 Welcome, weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes. This is a special 12 Nightmares of Christmas episode. Each day from December 13th through December 24th, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from the new book, The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Be sure to come back every day from December 13th through the 24th for more holiday horrors on Weird Darkness. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, put another log onto the fire, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The town of York, England is incredibly ancient by American standards. Many cultures have put their stamp on it, Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Celts, Normans, all putting a facet on this jewel of the North. And relics of all these bygone people who lived and died in York are housed in the York Museum. In 1953, a haunting began at the museum that involved a book with a blue cover. It was just an ordinary book, but for one returning spirit it seemed to hold great importance. It started on a Sunday evening in September 1953. There was a meeting going on at the museum so the caretaker, Mr. George Jonas, was waiting for it to be over so he could lock up the building. Jonas and his wife were downstairs. As people filed out, Jonas made a cup of tea before going upstairs for a final sweep of the building. But Mrs. Jonas said, Are you sure everyone's gone? She heard footsteps above them and listening, Mr. Jonas did too. It's probably the curator. I'll go up and tell him I'll be turning the lights off soon, Jonas said. He went up the stairs, heading for the curator's office. There was an elderly stranger in the office instead. He was in the far corner of the room, bent over as if looking for something. As Jonas came into the office the stranger stood up, turned around and walked right past Jonas out of the office. Pardon me, sir, but are you looking for someone? Jonas asked. The stranger who was dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat and trousers ignored him. The old fellow went straight across the hall through the open door into the library. Jonas followed him, turning on the lights as he came into the room behind the odd stranger. I must find it! I must find it! The old gentleman muttered to himself. He crossed the library to a bookshelf and ran his fingers down the spines of the books. By this time, Jonas was feeling a bit miffed at being so roundly ignored, but he thought that perhaps the old fellow was hard of hearing or even stoned death. Jonas walked closer to the old man. If you want to see the curator, Mr. Wilmot, I'll be glad to escort you to his house. As Jonas spoke, he reached out to touch the gentleman's shoulder to get his attention. Just before Jonas' fingers brushed the tweed of the old fellow's jacket, the man vanished. Jonas stood completely still for a few moments, while his mind tried to process the old man's sudden disappearance. His gaze wandered to the floor. There was a book with a blue cover lying there. It had fallen from the old gentleman's hands as he vanished. Idly, Jonas noted the title, Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church. Then his mind caught up with the situation. He raced down the stairs and bundled his wife out the door. Time to go, let's go, now we need to go! The next morning, Jonas went to work at the museum as usual. His first stop was the library. The blue book was still lying on the floor where the ghost had dropped it. Jonas shook his head, so he hadn't imagined it after all. He told the museum's curator the odd story. Four Sundays later, Mr. Jonas was again at the museum. And the ghost returned. The spirit looked just as solid as before. Jonas later swore he looked like a very real person. But this time the old man in Edwardian dress went from the office across the hall to the library and walked through the locked door to get there. This was just weird enough that Mr. Jonas decided to bring someone else with him when he worked his Sunday hours. On the fourth Sunday after that, Jonas and a friend walked into the library and heard the quiet shuffling of someone turning the pages of a book. A flash of blue caught their eyes and a book dropped to the floor as they watched. It was the same book the old man had pulled off the shelf the first time Jonas had encountered him. Enough was enough. The ghost was following a pattern of appearing every fourth Sunday. So, on the fourth Sunday in December, a group of six men gathered with Mr. Jonas in the library of the York Museum. Jonas had gone to his doctor to make sure he wasn't just imagining things and had even invited the doctor to come to the library to see the manifestation for himself. Along with Jonas and his doctor were a lawyer and a reporter from the Yorkshire Evening Press. Mr. James Jonas, the caretaker's brother, was also there, mostly because he thought his brother's story was complete nonsense. George Jonas took the blue book off the shelf to show it to everyone as it turned out the book had a business card pasted inside the front cover. Antiquities and curiosities of the church had once belonged to Alderman Edward Willer, a lawyer who collected antiques. The Alderman had collapsed and died at a meeting nearly 30 years before. The old gentleman had always arrived around 7.40pm. Everyone in the room sat tensely, watching the clock as the minutes ticked past. At exactly 7.42pm, the slim blue book slowly slid to the edge of the bookshelf, as if drawn out by an invisible hand. It gently dropped from the shelf onto the floor, still standing upright. Everyone in the library was shocked, except for George