May 30, 2025 • 30 mins
Due to the recent arrival of another mini MacLean Smith, there’ll be a slight pause on new episodes. For the next two weeks we’ll be dipping back into the vaults until we continue, rather aptly with the next episode of Season 08 on Friday 13th of June…
This week, we’re heading back to Season 01 Episode 10.
The world of horror is littered with unnerving locations, places that both draw from and have in turn seeped into the public imagination.
For many there is one place in particular that continues to fascinate like no other in the UK.
With its combination of mystery, intrigue and atmospheric location you couldn’t concoct a better setting, the place: Boleskine House.
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here. Due to the
recent arrival of another Minnie mc lean Smith, there'll be
a slight pause on new episodes, so for the next
two weeks will be dipping back into the vaults, before
continuing rather aptly with the next episode of season eight
on Friday, the thirteenth of June. This week, we're heading
(00:21):
back to season one, episode ten. The world of Horror
is littered with unnerving locations, places that both draw from
and have in turn seeped into the public imagination. For many.
There is one place in particular that continues to fascinate
like no other in the UK. With its combination of mystery,
(00:43):
intrigue and its atmospheric location. You couldn't make up a
better setting the place Burleskin House. This is unexplained Season
one episode ten, The Spaces that Linger. The world of
(01:11):
Horror is littered with unnerving locations, places that both draw
from and have in turn seeped into the public imagination.
Perhaps the most symbolic of them all being the forest,
the archetypal liminal space of what Joseph Campbell termed the
hero's journey. Not only is the forest dark and mysterious,
(01:35):
but it is of course profoundly symbolic, being as it
is a manifestation of our deep unconscious. As we venture
deeper into the forest, so too do we journey deeper
into ourselves in our quest to confront our greatest fears,
before with any luck, ultimately emerging victorious and changed. But
(01:56):
for all the creatures and the hidden and unknoble fears
we might discover along the way, the forest, in a
sense remains a space that is our own, those fears
within our own to decipher and overcome. Far more chilling, therefore,
are the places that, when entering, we find ourselves crossing
(02:17):
a threshold into a world that is very much not
our own, Places where no longer are we at the
whim of our darkest unconscious, but rather that of somebody else's.
God forbid you ever find yourself checking into the Bates Motel,
as found in Robert Box's Psycho, or stumbling into the
(02:37):
family home of leather Face, so disturbingly depicted in Toby
Hooper's mesmerizingly deranged Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What both stories have
in common is a location so inextricably linked to the
bad guys as to be almost inseparable from them. There
is the sense that even when empty, the locations will
(02:58):
somehow incubate the things that have happened inside. Both stories, incidentally,
were partly based on the life of murderer ed Gean,
whose proclivity for manufacturing ornaments and furniture from human bone
and skin continues to shock the world almost sixty years
after the event. After Gene's conviction, it was decided that
(03:21):
his house should be torn down. So incapable with the
local community from separating the location from the events that
had taken place inside, there was no other option but
to remove it entirely. A similar theme emerges in many
cases of alleged domestic supernatural disturbances, such as those that
took place at thirty East Drive in Pontefract or at
(03:44):
number two eight four Green Street in Enfield. In these
stories we find the recurring notion that any new resident
of the property is merely an invader occupying a space
that isn't theirs to occupy. At times, it might it
seems that in some way or another the property has
developed a soul all of its own. For many there
(04:08):
is one place in particular that continues to fascinate like
no other in the UK for its combination of mystery,
intrigue and atmospheric location. You couldn't concoct a better setting
the name Burleskin House you're listening to unexplained in dime
(04:29):
Richard MacLean Smith. The story of Bileskin House is inseparable
from that of its most infamous former resident, Alister Crowley.
It was a very particular journey that brought Crowley to Buleskin,
and it begins a short time before midnight on the
(04:51):
twelfth of October eighteen seventy five with his birth in
Royal Leamington, Spa, England. Crowley, who was christened Edward Alexander,
was the first of two children born to Edward and
Emily Crowley. Their second, a baby girl, would arrive five
years later, but would tragically die after only five hours
(05:12):
of life. The family was devoutly religious and belonged to
a Christian sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. The sect
were renowned for their belief in the literal truth of
the Bible and their puritanical attitude toward sin and the
dangers of temptation. It was into this deeply rigid and
conservative environment that Crowley was brought up, an environment which
(05:36):
many believe contributed to his utter rejection of all such
beliefs in later life. Owing to his share in the
lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's father, Edward, had been able
to take an early retirement, and as such divided most
of his time between his family and volunteering as a
traveling preacher for the Sect. Despite the socially claustrophobic upbringing
(06:00):
and unhappy childhood, Crowley was utterly devoted to Edward. In
March eighteen eighty seven, Crowley was devastated when his father
died after a short battle with cancer. The young Allister
was only eleven years old, and the death would prove
to be a significant turning point in his life. Crowley's
(06:21):
sorrow at the loss of his father soon morphed into anger,
as Crowley began attacking the very thing that had made
his life such a misery, rejecting what he saw as
the zealous and authoritarian scourge of Christianity. In the years
that followed, it would seem that Crowley had developed a
pathological yearning to commit the sins he had so studiously
(06:42):
been warned against. He started to experiment sexually, dabbled with debauchery,
and took any opportunity to point out what he considered
to be the many inconsistencies in the Bible to anyone
who would listen. Crowley had the sense that he was
searching for something, but it wasn't until he arrived at
Cambridge University that the pieces began to shift into place.
