Hello, it's Richard Maclin Smith here, not the impostor you've been listening to on the podcasts the real one. Join me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com Forward Slash Unexplained pod. It could be argued that our ability to comprehend our own death and the fear of such an idea, is the very thing that makes us the conscious, self aware creatures that we consider ourselves to be. That only in understanding our lives as something in opposition to death
do we develop a concept of the self. You might say that death is the ultimate price of self awareness. A recent Gallup poll conducted across sixty one countries around the world found that roughly sixty percent of people believe in an after life, and yet for many of those same people, the idea of death as a final end for us and the ones we love is still the
greatest of fears. We need only witness the ferocity with which people will instinctively fight for their survival, even if they believe heaven awaits them on the other side, to understand how potent this fear can be. This instinct heart wired into the brain's hypothalamus, suggests from a biological perspective, at least that, despite what we hope may await us after we die, that our bodies seem very reluctant to find out exactly what that might be. All stories, says
Ernest Hemingway, are about death. What then, of the stories we tell that go a little further. The first law of thermodynamics dictate that the total amount of energy in a closed system is constant. It can neither be destroyed nor created, merely changing from one form to another. If the universe is a closed system, as many scientists believe, there is little dispute as to what fate awaits the
material of the body after death. Its constituent parts will be broken down piece by peace, repurposed and reintegrated, never disturbing the scales of the universal totality of energy. Perhaps for the materialist, then this is satisfaction enough that we, in some way or other, continue to exist long after our bodies have decomposed. The idea of where we go we being the slightly more abstract and intangible notion of the self, as proven and altogether more difficult beasts to
pin down. It is an unknown that cause into question the very nature of consciousness, and one that has been explored in stories told across every community and culture from as far back as we know. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard MacLean Smith. Death, as an ancient Greek, provided you had received a burial, would supposedly be followed by the separation from your body of your soul, which would then be led by Hades to the entrance of
the underworld. From here, your soul, taking the form of your living world self, would be ferried by Charon across the Acharn River, where, under the watchful eye of Cerberus, the three headed hound of Hades, the judges of the underworld would decide your fate. For the virtuous heroes and semigods, the golden fields of Elysium would await. For those unlucky enough to be judged sufficiently undeserving, it would be to the unlit gloom of the Tartarus Abyss that you would
be dispatched. For. The ancient Egyptians, differing traditions offered a variety of after life scenarios. The most well known is to be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which details a horrifying and complex journey into Duart. The Egyptian underworld. Provided your soul was able to survive a treacherous gauntlet chased by terrifying and grotesque entities, it would arrive at the Hall of Truth to face the judgment
of Osiris, the god of the Dead. If found to have lived a sufficiently virtuous life, your heart would be taken by Anubis, the god of embalming, and weighed against the goddess my arts, white ostrich feather of Truth. If the heart was equal to more lighter than the feather, your soul would be granted access to the red fields of Aru, a paradisical land, where again, in the guise of your wants living body, your soul would dwell for eternity.
A heart heavier than the feather of Truth would be thrown to and promptly gobbled up by the goddess and devourer of the dead Amit, condemning the soul to an
eternal restlessness. In contemporary cultures influenced by the Abrahamic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, stories of the afterlife follow a similar theme, promoting a version of continued life consistent with our living sense of self image, just as it was for the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, life becomes a test of moral courage, and where we end up is subsequently dependent on our actions. The options are invariably divided
between some form of heaven or hell. Followers of religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, however, believe our lives to be but one moment in the process of samsara, the repeating cycle of birth, life, and death, more commonly known as reincarnation. Much like the eschatology of other faiths, those that incorporate samsara believe too, in the karmic process of the life you lead, dictating your fate in death, while also employing a dualist separation of body and soul.