Jonas. He was just relieved not to have been the only witness this time. Everyone else agreed that, yes, without a doubt, there was something supernatural going on in the library every fourth Sunday, and now there was a possible identity for the ghost, Alderman Willer. But not everyone welcomed the idea of a ghost in the library. Mr. Wilmot, who had held the post of curator for the past four years, was open to the idea of investigating the phenomenon further. After all, the apparition, whoever he was, had now been experienced by nine people. However, the museum was overseen by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and they roundly poo-pooed the very thought of the paranormal. The Society's chairman groused, It is too silly for words. There will be no investigation. I would not let the subject be brought before the Council of the Society. I would not waste time on such a tripe. Wilmot was so incensed at the chairman's dismissive attitude that he handed in his resignation. In the meantime, Jonas and his associates went ahead with the investigation Wilmot had supported. Jonas was ill on the fourth Sunday in January, so he wasn't able to ghost hunt that evening, but on the next fourth Sunday, February 7, 1954, 12 men sat quietly in the museum's library. George Jonas was feeling much better, and he was joined by several professionals, including members of the Society for Psychical Research. The men locked the door of the library to make sure they could conduct their investigation undisturbed. They got to the museum in plenty of time. It began the session at 7.15, 25 minutes before the ghost's usual arrival time of 7.40. Unfortunately, the haunting seemed to have run its course. Whether Jonas' absence in January knocked the ghost off his schedule, or the spirit had finally been satisfied with pulling the book off the shelf several times, we'll never know. But nothing happened in February, save for a small, wandering cold spot. And on March 7, the next Sunday in the cycle, nothing at all happened. The spirit was gone, but the snark remained. During those weeks of waiting for the ghost to show up, some of the more open-minded members of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society started asking questions about Mr. Wilmot's resignation. A special meeting was held to inquire into the circumstances. There were, it was reported later, some bitter attacks and some strong defense. Who knew philosophers could get so worked up? The result of the meeting was that the members of the Society voted overwhelmingly to ask Wilmot to stay on as the museum's curator. Wilmot had been about to leave for another position, but he agreed to stay. Politics being what they are, this was followed by a flurry of other resignations. At its annual meeting two months later, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society had a completely new 12-member council. There was one person who was sad to see the museum ghost go. Alderman Willers' grandson heard of the ghost and realized that the description of the Edwardian gentleman fit his grandfather exactly. He was thrilled to have a ghost in the family. After the experience of December 1953, the ghost has never been seen again. But there are people who say that if you are in the York Museum Library doing research or simply reading a book, you may notice that the room seems unnaturally cold. Maybe the old fellow is still lurking in the library. The coast of Donoghul, Ireland is one of the most picturesque places in the country. Small islands off the coast provide a breakwater, some small protection from the angry storm-lashed waters of the Atlantic. The islands of Inishini, Gola and Inisman perform a perfect natural harbor for passing ships to seek refuge in a storm. Around Christmas one year in the early part of the 20th century, a small sailing ship came into the harbor to resupply. The ship had been battling her way through a prolonged storm and supplies were running low. The captain and two of his men rode to the harbor from the ship. They barely made the trip safely, even with the protection of the islands, the water of the harbor was a seething, boiling cauldron of foam, and it was evening by the time they landed. The islanders guided the small boat safely to shore and welcomed the three men. The captain loaded these skiff with supplies and was determined to make it back to his ship that night. The captain was a frequent visitor to the island and was well light. The islanders begged him to stay until the fury of the storm slackened, but the captain was adamant. He and his two companions pushed off into the darkness. The next morning the fears of the islanders had come true. In the darkness of the storm, the unfamiliar harbor and the storm-wracked waters had bested the small skiff. A man walking the beach looking for salvageable items from wrecks found the small boat. It had been smashed to splinters by the pounding waves. Near it was the battered broken body of the captain. The bodies of the other two sailors were never found. The tragedy hit the islanders hard. The island was home to just a handful of people who kept horses and cattle grazing on the tough forage there. The islanders were devastated that despite their best efforts to convince them to stay, the captain and his companions had taken their chances on the dangerous waters, and now they were gone. The islanders felt the loss as though it had been family members who had drowned. After the tragedy, the settlers drew together for companionship. Soon afterward, they began to spend their evenings together in one house in an effort to keep the loneliness at bay. One