June 20, 2025 • 30 mins
In the shadows of Greater Manchester’s canals and waterways, some believe something ancient and malevolent might be lurking. This week on Unexplained, we plunge into eerie folklore, mysterious drownings, and chilling whispers of a phantom predator said to haunt the waters - claiming victims no one can explain.
Written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard MacLean Smith.
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.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, meet and greets,
Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. What is it about water that
(00:54):
haunts us? Perhaps it's the way that great bodies of it, locks,
canals and ponds sit like amorphous entities beneath the moonlight, quiet, patient, indifferent.
Perhaps is the thought of what they might conceal, their
mirror like surfaces, offering the perfect metaphor and sometimes genuine
(01:18):
hiding place for whatever unknown horrors might lurk within its depths.
Perhaps it's to do with waters awesome power to overwhelm
and destroy we see footage on the news of tsunamis
and extreme weather events. We know what it means when
a region reports higher than average rainfall, and can almost
(01:41):
feel the creak of the levee when a storm assaults
the coastline. It's the ultimate irony that the most abundant
element on Earth, the one thing other than air, which
is non negotiable for survival, is also a deadly killer.
Just as gods are granted the power to give and
(02:01):
take life, we might do well to see water in
just those same terms. In nineteen forty one, T. S.
Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages that the Mississippi River
was a strong brown god, unhonoured, unpropitiated by worshipers of
the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting, and that in
(02:25):
keeping his seasons and rages, the river was also a destroyer,
reminder of what men choose to forget. It was Eliot's
contention that attempts to outgrow the natural world would wreak
havoc of the kind we see today as a result
of global warming. It should therefore come as no surprise
(02:46):
that in almost every culture around the world, from the
Japanese kappa to the figure of Poseidon. In Greek mythology,
water is depicted as a jealous and unforgiving supernatural force.
We ignore it at our peril, and if we fail
to pay it due deference, it has the power to
(03:06):
claim us and our loved ones and drag them impassively
to its depths. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
McLean Smith. The English legends of Peg Powler and Ginny
(03:29):
Green Teeth, from the northeast and northwest of England, respectively,
might at first give the appearance of a more frivolous
take on the subject of elemental destruction. Both are spirits
or old crones, said to haunt inland waterways. Both prey
on children and old people, using their elongated arms, talon
(03:52):
like fingers, sharp teeth, long straggly hair, and green skin
to petrify and insight ne'er anyone unlucky enough to encounter them.
The presence of duckweed is usually an indication that either
Ginny or Peg is close by, keeping their presence mostly
(04:13):
to rivers and ponds, with occasional forays into haunting canals
and sewer systems. In more industrialized urban landscapes like Liverpool
and Newcastle. Both have been invoked to warn people away
from dangerous bodies of water, and both can trace their
origins within a long folkloric tradition stretching as far back
(04:36):
as the thirteenth century. Some scholars, however, think that the
legends date further, noting striking similarities between the figure of
Grendel from the tenth century epic Beowulf and the Welsh
myth of Haffron or Sabrina, who was drowned in Britain's
longest river, the River Seven, and curse to haunt its
(04:58):
waters forevermore. But not all stories to do with Ginny
Green Teeth or peg Powler are quite so esoteric. On
thirteenth of January eighteen sixty a recently constructed iron bridge
over the River Tees near Yarm in North Yorkshire collapsed
(05:18):
into the water, leading many locals to believe that the
spirit of peg Powler had somehow been angered. A local
paper wrote at the time the new bridge was built
adjacent to the old one, but peg Powler, the mythical
spirit of the River Tees, objected to the effrontery offered
by these new fangled ideas, rose in her wrath and
(05:41):
before the much vaunted new way was opened to the public.
It collapsed at midnight on January twelfth, eighteen sixty. The implication,
of course, is that, like T. S. Eliot's depiction of
an ancient water got disturbed by modern industrial lifedzation, the
figure of peg Powler rose up in anger to foil
(06:05):
modern man's tampering with the order of the natural world.