(07:07):
At some point, Crowley had become interested in the occult,
in particular the study of ritual magic, an enthusiasm that
was piqued after he read A. E. Waits's The Book
of Black Magic and Pacts. An acute interest in alchemy
brought him into contact with British chemist and occultist George
Cecil Jones, who in turn introduced Crowley to the Hermetic
(07:30):
Order of the Golden Dawn. The Order had been established
in eighteen eighty eight and was led by the charismatic
Samuel Liddell mac Gregor Mathers. Some of you may remember
that it was to Maths that the Alpha and Omega
group had stayed faithful, the same group to which Nettafornario
had belonged before her death under mysterious circumstances in nineteen
(07:53):
twenty nine. As we explored in Episode one, After graduation
and with the luxury of his family's brewing dynasty inheritance,
Crowley was able to untether himself from the usual constraints
of life. As such, he was free to throw himself
into his new and burgeoning obsession of ritual magic. A
(08:25):
year after leaving Cambridge, Crowley had moved into a luxury
London flat in Chancery Lane and had hired fellow Golden
Dawn member Alan Bennett to become his personal magic tutor.
It was Bennett who formerly introduced Crowley to ceremonial magic
and the ritual use of drugs, but most importantly to
(08:45):
the rituals of the goetia, the practice of invoking what
are commonly known as angels and demons, in particular the
AARs goetia, as found in the opening section of the
seventeenth century Grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, a Grimoire
being another term for a book of magic spells. Mathers
(09:08):
was impressed by Crowley's dedication and rapid rise through the
various grades of the Golden Dawn, and the two became
close friends, but Crowley was growing increasingly frustrated with the movement.
His frustration was in part due to the reticence that
some of the more established members had about Crowley's membership.
In what was quite a rarity for the time, Crowley
(09:30):
was openly bisexual, a state of affairs that many members
sadly found uncomfortable. But what irked Crowley more than anything
was what he considered to be the inherent phoniness of
the group, peopled as it was by many esteemed intellects
of the day such as W. B. Yates and Brown Stoker.
Crowley felt that they were merely playing at magic and
(09:52):
treated the organization as a glorified salon. In what would
later become a feature of Crowley's life, he wanted more
and to go further than anyone had gone before. In
eighteen ninety eight, Mathers introduced Crowley to a strange and
a mystical text called The Secret Book of Abramelen Magic.
(10:15):
The book, which is said to date back to the
fifteenth century, recounts the story of an Egyptian carbalistic magician
known as abrameln the Mage and his pupil, Abraham of
Vorms in Germany. As the story goes, Abraham found the
maid living in the desert outside Aratchi, an Egyptian town
(10:36):
near the River Nile. After agreeing to serve and fear
the Lord, and to live and die in his most
Holy Law, Abraham was instructed by Abramelen in the divine
science and true magic embedded within the two manuscripts. Abraham
was warned only to pass this knowledge on to those
he knew well and trusted. But now it was in
(10:58):
the hands of Alistair Crowley. Crucially, the book describes an
elaborate ritual known as the Abremellin operation, designed to conjure
up the magician's guardian angel. It became clear to Crowley
that this was the next step that he must take
in his path to complete enlightenment. It is a path
(11:19):
that many believe to have led to fatal consequences. Not
wanting to leave anything to chance, the well heeled Crowley
embarked on a lengthy undertaking to find the ideal location
for the operation. As Crowley later wrote, the house must
(11:41):
be in a more or less secluded situation. There should
be a door opening to the north from the room
of which you make your oratory. Outside this door you
construct a terrace covered with fine river sand. This ends
in a lodge where the spirits may congregate. A year
after searching, Crowley had failed to find the perfect location.
(12:03):
That was until he found himself traveling into the highlands
of Scotland along the haunting shores of the majestic Loch Ness.
A short time later, Crowley arrived at a small grave
site by the side of the road overlooking the loch. There,
perched a short distance up the hill overlooking the graveyard,
he saw it for the first time, the house that
(12:26):
would forever become synonymous with his name, Buleskin. The single
floored mansion, located on the eastern shore of Loch Ness,
was built in the late eighteenth century by a Colonel
Archibald Fraser. It is not clear what exactly brought Crowley
to Buleskin, though the filmmaker and Croley ficionado Kenneth Anger
(12:48):
has pointed out that he may have been drawn to
the name and its similarity to Baal, the can and
god of Gods, later remodeled as the Lord of flies.
In the Old Testament, Barull is represented by the symbol
of the bull, the word boll from Boleskin, being an
ancient Scottish form of the same animal. Others believe, however,
(13:10):
that Crowley had in some way been preternaturally drawn to
the house. It was said that a medieval church had
once stood on the same site. One morning, with the
congregation inside, the church mysteriously caught fire. As the congregation
rushed to escape, they found themselves inexplicably trapped inside. Unable
(13:32):
to escape, they perished as the church burnt steadily to
the ground. Had something of the event remained something that
Crowley was eager to tap into. It is also said
that the graveyard itself was once a meeting point for witches.
