Queen Victoria’s Spooky Seance for Prince Albert

RiCRYPTulous Romance returns for a 3rd Halloween Season! When Queen Victoria’s dear husband Prince Albert died, she fell into deep mourning. But when a medium brought the queen a letter from Albert from beyond the grave, her spirit was lifted. She arranged a seance to peer through the veil and speak to her beloved once again! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
October. Man, it is packed to the gills every year,
is what we just started. We're only I don't think
we mentioned this last time. We're just a few sessions
in to starting power yoga.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Oh man, my fourth, fourth, my third, needless to say,
I've not done yoga before.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Also my first hot yoga. I've done some yoga, but
this is my first like hot yoga.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
And god, and it's not even just I mean, the
heat is one element, but it's the I mean it
is a strength exercise and it's like stability, you know what.
Everything they say about yoga is true. It's hard.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I know, it is tense. Yep, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Going to come out of this looking like Ryan Reynolds
crossed with one of the Hemsworth. I would say, I
would say three more weeks.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, I think it's about six weeks of work for them, right.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I think so at least or so like that that. Yeah,
if that maybe five? Yeah, it's just because they can
do it, you know, full time.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
They probably eat half a pizza every other night, right, definitely?
All right, then I'm right on all the meats for protein.
Oh I don't eat meat. Ah crap. Now, I'll never.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Look like vegetables do nothing for you.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
What else is going on this month?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Let's see, Well, it's I mean it's it's Halloween month.
It's spooky season. So what isn't going on? We got
stuff to do, We got costumes to plan. Yeah, because
we actually have a party to go to this year.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Oh crap.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
We get a parade A little five points A little.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Five points Halloween Parade is a time hunered Atlanta tradition.
If you've never been, it's a wacky, wild, good time.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
I mean, it's pretty much the pre eminent Halloween weekend
of activities, yeah at in Atlanta. Yeah, because it's like
a whole weekend of various stuff. They got a haunted house,
a three D haunted house, which I don't know if
that means because in the third dimension they're usually forty

(02:05):
we can like smell things.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Too, but yeah, and they take time. That's a dimension, right,
I so.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Question question the three D el on.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Quite honestly, I'd be more impressed to experience a two
dimensional haunted house.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
It's all in a coloring book or something.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, I will have a hard time doing that this
month too, because I'm also remounting the show that I
was in. What last year when we did Tipsy Tales
Presents robin Hood. It's a live show that I'm the
narrator and I'm Alan Adale or the Rooster. If you're
only familiar with Disney's Robin.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Hood, I wish you were dressed like a rooster.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Look, I almost was in the show. To be fair,
I had a lot of pomp I love that and
pizzaz But yeah, we do. The producers of the show
wrote this hilarious script, just one hour sort of robin
Hood story, the traditional Robin Hood story classic, but each
night of the show, one actor gets pretty drunk before

(03:04):
we go on an assigned actor and then continues drinking
throughout the show and we just have to sort of
improv around whatever Shenanigan's happen.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
They're given full rein to destroy their part any.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Scene, and they do. Last time, Like last time we
did this, characters main characters were dead halfway through the show,
and you just have we as the actors, just have
to go with whatever the drunk does. If it's safe,
we have to kind of just roll with it. And
so it would just randomly like made Marian got killed
halfway through the show one night, and I feel.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Like there was a win.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
We had to get her twin to come back. That's right.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I feel like I feel like there was a romance
between the sheriff. That's what it was, one of them.
That's right. That was fun.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Anything it happened. Some people asked last time when we
talked about it if they could see it, and we
only did one weekend last time. We're only doing one
more weekend this time. A few different actors but otherwise
mostly the same show. And it's the weekend before Halloween
in Atlanta, So shoot us a message if you are
in the city and want to catch it, because it's
a it's it's a good time.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
It is a good time. It's a lot of fun.
Plus you're, of course encouraged to drink. I believe that.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yes, not me, Yeah, you're I'm in charge of the
drunk on stage and making sure they don't die. So
I specifically am not drinking.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's right. You're the babysitter. But the rest of us
are allowed to drink as much as we want.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Oh yeah, look, alcohol makes Alcohol is every comedy theater
show's best friend.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
It does help a lot for people to be a
little loose.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, you know, but seeing as how it's October, that
of course changes everything around here on Ridiculous Romance too,
because year one we started this tradition almost by accident,
and we've loved it, y'all have loved it ever since.
It's time for recripulous Romance, and that's when we take

(05:07):
the spookiest, scariest, grossest, creepiest stories we can find that
still fit the Ridiculous Romance category and we try and
do them once a week throughout October. Tonight will be
no different. In fact, a nice roll into the season.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think, true, true, because we're actually we're going to
talk about Queen Victoria, not who.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I think of when I think horror and murder and mystery.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
I know it's so true. We are not abused, but no,
Queen Victoria actually had quite a fascination with the spirit world.
She was a very powerful queen. Obviously, she had one
of the longest reigns in British history until, of course,
our girl, Queen Elizabeth the Second. She was very ably
assisted by her husband, Prince Albert, and these two had

(05:52):
a like Hollywood romance. They fell head over heels in
love with each other. They were sexy into each other.
They were doing it all the time, and when he
died she suffered really intense depression. So when a thirteen
year old medium named Robert James Lees claimed to have
a message for her from her late husband, Victoria was

(06:14):
all ears.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
So for our first.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Recorptulous romance of the spooky season, let's find out how
Queen Victoria ruled over the British Empire with the health
of her husband's ghosts.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Let's goot friends, a listen, well, let's beat say you
welcome to Hell.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
There's no matchmaking, romantic taps, it's judged all cops, you're
lying and crypts.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I love my dag type of moms A ghost.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Stood demonic dog that if.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
There's a spirit with a shift in jags, we'll put
it an all show record.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Row a production of iHeart Radio.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
So Victoria, she was fifth in line to inherit the
throne when she was born in eighteen nineteen, but ahead
of her were two elderly uncles with no kids. Her
uncle William's two daughters, both of whom died as infants,
and her own father, Edward, who died when Victoria was
only a year old. So even though she didn't become

(07:27):
the official air presumptive until she was eleven, you know,
it was pretty easy to see that she was going
to inherit.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, we have people kept dropping off around this.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Baby curiously, man, like this is some weird shit.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I'd be looking at this baby fifth in line And'd
be like, uh, numbers one, two, three, and four. Suspiciously,
that's the first mystery. Which of the Pickwick triplets?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
I did it?

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Baby murderer?