Not only do mortals in this story fail to show
respect to the spirit of the river, they are punished
for their transgressions through physical violence and economic sabotage. Thanks
(06:32):
largely to more advanced public understanding of scientific natural processes,
the prevalence of mythbusting on social and traditional media, and
sustained government efforts to clean up and make safe dilapidated waterways,
stories about Peg Powler and Ginny Green Teeth have mostly
been forgotten, and yet many urban legends of this nature
(06:55):
have not been completely consigned to history. Still whispers about
malevolent beings ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims who stray
too close to the water's edge. Many in Britain will,
no doubt remember the brilliant and haunting public information films
released by the suitably Orwellian sounding Central Office of Information
(07:19):
that proliferated on British TV in the nineteen seventies. The
drowning awareness film Lonely Water was perhaps the most haunting
of them all.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready
to trap the unwary, the show off, the fall. And
this is the kind of place you'll expect to find
me that no one expects to find me. Here it
seems too order me, but that call is deep. The
boys showing off. The bank is slippery, The shops are easy,
(08:02):
but the unwary ones are easiest too. This branch is weak, rotten.
It will never take his way. Only a fool would
ignore this. But there's one born every minute. Under the water.
There are traps, old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's
(08:29):
the perfect place for an accident. Oh I love the.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Stamin wah, great you step big sticks came out?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Since children, I have no power over them. Why am
I that stupid cries to swim? Hi, go and get
that thing to reckon me. You do have to call
my own resum. I'll be back back back.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The somber narrator was, of course, the Green Reaper himself
forever lurking in the background, watching on patiently as one
child after another fails to heed his warnings to stay
away from the water. Perhaps the most chilling British urban
legend of recent times concerns an alleged serial killer that
(09:19):
some believe has been using the warren of isolated waterways
that snake through much of England's northwest as a hunting
ground for their victims. Police have dismissed this as a
modern moral panic, though for those who believe it, this
phantom figure is said to be responsible for upwards of
(09:39):
eighty six deaths. For more than two hundred and fifty years,
Manchester and its surrounds such as Salford, has been a
Northern English powerhouse. In the nineteenth century. It was there
that Friedrich Engels and Carl Marx studied the industrial working classes.
So important was their labour for the manufacture and distribution
(10:03):
of cotton and linen to international markets. The city's burgeoning
textiles industry earned it the nickname Cottonopolis, and required the
construction of a vast network of shipping canals, docks and
fire ducts to bring raw materials from the New World overnight.
(10:24):
It seemed the city was transformed from a sleepy market
town into a kind of infernal red brick inversion of Venice.
Instead of gondolas and churches, cobbled squares and famous art expositions,
it was schooners and warehouses, dirty terraces, and row upon
(10:44):
row of red bricked factories breathing hell fire into the
choked streets. As the population exploded from just a couple
of thousand at the start of the eighteenth century to
more than three hundred and fifty thousand by eighteen sixs
the canals were the arteries that fed the city's heart,
(11:06):
though by the end of the nineteen seventies, with the
decline of heavy industry cruelly accelerated by Margaret Thatcher's government
of the day, Manchester began a steady decline into unemployment
and deprivation. The disintegration of the city's literal and psychological
horizons would later define much of Greater Manchester's local music scene,
(11:30):
as exemplified in the timeless work of bands like Joy Division,
The Smiths and The Four. Over time, the canals fell
into disuse and disrepair, and what had once been vital
transport lanes connecting the city to the rest of the
world suddenly became something far less edifying and much closer
(11:53):
to the kind of still water favoured by those dark
legendary figures like Ginny Green Tea. By the early nineteen nineties,
a new Manchester was beginning to emerge, driven by the
city's intrinsically indomitable spirit and blossoming out of the detritus
(12:19):
of its former glories. From its resurgent music scene dubbed
Manchester to the unrelenting success of the city's Manchester United
football club, Manchester at once again established itself as one
of the nation's most heralded cities. By two thousand seven,
work was well underway to redevelop the Bridgewater and Manchester
(12:42):
ship Canals to cater to what would eventually become Media
City UK, a sprawling two hundred acre site in Salford
that became home to much of the nations leading media organizations.