Reports of a tunnel leading from the house to the
grave site, which some claim to have been used by
(13:54):
Crowley to conduct his own nighttime rituals, remain unsubstantiated. So
convinced was Crowley of the house's suitability that in August
eighteen ninety nine, he paid more than twice its value
to secure the property. A short time later, he relocated
his possessions and began preparing for the great Operation. It
(14:23):
is important at this point to draw the distinction between
what many see as Crowley's unhealthy obsession with black magic
and satanism and what, in reality it was that Crowley
hoped to achieve whether there is a truth to it
or not. Crowley's intention and the sole purpose of the
ritual was to seek knowledge and conversation with his own
personal guardian angel. It is, by all accounts, a ritual
(14:47):
to invoke positive change, a force for good, But there
was one glaringly large catch. In order to do this,
Crowley would have to invoke and then bring under his
control the twelve Kings of Hell before beginning the ritual,
which required him to start in Easter. Crowley spent the
(15:07):
intervening months entertaining guests and readying the property in preparation
for the ceremony. The final stage was to cover the
outdoor terrace in a fine river sand. The reason was simple.
It was so Crowley could see the feet marks of
the spirits and demons he was about to invoke. The
(15:27):
ritual was to last six months and required the utmost conviction.
It would require him to live off little more than
bread and water, and to wake regularly at three a m.
To begin the invocations. Chastity had to be observed at
all times, and complete abstinence was paramount for the free
spirited Crowley. That in itself would have proved a tall order. However,
(15:52):
As the winter snow of eighteen ninety nine began to thaw,
and with it past the season of death, new life
was bursting forth throughout the surrounding hills. Spring had finally arrived,
and Crowley's dedication had not faltered. The time had come
to begin the ritual. Crowley began by preparing the talismans
(16:18):
that were essential for the operation. The talismans, which can
be found at the back of the Book of Abremelen,
are a set of magic word squares required to bring
the twelve kings of Hell into order. Crowley had moved
to the brightest room in the house to best complete
the task. The room, located at the front of the house,
overlooked the terrace and down to the dark and still
(16:41):
loch ness beyond. Crowley cut the squares from the material vellum,
and as a bright sun flooded the room with light,
he began to inscribe the squares with Indian ink. When
something strange happened despite the clear skies, the room began
to darken until the light had been almost entirely extinguished.
(17:03):
From this point on, Crowley was required to use a
large array of candles to keep the room alight. Even
during the brightest times of day. With everything in order,
Crowley embarked on his six month odyssey. Almost immediately he
received confirmation that he was on the right path as
he began to chant in the room. Even with all
(17:25):
its artificial light, it again began to darken, while all
around the lodge in Terrace became peopled with shadowy shapes, or,
as Crowley writes, the demons and evil forces had congregated
round me so thickly that they were shutting off the light.
A number of friends had declined to visit Crowley, believing
(17:45):
he was going too far meddling with things he couldn't understand,
let alone control. The Grimoire itself begins with the warning
not to attempt any of the magic contained. Within only
a few weeks into the opera, already there were ominous stirrings.
One acquaintance named Russia, lasted only two weeks before terror
(18:09):
forced him to flee, Crowley coming down to breakfast one
day only to be informed that Russia had taken the
first boat in Vernesse that morning. At one point, Crowley
returned to Buleskin one afternoon to find a Catholic priest
waiting for him, in his study. The priest informed him
(18:29):
that the day before, his lodge keeper, who had not
touched alcohol for twenty years, had come home raving drunk
and attempted to murder his wife and children. Already, it
would seem that the ritual, despite being a very personal pursuit,
was provoking forces beyond Crowley's control. Although it may not
(18:51):
have been going well for those around him, the ritual
seemed to be working for Crowley, but all that was
about to change. Barely two months in, Crowley received a
letter from Samuel Mathers requesting Crowley's immediate assistance. In Crowley's absence,
the Order of the Golden Dawn had fractured into two
opposing schools of thought, with Mathers believing he was in
(19:14):
great danger of being usurped despite only being part way
through the ritual. Crowley felt compelled to offer his assistance immediately.
He packed his bags and headed straight to London, and
with that the magic ritual was broken. It had been
(19:38):
Croley's intention to return and complete the spell, but with
one thing leading to another in the summer of nineteen hundred,
Crowley instead moved to Mexico. The ritual remained incomplete as
Kenneth Anger notes, if you invoke spirits to help you
or teach you, there is something that has to be
done afterwards, they must be bad. But Crowley never did that.
(20:04):
It is said that soon after a dark cloud appeared
over the house that failed to disperse for many months.
Locals refused to go by the house, instead preferring to
travel the entire circumference of the loch rather than pass it.
As for Crowley, there are some who believe that failure
to complete the ritual left him dangerously open to demonic possession,
(20:25):
that the twelve kings of Hell may well have somehow
found their way inside him, using him for their own purpose.