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Okay, we clearly just finished only murders in the building.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
So yeah, many people were like, Okay, it's definitely going
to be this little girl, except for Victoria herself. Funnily enough,
her governess Louise Lesson slipped a copy of the genealogy
of the House of Hanover into one of Victoria's like
lesson books, and when she studied it, that's when she
realized like, oh shit, I'm going to be the next monarch.
And she is reported to have said quote, I will

(08:19):
be good. Oh she is, like, I've seen some shit
kings and queens in our past. I'll do I'm gonna
try to be a good one. And that became like
kind of a big folk legend that she didn't know
until she saw and then she was like, I'm gonna
be good.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
So she meant I will be good, I will be
good at it, I will be kind yeah, and neither oh,
I'll be good like I'll be the best theraist, which
is never a good attitude to take into a leadership position.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
It could have been that, but I feel like, was
she like, I'm.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Good, I'll be good. You guys can have it. I'll
be good.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Somebody call I don't know when I old uncles or
something still around.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, if she became queen before she turned eighteen, of
course the nation would have a regent in charge, and
that would have been Victoria's mother.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
The Duchess of Kent too, the doctors of Kent.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Now, unfortunately, the Duchess of Kent was close as crabs
with her comptroller, Sir John Conroy. Some people even thought
that they might have been lovers. Of course, a lot
of scholars have dismissed that idea. But together these two
schemed up all kinds of ways to keep Victoria under
their control and away from her powerful uncles. We've seen

(09:34):
this a thousand times in every sort of historical regal drama,
the regency drama.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
That we see, it's always this power behind the throne.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Now, they created what was called the Kensington system, and
this was an elaborate set of rules about how Victoria
would be educated and how she could behave and with
whom she could spend her time, which was only these
two other kids and her dog, Dad Spaniel. So this
Duchess and John Conroy, along with the Duchess's lady in waiting,

(10:06):
Flora Hastings, who also rumors that might have been the
Duchess's lover.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
The funny thing about this is that, like if you're
in a court, everybody's like, she probably fuckings somebody, you know,
They're all just whisperings.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
That is not unlike today.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
It's so true. So I don't know how much I
believe any of that.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
You were always like two people, a man the woman
spending time together. Oh, two women spending time together.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Oh, I mean, I guess there's not a lot to
do in this time period. So maybe that was the
common wait a while away, it just came only lasts
so long. There's only so many books one can read.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well regardless, still just rumors. Point being that the Duchess
and Conroy made Victoria's childhood extremely lonely and isolating, right,
that was kind of the point. The idea was to
make her really weak willed, really dependent on them for
her judgment, so that even once she was old enough
to rule alone, they would still have a lot of

(11:07):
power concentrated in their hands.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
She would constantly be turning to them like what should
I do? What should I do? But as she got older,
Victoria was pressured constantly to make Sir John Conroy her
personal secretary, which was given quite a lot of power
over like, you know, her messages and everything else around her.
But by then she hated Sir John, she hated her mother,
and she hated Flora Hastings.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
So she refused the three people who oppressed her her
entire childhood.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
She did Fondo didn't like anymore.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Sorry, that plan backfired all right.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
And fortunately she was not the only one who disapproved
of this little contingent that was about her ears, you know,
like her uncle, King William the Fourth once declared in
the Duchess's presence that he intended to live until Victoria
was eighteen, just so they could avoid a regency with
her in argap, which I just think is so funny.
He's like, I can plan my death and guess what

(12:01):
it's time to keep. Mom makes sure that you never
have an official role here.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Amazing.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
He also, of course, had some thoughts about who Victoria
should marry. Oh and he favored Prince Alexander of the Netherlands,
but her other uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, offered
up his nephew, Prince Albert of Sex, Coburg and Gotham.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
I also love that William and everybody hated these three
so much because I have to relate everything back to
TV to make it work in my brain, because I'm
a millennial and I'm broken like that. You could just
see these characters just being the most sniveling, obnoxious, power hungry,
and how could you not see that constantly? It's so obvious,

(12:47):
you know when these schemers are scheming. Oh yeah, they're
not subtle about it. Well. The minute that Victoria met
her cousin Albert in eighteen thirty six, poorl Alexander, King
William's choice didn't stand a chair because Victoria went straight
into her diary and started writing about how handsome and
charming Albert was, while alex got one line about being

(13:10):
quote very plain.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Damn. I mean, it's like galling. She's just like paragraphs
of like his beautiful face and his charm of manner whatever.
And then she's like alex he was there too.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
She's just doodled in the margins missus Albert and Saxe,
Coburg and Gotha, and then yeah, a little doodle of
Alexander in with like a fark cloud around him. Oh no.
Victoria even thanked her uncle Leopold.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
For quote, the prospect of great happiness you have contributed
to give me in the person of dear Albert. He
possesses every quality that could be desired to render me
perfectly happy. He is Sue sensible, Sue kind, and Sue good,
and Sue amiable too. He has besides the most pleasing

(13:59):
and delightful steria and appearance you can possibly see.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
But since Victoria was only seventeen at this point, marriage
itself would have to wait a little while, but pretty
clear that she had her eyes on the price.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
She knew who she wanted at this point. But Victoria
turned eighteen on May twenty fourth, eighteen thirty seven, and
less than a month later, King William died.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Oh my god. Wow.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Straight, he was like clinging to life until her birthday.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
I just want to make sure the Duchess of Kent's
not control here. Oh thank god, I can die. Give
me the cocaine.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Keep my eyes open until May twenty fifth. So anyway,
he died. She became the Queen of England.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, and as queens.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
She started off pretty popular. You know, she's young, she's beautiful, right,
They're all like, hey, love this beautiful queen of ours.
But then the Duchess's lady in waiting, Lady Flora Hastings,
started walking around with what looked like a baby bump.
Oh and she wasn't married, so this caused a lot
talk and Victoria of course hated that bitch, so she

(15:03):
was very excited to talk about her. She's like, yeah,
she probably is pregnant. And guess who I think the
dad is? Oh, Sir John Conroy, that other bitch.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
But I hate wow.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
So she was kind of getting in on these rumors.
They got worse and worse. Finally Flora agreed to an
official like medical examination. Okay, This medical examination found out
that a Flora was a virgin b she was not pregnant,
so we don't have like a Messiah situation going on
with Flora. See, she had a large tumor on her

(15:37):
liver which had distended her stomach, and she only had
a few months left to live. Oh my god, it's
like the worst possible house. That's awful, especially to be
like examination.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Talking shit like she's got she's pregnant, and then find oh, no,
she's terminally ill.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Not only is she a virgin, has never had sex. Wow,
she's like terminally sick, and you've been making fun of
her tomb.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, so this was pretty crushing, and Victoria did feel
very bad. It's reported that she had nightmares about Flora
for years afterwards. So a lot of guilt there, right,
which is, you know, just a lesson for everybody. We
don't need to be talking shit so much. You know
it's gonna come back and bite you. But it wasn't
just that. It was also Sir John Conroy, Flora's family,

(16:22):
the opposition party, the Tories. They all got together and
they started a press campaign criticizing Victoria for throwing a
dying woman into a month's long scandal and making her
final months miserable. So she's already feeling bad and all
these people are like, yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Should feel right, You're a real piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
They were hoping to discredit her so she would be
forced to give Conroy a position in her court, and
they did succeed at making her very unpopular. Now, as
soon as Victoria had become queen, she had relegated Sir
John Conroy and her mother, the Duchess, to a small,
faraway apartment in the palace, and she refused to see
either one of them. But since she was still single,

(17:03):
she did still have to live with her mother, which meant,
of course that she still had to live with John
Conroy too, who was her chief tormentor.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Right, So the whole time this is happening, this man's
in her house. I mean it's a it's Buckingham Palace.
She's not tripping over him, but she's like, get him
out of my house. So she's complaining about this to
her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne at the time, who told her,
of course, the quickest solution would be to get married,
because then she could have vict her mother, and her
mother would take John Conroy with her. And Victoria called

(17:33):
it a quote shocking alternative, but you know, she was
still totally crushing on Albert. So she, you know, she
was kind of like a little not wanting to get
married and give up you know, some of her position
as queen, right, but also she's going, let me get
this hottie up in my bed, body up in here.