evening, as they sat around the fire chatting, they heard footsteps approaching the door. The walkway leading to the door was made of fine, soft sand, yet they still heard footsteps, as if someone was coming towards the house on hard-packed earth. Everyone on the island was there in the house, so they figured it must be a stranger. They all looked eagerly towards the door, ready to welcome the traveler to their fireside. The door swung open, and there stood a tall, broad-shouldered man, the captain who had been buried just a few days previously. Every person in the room recognized him. A woman sitting in the corner said in Irish, Oh God, there's the captain! One of the men found his voice and greeted the captain in his native Irish speech, saying, come in. But the figure in the doorway simply stepped back and disappeared. The islanders rushed out into the night, but they didn't find anyone near the house. The captain had vanished into the dark winter night. A few days before Christmas, 1850, a small boat dropped anchor off Jameson's point near Rockland, Maine. The captain was not on board. Rumor had it that he had gone ashore for a drink, and not his first, and that the schooner's owners had fired him for his hard-drinking ways. Whatever the reason, the boat was lacking a captain. The first mate, believing strongly in the old adage, when the cat's away, the mice will play, had recently proposed to a beautiful young woman. With the captain gone, the first mate saw no reason not to enjoy the company of his bride to be. He invited her to stay in his cabin on the schooner for a few days. Only the mate, his young lady, and one deckhand were aboard the boat on December 22, when a vicious storm whipped up and snapped the boat's anchor cable. With only two men to guide the schooner, it soon ran aground on the rocky shore near Owl's Head. The boulders held the boat in place, so luckily it didn't sink, but it did fill with seawater. The three people aboard huddled for warmth on the deck. Waves crashed over the deck, drenching the three in freezing spray. Their clothes began to grow stiff with ice. The first mate took charge. His plan was for all three of them to roll up together in a wool blanket and lie down next to the stern rail, as far out of the wind and spray as possible. The mate knew they couldn't avoid the spray altogether, but he hoped it would freeze on the blanket and form a protective shell of ice around them. This plan worked too well. The waves continued to pummel the boat all night and the spray froze into ice more quickly than the mate had anticipated. The ice built into a suffocating layer several inches thick. By the time the sky grew gray with the dawn, the first mate and his fiancé were unconscious. The deckhand mourned his companions, but was glad to find himself alive at the end of that chilling night. He used a small knife to chip away at the ice, then smashed his way free with hands that bled from the shards of icy cold. He staggered to his feet and saw that the tide had gone out. A narrow, rocky bridge now connected the boulders to the shore. The winds of the storm still blew, but at least the deckhand could stumble towards dry land and salvation. He headed for the lighthouse at Owl's Head. Even through the battering storm, the light still shone. He fixed his mind on the light and headed for it, crawling the last fifty yards on bloodied hands and knees. He reached the lighthouse and the keeper hurried him into the warmth of the house's kitchen. Shivering under a blanket, his hands wrapped tightly around a mug of hot soup, the deckhand stammered out his amazing story of survival. The lighthouse keeper was reluctant to go out into the storm to retrieve two corpses, but he organized a rescue party just in case. The man found the pair curled in a tight embrace and frozen in a solid block of ice. The rescuers used chisels and picks to free the storm's victims. Everyone was sure the two were dead, but even so, they were rushed to a home near the lighthouse. In an attempt to revive them, they were stripped and placed in cool water baths. Rescuers gently massaged the cold limbs, searching for the faintest signs of life. In about two hours, the woman's eyes fluttered open and she struggled back to consciousness. An hour after that, the first mate stirred, too. The two snatched from death's icy grip, took several months to recover. But in June, the first mate and his radiant bride stood together in front of a preacher and promised to love each other. Till death do us part. The paranormal rider, Jeff Ballinger, is a tireless collector of weird tales. In his book, Our Haunted Lives, True Life Ghost Encounters, he shares some of these wonderful stories. Susie Layman had a beloved cat, affectionately named Fat Kitty. Fat Kitty was a beloved member of the family and stayed devoted to them even after death. Susie's son was born prematurely and the spirit of Fat Kitty seemed to watch over the tiny human. Susie would see a glimpse of a shadow cat under her son's bassinet. She'd also notice that the bedsheet at the foot of her bed, which was the corner of the bed closest to the bassinet, was constantly must as if a cat had been sitting on it, keeping watch. Fat Kitty had one litter and Susie kept two of the kittens. One named Calico spent her life utterly fascinated by Christmas trees and the decorations that adorned them. One afternoon after she'd lost Calico, Susie was in the house by herself. She happened to walk through the living room and gave the Christmas tree a looking over, making sure it was just the way she wanted it. Just then, one of the ornaments at the bottom of the tree