Some consider what later became of Crowley to be directly
linked to this moment, and for those that came to
Boleskin after Crowley, it is hard to resist the temptation
to think that some strange gateway had indeed been opened
(20:46):
that has never since been closed. Some time after nineteen thirteen,
the property came into the possession of Major Edward Grant.
Not a lot is known about Grant's period of ownership,
except that one morning, while his housekeeper, Anna McLaren, had
been working in the garden, the family dog had come
running up to her playing with something in its mouth.
(21:09):
It looked like some kind of bone, but knowing there
was nothing of that sort in the house, Missus McLaren
grabbed it from the dog and threw it away. A
short time later, Anna called in on the Major, only
to make a horrific discovery. There, slumped in front of
a large bedroom mirror was the body of Major Grant,
(21:29):
lying next to a recently discharged shotgun. His head had
been completely removed by the blast. The dog had indeed
been chewing on a bone. It was a piece of
Major Grant's skull. In nineteen seventy, the house was bought
by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Page had for a
(21:50):
long time been fascinated by the occult, and in particular
the life of Aleister Crowley. However, due to his rigorous
touring schedule and other commitments, rarely visited the house and
had invited his friend Malcolm Dent to look after the
property in his absence. Dent and his family moved into
the property soon after, and it wasn't long before they
(22:11):
realized something in the house wasn't quite right. Despite Bileskin's reputation.
Dent was a confirmed skeptic and had little time for
what he considered to be nothing but superstitious nonsense. Before long,
Dent and his family became plagued by a series of
inexplicable noises moving throughout the house. Doors would slam mysteriously
(22:34):
all through the night, and carpets and rugs would be
mischievously pulled up. Another regular occurrence was that the doors
would suddenly spring open, as if someone was running through them,
even on a calm day. Dent recalled sitting in bed
late at night when something outside the room began snuffling
under the door. It sounded at first like a dog,
(22:57):
before growing in intensity, becoming louder and louder. He snapped
on the light, only for the noise to become even
more intense. As the door began to rattle violently. He
had the sudden feeling that something huge and evil was
trying to get in. Then, as quickly as it had begun,
it stopped. Was this one of the twelve Kings of
(23:18):
Hell that Crowley had failed to banish, or something else
that had entered through a strange gateway he had failed
to close. Dent later discovered that the room he was
in at the time had been the same room that
Crowley conducted his ritual. In nineteen ninety one, the house
was sold again to a Ronald and Annette mac gillivray,
(23:41):
who stayed in the property event free for almost ten years.
Following the death of Ronald in two thousand two, the
house was again put up for sale and was later
bought by a Dutch family, who also reported nothing unusual
in all their time staying at the house. The demons,
it would seem, had finally taken leave, or had they.
(24:06):
In December twenty fifteen, the owner's daughter and partner arrived
at Burleskin House intent on staying for the Christmas holidays.
Shortly after one pm on Wednesday, the twenty third, the
couple had left the house to get some much needed
supplies for the days ahead. At approximately one forty pm,
a motorist on the A eighty two road on the
(24:28):
opposite side of the lock reported seeing flames and smoke
coming from the direction of Burleskin House. By the time
the couple had returned, half the building was on fire,
with the flames rising over twenty feet into the air.
Multiple crews of firemen battled the blaze until the early
(24:48):
hours of the following day. By the next morning, sixty
percent of the house had been incinerated, as it remains
to this day. After an extensive investigation, the fire was
found not to have been started deliberately. The precise cause
of the fire is a mystery that remains to this
(25:08):
day unexplained. For more on the story of that greatly
misunderstood Aleister Crowley, please listen out of episode ten extra,
where we'll be delving a little deeper into the beliefs
and magic of the man once described as the wickedest
(25:29):
man in the world. As for Burleskin House, whether you
care to believe all the stories or not, the will
forever remain something compelling about this most beguiling of places.
Whether that is because of what we have projected onto
it or due to something perhaps a little more unearthly,
is anyone's guess. In fact, there is something of this
(25:53):
in all buildings, even those without such ominous connotations. We
feel it in our fascinae with ruined and abandoned places,
because although they may be empty, it is impossible not
to sense something of those that had come before, and
perhaps in some way still remain. I will leave you
(26:14):
with a passage from Thomas Pinchon's Gravity's Rainbow. In the
novel pinch and Rights of a place known as the Zone,
a sort of liminal space metaphorically caught somewhere between life
and death. The novel's protagonist Slothrop, is traveling through the
Zone in the aftermath of the Second World War when
he finds himself inside an abandoned factory, once a throbbing
(26:38):
heart of industry, now quiet and stilled, though found adrift
and haunted, full of signs of recent human tenancy. This
is not the legendary ship marries Celeste. It isn't bounded
so neatly. These tracks under foot run away fore and
aft into all stilled Europe, And our flesh doesn't sweat
(27:02):
and pimple here for the domestic mysteries, the attic horror
of what might have happened, so much as for our
knowledge of what likely did happen. It was always easy
in open and lonely places to be visited by panic, wilderness, fear.
But these are the urban fantods here that come to
get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way.
(27:25):
Time is passing when there is no more history, no
time traveling capsule to find your way back to, only
the lateness and the absence that fill a great railway
shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat
God's city cousins wait for you at the edges of
the light, playing the tunes they always played, but more
(27:46):
audible now because everything else has gone away or fallen Silent.
Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
mclin smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
(28:09):
are also produced by me Richard mc cleinsmith. 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
(28:29):
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward
Slash Unexplained Podcast. The b the to
Hello, it's Richard mc lean smith here. Due to the
recent arrival of another Minnie mc lean Smith, there'll be
a slight pause on new episodes, so for the next
two weeks will be dipping back into the vaults, before
continuing rather aptly with the next episode of season eight
on Friday, the thirteenth of June. This week, we're heading
(00:21):
back to season one, episode ten. The world of Horror
is littered with unnerving locations, places that both draw from
and have in turn seeped into the public imagination. For many.
There is one place in particular that continues to fascinate
like no other in the UK. With its combination of mystery,
(00:43):
intrigue and its atmospheric location. You couldn't make up a
better setting the place Burleskin House. This is unexplained Season
one episode ten, The Spaces that Linger. The world of
(01:11):
Horror is littered with unnerving locations, places that both draw
from and have in turn seeped into the public imagination.
Perhaps the most symbolic of them all being the forest,
the archetypal liminal space of what Joseph Campbell termed the
hero's journey. Not only is the forest dark and mysterious,
(01:35):
but it is of course profoundly symbolic, being as it
is a manifestation of our deep unconscious. As we venture
deeper into the forest, so too do we journey deeper
into ourselves in our quest to confront our greatest fears,
before with any luck, ultimately emerging victorious and changed. But
(01:56):
for all the creatures and the hidden and unknoble fears
we might discover along the way, the forest, in a
sense remains a space that is our own, those fears
within our own to decipher and overcome. Far more chilling, therefore,
are the places that, when entering, we find ourselves crossing
(02:17):
a threshold into a world that is very much not
our own, Places where no longer are we at the
whim of our darkest unconscious, but rather that of somebody else's.
God forbid you ever find yourself checking into the Bates Motel,
as found in Robert Box's Psycho, or stumbling into the
(02:37):
family home of leather Face, so disturbingly depicted in Toby
Hooper's mesmerizingly deranged Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What both stories have
in common is a location so inextricably linked to the
bad guys as to be almost inseparable from them. There
is the sense that even when empty, the locations will
(02:58):
somehow incubate the things that have happened inside. Both stories, incidentally,
were partly based on the life of murderer ed Gean,
whose proclivity for manufacturing ornaments and furniture from human bone
and skin continues to shock the world almost sixty years
after the event. After Gene's conviction, it was decided that
(03:21):
his house should be torn down. So incapable with the
local community from separating the location from the events that
had taken place inside, there was no other option but
to remove it entirely. A similar theme emerges in many
cases of alleged domestic supernatural disturbances, such as those that
took place at thirty East Drive in Pontefract or at
(03:44):
number two eight four Green Street in Enfield. In these
stories we find the recurring notion that any new resident
of the property is merely an invader occupying a space
that isn't theirs to occupy. At times, it might it
seems that in some way or another the property has
developed a soul all of its own. For many there
(04:08):
is one place in particular that continues to fascinate like
no other in the UK for its combination of mystery,
intrigue and atmospheric location. You couldn't concoct a better setting
the name Burleskin House you're listening to unexplained in dime
(04:29):
Richard MacLean Smith. The story of Bileskin House is inseparable
from that of its most infamous former resident, Alister Crowley.
It was a very particular journey that brought Crowley to Buleskin,
and it begins a short time before midnight on the
(04:51):
twelfth of October eighteen seventy five with his birth in
Royal Leamington, Spa, England. Crowley, who was christened Edward Alexander,
was the first of two children born to Edward and
Emily Crowley. Their second, a baby girl, would arrive five
years later, but would tragically die after only five hours
(05:12):
of life. The family was devoutly religious and belonged to
a Christian sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. The sect
were renowned for their belief in the literal truth of
the Bible and their puritanical attitude toward sin and the
dangers of temptation. It was into this deeply rigid and
conservative environment that Crowley was brought up, an environment which
(05:36):
many believe contributed to his utter rejection of all such
beliefs in later life. Owing to his share in the
lucrative family brewing business, Crowley's father, Edward, had been able
to take an early retirement, and as such divided most
of his time between his family and volunteering as a
traveling preacher for the Sect. Despite the socially claustrophobic upbringing
(06:00):
and unhappy childhood, Crowley was utterly devoted to Edward. In
March eighteen eighty seven, Crowley was devastated when his father
died after a short battle with cancer. The young Allister
was only eleven years old, and the death would prove
to be a significant turning point in his life. Crowley's
(06:21):
sorrow at the loss of his father soon morphed into anger,
as Crowley began attacking the very thing that had made
his life such a misery, rejecting what he saw as
the zealous and authoritarian scourge of Christianity. In the years
that followed, it would seem that Crowley had developed a
pathological yearning to commit the sins he had so studiously
(06:42):
been warned against. He started to experiment sexually, dabbled with debauchery,
and took any opportunity to point out what he considered
to be the many inconsistencies in the Bible to anyone
who would listen. Crowley had the sense that he was
searching for something, but it wasn't until he arrived at
Cambridge University that the pieces began to shift into place.