(17:53):
So she finally proposed to him, and they were married
in February eighteen forty, and Victoria discoveredude sex. She wrote
in her diary after her wedding night quote, I never
never spent such an evening my dearest, dearest dear Albert.

(18:16):
His excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly
love and happiness I never could have hoped to have
felt before. They clasped me in his arms, and we
kissed each other again and again. His beauty, his sweetness,
and gentleness. Really, how can I ever be thankful enough
to have such a husband. To be called by names

(18:40):
of tenderness I have never yet heard used to me before?
Was bliss beyond belief. Oh, this was the happiest day.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Of my life. She I mean, she is like God.
I feel like I'm gonna hear Senator John Kennedy reading
that out on this Congress floor.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
I will give you the best low job.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's in the news. If you'all haven't seen that one yet,
look it up. Senator John Kennedy reading a pornographic book
is one of the best clips of the of the past,
of this of the year, and.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
One of the least sexy things you'll ever hear.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Shot we could.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
But yeah, so she's she is like I found out
what an orgasm, is very excited about it, and I
want more. Let's do this.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Albert a generous lover's handled business. And this is probably
probably why she wanted to put him in a can.
Prince Albert in a can.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
I don't know this, you know, I don't know that.
I'm sorry that I made that joke. Fall Rell flat.
I don't know it was.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
It's a very old joke. It's like a like a prince.
Do you have Prince Albert in a can? We'll let
him out of the house. Oh, because it was it's
a I think it's a chew tobacco product or no,
it's a pipe tobacco, pipe tobacco. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, a lot about it.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Anyway has been Eli's year old jokes. Thanks for tuning in, everybody.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
I thought Prince Albert was the piercing.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yes, yes, Also you don't put that in the can.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Maybe he had a penis piercing that added to the situation.
I don't know why it's called the Prince Albert.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Uh, readers, let us know. I don't feel like I
don't feel like adding that to my Google searches.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
No thanks, So at any rate, all have to say,
Queen Victoria loved doing it. She's got she's real into
whatever Albert.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Had going on down men had the moves.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Within two months of their marriage. She was pregnant, and
of course her popularity soared. Once again, nothing better than
a pregnant queen.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
People love a pregnant queen. And you know, they kept
at it all day, all nights, every surface of Buckingham Palace.
Probably in all they would go on to have nine
children together, the two of them also together whether several
assassinations attempts, and these actually made Albert more popular with
the public because he was very cool headed in a crisis.

(21:07):
He was a quiet guy, but he was a great dad.
The fact that all nine of their kids lived to
adulthood was credited to Albert's quote enlightened influence in running
the nursery. Bio biographer named Hermione Hobhouse.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Love that name, Mione Hobhouse British.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, Albert even got Victoria to dismiss her old Governess
Louise Lessen, who had been kind of running the household
the whole time before him. Lesson had been the one
who helped Victoria build a strong personality in spite of
this Kensington system that her mother and Conroy raised her with,
and she had supplanted Victoria's mother, in Victoria's own affections,

(21:46):
kind of more of a motherly figure than her mother herself.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Victoria called her mother on several occasions.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
But Lessen was also the one who was out there
spreading rumors about Flora Hastings and that kind of blew
back against Victoria. Albert hated her for that, so to
keep him happy, Victoria pensioned her off.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, it says a lot about her feelings for
Albert that she was willing to send this lady away
who had been like her main source of comfort so long. Yeah,
and Victoria also relied on his advice and assistance. But
fortunately Albert had some cool notions. He was actually four
child labor laws instead of against he was like maybe
kids shouldn't be working.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Oh, child labor laws. I'm four child labor laws in
that we should stop getting up.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, we should put children, we should put them to work.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Now.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
At the time, it was a big thing whether kids
could work in factories, you know whatever, and he was like, no,
kids should go to school, kids should not do that.
He also wanted to abolish slavery worldwide. He's also credited
with being the guy who kind of felt that the
British royal family should be above politics. So he's sort
of the reason we have this distance between the royal

(22:52):
family and the Parliament that seems pretty average now. And
he also arranged the Great Exhibition, which is basically the
the first World's Fair. Wow, and people like fought him
every step of the way. They were like, don't bring
that foreign stuff into my you know, my country or whatever.
But of course it was an enormous success, so they

(23:12):
were like, oh shit. Albert's a smart guy. So over
the years his influence only grew and he ended up
like helping with Victoria's government paperwork. He started drafting or correspondence.
He would attend cabinet meetings. He would even see cabinet
ministers alone without Victoria. So a clerk named Charles Greville
wrote in his private journal quote, he is king to

(23:34):
all intents and purposes.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Man, I want to put this guy in a can
and carry him out, all right.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
He sounds like a smart cat.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Just oh yeah, things look pretty dark. I'm gonna pop
open at cant Albert, see what happens. But you know,
it's ridiculous romance, and as is often the case, tragedy awaited.
Their eldest son, Bertie, was at Cambridge at this point,
and the Queen had heard that he was consorting with
an Irish actress named Nellie actress excuse me. They were

(24:07):
terrified that this girl was going to get pregnant, or
start some kind of scandal, or even start blackmailing Birdie
something like that. So Albert went to visit the kid
and discuss him, you know, getting his shit together. A
few weeks later, though, Albert died of typhoid fever. But
two years prior to his illness with typhoid, Albert had

(24:29):
been dealing with intense pain in his stomach and legs,
So there's some scholars that think that he might have
already been suffering with Crohn's disease or maybe even kidney
failure or stomach cancer. So unsure exactly what it was
that led to his death, or that he would not
have died soon anyway, but Victoria was devastated. Obviously, we

(24:49):
know how much she loved him, and she went into
deep mourning. She would only wear black for the rest
of her life. She locked herself away from the public.
She became so remote that she was known as the
Widow of Windsor. She slept with a plaster cast of
Albert's hand, and she also kept Albert's room exactly the

(25:10):
way it was, wouldn't touch anything. The servants even came
in each night to lay out fresh clothes and hot
water and change the sheets.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
No one was in there as if he was coming home.
I find that so sad. A plaster cast of his
hand makes me really sad, because you know, she just
wants to hold She just.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Wants to hold it.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
That's so sad.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, I mean, unless your mind slips into the gutter
like mine. But I'm going to go with it. She
was just holding his hands up against her face on
the pillow at night. I mean, I think he would
probably go with it from those diary entries.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Okay, However, speculation station it was a masturbation aid. But
not long after Albert's death, someone brought a startling story
to Victoria's attention. It was the editor of a spiritualist
magazine who had recently sat in on a seance. Now,
at this time, spiritualism was as in vogue as scientific advantage.