started moving. That's what Calico always loved to do. She loved to run by and slap an ornament or lay up underneath it and slap it. I don't know what made me do this, but I looked at the ornament and said, Calico, just leave the tree alone. And it stopped immediately. My husband saw it do the same thing. It was always one particular ornament on one particular part of the tree that she used to play with. Susie smiled, knowing that Calico was still enjoying her shiny, swinging toy. Sometimes the spirits of the animals we love come back, and sometimes those spirits are given the chance to say their goodbyes to us, just as people do. The French scientist Camille Flammarion was also an investigator of psychic phenomenon. In 1912, he published a story that a Mr. M.G. Grazier had shared with him. Grazier was a very solitary boy, preferring studying to socializing. His one companion was his St. Bernard, Bobi, who was with him nearly constantly. On December 14, 1910, Bobi was with Grazier's parents in Lausanne, Switzerland, two kilometers from where Grazier was. About 7.30 pm, I heard the door of my room open and saw Bobi standing in the doorway, looking unhappy. I called him to me. He didn't look up and he didn't obey my order. I called again. He came, rubbed against my legs and lay down on the floor at my feet. I bent to stroke him and he wasn't there. With a sick feeling, Grazier ran to the nearest phone. He dialed the number for Bobi's veterinarian. That's when Grazier found out that Bobi had been put to sleep two minutes earlier. On the night of December 11, 1876, a servant of the McNamara's of County Claire in Ireland was making his evening rounds on the estate of Ennestmont. In the dark, he heard the rumbling of wheels on the road. The hour was very late and the watchman knew no mortal vehicle was expected. He realized that the noise was coming from a phantom coach, a coach that, according to local legend, foretold approaching death. The servant knew that at the appearance of the spectral coach, all of the gates in its path should be opened. Then the ghost coach would not stop the house for a member of the family, but would only foretell the death of a relative far away. The watchman ran ahead of the spectral carriage, flinging open the gates ahead of it. Gasping for breath, hand pressed to a stitch in his side, he wrenched the third gate open with a clang and threw himself face down on the ground next to it. The carriage rumbled through the open gate as the watchman sobbed for breath. The next day, Admiral Sir Burton McNamara died in London, many miles from Ennestmont. Geoffrey DeMandeville Earl of Essex was quite possibly the most hated man of his time. He lived in England during the tumultuous 12th century. He was the grandson of a Norman baron who fought alongside William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Geoffrey himself was no stranger to conflict. He played a dangerous game when Stephen and Matilda were jockeying for the crown of England in the 12th century. Geoffrey cheerfully accepted honors and patronage from both of the potential rulers. He was accused of treason against King Stephen in 1141 but was pardoned. After his narrow brush with disaster, Sir Geoffrey became sheriff and justice of London as well as Essex, Middlesex and Hertfordshire. This gave him absolute power over the capital of England and three of its counties. Sir Geoffrey was at the top of the heap, both in wealth and in political influence, but his ascendancy also proved to be his downfall. Sir Geoffrey's ambition made him cruel. He attacked Ramsey Abbey, the fourth richest abbey in England. He evicted the monks and looted the church. He then moved himself and his men into the abbey, using it as his home base to ransack nearby towns. For this plunder and desecration of church property, he was excommunicated, although he was later given absolution. Sir Geoffrey didn't only attract negative attention from the church. King Stephen, who once again had the upper hand in the power struggle, suspected Geoffrey of collaborating with Matilda. The King sent officers to arrest the Earl and take him to London. There, under threat of hanging, Geoffrey was forced to give up the tower of London and his castles in Essex, his biggest military assets. Although Sir Geoffrey was released after that tussle with the King, he was burning for revenge. He led an open revolt against Stephen, forcing the King to march against him. As part of his campaign, Geoffrey attacked Burnwell Castle, one of the fortresses built by King Stephen to defend against the traitorous Earl. The Earl's death was almost an anti-climax, a result of raw stupidity on his part. During the siege of the castle, Sir Geoffrey removed his helm for a moment and was shot in the head by a bullman on the castle's rampart. Sir Geoffrey lingered for a few weeks before dying at Mildenhall and Suffolk in September 1144. Because of his excommunication, the Earl was denied Christian burial. His body was taken to London and he was buried there. So why does Sir Geoffrey walk in East Barnett, a suburb of North London? His ghost was to be seen wandering the small village and at Christmastime, the spook wearing spurs and a red cloak could be seen in nearby Trent Park cockfosters. The only connection he had with the area was that it had been a small part of his vast territory. Why haunt just this one place? Well, there is another version of Sir Geoffrey's demise that can be considered when discussing this haunting. This story goes that the outlaw Earl drowned in a well in Trent Park near East Barnett. There were also whispers that the Earl hid some of the treasure he