 'Phantasms of the Living'. The story wasn't considered strong enough for inclusion.
The SPR investigated and reported what they found as told by first hand witnesses, The story was embellished by Maude Ffoulks when it was included in the book True Ghost Stories in 1936. Since then the story has been further embellished by other books reporting on local hauntings. I try to give the original story here as found in the archives of the SPR.