(07:07):
At some point, Crowley had become interested in the occult,
in particular the study of ritual magic, an enthusiasm that
was piqued after he read A. E. Waits's The Book
of Black Magic and Pacts. An acute interest in alchemy
brought him into contact with British chemist and occultist George
Cecil Jones, who in turn introduced Crowley to the Hermetic
(07:30):
Order of the Golden Dawn. The Order had been established
in eighteen eighty eight and was led by the charismatic
Samuel Liddell mac Gregor Mathers. Some of you may remember
that it was to Maths that the Alpha and Omega
group had stayed faithful, the same group to which Nettafornario
had belonged before her death under mysterious circumstances in nineteen
(07:53):
twenty nine. As we explored in Episode one, After graduation
and with the luxury of his family's brewing dynasty inheritance,
Crowley was able to untether himself from the usual constraints
of life. As such, he was free to throw himself
into his new and burgeoning obsession of ritual magic. A
(08:25):
year after leaving Cambridge, Crowley had moved into a luxury
London flat in Chancery Lane and had hired fellow Golden
Dawn member Alan Bennett to become his personal magic tutor.
It was Bennett who formerly introduced Crowley to ceremonial magic
and the ritual use of drugs, but most importantly to
(08:45):
the rituals of the goetia, the practice of invoking what
are commonly known as angels and demons, in particular the
AARs goetia, as found in the opening section of the
seventeenth century Grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, a Grimoire
being another term for a book of magic spells. Mathers
(09:08):
was impressed by Crowley's dedication and rapid rise through the
various grades of the Golden Dawn, and the two became
close friends, but Crowley was growing increasingly frustrated with the movement.
His frustration was in part due to the reticence that
some of the more established members had about Crowley's membership.
In what was quite a rarity for the time, Crowley
(09:30):
was openly bisexual, a state of affairs that many members
sadly found uncomfortable. But what irked Crowley more than anything
was what he considered to be the inherent phoniness of
the group, peopled as it was by many esteemed intellects
of the day such as W. B. Yates and Brown Stoker.
Crowley felt that they were merely playing at magic and
(09:52):
treated the organization as a glorified salon. In what would
later become a feature of Crowley's life, he wanted more
and to go further than anyone had gone before. In
eighteen ninety eight, Mathers introduced Crowley to a strange and
a mystical text called The Secret Book of Abramelen Magic.
(10:15):
The book, which is said to date back to the
fifteenth century, recounts the story of an Egyptian carbalistic magician
known as abrameln the Mage and his pupil, Abraham of
Vorms in Germany. As the story goes, Abraham found the
maid living in the desert outside Aratchi, an Egyptian town
(10:36):
near the River Nile. After agreeing to serve and fear
the Lord, and to live and die in his most
Holy Law, Abraham was instructed by Abramelen in the divine
science and true magic embedded within the two manuscripts. Abraham
was warned only to pass this knowledge on to those
he knew well and trusted. But now it was in
(10:58):
the hands of Alistair Crowley. Crucially, the book describes an
elaborate ritual known as the Abremellin operation, designed to conjure
up the magician's guardian angel. It became clear to Crowley
that this was the next step that he must take
in his path to complete enlightenment. It is a path
(11:19):
that many believe to have led to fatal consequences. Not
wanting to leave anything to chance, the well heeled Crowley
embarked on a lengthy undertaking to find the ideal location
for the operation. As Crowley later wrote, the house must
(11:41):
be in a more or less secluded situation. There should
be a door opening to the north from the room
of which you make your oratory. Outside this door you
construct a terrace covered with fine river sand. This ends
in a lodge where the spirits may congregate. A year
after searching, Crowley had failed to find the perfect location.
(12:03):
That was until he found himself traveling into the highlands
of Scotland along the haunting shores of the majestic Loch Ness.
A short time later, Crowley arrived at a small grave
site by the side of the road overlooking the loch. There,
perched a short distance up the hill overlooking the graveyard,
he saw it for the first time, the house that
(12:26):
would forever become synonymous with his name, Buleskin. The single
floored mansion, located on the eastern shore of Loch Ness,
was built in the late eighteenth century by a Colonel
Archibald Fraser. It is not clear what exactly brought Crowley
to Buleskin, though the filmmaker and Croley ficionado Kenneth Anger
(12:48):
has pointed out that he may have been drawn to
the name and its similarity to Baal, the can and
god of Gods, later remodeled as the Lord of flies.
In the Old Testament, Barull is represented by the symbol
of the bull, the word boll from Boleskin, being an
ancient Scottish form of the same animal. Others believe, however,
(13:10):
that Crowley had in some way been preternaturally drawn to
the house. It was said that a medieval church had
once stood on the same site. One morning, with the
congregation inside, the church mysteriously caught fire. As the congregation
rushed to escape, they found themselves inexplicably trapped inside. Unable
(13:32):
to escape, they perished as the church burnt steadily to
the ground. Had something of the event remained something that
Crowley was eager to tap into. It is also said
that the graveyard itself was once a meeting point for witches.
