Strange Stories UK

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This is something of a ramble. After becoming famous, the Rolling Stones developed links with Sussex. Their rock star behaviour upset some people who seemed determined to have them sent to jail, this did not end as expected, one drug raid pushing up the sales of Mars bars by 8% after claims it was used as a sex toy. 
Others were trying to steal from the Rolling Stones. Brian Jones seemed to be the vulnerable weak link who was ousted from the band and it doesn't seem much of a secret now that he was killed, probably by accident by those supposedly working for him. 
I suppose it isn't too much of a surprised to discover that corrupt Metropolitan police were also involved or there was a climate of fear after the so called Brian Jones suicide to cover the truth and cost the life of another young woman who it was thought was about to tell the story to the newspapers.

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This story takes place during August 1969. Alec Keen who described himself as a self employed chartered yacht owner was desperate for money and claiming that he found it impossible to have a relationship with anybody over the age of 27. 
Keen told police his wife was missing from the yacht they were staying on while he had taken a dinghy to go to the local pub, The ship Inn at West Itchenor. 
This is one of two episodes that took place in this area during the summer of 1969. The next podcast is about events that happened just a few miles away and were connected to the death of Brian Jones guitarist Brian Jones.

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Two stories from Yorkshire, one from Leeds from the 1880s and one from York from 1950s, both investigated by Trevor H.Hall. 

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This is part 2 of the story of how the police prevented Mark Brown becoming a serial killer of sex workers. Brown killed his mistress Leah Ware whose body was never found.
There is a mistake in the title as Mark Brown lived in East Sussex although the Kent police were involved in the case from the beginning.

Please be advised that this podcast is recorded in one take with no editing.

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  I think it will become obvious that Mark Brown was going to become a serial killer targeting woman who were operating as sex workers. He was going to be detected by automatic number plate recognition and cell phone tracking and the like, to allow the police to build a case against him.

Brown's mind seemed to have been turned by a combination of the death of his parents, violent pornography on the internet and the isolation of lockdown allowing him to focus on his dark side. This podcast tells of the murder and disposal of the body of Alex Morgan, a single mother trying to build a better life for her family.

This case has only recently finished at Hove Crown Court, on 1 December 2022. Brown is due for sentencing on 13 January 2023. 
I will put out part 2 shortly. Please be advised that this podcast is recorded in one take with no editing.

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This story was uploaded at 10:00 pm 31 October 2022. Another story from the Journals of the Society of Psychical Research. This story regards the death of a young boy, Bobby Newlove,  who was said to communicate through the medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. Nothing much happens and  hardly a story to scare or excite but one to think about. But it was known as 'The problem of the Pipes' that was finally solved, according to some, via seances. 
It is set in the town of Nelson, Lancashire. The story of Bobbie Newlove that died of diphtheria. Bobbie was much loved and his family tried to contact with him after his death.
I wanted to put up a halloween podcast on 31 October although this is the last podcast that I am posting for a few weeks. I will be back in December .
Please be advised that there is no editing and that I stumble over words and apparently make weird sounds with my mouth, which in listening back seems to be true. So soz for that.

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July 1 1968 in Worthing UK. The Rolling Stones were top of the singles charts with Jumping Jack Flash. 2001, A Space Odyssey was being seen in the cinemas. Manchester United had recently won the European Cup. Harold Wilson’s Labour government were struggling since a recent devaluation of the pound. There was a heatwave on the South Coast on 1 July about to break out in violent storms and flooding

 This is a murder case that is virtually unknown, apart from one sentence on the website Black kalender, there is no trace of it on the internet. The information for this podcast comes from a file in the National Archives and that file is somewhat confused.  I can find no record of the man who was convicted for murder David Lewington. 
My own opinion is that it was not a pre-planned murder, probably an accident but Lewington was convicted of murder and lucky for him it was just after the death sentence law had been ended in the UK. I think that the last person sent to death in the UK was in 1964, this case was in 1968.

David Lewington was a dishonest person who probably suffered delusions and was a ‘Walter Mitty’ type character. He clearly wanted to be noticed, covering himself in tattoos. 

 How he came to shoot his friend will never be known, the case is long forgotton. Nobody comes out of the case particularly well, those people who surrounded Lewington all seemed to have their own particular problems and issues. Please listen to the podcast and make up your own minds as to what happened.

I intend to place one more podcast for Halloween and then I am away for about six weeks, taking a break and hope to be back in December.

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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.