(26:10):
Sort of. The funny thing about the Victorian age the
spirit you know, alongside everyone being like, let's measure in
way I categorize everything, they were very concerned with the unknowable,
you know, which is really interesting. Nothing preoccupied the Victorian
mind more than if there was life after death, and
if so, what was going on in how can I talk?

Speaker 1 (26:30):
I mean, I guess that makes sense if you're in
an age where you're really looking a lot of scientific
advancements and you're trying to answer I mean, isn't that
what science often is is the pursuit of answering the unanswerable. Right,
So your mind is already in that place and you're
just like, Okay, I figured out why water turns to
steam when you heat it up. Now tell me what

(26:51):
happens when we die? Right?

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Can I not talk to my mom?

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah? Like goes in that order water into steam. What
happens when we die.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Amazing. There's so many reasons that it took off spiritualism,
and one of them I think is interesting is that
they found women to be better mediums than men because
they were considered a more spiritual sure, so there's a
lot of actually a lot of women's rights sort of
marched along with spiritualism and mediums and stuff because they
were able to gain some power and influence. They were

(27:23):
able to make money on their own. So all that
to say, spiritualism is huge at this time. Everybody's into it.
Even Charles Dickens, our old friend, who did not believe
in spiritualism at all, was writing ghost stories. You know,
people will prop preoccupied.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I know it exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Victoria and Albert had even attended a few seances themselves.
Victoria particularly into this. They even awarded a particularly convincing
medium with a medal for quote meritorious and Extraordinary clairvoyant.
So after Albert died, Victoria received this letter from this

(28:01):
editor of the Spiritualist magazine telling her about this seance
that he had attended. She probably would have been interested anyway,
but it was even more attention grabbing because He said
that the thirteen year old medium Robert James Lees, had
received a message from beyond for the Queen herself, and
he claimed that it was from the Prince Consort Albert.

(28:26):
Oh my god, what did Albert have to say? We
will tell you right after this quick break, Welcome spirits.
Oh back to the show.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Oh, I just got a chill. The curtains just rustled. Look.
Most of the information that follows here comes from the
book Whisperers, The Secret History of the Spirit World by J. H. Brennan. Now,
a chunk of the book concerning Queen Victoria was reprinted
in The Daily Beasts, so that's where we found most
of this. Brennan says that, of course, any historian will

(29:06):
tell you that Victoria had a nervous breakdown after Albert died,
and she retreated from public and political life for over
two years. She stopped trusting her own judgment. She preferred
to wonder what Albert might have done, but Brennan suggests
that she actually found a way to ask for his advice,
as if he were still alive. When she heard about

(29:29):
this message that Robert James Lees claimed to have, Victoria
had to move carefully. She wasn't stupid, right, she did
have a healthy skepticism about Lee's about I'm sure mediums
in general. Even when she was having a good time
and saying, oh you did so well, she's like okay, rationally,
if I had to say so. It wasn't unusual for

(29:50):
a famous death to attract all kinds of fake mediums
pretending to have messages for the grieving family. Victoria knew
this as well, so she summoned a couple of her
courtiers and told them to attend the next Lee's seance undercover.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
So, using fake names and not revealing their connection to
the palace, the two courtiers went to the seance. Now,
according to Brennan, these men were not believers in spiritualism,
so they were probably trying not to laugh as they
entered the seance room, sure, which would have likely been
filled with candles and oil lamps on low, maybe decorated

(30:29):
with red drapes because that was believed to enhance communication
between the living and the dead. Now, the participants would
have all held hands as Robert James Lees welcomed the
spirit of Prince Albert to join them, and we don't
have details of the exact methods used by Lee's. There
were lots of different methods that mediums used at this time.

(30:52):
They often communicated with spirits through taps and wraps, so
they would ask a question once for yes, twice forno okay.
Sometimes they would go into a large cabinet for part
or all of the seance, and they would maybe shout
messages that they were receiving from inside the cabinet, or
they would come out possessed by the spirit. Often the
cabinets would then be covered with like gooey ecdo plasma,

(31:16):
so it's proof that some uncanny activity had happened in there.
Some used weed aboards, or they had pencils rigged up
over paper, so messages would be written or drawn by
an unseen hand.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
And it seems like Lee's would go into a trance
in front of his guests because to the courtier's surprise,
Lee's began to speak in Prince Albert's voice. It was uncanny.
They grew more and more uneasy as Lee's described rivate
details of life at the palace that only Albert would

(31:53):
have known h drapped in this cab My penis was Peters,
who else could have known these things? Even more terrifying.
He called the courtiers out by name, their real names,

(32:14):
not the fake ones that they had given Lees. They
were forced to admit that they were there on the
Queen's behalf, and they questioned the ghost of Albert further.
What they heard impressed them so much they sent a
glowing report to Victoria. This medium might be the real deal.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Victoria had barely finished reading it when she received a
letter from Lee's, a letter he said was really from Albert.
This was an example of automatic writing, which is when
the spirit would take over the body of the medium
or just their hand even and use it to write
a message. Brennan says the letter was signed with a

(32:58):
personal pet name only Albert and Victoria used, and it
was chock full of personal details. Victoria was convinced. She
sent for Lees, who held a seance in Buckingham Palace
for her, and she was thrilled to hear Albert's voice
once again. She invited Lee's back over and over. In all,

(33:18):
he held nine seances for her. She finally asked if
he wanted to take up residence in the palace and
become the court medium. Lee's consulted with his spirit guides,
but they told him to decline. Fortunately, Albert wasn't too
picky about who could speak for him Lee's as Prince
Albert told the Queen that a new medium had been

(33:40):
chosen to be his conduit. Quote the boy who used
to carry my guns at bellmorle Haw.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
This boy was John Brown, and he had been the
Prince's gilly, or the guy who goes along on fishing
and hunting expeditions, especially in the Scottish Highlands. He would
have been over twenty years old when he started working
with the royals, but not really a boy, but he
worked with the family for years, so he became a

(34:08):
personal friend of Albert's and was eventually promoted to a
permanent position leading the Queen's pony. Victoria wasn't surprised that
he was a medium either, because she had become convinced
that he had a second sight when only weeks before
Albert's death, John Brown had said goodbye to them at
Balmoral Castle, hoping they traveled safely and quote above all

(34:31):
that you may have no deaths in the family.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
So she said, and then Albert died and John saw
that con.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Although to say, hope nobody dies, and then someone dies
to me is suspicious.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
You're a suspect, John, how'd you give him typhoid from Scotland?

Speaker 1 (34:52):
But anyway, what most people saw at this point when
Victoria turned to John Brown was a grieving widow turning
to a close friend at a time that she a
difficult time. But the Queen started to rely heavily on Brown,
and his influence over her raised a lot of eyebrows.
Now we're going to get into that and maybe unravel

(35:13):
the mystery of some of these spooky seances. Right after
this BREAKO, wellcome sorry, I'm doing some of my yellow exercise.
It is still so yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Pretty quickly Victoria started to rely kind of heavily on
John Brown, her servant, and that was super weird for
people around the castle. The Daily Mail recounts that she
would gaze at one of her many busts of Albert
when she was asked a question about what to do.
Then she would look at John Brown before giving her answer.