A fundamental difference is the complete rejection of a singular image of the body. Instead, Samsara dictates that the soul, your true essence, is the only consistency, while its body will take potentially infinite forms as it is reborn ceaselessly into the material world. Release from the infinite cycle comes only to those souls who are able to become so transcendentally enlightened that they are liberated from the bondage of consciousness altogether and dissolved back into the great oneness of
all things. Buddhist teachings of Samsara have suggested that such a process could allow for the remembrance of previous lives, since all previous lives are considered to be merely different experiences of the same soul. Some believe this phenomenon known as jattismara. Although traditionally the preserve of great Buddhist saints can be unnearthed through past life regression, the technique of
using hypnosis to recover these apparent memories. Although common in ancient India, it wasn't until the late nineteenth century, through the teachings of occultist Elena Blovatski and the Theosophical Society that she co founded in eighteen seventy five, that the idea of past life regression gained prominence in modern European society. Many accounts have been dismissed as simple cases of false
memories recollections of names and places that have been subconsciously absorbed. However, there are a few cases that have not been so easy to dismiss. In twenty fifteen, a young boy named Ryan from Muskogee in Oklahoma who was ten at the time, hit the headlines with the claim that he could remember the life of a man who died fifty years previously. It began with a nightmare when, at the age of four, Ryan woke up screaming, saying that his chest was exploding.
He began dreaming about a life spent working in Hollywood in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, a trip that had once taken to Paris, that he had a sister and lived on a street with the word rock in it, as well as the bizarre claim that he had had five wives. Ryan became so insistent that his mother, not quite sure what to do about it, took out some books on the Golden era of Hollywood and brought them
home for Ryan to look at. While perusing one of them, Ryan yelled, that's George, pointing at an image taken from the nineteen thirty two movie Night After Night. And that guy's me, he said, pointing to another man at the back of the picture. Growing increasingly unsettled by Ryan's ba proclamations, his parents enlisted the help of child psychologist doctor Jim Tucker from the University of Virginia, whose division of Perceptual
Studies specializes in investigating cases of apparent reincarnation. With doctor Tucker's help, the man that Ryan pointed out in the picture was identified as Marty Martin, who had appeared in the movie Night after Night as an extra. Incredibly, the other man Ryan had pointed to was indeed called George. It was the actor George Raft. Neither man was listed
under the image in the book. It was later discovered that Marty Martin did indeed have a sister, had at one point visited Paris, and incredibly, had had five wives. Martin was also found to have lived on not Rock exactly, but Roxbury Drive. And that sensation of his heart exploding that had so terrorized Ryan at four years old. Some might say it had something to do with the heart attack that killed Marty Martin at the age of sixty one, or at least that's how old Ryan claimed Martin was
when he died. However, when doctor Tucker located his death certificate, it listed his age at death as fifty nine. It was some time later when doctor Tucker found Marty Martin listed in an old census report, amazed to discover that the death certificate had incorrectly listed Martin's birth by two years. He most likely had been sixty one when he died after all. The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia was founded in nineteen sixty seven by psychiatrist
doctor Ian Stephenson. By the time of his retirement in two thousand and two, Stephenson had logged over two and a half thousand cases of apparent reincarnation, with varying degrees of credibility. One such case involved a young boy from Middlesbrough, England, whose story he would learn about after reading an article published in nineteen eighty three detailing the boy's extraordinary claims. It would prove to be one of the most compelling
cases that doctor Stephenson would ever come across. On the bitterly cold afternoon of January fifteenth, nineteen forty two, with night beginning to fall, Captain e s Parks of the Ess Empire Bay watches from the ship's bridge as all across the British Isles, the lights go out. The sky shimmers like oil. Electric pinks dissolve into inky blue as the last of the sun's rays drop below the horizon.
At seventeen hundred hours, the ship's engine gurgles and sputters before roaring into life as thick black plumes of smoke are belched into the air. The cargo ship is laden with three thousand, eight hundred tons of coal and thirty eight crew, bound for London. Such journeys are among the most treacherous for the Merchant Navy as they attempt to deliver fuel to the Capitol to aid the British war effort.
