Season 06 Episode 26: Under the Rocks and Stones (Pt.1 of 2)

eight thousand BC, back in the Mesolithic Age. It is little wonder then, that this place, with its singular and ancient history, has proved such fertile ground for so many folk tales over the years, many of which you can find in The Wonderful Guernsey Folklore by Sir Edgar McCulloch, first published in nineteen oh three. With chapter headings such as Ghosts and Prophetic Warnings, the Devil, Demons and Goblins,

McCulloch's book really has it all. Within its pages, you'll find all manner of peculiar tales, from apparent ghostly apparitions to the many reported sightings of the terrifying black dog, an infamous omen of death known variously as she Co or shen Bodou that is said to stalk the island.

One story regarding a cave known as lacrue Mahei, located on the island's south coast, suggests it may in fact be an entryway to the underworld of the Fairies, a race of other worldly beings that are said to make frequent appearances on the island. With Guernsey being an island, naturally maritime superstitions and the mysteries of the sea also feature heavily. Thus so much in fact, I felt certain I would find a story suitable enough for an episode

of this podcast. However, as I dug a little further into the many tales collated there, I continually came up against the same problem, which was, namely, the distinct lack of solid facts with which to hang a story of the kind I like to tell. Unexplained. More often than not, stories of peculiar goings on seemed to have been relayed

second or third hand. They were simply tales whispered and traded from one islander to the next, with many portrayed merely as vague superstitions for which the provenance had long been lost to time. Thankfully for me, I didn't have to look far for something with a little more meat on the bone. Perhaps the most startling stories to come out of Guernsey are those concerning so called which is between fifteen fifty and sixteen fifty It is thought that

at least one hundred individuals were accused of witchcraft. There Those unfortunate enough to be convicted suffered or manner of punishments, from flogging to being burned at the stake. The story of Perrotine Massey is one especially horrific true tale that continues to haunt all to this day who hear it. In fifteen fifty six, Massey, along with her sister Guillemine Gilbert, and their mother, Catherine Couche, was accused of stealing a goblet, and all three were taken to trial over it. They

were eventually found innocent of the crime. During their trial, however, it came out that the women, who identified as Calvinist had not been adhering to the religious standards of the day as demanded by the court of the queen at the time, the Catholic Mary. The first three women who became known as the Guernsey Martyrs, were subsequently found guilty of heresy and on the eighteenth of July fifteen fifty six,

were burned at the stake. The method of the day was to strangle the accused first with a large rope so that they might die before the flames took hold. However, no sooner was this attempted than the rope snapped and or three fell alive into the flames. If that wasn't horrendous enough, Perrotine Massey was heavily pregnant at the time. As she fell down on her side, her flesh burning in the fire, her belly burst open, and her baby's son,

as alive as a newborn, tumbled out of her. The boy was first recovered from the flames, only for Guernsey's bailiff, Elier Gosselin to demand that he be thrown back into them, and so he was. Best Fiends is a new, fun packed, free to download mobile game with thousands of exciting levels for new adventures every time you play with its band of cute creature heroes, match and solve thousands of fun puzzles as you take down your sluggy enemies and blast

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level five. That's Friends without the art Best Fiends. Considering the persecution of so called witches and the horror of what befell the Guernsey Martyrs, it's little wonder that many believe something of those times still haunts the island. And perhaps it was just these such tales that were on the mind of the Colonnette family when in late nineteen oh two strange things began to happen in their rented home. Number seven Union Street lies in Saint peter Port, Guernsey's capital,

located in the middle of the island's east coast. Basil Colonnet, who lived there with his wife and children, was a photographer who also used the property as his studio. It is said to have begun late one night with a series of loud knockings and bangs that reverberated through the walls. Before long, the furniture was beginning to move. A chair left in one spot might be found moments later in

a completely different part of the room. One morning, the family was said to have awoken to find a number of portraits hanging up on their walls had all been turned around. These bizarre events appeared to have piqued when Basil sat down for dinner one night only to see a ghostly pair of hands reach out from over his shoulders, as if about to snatch away his food. But the

worst was yet to come. One night, one of Basil's daughters was making her way upstairs to bed when she was suddenly confronted by a terrifying fission, the spectral image of a woman dressed in white staring right at her. This ghostly figure is said to have reached out toward her with hideously elongated fingers that were streaked with blood. The young woman was so disturbed by the incident she ran straight to her room and didn't come out for days.