Reports of a tunnel leading from the house to the
grave site, which some claim to have been used by
(13:54):
Crowley to conduct his own nighttime rituals, remain unsubstantiated. So
convinced was Crowley of the house's suitability that in August
eighteen ninety nine, he paid more than twice its value
to secure the property. A short time later, he relocated
his possessions and began preparing for the great Operation. It
(14:23):
is important at this point to draw the distinction between
what many see as Crowley's unhealthy obsession with black magic
and satanism and what, in reality it was that Crowley
hoped to achieve whether there is a truth to it
or not. Crowley's intention and the sole purpose of the
ritual was to seek knowledge and conversation with his own
personal guardian angel. It is, by all accounts, a ritual
(14:47):
to invoke positive change, a force for good, But there
was one glaringly large catch. In order to do this,
Crowley would have to invoke and then bring under his
control the twelve Kings of Hell before beginning the ritual,
which required him to start in Easter. Crowley spent the
(15:07):
intervening months entertaining guests and readying the property in preparation
for the ceremony. The final stage was to cover the
outdoor terrace in a fine river sand. The reason was simple.
It was so Crowley could see the feet marks of
the spirits and demons he was about to invoke. The
(15:27):
ritual was to last six months and required the utmost conviction.
It would require him to live off little more than
bread and water, and to wake regularly at three a m.
To begin the invocations. Chastity had to be observed at
all times, and complete abstinence was paramount for the free
spirited Crowley. That in itself would have proved a tall order. However,
(15:52):
As the winter snow of eighteen ninety nine began to thaw,
and with it past the season of death, new life
was bursting forth throughout the surrounding hills. Spring had finally arrived,
and Crowley's dedication had not faltered. The time had come
to begin the ritual. Crowley began by preparing the talismans
(16:18):
that were essential for the operation. The talismans, which can
be found at the back of the Book of Abremelen,
are a set of magic word squares required to bring
the twelve kings of Hell into order. Crowley had moved
to the brightest room in the house to best complete
the task. The room, located at the front of the house,
overlooked the terrace and down to the dark and still
(16:41):
loch ness beyond. Crowley cut the squares from the material vellum,
and as a bright sun flooded the room with light,
he began to inscribe the squares with Indian ink. When
something strange happened despite the clear skies, the room began
to darken until the light had been almost entirely extinguished.
(17:03):
From this point on, Crowley was required to use a
large array of candles to keep the room alight. Even
during the brightest times of day. With everything in order,
Crowley embarked on his six month odyssey. Almost immediately he
received confirmation that he was on the right path as
he began to chant in the room. Even with all
(17:25):
its artificial light, it again began to darken, while all
around the lodge in Terrace became peopled with shadowy shapes, or,
as Crowley writes, the demons and evil forces had congregated
round me so thickly that they were shutting off the light.
A number of friends had declined to visit Crowley, believing
(17:45):
he was going too far meddling with things he couldn't understand,
let alone control. The Grimoire itself begins with the warning
not to attempt any of the magic contained. Within only
a few weeks into the opera, already there were ominous stirrings.
One acquaintance named Russia, lasted only two weeks before terror
(18:09):
forced him to flee, Crowley coming down to breakfast one
day only to be informed that Russia had taken the
first boat in Vernesse that morning. At one point, Crowley
returned to Buleskin one afternoon to find a Catholic priest
waiting for him, in his study. The priest informed him
(18:29):
that the day before, his lodge keeper, who had not
touched alcohol for twenty years, had come home raving drunk
and attempted to murder his wife and children. Already, it
would seem that the ritual, despite being a very personal pursuit,
was provoking forces beyond Crowley's control. Although it may not
(18:51):
have been going well for those around him, the ritual
seemed to be working for Crowley, but all that was
about to change. Barely two months in, Crowley received a
letter from Samuel Mathers requesting Crowley's immediate assistance. In Crowley's absence,
the Order of the Golden Dawn had fractured into two
opposing schools of thought, with Mathers believing he was in
(19:14):
great danger of being usurped despite only being part way
through the ritual. Crowley felt compelled to offer his assistance immediately.
He packed his bags and headed straight to London, and
with that the magic ritual was broken. It had been
(19:38):
Croley's intention to return and complete the spell, but with
one thing leading to another in the summer of nineteen hundred,
Crowley instead moved to Mexico. The ritual remained incomplete as
Kenneth Anger notes, if you invoke spirits to help you
or teach you, there is something that has to be
done afterwards, they must be bad. But Crowley never did that.
(20:04):
It is said that soon after a dark cloud appeared
over the house that failed to disperse for many months.
Locals refused to go by the house, instead preferring to
travel the entire circumference of the loch rather than pass it.
As for Crowley, there are some who believe that failure
to complete the ritual left him dangerously open to demonic possession,
(20:25):
that the twelve kings of Hell may well have somehow
found their way inside him, using him for their own purpose.
Some consider what later became of Crowley to be directly
linked to this moment, and for those that came to
Boleskin after Crowley, it is hard to resist the temptation
to think that some strange gateway had indeed been opened
(20:46):
that has never since been closed. Some time after nineteen thirteen,
the property came into the possession of Major Edward Grant.