(35:57):
She consulted him about everything, or at least to He
was also allowed kind of extraordinary license with his behavior.
He was allowed to smoke around her, which even her
sons could not do. Her second son, the Duke of Edinburgh,
even said that he had been evicted from Buckingham Palace
for refusing to shake John's hand. Instead of calling Victoria

(36:18):
your majesty, he would call her woman, what like hey woman?
And he would repeatedly tell her off to her face. Ah,
just lots of very clear instances of them being pretty
intimate with one another. She allowed him a lot of
freedom in the way he behaved around her, and he
got very high handed with the rest of the royal staff,

(36:41):
and so it wasn't long before he was pretty universally
hated around the court. They didn't like how much power
this guy had.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Then, no one could understand the hold that this guy
had over the Queen either, So naturally most decided that
Victoria and John Brown must have been lovers, the queen
a woman and a man's time together. I mean, there
was a lot to support that theory, though The Guardian
writes that John Brown had taken up residents in rooms
adjoining the Queen's, according to Courtier, who said it was

(37:12):
quote contrary to etiquette and even decency.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
We remember that from our Queen Elizabeth the First and
Lord Robert Dudley episode where he had rooms next to yours.
There are a lot of rumors.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Victoria's daughters joked about quote Mama's lover, and newspapers speculated
that a secret marriage had even taken place, maybe even
a secret child, and they began calling Queen Victoria missus Brown.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Oh, Missus Brown, You've got a lovely daughter.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Missus Brown was also the name of a nineteen ninety
seven movie about this relationship, starring Judy Dench and the
Great Billy Connolly. The Great Judy Dench, they're both the
great what they're both great? Victoria even created two Medals
of Service just for John Brown, though one was given
him for foiling another possible assassination attempt, So that's legit, Like,

(38:03):
I just think respectable.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Faithful, meritorious service. You took a bullet for me.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
But if, as Brennan writes, she believed that John Brown
was a direct conduit to her beloved husband, it makes
a lot of sense why he had so much influence
over her right exactly now.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
A sculptor named Edgar Boehm spent several months at Balmoral
sculpting a bust of John Brown for the Queen, and
he once told Catherine Walters, who is one of Edward
the Seventh mistresses that quote. The queen, who had been
passionately in love with her husband, got it into her
head that somehow the Prince's spirit had passed into Brown,

(38:41):
so he believed she allowed him quote every conjugal privilege. Ooh.
It seems that whenever she needed Albert's advice, she would
simply get Brown to conduct a seance and tell her
what Albert thought she should do. Once, The Daily Mail
recounts she left a meeting of the Privy Council to
consult with Albert, returning to tell them quote the Prince

(39:04):
was hostile to any act of war by England. And then,
of course there were plenty of skeptics who were like,
this guy does not have a direct line to the
ghost of Albert. He is totally faking this, And they
started thinking that, you know, he was kind of exploiting
Victoria's well known fascination with spiritualism. They started calling him
quote resputant in a kilt man.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
I mean yeah, when he came back around and was like, uh,
Prince Albert says, I can blow my smoke in your
face woman.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
You know, yeah, if he thinks it's best.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Prince Albert says, time for a pay raise. When John
Brown died in eighteen eighty three, the rumors somehow gained
even more power because the Queen was devastated by his death,
much like Albert's. She likened it to losing Albert. She
said that life quote for a second time, had given
her a heavy blow. She wrote quote, perhaps never in

(40:02):
history was there so strong and true, an attachment so
warm and loving, a friendship between the sovereign and servant.
She wanted to write a memoir of John Brown's life,
including all the seances that he had conducted for her,
but she was advised against this. A lot of her
writing about those seances ended up being burned, so.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Unfortunately we don't have a lot of the information about
the seances right.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
And when Queen Victoria herself died years later, her face
was surrounded by her wedding veil, her hands covered in
rings from Albert and her children, and she had one
of Albert's cloaks, a handkerchief, and the plaster cast of
his hand with her. But secretly, the doctor James Reid

(40:48):
dropped a few other items in her coffin as well.
John Brown's mother's wedding ring was placed on one of
Victoria's fingers, his photograph in her hand, along with some
of his head and a handkerchief that belonged to him.
I mean, so.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
She was mementos, yeah, of someone she really loved. Now,
of course, not everyone is convinced that they were lovers.
There's not a lot of evidence to support it, like
written down evidence or anything. They're not even convinced that
John Brown really had that much influence on her. Kind
of like it was an intimate relationship, but it doesn't
follow that it was sexual, okay, and he didn't really

(41:28):
care about politics, so what would have been the point
to trusted rascootin and a kilt thing. There's lots of
reasons for this. Some say Victoria would never consider lowering
herself to have sex with a servant, she was not
that type of gal, Or that Victoria didn't approve of
widow's remarrying, so she never would have had a secret
marriage with this guy, or you know, she was also
raised in a time when women were taught that men

(41:50):
were superior. Even the Queen was taught that. For example,
she called Albert master and he called her child, which
is not that unusual. Child was kind of a common
endearment for a man to call his wife okay at
that time, so the you know their feeling is she
would she could never see an inferior man who had
to call her mistress or whatever as a partner. However

(42:12):
he called her woman. So we don't know, I know, right,
we don't know. But even in her own time, some
of Victoria's court thought Brown was pretty harmless, and in
fact were relieved that she had put her trust in
someone with zero political aspirations. He did not try to
use that position to gain power for himself for members
of his family. Nothing like that. Interesting, More often than not,

(42:34):
when she was faced with a tough political issue, she
wouldn't turn to Brown at all. She would turn to
her favorite Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who on his deathbed
in eighteen eighty one quipped that no one should send
for the queen quote. She would only ask me to
take a message to Albert. Oh wow, which it's just
because a funny.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
I love that they knew back then that she was
just never stop talking about it. No.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Well, and I would also like to say that that's
not the only say on so she had. She also
had seances with different mediums to talk to children of
hers that had.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Departed kidding her.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
So she had several She was really into this, Okay,
she was into it, and again it was well known.
Disraeli's like, I don't want to talk to anyone's ghost.
M So there's a lot of reasons why people kind
of dismissed this idea. They were just like, he was
just a really good friend.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
The Oxford Dictionary of Biography likens John Brown basically a
court gesture of old right. For Victoria, the loss of
Albert was also the loss of the one man on
earth who could tell her about herself. And without him,
she was surrounded by courtiers. Even her children were her subjects.
They were all too terrified to talk to her like

(43:41):
a person. When Albert died, Victoria even said, quote, who
will call me Victoria?

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Now that's such a melancholy line. I don't know, it
made me sad to read that.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, John Brown's gruffness, his willingness to speak his mind
to her, and his lack of interest in political power
is pretty much exactly what she valued. When she asked
Alfred Tennyson to write lines for John Brown's tombstone, she
wrote about him, quote he had no thought but for me,
my welfare, my comfort, my safety, my happiness. Courageous, unselfish,

(44:17):
totally disinterested, discreet to the highest degree, speaking truth fearlessly
and telling me what he thought and considered to be
just and right, without flattery, and without saying what would
be pleasing if he did not think it right. The
comfort of my daily life is gone. The void is terrible,
the loss is irreparable.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
I think that says a lot about it, really, what
she really liked about him?