The family vacated the property soon after, with Basil only using it in the daytime for his studio. As word quickly spread of the terrifying events, people from the local neighborhood flocked to the house in the hope of witnessing the ghostly goings on for themselves. As a result, the police were called out to keep the peace, with one report claiming that when the officers arrived to investigate, children

burst out the front door screaming for help. They had apparently been conducting an investigation of their own insight when they saw the ghostly image of a man staring at them from behind a broken window. One officer, after entering the property, was reportedly struck in the face by a flying doormat, while another was levitated into the air after

taking a seat in Basil's studio. Some local residents, keen to get evidence of the apparent ghost, placed chalk on the stairs, then locked a chocolate box in a cupboard and challenged the entity to remove it when they returned a short time later, with no one having entered the house in the meantime, It is said that footsteps were clearly visible in the chalk, while the chocolate box was found left out in the middle of the kitchen table,

with the peculiar detail that small feather was balancing on top of it. At some point, it was recommended to the family that they searched the house for any human remains that might account for a spirit being trapped there. To that end, the kitchen range was removed in order to excavate the floor underneath. However, no remains were discovered. By March nineteen o three, with the story having made it into the local press, it caught the attention of

well known Guernsey resident Henry Turner. The then sixty year old Turner, who was once described by the Guernsey Evening Press as a showman, a lover of publicity and maybe an eccentric, is perhaps best known for being Victor Hugo's

personal bookbinder, arguably Guernsey's most famous former resident. Turner, who owned over twenty properties on the island, including his famed antique store at number seven Mill Street, Saint Peter Port, received regular mentions in the island's principal paper, The Guernsey Star, which gives you some idea of his standing in the local community. After hearing about the mysterious events in Union Street.

Turner wrote to The Guernsey Star offering to donate ten pounds to the recipient's charity of choice if they could prove beyond reasonable doubt that the property was indeed haunted. Further to this, Turner offered to investigate the property himself, vowing to spend seven nights there alone in order to

prove there was no ghost. Turner, as a landlord himself, claimed he felt compelled to make the gesture out of concern for the building's owner, Miss Mollett, and the value of her property, which he feared would decrease should it acquire a reputation for being haunted. Mollett gladly took him up on the offer, and so on the evening of March twenty sixth, nineteen o three, Turner, accompanied by his trusty dog Fido, entered the vacant property, having arrived at

eight pm. He spent the first few hours in the company of other curious parties, then, shortly before midnight he bid them all a good night, then locked himself up inside alone, with only candle light to guide him. He hung up some pictures on a few of the walls and placed a plate of flour on the kitchen floor to test for ghostly footprints. Then, with candle in hand, he retired to the living room, where he took a seat in one of the property's few remaining chairs and

blew out the flame. Plunged instantly into darkness, with only the loyal Fido curled up on the floor by his feet for company. He felt his senses slowly beginning to heighten as he sat waiting in the pitch black stillness. The darkness seemed to morph and swirl before him as his eyes fought to adjust. When all of a sudden, something touched his leg. Turner cried out in fright and

hurriedly fumbled for the matches. On first strike, a burst of orange light flooded the room to reveal Fido sat up at his feet, with his paw resting gently on Turner's leg. With great relief and a little disappointment, Turner soon collected himself and returned to the task at hand. Three hours later, the first light of dawn crept in through the curtains and gently illuminated the room. Turner's vigil