looted from Ramsey Abbey down that well and that he is still searching for that chest of gold. This provides a handy though not historically accurate explanation for the haunting. Stories can get a little mixed up during the passing of 900 years. In December 1926, the ghost of Sir Geoffrey returned to East Barnett in fine form. The year before, strange things had been seen and heard in a municipal stable there. In 1926, the district council decided to demolish the stable and repurpose the bricks into a new road. The road work had barely started when reports came of Sir Geoffrey walking across the floors of an old house nearby, ostentatiously clanking his spurs on the floorboards. This phenomenon was repeated three times. At the same house, the family experienced several impatient knocks at the front door where there was no human standing there. Then the letterbox rattled, scaring both the family and their dog. Strange noises were heard near the road works too and a man walking near the haunted stables at midnight heard the jingle of the phantom spurs and caught a brief glimpse of an apparition wearing a red cloak. This being December, many London newspapers set reporters to East Barnett in search of a good ghost story. But for some reason, many of the reporters wrote excited articles about the ghost but then denied the reports. This cast serious doubts on the haunting. A small group of local hunters went out to East Barnett late in December to wait for the phantom to appear. They claimed that they did see the Earl dressed in armor standing in the moonlight, but because of the reporter's backpedaling, no one believed them. Six years later, in December 1932, dozens of people saw Sir Geoffrey's ghost. A ghost hunting group had done some research. The records they had to work with only went back 20 years, but in that time the ghost had reliably appeared every sixth year. Older residents of East Barnett claimed that the spirit appeared as midnight approached between the full moon and the last quarter in the month of December. Armed with this information, the group went for an investigation on Saturday, December 17, 1932. Just before the moon rose that night, the ghost hunters heard a weird noise off in the distance. A noise like the clanking of spurs. The noise came closer and closer until it was right beside the group. Then it faded, moving away from them. The group slowly followed the sounds of clanking spurs until they got to a place at the edge of the East Barnett Valley where the land rose a bit. There was a break in the cloud cover and there, on a sloping rise, they saw the armored figure of Sir Geoffrey in the faint moonlight. According to the group's report, the glance was a fleeting one but very distinct, and the sight is fixed in the minds of those who saw it as plainly as if it had been revealed in midday sunlight. The ghost hunters were giddy with excitement. They hoped that the ghost would return either on St. Thomas's Eve the next Tuesday or on Christmas Eve, both days being considered especially favorable for ghostly manifestations. St. Thomas was the apostle who doubted the existence of life after death. The group decided to hold another investigation on Christmas Eve and they invited anyone who wanted to join them to come along. Everyone met an hour before midnight on Christmas Eve. The sightseers drifted off in various directions while the investigators and a few others moved a quarter mile south of the village to a small wooden bridge across Pims Brook. This bridge connected the old church path to the road to Cockfosters. As midnight approached, the main group at the bridge started hearing strange noises to the south. They started walking slowly towards the sounds. They followed the stream for a while, walking along the bank, and the noises stopped. The group continued on, heading towards the nearby cemetery. Suddenly the drawn-out howl of a dog split the night. The dog seemed to be wailing in distress. The group stopped, listening tensely, waiting for whatever would happen next. The soulful howl came again, in among the investigators. The ghost hunters didn't dare break the spell of the manifestation by turning on their flashlights, so they stood, frozen to the spot. The dog continued to keen and soon the clanking of ghostly armor was added to the mournful song. Over there, someone yelled. They all saw the shadowy form of a headless dog feeding into the mist. Legend spoke of a hound that often accompanied Sir Jeffery, but no one alive had ever seen the dog's ghost. Then the group surrounded by the clank of armor. The ghost of Sir Jeffery stood in the moonlight for a long moment. Then, he too, melted into the mist as they watched. History doesn't tell us if Sir Jeffery and maybe his faithful hound appeared six years after that. But in 1938, the people of England had other things on their mind. But December mists still gather in the Valley of East Barnett, and there are plenty of places for ghosts to hide. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of my 12 Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in this episode are from her book, The Spirits of Christmas, the Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find a link to that book in the show notes. Do you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. Find a link to purchase and download this dark, creepy Christmas music in the show notes. I'm your creator and host, Darren Marlar. Merry Christmas and thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. So you don't miss future videos. I post videos seven days a week, and while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com