They skulk close to the coast in small convoys in the hope that their limited company and the cover of darkness will keep them safe from the peril above. It is shortly after seventeen hundred hours and fifteen minutes when the Empire draws level with the S. S. Corse, when Captain Parks orders the anchor dropped while they wait for the final vessel of their convoy to catch up to them. The crew pull their pea coats a little tighter, taking drags on woodbines. As the boat gently rocks and creeks
on the ebbing tide. All eyes are turned nervously to the skies. It's just gone seventeen hundred hours and thirty minutes when the looping whale of an air raid siren comes twisting out of the dark from somewhere in the direction of Hartleypool action stations. Screams, parks, glowing embers are flicked overboard, and hats hurriedly pulled onto heads as the
crew scurry into position along the coastline. Bulbous barrage balloons vast inflatables designed to obstruct low flying aircraft are drifting up into the air as the men continue to scan the sky, their necks in manic desperation for any glimpse of incoming planes. Chief Stewart John Cavanagh is perched behind the twin Lewis guns on the port side of the ship's bridge, his eyes fixed on Captain Parks, waiting for
his signal. When he finally hears the dreaded, unmistakable hum of approaching aircraft, Cavanah spins round, squinting into the distant darkness as his eyes work desperately to adjust to the gloom. Clouds and eye spots teas shapes in the sky that swiftly vanish into nothing, until finally something solid materializes. A row of small spots twelve miles or so off the port beam, steadily growing in size as the rumble of engines grows ever louder, the spots grow longer and thinner
and sprout wings and tails. Grips the gun tight and positions the planes in its sights. Then one breaks suddenly from the pack, the drone of its engine giving way to a piercing shriek as it plunges menacingly from the clouds. Cavanagh hopes for a moment that it might disappear into the water, only to see it level out at the last instant before continuing on its path straight towards them.
Guns hold fire, yelled parks. Cavernah's fingers hover over the triggers as the aircraft, now less than five miles away, bears down upon them. Hold two miles, hold one mile fire. Cavanagh squeezes the triggers, releasing a thundering racket as the plane roars overhead, swerving viciously to the left, before circling back round and heading for the SS Corsey. Cavanah watches with alarm as the plane reaches the second vessel. It
fears away at the last moment, releasing a single bomb. Mercifully, it misses the ship and drops straight into the black waters around it. The crew find their breath as the plane pulls up and away, heading in land toward the River Tees. A strange calm descents as the worst looks to be over, but then comes that dreaded sound again. Portside bellows Captain Parks. Cavanagh swings the guns back round, and there it is again, dropping out at the sky
and heading straight for the SS Empire Bay. He fights to a nor the trembling in its fingers, and steadies himself once more behind the sights. Hold your fire, and again it comes closer and closer, until finally it is so close that Cavaner is sure he can see the pilot's eyes fire. A rocket shoots out from the bridge with a fierce rasp. As Cavanah lets off another volley of fire, it pummels into the underside of the wing. As the plane rears up, missing the ship's funnel by inches.
Caverner spins round just in time to see it swerve wildly again to the left, before this time releasing five bombs from underneath its wings. For a moment they seem like soft clods of earth suspended above them, before ripping violently through the air. Cavner breathes the sigh of relief as he catches sight of four of them, disappearing down the port side and straight into the water, but there were five. A booming explosion reverberates from out of the
starboard quarter. As the boat is lifted from the sea, Flames and fountains spray up in unison. Cavanah is thrown to the floor, his ears ringing from the chaos as the boat crashes back down. When he finally gets its bearings, the ship appears to be holding, and in the space beyond he can just make out the hulking silhouette of an aircraft heading towards the mouth of the River Tees, with a trail of thick, dark smoke spewing out of
its engine. Twenty miles in land, on the outskirts of Billingham, a call comes through reporting enemy aircraft spotted off the coast of Hartlepool, leading aircraftmen while to Myers and his crew leap to their stations and begin manically pumping hydrogen into defense balloons. Once inflated, they stand back and watch together as Annie, as they'd christened it, the last of their set makes its slowercent into the sky. Its limp tail flapping casually in the wind. Come on before it's
too late. Hands turn faster and faster on the winch, unspooling the cable until a final click locks it into place. A sudden gust of wind catches the tail, expanding the balloon to its full corpulent glory. The men make their way back to the station hut and have only just settled in when the telltale rumble of a spluttering engine is hurt Drawing closer. Maya spots it first, coming in far too low and trailing huge clouds of black smoke.