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, and you know she was.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
She liked sex. We know that about Victory, so you know,
maybe she did find herself some comfort somewhere.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
She liked sex with Albert. We know that with Albert.
I mean he didn't see I don't remember seeing any
journal entries about anybody else she was banging. She wrote
a lot, so maybe she tried and it was just
like some things, no one can replace Albert on.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I'd rather sleep with my plaster cast his hand.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Oh, Albert's plaster cast is a more generous lover than
you'll ever be. John Brown.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
I feel like John Brown doesn't sound like a generous
lover to me.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
He does not, He does not. There is a little
story where her doctor James reed once like happened upon
the Queen and John Brown together, okay, and he don't
know what they're joking about. The only two lines her
we know is that John Brown lifted his kilt to
show his knee and said is it here? And Queen

(45:45):
Victoria lifted her skirt and said, no, it is here.
So they're like, there's something going on there because it's
very unusual in Victorian times to show your limb to
a man that was very I may as well have
popped a boob out at him or something. So the
doctor clearly saw it as strange enough that he had
to write it down in his diary. That's the reason
we know about that story.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Well, it was the old two knees.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Joke, the old the old two knees flirting.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Which, uh, which nie is? Yeah? Which knee am I gonna? Well,
I don't know what the old two knees joke is. Well,
I guess that's it.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
We don't know. Setup no punchline, but the worst kind
of joke. But I kind of think I don't know.
It's it's just very funny because she's such an interesting character. Victoria.
She liked Benjamin Disraeli because he flattered her a lot.
He even had a joke about like laying it all
with a trowel or something like that. But then she
likes John Brown because he doesn't. So she clearly just

(46:44):
needs different things from different people. She likes having some
guy around her that does not cow tow sure, and
she liked having somebody who I don't know it wasn't
afraid of being fired or beheaded or something by her,
you know, who could talk to her like a regular
person to be a friend.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
I mean, isn't that the real power of being a
queen too? Is Like I obviously people's default mode is
going to be towards subservience and doing whatever they think
makes you happy. But you can also get a couple
of people to say you kind of have control over that.
I don't have control over that. Like people are going
to do one or the other around me. I got
nothing to say about it, And usually it's the latter.

(47:22):
Usually it's people telling me to my face what's wrong
with everything I'm doing? Present company included.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
So I don't know what you mean. I've never spoken
a word of criticism, so.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
You know, it just another benefit of that royal life,
I guess right.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
And the drawback though, because I think, you know, everyone
talking to her wanted something. Yeah, and so she's like,
I like this guy, I don't want nothing from me.
He just wants to do what he's doing.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
But how many of those how many those people were
offered up to her that she dismissed or or punished.
I do wonder that, you know, because at the same time,
it's she she wants everybody to tell her what she
you know, she wants people to reveal with her until
she doesn't one day and is like, how dare you
speak like that? I'm the queen.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Well, and she's the reason her kids were kind of
afraid of her too, she was. She never let them
forget that she was the queen and not just their mother,
so that, you know, there she had a little bit
to you know, she had responsibility for that for sure.
But but yeah, and I do wonder sometimes, just with
knowing about the Kensington system, how much because she's she

(48:27):
was a decisive person. Oh no, I'm not trying to
take away her agency here as a queen. She made decisions.
She was not just handing off her power right and
left to different men.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Or anything.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
But I do wonder how much she second guessed herself
just because of growing up with people being like you
should be second guessing yourself at all times. Not only
does she have that coordinated campaign to make her like that,
but she also was already growing up in a time
where it's like women aren't really that smart, women don't
really know what to do, women don't know how life.
You can't do life, and you know what I mean.

(48:57):
So it's just like you have from so many different
sides this feeling of am I should I? Am I
really the right person to be doing this? Should I not?
You know what I mean? So anyway, I just feel
like she must have had a lot of conflicting, a
lot of mixed emotions around that sort of thing. Yeah,
where she's like, I need my respect that I deserve
and if you don't show it, I have to you know,

(49:17):
I'd be like fuck you.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
But also I wish I had a friend who could
just josh around with me about my knees.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
But two knees joke, Oh, nobody's done two knees with
me since Albert's played two.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Knees with me now, So you know, I don't know
do you think she was fucking John Brown?

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Do I think she was? On this?

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Based on this evidence, I'll.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Say, I don't know. It kind of feels like it
because it's sort of she's got like a in a
sexual sense, she's got subvibes to me, like a submissive,
like she likes having a daddy and uh, you know,
and like somebody is sort of like the more dominant
hand plaster or flesh, whichever it may be. And again,

(50:02):
that might come back from social conditioning, whether that was
her upbringing or just like you said, women of the
time or whatever. But she seemed to kind of maybe
maybe take some pleasure in someone who kind of stood
up to her. I might have been thrilling. You see
that a lot with people who are I'm not saying
you see it a lot, but the general idea is

(50:24):
that people in high level, powerful positions in the bedroom
are willing to hand that power over to someone else.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, they want to not make decisions for a minute,
and they want to be told to do and.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Maybe not even just in the bedroom, it might even
be in their relationship. You know, it's like I go
home and that the other person's in charge. Yeah, I'm
in charge all day. So she to me their dynamic Carson.
John Brown's feels like that, like he's like, hey, you
do what I say. I call you woman, I do
what I want around you. You know? Was she like

(50:59):
did that kind of turn her on a little bit?

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (51:01):
I don't know, maybe maybe no, no telling.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
I gotta wonder too if she's just like one person
has to love me, specially just me and have my
welfare at heart. I'm their main concern because she had
Louise her governess. Then she went to Albert, then she
went to John Brown. You know, she only has the
one person kind of as a confidant. Everybody else is

(51:26):
like everybody else. Yeah, So I wonder too if she's
like not capable of having two confidants at once, like
she doesn't believe you know what I mean. I don't
know if that's just a pattern she got into.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Also did we kind of brought up earlier, but like
did John Brown ever say, oh, Albert wants to have
sex with you, Victoria, so through me, right, he would
like to And of course that's like kind of tantamount
to rape, right, I mean, like I'm giving you the
false yeah, pretext, I'm taking advantage of your frash and

(51:57):
emotional state to have second you. That's pretty twisted, right
Did John Brown do that? I don't know. He's certainly
I know he didn't use it to get political power.
But if he's not communicating with the ghost of Prince Albert,
and personally I don't think he was, then he was
using it for something. I mean, whether it was just

(52:20):
a comfy bedroom to sleep in at night, or you know,
getting laid by the Queen. I don't know, maybe I mean.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
But also you have to keep in mind there's a
different feeling in the UK about your queen. You know,
there are plenty of people who are like it would
be the honor of my life, a privilege of my
life to be a close person to the Queen. I
would like nothing more than to help them. And if
he really did dedicate himself to her interests like that,

(52:48):
he might have been like, whatever it makes her feel better.
I'll pretend to be Albert and I'll say whatever you
think is right is what you should do.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
But you can let me smoke around you.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
But I want to smoke.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
I don't know. I don't know. The fact that he
called her woman doesn't make me feel like he had
all this reverence for the position of the queen. I
don't know that. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
I can't decide myself because I'm like part of me
is like I don't believe it because she was just
so so in love with Albert, and she was in
love with him her whole life. She never stopped loving him,
so I'm like she never really considered herself open to
love someone else. I don't know if that means she
said no one can have sex with me again, but
it seems to be really tied up. Sex and love

(53:30):
were very tied up for her, so I would be surprised.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
I think.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
But if you found some real, real evidence of it,
and I could see her being very lonely and wanting
a friend and saying, you can call me whatever, I
don't care. Because he had been Albert's friend too, so
he knew Albert. He could talk to her about Albert.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
I don't know, my I think where I'm landing is
that I think that combined her talking about him after
he died, her grief and despair after John Brown died
being the only thing that ever matched Albert's death, and
her being so in love with Albert and thinking that

(54:08):
John Brown was a conduit for him. I think I
think they were.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Doing they were doing it. I think I do fa
but fair enough, it could be.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
There's only one way to know for sure, and that's
define that's to have a seance.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Prince Albert, if you're here, well, speaking of the seances,
I mean we we did hear some pretty gnarly stuff.
They knew the courtier's names and he was speaking.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
With his voice.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Yeah, so we I mean, we can't know how real
these stances are. We were not there. I think there
are some people who do seem to have a knack
with you contacting uncanny or having some kind of experience,
and I'm not going to tell them they weren't having
an experience. But it must be said that, of course,

(55:09):
there were tons of ways to fool people in Victoria's time,
and people, oh, we're doing it. It's a very lucrative scam.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
When people want to believe something, it's a lot easier
to convince them that it's happening, very true.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
And we're time at desperate, sad people that they were
praying on, so pretty fucked up. Predatory mediums would do
a lot of crazy things to convince. For example, they
would regularly hire actors and ventriloquists so they could make
voices and whispers you know, sound around the room during
a seyon.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
They would also use invisible ink, right, so all the
medium would have to do is get some water sprinkled
over a piece of paper, and then a message would appear.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
As if it was being written.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Chimney sweeps were paid to hang out in chimneys and
wrap on the flu in response to question so once
for yes, twice for no, and there's just a little
seven year old up there or whatever.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
I'm kind of into this one too. They would make
candles that included the deceased perfume or cologne, so when
they would like them, the breeze would come in and
be like, it smells like my late husband didn't here.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Oh my, I mean that would be very convincing if
you had a waft of your wife's perfume or something,
Oh my god. Of course, fake ectoplasm is easily made
with normal household things like flower water and corn starch,
so not a hard thing to fake that out.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Oh yeah, sure. I'm often making pizza at night and
be like, who got ectoplasm all over the counter. They
even Obviously, photography was pretty new. Nobody really understood how
photographs worked very well back then, so the people who
did could make spirit photos by overlaying underdeveloped portraits that

(56:56):
would make it seem like there was this ghostly figure
captured in there. I mean, I can't even see a
real photo that I took myself without thinking I photoshot ai.
That's fake.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
But of course photography at the time, Yeah, that was
the only way to capture the truth. If you saw
a ghostly figure, it must have been there, you know.
So lots of lots of ways to mess with people.
And I do think it's really funny that they would
go into a cabinet.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
This is what that's the one that really got made.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
I'm going to watch you, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Turn around. I will speak to the medium.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
I have invisibility powers, but only when you so yeah,
you know, And of course we've all seen a million
of these types of fakers, right. It's it's Victoria's fascination
with spiritualism was so so well known that it's possible

(57:54):
that whoever Robert James Lee's and whoever he was working
with for these seances deliberately said, let's get a message
from Albert, because then the queen will notice us. And
then they might have said, oh, well, let's make sure
we know if she's she's gonna send somebody to see
how really you are. Let's make sure we know who
they are, and when they come in, uh, Hans. They
might have had somebody in the court, you know, leaking

(58:17):
information center. They would have some private details. It's not
hard to imagine how you could hoax that she send
in Gerald and Philip and then make sure he says
something about how glad he is. She still has his
hand the night. That's good to comfort. She'll know what
it means.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
And you know, of course Lee's might have been like
a good impressionist. See, and they must have heard Albert talk, yeah,
before I give a speech or something, so they could
fake up his voice somehow or something like that. Okay,
but you know, it is also possible that the veil
between living and dead is thinner than we think, especially
in spooky season. Could be true that's something of our souls,

(59:00):
our consciousness can imprint itself on the world and leave
itself behind. It could be true that there's something.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
With us right now, Oh spooky, okay, all right, a
royal seance for a dead prince ghost ghosts? Okay?

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Now, my my other question is if there really is
a ghost of Prince Albert hanging out? Are he and
Victoria hanging out? Or is he like lonely because no
one talks to him anymore?

Speaker 1 (59:34):
I hope that if because Queen Victoria's a ghosts now too.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
In that case, they're they're they're doing it in the
beyond and leave an ecoplasm all over.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
She tossed away that plaster hand was like, finally, I
don't need this.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Anymore, give me some spirit fingers.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Oh man, that's the spookiest image of all. Well, I
like it. I don't know. I would love to see
Lee's setting up this ghost heist basically, you know. Also
insane to me that if they did, if they were
like Queen Victoria, she's into spiritualism, Let's see if we

(01:00:21):
can nab her. Like, if you're running a con operation
of spiritualism and ghosts, you're going to go for a
fish that big. That's that's ballsy, it is because that
is drawing a lot of attention to yourself. And you know,
fortunately she bought it. But to me, that's like, that's
like we're gonna rob the Bellagio. You know. That's the

(01:00:42):
big score that a lot of people have been like,
why would you put yourself in that danger? I'm perfectly
happy going after the First National Bank. A couple of times.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
This guy was like, I'm made for life though as
a medium. I mean you must think that. Yeah, and
especially because male mediums were less popular, maybe he was like,
I really need to stand out. If I do some
seances at Buckingham Palace, I mean, I'll be in demand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
He told his crew this one last score and then
we're out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
We'll be sipping martini's in Malibu.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
What's a martini?

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Yeah, that's the better question. Okay, all right, well here's
my question to you. Then?

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
What's that?

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Uh? Who? What historical figure would you seance with? Mmmm?

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
That I would most want to call to me? Questions?