was over. As promised, Turner completed his week's worth of nightly vigils in the property but in the end found no evidence whatsoever that the house was haunted. Perhaps most relieved was miss Mollett, who later thanked him in an open letter for dispelling the potentially costly rumor. As for the place itself, it isn't known who occupied it after the Colonnett's tendency came to an end, or indeed, if

any other peculiar events were known to have happened there. Ironically, despite his commitment to disproving the apparent haunting at Union Street, Turner insisted that rather than being scared at the notion of seeing a ghost, he would much rather have seen one than not, due to what this might reveal in

regards to the possibility of life after death. In nineteen oh seven, only a few years after these bizarre events, Turner was struck down with ill health and died soon after, when perhaps he finally learned the truth about the possibility of ghosts, or perhaps he learned nothing at all. Turner's sentiment about wanting to see a ghost is one I share myself, and perhaps you two would be comforted by the sighting of a ghost, particularly that of a friend

or a lost loved one. Almost without exception, however, dating back to our earliest cultures, from those of the Ebo in West Africa to the Bengali of South Asia, the sighting of a ghost was rarely something to celebrate. Commonly, the appearance of a ghost would speak of something unsettled, the result of a body not properly buried, perhaps, or one that had been lost at sea, or maybe, if the ghost was especially angry, a final resting place that

had been disturbed. That people lived on the land we know today as Guernsey, certainly as far back as four thousand BC, is evidenced by the many incredible relics that have been found there dating back to that era, most prominently the many dolmen that have been unearthed in the

last few hundred years. A dolmen is essentially a megalithic tomb or burial chamber comprised of two large stones placed side by side, with another large stone known as a capstone, placed on top to create a chamber underneath where a body or bodies would be laid, and Guernsey is littered with them. In Edgar McCulloch's book Guernsey Folklore, in the chapter Prehistoric Monuments and their Superstitions, he outlines one especially

troubling story connected with these sepulchral monuments. Laroque Quisson, one of the largest dolmans discovered on Guernsey, or what remains of it, can now be found in the playground of Vale Primary School in the parish of Vale, in the northeast of the island. As the story goes, the dolmen was discovered sometime around eighteen hundred on land belonging to a mister Hocart. With little interest in its archeological significance, Hokart promptly had its smashed up for use as a

building material. Most of it was split into paving stones or smashed into smaller pieces, with a view to being sold off and shipped to England. From the moment the rocks were found, however, there were murmurings among the locals, worried about Hocart's plans. Some tried to warn him against destroying the Dolman for fear that it might put a curse on him and the island, but Hocart didn't listen.

Shortly after using some of the material in his new house built, the house burned down, killing two servants inside. Then two ships transporting fragments of the stones to England were lost at sea, with all on board believed to have drowned. Not long after, Hocart moved across to the island of Alderney, where once again his house burned down, and on his return journey to Guernsey he is said

to have encountered rough seas. As his boat was tossed about on the waves, the rigging collapsed, hitting him square on the head, killing him instantly. The people of Guernsey, it seemed, had been warned. Have you ever been interested in a conspiracy theory? What's the most fascinating one you've

ever heard? In Land of Delusion, cultural historian and acclaimed author Colin Dickey dives deep into two bizarre theories gaining traction in the United States and Russia today from a worldwide empire erased from the history books to a claim that history itself began only eight hundred years ago. Taken entertaining but grimly serious journey into the warped logic of conspiracy theorists that just hint at where present society is heading.

In Land of Delusion, I immensely enjoyed Dickie's book, which was riveting and maddening an equal measure as I came face to face with one character after another who, despite having access to the exact same information about the world as I do, seem to have come to a completely different conclusion about it, and neither one of us would ever be able to convince the other who was truly in the right, which, in a way, is what conspiracy

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start with a free sixty day trial. On the north coast of Guernsey in the district of Lelay, just off the corner of close to Sablon, Hidden behind a wall and some trees lies a small patch of grass dotted with stones. Many years ago it would have been a beach, but due to the land to the north of it, being artificially reclaimed in eighteen twelve. It now sits roughly

six hundred feet in land. In the years that followed its reclamation, the area became a natural repository for sand blown in from the newly established beach to the north.