The rumble turns to a sickening, shrieking wine as the plane lurches suddenly to the right and heads straight for the hut. He's going to machine gunners, No look the cable. The air itself seems to tear apart as the plane roars past, sending the men scattering for cover. A horrifying crunch and the hulking winch lorry is lifted from the floor before it clatters back down to the ground. The balloon's cable as sliced straight through the starboard wing, propelling
it in the opposite direction. The rest of the plane jerks to the site and veers off towards the Middlesbrough Docks before slamming into the ground in a ball of fire just south of the river Tees. An air raid warden watches the drama unfolding from his back garden. He tracks the plane until it disappears just meters from his home onto the train tracks behind the Dorman Long steel works at the bottom of Clay Lane. The warden races
to the crash site as quickly as he can. When he arrives, he's immediately sent sprawling to the ground by the aircraft's ammunition, exploding in every direction. When the violent popping stops, a fire has engulfed the plane. It's already too intense to attempt a rescue of the men trapped in sight. It'll be thirty minutes before firefighters are able
to extinguish the inferno. Meanwhile, twenty miles up the coast, the crew of the SS Empire Bay, having all been successfully retrieved, watch huddle together from rescue boats as the ship's bow raises into the air before stead sinking below
the waves. First light on Teesite reveals a monochrome landscape of industrial plants and wastelands little changed from the evening's drama, save for the smoldering pile of metal, one hundred feet of smashed rail track, and a large hole in the ground measuring roughly ten feet deep and twelve feet wide. In the distance beyond, the slag and coal heaps lie dotted with snow, while the chimneys of the dormant Long
steelworks blow white clouds into the morning air. At the crash site, rescue workers, watched over carefully by two men wrapped in thick woolen coats, pull three charred bodies from the wreckage. A fourth body was thought to have likely
evaporated in the flames. The two men presiding over the grizzly scene have been sent by British intelligence to gather what they can from the German bomber, but with little of interest to be found, and the government keen to rebuild the rail track as soon as possible, the officers wrap up the search that morning. Within days, the remains of the aircraft are buried under a mound of earth, and the track is reinstalled as if nothing had ever happened.
The three bodies, identified by their dog tags as Feldvabel Jokim Lenes, Lieutenant Rudolph Mattn and uberfeld Wabel Heinrich Richter are taken to the nearby Thornaby on Tees Cemetery and laid to rest. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Middlesbrough as little more than a farm located on the banks of the River Tees in the northeast of England,
populated by roughly twenty five people. But a tidal wave of change is approaching that will soon turn this bucolic idol into one of the country's most prolific industrial powerhouses. As the spirit of Enlightenment begins to permeate all aspects of British society, there comes a sudden synchronicity of vision with the means of production, igniting a fuse from which
there will be no going back. From the bowels of the earth, the British Industrial Revolution rrupts in an explosion of steam, fire and smoke, a time of extraordinary physical and philosophical upheaval built on ambition, greed, and the blood and sweat of the men, women and children who rip it from the ground and smelt it in the factories. Soon throughout the land, colossal quadron of industry are springing
up wherever the raw ingredients are most abundant. In the early eighteen twenties, railway pioneer Joseph Peas gazes out over the banks of the River Tees as it meanders towards the North Sea, seeing not the tranquility of its placid waters, but rather a gateway to the world. By eighteen fifty, having bought that Middlesborough farm in eighteen twenty nine, Peas brought coal storage facilities and trains to the area, transforming the quaint hamlet into a bustling town with a population
of over seven thousand. Twenty years later, after iron ore is discovered in the nearby town of Eston in the Cleveland Hills, Middlesbrough quickly establishes itself as a world leader
in steel production. By the end of the century, the population has grown to ninety thousand, and the town, widely referred to as Ironopolis, is producing a third of the nation's iron Before long, with the increasingly expanding British Empire, easton steel, as writer H. G. Reid put it, like a strong and invincible serpent is coiling itself around the world.
In the nineteen twenties, Arthur Dorman and Albert de Land long better known as Dorman Long, purchase the Teeside Iron Works, and in nineteen thirty two will oversee the building of their most famous construction, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But a lot can change in fifty years. A combination of the reduced demand for steel and an ever expanding pool of
global competition leaves Middlesbrough's key industries floundering. By the early nineteen seventies, the town, once known as the Infant Hercules, is struggling to stay afloat. Nineteen seventy two is an especially chaotic year, characterized by strikes and stalemates between a conservative government intent on consolidating what little profit there is left to be made, and the workers' unions intent on protecting the interests of the people on whose backs that
very profit had been raised. Throughout Middlesbrough and many of the flailing industrial towns of the Midlands and the North of England, many jobs are lost as companies seek to reduce expenditure in the hope of maintaining what are by now unrealistic profit margins. The government's disastrous efforts to combat falling employment ultimately results in the worst unemployment figures since
the nineteen thirties. It is into this urbulent period on Friday twenty eighth, at December nineteen seventy two, that Carl Eden is born. You've been listening to Unexplained Season eight, episode twenty one, East of Eden, Part one of three, Part two will be released next Friday, March seventh. This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
produced by me Richard mclin Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've had on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
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