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yeah, you get one, you have one little sciance. It's
it's the classic like who would you have lunch with?
But they're they're actually.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Dead right and they can only speak in caps and
wraps or some shit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
You taps and raps or through a medium conduit. Okay, listeners,
I want you to email us your answers as well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yes, we'd love to know who would I saance with? Hmmm, God,
this is tough. So many people.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I know what you're doing in your mind too well.
It could be this, but then what about that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
But then if I didn't do that, I'd be like,
what would I rather stay on with someone who could
tell me more about myself and my family history, or
somebody you know, way from the past, or somebody who
might have the key to a long held mystery or
cold case or something that would be pretty cool to
be able to find out.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
You know, he's just got some good stories, you know, right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
That's really what I'm like, honestly, would rather just be like,
tell me, you know about, I don't know, some cool
party you went to and all the people that were there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Yeah, Mark Twain, Yeah, might be really fun.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
I think about Oscar Wilde. I think he would be
sure tell me everybody he was really talking about when
he wrote the Importance of being arnestor or whatever. That's
what I don't know. I feel like some part of
me would be like, I'd rather talk to my dad's mom,
who died when I was ten. I would love to
know more about her life and like, you know, give
me some of the dirt you know from your life

(01:02:53):
and your family and stuff, because we don't only know
much about it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Yeah, we only got your son's version, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Right, and he only got you know, probably your highly
edited version because he's your son to tell him everything.
So I need to know the truth. I want to
know what really is going on with her, why she
left Edinburgh, what's you know? All that stuff? So I
don't know. That would be really fun, but it would
also be really cool to be like, hey, Governor Morris,
tell me about the founding of America. Yeah, true, and

(01:03:20):
all your fun house parties and stuff. Who would you do?
Who would you talk to?

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
I think I would talk to right now. I just
want to go to John Brown and be like, what
was Scott? I'm your answers here, buddy, were you guys
doing it or not?

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
That's just because it's on my mind. I know, I
don't know. Mostly I just want to hear what you
all think. Tell me about your spiritual seances, tell us,
tell us if you've had one, because I'll tell you.
And here's another question for you. Have you had communication
with the other side, Yes, I.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Would love to know that. What about you have I No,
I have not, and I have been to a stay.
We have actually conducted one ye and I was not
a believer. I wasn't by the end either, but a
lot of people that were there felt said that they
felt things.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Well, especially the person I was oijiing with that Ouigi
was going nuts and she straight out told me half
an hour later, oh yeah, I was moving that all
over the place, and she is a believer. So I
don't understand why that was what was happening there. But
I did see a spooky, spooky spirit when I was

(01:04:31):
a kid in my house, and others had claimed to
see it as well, a young girl standing at the
top of our basement stairs.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
So that was I do remember that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Robbiie one that stuck with me. And then I think
I have told this story about when I when the
the children's book that played sounds was going off in
the middle of the night and I thought it was
a train. But what I remember in my as I
was waking up was pushing the b and on a

(01:05:01):
like like reaching up and pushing some sort of button,
which after I knew that it was a book of sounds.
I was like, oh my god, it was that book
like floating over my head and I pushed the button.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Oh creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
And then also I distinctly remember once as a kid
looking up at the ceiling and the shadows from my
lamp like turned into a face, like an animated face
that was talking.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Whoa that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
I'll never forget that one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
That's very creepy. Yeah, yeah, and I haven't had anything
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
I don't know if I should be happy or not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
I just honestly don't recommend it. All those memories have
stuck with me, and not in a positive way. I mean,
they're cool stories, you know, but but I got other stories.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
The principle of my high school told us once she
was a very pragmatic person, not a believer in magic,
but she said she she experienced someone with telekinesis once
she watched her move a lamp from one side of
the room to the other with the moving just with
their eyes or something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
That's what I don't believe, because I have been trying
so hard to move stuff with my mind. If you
see me and I'm not actively engaged in conversation, I'm
probably trying to move things around my mind.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
My only thought is that what if it's harder to
move with your mind than with your body, so you'd
just be like, I'd rather just fucking pick up the lamp.
It gives me stuck a headache.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
I thought that if I if, like the power is
that you can teleport, but it takes as long as
it would for you to walk, Oh, would you still
do it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Would you bother?

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
I mean yes, I mean yes, I wouldn't have to walk.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
The thing is that I don't have to walk. I
guess the question would be if it takes as long
as a flight though, Like if you if you could
teleport from here to Europe, but it took as long
as a flight as a flight, absolute, would you still teleport?

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Why? Yeah? Why wouldn't I obviously deal with the airport anybody?
My question is if it took you as long as
it took to walk, so it would take you for
you know, yeah, whatever weeks probably to get to Europe,
would you fly or would you still teleport? Probably? Fly?
I don't know. My time's not that valuable. Wow. If

(01:07:14):
I don't have to deal with the airport, I don't
have to get on a plane. If I don't have
to get up to it. Rather, look, I've often said
that with superpowers, I would be the laziest super person.
I won't even say superhero of all time. I would
be a real fat Spider Man because I'd be just
getting I'd just be web slinging Dorito's from the cabinet

(01:07:35):
to my to my lap, and that that'd be the
long and short of my Spider powers.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
No, that is that is a that is a stone
left unturned by a lot of these right superhero shows,
Because I know we complained about this about the Flash
on c W is that anybody who got powers besides
the Flash was the bad guy to immediately be evil,
And we were like, where are all the people that
would get powers and literally do nothing not change their

(01:08:02):
life very significantly. They would just like, oh now I
don't have to get up out of my bed to
turn on the line.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Right, It'd probably be like, oh, I can control the weather. Great,
it's rain today and I want to go outside, so
I'm gonna make it not rain, or like I don't
feel like going anywhere today, so I'm gonna do a
little thunderstorm and read a book. Yeah, that's probably most
people have six steps.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Right, would be like I'm going to make sure it
rains on my ex's wedding day or something.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
You know, it's not going to be maybe little, yeah,
little scampy stuff like that, but not like I'm going
to craft a tornado so I can rob a bank.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Like, I mean, how many people really want to do
all that? There's a lot of effort, is what I'm saying,
And a lot of people don't like to put in
a lot of efforts.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Well, and I would argue that for most people, not
being able to form a tornado at will is not
the thing stopping them from robbing a bank. It's not
the only thing, man, It's the only thing holding me
back from robbing that bank. But I'll tell you, if
I could create a tornado with my hands, it's sober
for you, It's sober.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
For all, y'all. I'll be up in that first national.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Right the bellagio.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Oh y'all, we get robbed. What does a tornado play
into this heist? Anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
You know, tornado comes through the roof, it's in the vault,
sucks up money, tornado.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Tunnel it up. Okay, well then now it makes sense.
Now I feel like if you can make a tornado.
It's kind of weirdo. E is not as much as
I expected.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
All right, I'm switching my exercises in telekinesis to now
tornado creation.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
So that we can rob banks.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
So we can rob thanks. What a life?

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Well anyway, Austin. Sensibly this episode was about Queen victorious somewhere,
so hopefully you enjoyed this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
It was a lot of fun for us to talk
about a lot of a lot of sauce on that. Hopefully, hopefully.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
You do reach out and tell us about your spooky
experience or whom you would want to talk to if
you were able to contact them in a stay on
with you know, a legit Robert James, Lee's or whatever.
You can reach us through email. It's ridict Romance at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
That's right, or we're on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
I'm at O Grade, It's Eli, I'm at Dianamite Boom,
and the show is at pridic Romance.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Anna.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
We love you. We can't wait to contact more people
from the beyond. Yes, back to another episode crypt Roma.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
So long friends time would we write again allos with
your friends pads and pay for them. Our show