Not a lot is known about Grant's period of ownership,
except that one morning, while his housekeeper, Anna McLaren, had
been working in the garden, the family dog had come
running up to her playing with something in its mouth.
(21:09):
It looked like some kind of bone, but knowing there
was nothing of that sort in the house, Missus McLaren
grabbed it from the dog and threw it away. A
short time later, Anna called in on the Major, only
to make a horrific discovery. There, slumped in front of
a large bedroom mirror was the body of Major Grant,
(21:29):
lying next to a recently discharged shotgun. His head had
been completely removed by the blast. The dog had indeed
been chewing on a bone. It was a piece of
Major Grant's skull. In nineteen seventy, the house was bought
by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Page had for a
(21:50):
long time been fascinated by the occult, and in particular
the life of Aleister Crowley. However, due to his rigorous
touring schedule and other commitments, rarely visited the house and
had invited his friend Malcolm Dent to look after the
property in his absence. Dent and his family moved into
the property soon after, and it wasn't long before they
(22:11):
realized something in the house wasn't quite right. Despite Bileskin's reputation.
Dent was a confirmed skeptic and had little time for
what he considered to be nothing but superstitious nonsense. Before long,
Dent and his family became plagued by a series of
inexplicable noises moving throughout the house. Doors would slam mysteriously
(22:34):
all through the night, and carpets and rugs would be
mischievously pulled up. Another regular occurrence was that the doors
would suddenly spring open, as if someone was running through them,
even on a calm day. Dent recalled sitting in bed
late at night when something outside the room began snuffling
under the door. It sounded at first like a dog,
(22:57):
before growing in intensity, becoming louder and louder. He snapped
on the light, only for the noise to become even
more intense. As the door began to rattle violently. He
had the sudden feeling that something huge and evil was
trying to get in. Then, as quickly as it had begun,
it stopped. Was this one of the twelve Kings of
(23:18):
Hell that Crowley had failed to banish, or something else
that had entered through a strange gateway he had failed
to close. Dent later discovered that the room he was
in at the time had been the same room that
Crowley conducted his ritual. In nineteen ninety one, the house
was sold again to a Ronald and Annette mac gillivray,
(23:41):
who stayed in the property event free for almost ten years.
Following the death of Ronald in two thousand two, the
house was again put up for sale and was later
bought by a Dutch family, who also reported nothing unusual
in all their time staying at the house. The demons,
it would seem, had finally taken leave, or had they.
(24:06):
In December twenty fifteen, the owner's daughter and partner arrived
at Burleskin House intent on staying for the Christmas holidays.
Shortly after one pm on Wednesday, the twenty third, the
couple had left the house to get some much needed
supplies for the days ahead. At approximately one forty pm,
a motorist on the A eighty two road on the
(24:28):
opposite side of the lock reported seeing flames and smoke
coming from the direction of Burleskin House. By the time
the couple had returned, half the building was on fire,
with the flames rising over twenty feet into the air.
Multiple crews of firemen battled the blaze until the early
(24:48):
hours of the following day. By the next morning, sixty
percent of the house had been incinerated, as it remains
to this day. After an extensive investigation, the fire was
found not to have been started deliberately. The precise cause
of the fire is a mystery that remains to this
(25:08):
day unexplained. For more on the story of that greatly
misunderstood Aleister Crowley, please listen out of episode ten extra,
where we'll be delving a little deeper into the beliefs
and magic of the man once described as the wickedest
(25:29):
man in the world. As for Burleskin House, whether you
care to believe all the stories or not, the will
forever remain something compelling about this most beguiling of places.
Whether that is because of what we have projected onto
it or due to something perhaps a little more unearthly,
is anyone's guess. In fact, there is something of this
(25:53):
in all buildings, even those without such ominous connotations. We
feel it in our fascinae with ruined and abandoned places,
because although they may be empty, it is impossible not
to sense something of those that had come before, and
perhaps in some way still remain. I will leave you
(26:14):
with a passage from Thomas Pinchon's Gravity's Rainbow. In the
novel pinch and Rights of a place known as the Zone,
a sort of liminal space metaphorically caught somewhere between life
and death. The novel's protagonist Slothrop, is traveling through the
Zone in the aftermath of the Second World War when
he finds himself inside an abandoned factory, once a throbbing
(26:38):
heart of industry, now quiet and stilled, though found adrift
and haunted, full of signs of recent human tenancy. This
is not the legendary ship marries Celeste. It isn't bounded
so neatly. These tracks under foot run away fore and
aft into all stilled Europe, And our flesh doesn't sweat
(27:02):
and pimple here for the domestic mysteries, the attic horror
of what might have happened, so much as for our
knowledge of what likely did happen. It was always easy
in open and lonely places to be visited by panic, wilderness, fear.
But these are the urban fantods here that come to
get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way.
(27:25):
Time is passing when there is no more history, no
time traveling capsule to find your way back to, only
the lateness and the absence that fill a great railway
shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat
God's city cousins wait for you at the edges of
the light, playing the tunes they always played, but more
(27:46):
audible now because everything else has gone away or fallen Silent.
Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
mclin smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
(28:09):
are also produced by me Richard mc cleinsmith. 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
(28:29):
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com. Forward
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