In time, as the sand deposits became more substantial, builders began to use it as a natural sampit for local building operations, and it was there in late October nineteen twelve that a laborer by the name of Fork made his way, stepping past the clumps of long grass and brambles at the pit's edge, towards one of the few mounds of sand that had yet to be dug out. After taking away a few cartloads, he suddenly noticed something peculiar about the handful of rocks that had gradually begun

to protrude at the top of it. The stones were positioned in a circle, and, even to Fork's untrained eye, had clearly been placed there deliberately. After informing his employers, they in turn contacted the Guernsey Society of Natural Science and invited them to come and examine the sight. Having spent a day carefully excavating around the stones, the Society were excited to find they had uncovered a small Neolithic

stone circle. Looking around the sight at some of the other larger stones that peaked above the sand, the Society volunteers began to wander. A hammer was taken to one especially big boulder that stuck out of the middle of the pit and brought down hard against its surface. The resultant reverberation suggested the stone was far bigger than first assumed. A few hours of digging later, and it was revealed to be a capstone lying on top of a much

bigger structure. They'd uncovered a dolmen about six foot long and four feet wide. On Friday, October twenty fifth, the dolmen had been sufficiently exposed to begin the process of opening it. With great care, the vast capstone, essentially a giant coffin lid made of rock, was eased back and the Society volunteers were finally able to access the chamber inside and in there. Beside a few fragments of pottery, the team also found what appeared to be to fragments

of human bone. Early the next morning, with news of the latest archeological find beginning to filter through to the wider community. The owner of Burt and Co. Butchers at Saint Sampson Bridge arrived at their store to find the place had been ransacked. The unknown assailant appeared to have crawled in through the front window like a dark and disappeared with an assortment of raw meats from insight. As local police pondered on who on earth had done such

a thing, more revelations were uncovered at the site. In Lelay. A beautifully preserved urn was found at the entrance to the large dolmen, which itself was found to be the centerpiece of a much wider stone circle, measuring about twenty five feet in diameter, but the north and south ends either side of the central tomb to More dolmen were discovered, including one that had possibly been built for a mother

and child. The Archeology Society had not uncovered one to whom they had uncovered a graveyard, and it wasn't long after that that strange things began to happen. On the morning of November fifth, on Bertelow Street in some peter Port, some builders were working on scaffolding at the bottom of the road when a car was parked a little further up the hill, with the driver having left the vehicle.

A few moments later, the car suddenly jumped inexplicably and began to roll down the hill, straight toward an elderly woman who just stepped into the road below, and toward the builders on the scaffolding. The woman leapt out of the way just in time before a slight bump in the road knocked the vehicle off course and diverted it away from the scaffolding, sending it smashing into the corner of a nearby house. It was a miracle that no

one was hurt. An hour or so later, ten year old Roger Boussier was walking down Mill Street when his foot somehow slipped from underneath him just as a van drove by. The van miss to the boy's head by inches, but drove right over his arm, crushing his elbow. And at almost precisely the same time, a man cycling along the North Key for some unaccountable reason, was suddenly thrown from his bike head first into the tarmac, smashing his

face and knocking him out cold. It was the following night when much loved Reverend George Lee, the sixty year old rector of Saint Peter Port was climbing the stairs of his home when he suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed, dying shortly afterwards. As it happened, Reverend Lee was one of the archeological volunteers who had been helping out at the Dolman sight in Leelee, though he'd been

ill for some time. It was reported soon after in the press that there was no indication that is indisposition was of so serious a character as it eventually proved to be, and that was just the beginning. You've been listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twenty six, Under the Rocks and Stones, Part one of two. Part two will be released next Friday, December ninth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do

so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com forward slash Unexplained pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me

Richard McClain Smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast