Season 08 Episode 32: What the Water Took From Us

but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. What is it about water that haunts us? Perhaps it's the way that great bodies of it, locks, canals and ponds sit like amorphous entities beneath the moonlight, quiet, patient, indifferent.

Perhaps is the thought of what they might conceal, their mirror like surfaces, offering the perfect metaphor and sometimes genuine hiding place for whatever unknown horrors might lurk within its depths. Perhaps it's to do with waters awesome power to overwhelm and destroy we see footage on the news of tsunamis and extreme weather events. We know what it means when a region reports higher than average rainfall, and can almost feel the creak of the levee when a storm assaults

the coastline. It's the ultimate irony that the most abundant element on Earth, the one thing other than air, which is non negotiable for survival, is also a deadly killer. Just as gods are granted the power to give and take life, we might do well to see water in

just those same terms. In nineteen forty one, T. S. Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages that the Mississippi River was a strong brown god, unhonoured, unpropitiated by worshipers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting, and that in keeping his seasons and rages, the river was also a destroyer, reminder of what men choose to forget. It was Eliot's contention that attempts to outgrow the natural world would wreak havoc of the kind we see today as a result

of global warming. It should therefore come as no surprise that in almost every culture around the world, from the Japanese kappa to the figure of Poseidon. In Greek mythology, water is depicted as a jealous and unforgiving supernatural force. We ignore it at our peril, and if we fail to pay it due deference, it has the power to claim us and our loved ones and drag them impassively to its depths. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard

McLean Smith. The English legends of Peg Powler and Ginny Green Teeth, from the northeast and northwest of England, respectively, might at first give the appearance of a more frivolous take on the subject of elemental destruction. Both are spirits or old crones, said to haunt inland waterways. Both prey on children and old people, using their elongated arms, talon like fingers, sharp teeth, long straggly hair, and green skin to petrify and insight ne'er anyone unlucky enough to encounter them.

The presence of duckweed is usually an indication that either Ginny or Peg is close by, keeping their presence mostly to rivers and ponds, with occasional forays into haunting canals and sewer systems. In more industrialized urban landscapes like Liverpool and Newcastle. Both have been invoked to warn people away from dangerous bodies of water, and both can trace their origins within a long folkloric tradition stretching as far back

as the thirteenth century. Some scholars, however, think that the legends date further, noting striking similarities between the figure of Grendel from the tenth century epic Beowulf and the Welsh myth of Haffron or Sabrina, who was drowned in Britain's longest river, the River Seven, and curse to haunt its waters forevermore. But not all stories to do with Ginny

Green Teeth or peg Powler are quite so esoteric. On thirteenth of January eighteen sixty a recently constructed iron bridge over the River Tees near Yarm in North Yorkshire collapsed into the water, leading many locals to believe that the

spirit of peg Powler had somehow been angered. A local paper wrote at the time the new bridge was built adjacent to the old one, but peg Powler, the mythical spirit of the River Tees, objected to the effrontery offered by these new fangled ideas, rose in her wrath and before the much vaunted new way was opened to the public.

It collapsed at midnight on January twelfth, eighteen sixty. The implication, of course, is that, like T. S. Eliot's depiction of an ancient water got disturbed by modern industrial lifedzation, the figure of peg Powler rose up in anger to foil modern man's tampering with the order of the natural world. Not only do mortals in this story fail to show respect to the spirit of the river, they are punished

for their transgressions through physical violence and economic sabotage. Thanks largely to more advanced public understanding of scientific natural processes, the prevalence of mythbusting on social and traditional media, and sustained government efforts to clean up and make safe dilapidated waterways, stories about Peg Powler and Ginny Green Teeth have mostly been forgotten, and yet many urban legends of this nature

have not been completely consigned to history. Still whispers about malevolent beings ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims who stray too close to the water's edge. Many in Britain will, no doubt remember the brilliant and haunting public information films released by the suitably Orwellian sounding Central Office of Information that proliferated on British TV in the nineteen seventies. The drowning awareness film Lonely Water was perhaps the most haunting of them all.

There are traps, old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's the perfect place for an accident. Oh I love the.

ground for their victims. Police have dismissed this as a modern moral panic, though for those who believe it, this phantom figure is said to be responsible for upwards of eighty six deaths. For more than two hundred and fifty years, Manchester and its surrounds such as Salford, has been a Northern English powerhouse. In the nineteenth century. It was there that Friedrich Engels and Carl Marx studied the industrial working classes.

So important was their labour for the manufacture and distribution of cotton and linen to international markets. The city's burgeoning textiles industry earned it the nickname Cottonopolis, and required the construction of a vast network of shipping canals, docks and fire ducts to bring raw materials from the New World overnight. It seemed the city was transformed from a sleepy market town into a kind of infernal red brick inversion of Venice.

Instead of gondolas and churches, cobbled squares and famous art expositions, it was schooners and warehouses, dirty terraces, and row upon row of red bricked factories breathing hell fire into the

choked streets. As the population exploded from just a couple of thousand at the start of the eighteenth century to more than three hundred and fifty thousand by eighteen sixs the canals were the arteries that fed the city's heart, though by the end of the nineteen seventies, with the decline of heavy industry cruelly accelerated by Margaret Thatcher's government of the day, Manchester began a steady decline into unemployment

and deprivation. The disintegration of the city's literal and psychological horizons would later define much of Greater Manchester's local music scene, as exemplified in the timeless work of bands like Joy Division, The Smiths and The Four. Over time, the canals fell into disuse and disrepair, and what had once been vital transport lanes connecting the city to the rest of the world suddenly became something far less edifying and much closer to the kind of still water favoured by those dark

legendary figures like Ginny Green Tea. By the early nineteen nineties, a new Manchester was beginning to emerge, driven by the city's intrinsically indomitable spirit and blossoming out of the detritus of its former glories. From its resurgent music scene dubbed Manchester to the unrelenting success of the city's Manchester United football club, Manchester at once again established itself as one

of the nation's most heralded cities. By two thousand seven, work was well underway to redevelop the Bridgewater and Manchester ship Canals to cater to what would eventually become Media City UK, a sprawling two hundred acre site in Salford that became home to much of the nations leading media organizations. With that came bars and artisanal restaurants, glass fronted hotels and the kind of sophistication that would have been unimaginable on the banks of the Manchester Shipping Canal just one

hundred years previously. The redeveloped waterways with their newly installed towpaths became popular walking routes for everyone from young professionals on their way to work to joggers, and, most crucially for this story, drinkers and nightclub revelers making their way home after an evening on the town. Greater Manchester is home to over thirty six miles of criss crossing rivers and canals, many of which are lowered from street view to allow for the easy passage of a boat or

transport vessel. It stands to reason that after a few drinks, straying too close to the water's edge could spell disaster. After only a few units of alcohol, your heart rate speeds up, your reaction time lessons, your inhibitions lower, and

your hand to eye coordination becomes impaired. With increased consumption, performing even simple tasks like holding a conversation or walking in a straight line can become difficult, let alone the prospect of treading icy, treacle thick water having taken a

tumble over the edge of an embankment. Add to that the precarious living situation many homeless people find themselves in, and it should come as little surprise that between two thousand and four and twenty eighteen, the bodies of at least eighty six people, most of them young men, were recovered from the water. Some had been out clubbing before they disappeared. Many were last seen walking near the canal, often after dark, sometimes intoxicated and always on their own.

Nineteen year old engineering student Suvic Powell was one of them, having grown up in a strict Indian household before traveling to the UK to study at Manchester's Metropolitan University, Suvic Powell had never been much of a drinker, much less of regular fixture on the city's famous clubbing scene. Nonetheless, according to his friend Charlotte Wilson, on New Year's Eve twenty twelve, he found himself out celebrating at a club called Warehouse Project in the Trafford area of the city.

CCTV footage showed Suvac's last movements with friends as they entered the venue before being escorted off the premises by a security guard, ostensibly for being too intoxicated. Three weeks later, the young student's body was pulled from Manchester's Bridgewater Canal, a thirty nine mile stretch of water running through Manchester. The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, no signs of injury caused by a third party, and no defensive wounds showing that he'd put up any kind of struggle.

Suvic's death was ruled as an accidental drowning, but questions remained about the circumstances surrounding it. Why had it taken so long to find his body between the time of his disappearance and the likely time of his death, which coroners acknowledged had taken place much closer to the end of the three weeks, Where had he been for all that time? Suvic's parents made it clear that they didn't

believe he'd simply fallen into the water. Members of his family even appealed to the Indian government to investigate the possibility of foul play, but with nothing more than a series of patchy CCTV images to go on, the young man's case quickly went cold. He was cremated in his hometown of Bangalore in January twenty thirteen. Nine years earlier, on seventeenth of April two thousand and four, twenty one year old David Plunkett had also been out in the

Trafford area of the city. Like Suvic, he too, had been out with friends at Dayton of Racetrack in Trafford Park. At some point, David's friend Michael realized that David was no longer with the group. Unknown to him, David had been ejected by the event organizers for being too drunk. When Michael was unable to reach him on the phone, he contacted the young man's parents and and Mike Plunkett. They,

in turn then attempted to contact David. In the quiet of the night, the deeply concerned Anne and Mike sat in their home trying to call their son. It took and three attempts before the call was finally answered, but her son didn't speak, seemingly unaware that his phone had picked up the call. What struck her first and foremost was the strange quietness of where he seemed to be. No sounds of revelry or traffic, no sound of anything much at all. All she could hear was the sound

of him walking and his breathing. David, she repeated into the phone, to no reply, Can you hear me? Do you know where you are? Are you in Manchester? Do you recognize anything? About seven or eight minutes into the call, David's mother heard a series of ghastly screams. Horrified, Anne started crying and handed the phone to her husband, Mike, then quickly called nine ninety nine on a separate phone, hoping that some one could get to David wherever he was.

As she talked to an officer on the other line, David's screams continued until finally, a short time later, David's phone went dead. The screams and plunkets spoke about were also heard by the police officer on the other line, though they weren't picked up on tape the recorder had failed to work. The officer in question would go on

to describe the noises as distressing. She later resigned from her post, speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, who ran an early piece on the possibility of a serial killer operating on the Manchester Canal network. The incident still haunts me to this day. With every death I see reported in the news, more and more convinced that these are murders and not accidents. As David's father, Mike also put it, the screaming I heard made me feel like David had

seen something that terrified him. Like Suvic. It was a long time before David's body was found eventually washing up two weeks later in the Manchester Ship Canal. The coroner ruled it as drowning, and like Suvic, there was a lot of alcohol in David's bloodstream, so much so that the coroner publicly admonished the organizers of the event for ejecting someone in his vulnerable state when it was known that he would not have had the coordination to look

after himself. The third, and one of the most high profile cases for amateur sleuths on the hunt for what many have taken to calling the Manchester Pusher is that of Nathan Tomlinson. Nathan was a twenty one year old student student who disappeared after a Christmas party on seventeenth of December twenty ten. His last confirmed sighting was at

the Mita Hotel near Manchester Cathedral. Anecdotal evidence picks up his whereabouts on Victoria Street in the center of the city, where he is said to have hopped a war before making his way toward Chapel Street in Salford to the west. A man fitting his description was seen asking a passing bus driver how he might get home to Stockport, about five miles away to the south, A figure also matching his description was spotted by CCTV walking toward the River Irwell.

At that point, no more sightings were picked up of Nathan, speculative or otherwise, after which he is said to have disappeared completely. An agonizing three month search followed, during which time police focused their efforts on the area around the University of Salford, nearby Peel Park and Salford Crescent Railway station. His body was recovered from the River Irwell three months later, washing up at a bridge near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton.

An inquest into the search for Nathan found that police had failed to do basic investigative work to ensure that his body was uncovered more quickly. Pathologist Naomi Carter said that although Nathan had water in his lungs, she couldn't determine whether he'd died before going into the river or

whether he'd drowned. Nathan was found with its phone and wallet, though his coat was missing, and his mother even suggested at one point that she thought the discovery scene might have been staged to make it look as though Nathan had gone into the water of his own accord. Behind each of these high profile cases. The men's families insists there is more to the story, and perhaps there is.

It wasn't until twenty fifteen, when a newspaper published an article featuring criminal psychologist Professor Craig Jackson from the University of Birmingham that whispers began about the deaths of Nathan, David and Souvic, and possibly scores of others being connected. The professor was quoted as saying that it was extremely unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides, and that it was entirely possible a serial killer was

responsible for at least some of the deaths. A theory arose that because Manchester's waterways had been used over the decades as a cruising area for gay men, an elusive murderer may have been targeting the gay community and catching potential cruisers unaware. In twenty sixteen, British TV station Channel four commissioned a documentary called Manchester's Serial Killer, which featured a more cautious, though no less intrigued Professor Craig Jackson

expounding on his theory. Once again, forums exploded with hypotheses and innuendos, and Detective Chief Inspector Pete Marsh of the Greater Manchester Police was even instructed to reopen investigations into all the deaths linked to the theory. Marsh reported that he did not believe young men or those that were gay made up the majority of the deaths, and added that it was his belief that many of the individuals

who died on Manchester's waterways had died accidentally. Skepticism remained, however, Almost all victims identified were young men aged between eighteen to thirty. Last scene after dark, walking alone, found in or near one of the city's rivers or canals, with no witnesses, no clear cause of death, and no sign

of struggle against their likely impending doom. Rumors of the so called Manchester Pusher might have eventually died out were it not for the number of supposed survivors who claimed to have had near brushes with the elusive serial killer. One anonymous source calling himself Tom, a thirty four year old cyclist who regularly frequented Bridgewater Canal, felt an arm knock him off his bike and into the water one

April evening in twenty eighteen. As he struggled to get out, found that someone was waiting at the edge of the water for him, kicking his hand away repeatedly as he struggled to clamber over the embankment. By the time he eventually managed to haul himself out of the water, all signs of an attacker had disappeared. He'd heard rumors about the apparent pusher and had likely been on his guard, especially given that there were no lights where the attack

was alleged to have occurred. With all that said, Tom freely admitted that he'd heard about the pusher rumors before his near drowning, and with the shock of going into the water, he may have been in a state of mind suggestible enough for his unconscious to invent a dark figure that was responsible. With no new evidence to go on, and with Greater Manchester Police having effectively shelled their investigation into all searches for a murderer, its likely will never

know whether someone or something was responsible. Was it murder, misadventure or something older, colder and harder to explain. Either way, the water doesn't care. Perhaps only one thing is for certain that wherever water lies, the grim Reaper is never far away, just watching, waiting, I Will be. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard

McLean Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems titled Bandit, exploring the Hinterland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two t S Eliot Prize and is out now to buy, so do check it out. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as 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 McLain 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 heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd

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