With that came bars and artisanal restaurants, glass fronted hotels
and the kind of sophistication that would have been unimaginable
(13:06):
on the banks of the Manchester Shipping Canal just one
hundred years previously. The redeveloped waterways with their newly installed
towpaths became popular walking routes for everyone from young professionals
on their way to work to joggers, and, most crucially
for this story, drinkers and nightclub revelers making their way
(13:27):
home after an evening on the town. Greater Manchester is
home to over thirty six miles of criss crossing rivers
and canals, many of which are lowered from street view
to allow for the easy passage of a boat or
transport vessel. It stands to reason that after a few drinks,
(13:48):
straying too close to the water's edge could spell disaster.
After only a few units of alcohol, your heart rate
speeds up, your reaction time lessons, your inhibitions lower, and
your hand to eye coordination becomes impaired. With increased consumption,
performing even simple tasks like holding a conversation or walking
(14:12):
in a straight line can become difficult, let alone the
prospect of treading icy, treacle thick water having taken a
tumble over the edge of an embankment. Add to that
the precarious living situation many homeless people find themselves in,
and it should come as little surprise that between two
(14:32):
thousand and four and twenty eighteen, the bodies of at
least eighty six people, most of them young men, were
recovered from the water. Some had been out clubbing before
they disappeared. Many were last seen walking near the canal,
often after dark, sometimes intoxicated and always on their own.
(14:55):
Nineteen year old engineering student Suvic Powell was one of them,
having grown up in a strict Indian household before traveling
to the UK to study at Manchester's Metropolitan University, Suvic
(15:16):
Powell had never been much of a drinker, much less
of regular fixture on the city's famous clubbing scene. Nonetheless,
according to his friend Charlotte Wilson, on New Year's Eve
twenty twelve, he found himself out celebrating at a club
called Warehouse Project in the Trafford area of the city.
(15:37):
CCTV footage showed Suvac's last movements with friends as they
entered the venue before being escorted off the premises by
a security guard, ostensibly for being too intoxicated. Three weeks later,
the young student's body was pulled from Manchester's Bridgewater Canal,
(15:58):
a thirty nine mile stretch of water running through Manchester.
The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, no signs
of injury caused by a third party, and no defensive
wounds showing that he'd put up any kind of struggle.
Suvic's death was ruled as an accidental drowning, but questions
(16:21):
remained about the circumstances surrounding it. Why had it taken
so long to find his body between the time of
his disappearance and the likely time of his death, which
coroners acknowledged had taken place much closer to the end
of the three weeks, Where had he been for all
that time? Suvic's parents made it clear that they didn't
(16:46):
believe he'd simply fallen into the water. Members of his
family even appealed to the Indian government to investigate the
possibility of foul play, but with nothing more than a
series of patchy CCTV images to go on, the young
man's case quickly went cold. He was cremated in his
(17:08):
hometown of Bangalore in January twenty thirteen. Nine years earlier,
on seventeenth of April two thousand and four, twenty one
year old David Plunkett had also been out in the
Trafford area of the city. Like Suvic, he too, had
been out with friends at Dayton of Racetrack in Trafford Park.
(17:30):
At some point, David's friend Michael realized that David was
no longer with the group. Unknown to him, David had
been ejected by the event organizers for being too drunk.
When Michael was unable to reach him on the phone,
he contacted the young man's parents and and Mike Plunkett. They,
in turn then attempted to contact David. In the quiet
(17:55):
of the night, the deeply concerned Anne and Mike sat
in their home trying to call their son. It took
and three attempts before the call was finally answered, but
her son didn't speak, seemingly unaware that his phone had
picked up the call. What struck her first and foremost
(18:16):
was the strange quietness of where he seemed to be.
No sounds of revelry or traffic, no sound of anything
much at all. All she could hear was the sound
of him walking and his breathing. David, she repeated into
the phone, to no reply, Can you hear me? Do
(18:37):
you know where you are? Are you in Manchester? Do
you recognize anything? About seven or eight minutes into the call,
David's mother heard a series of ghastly screams. Horrified, Anne
started crying and handed the phone to her husband, Mike,
then quickly called nine ninety nine on a separate phone,
(18:59):
hoping that some one could get to David wherever he was.
As she talked to an officer on the other line,
David's screams continued until finally, a short time later, David's
phone went dead. The screams and plunkets spoke about were
(19:26):
also heard by the police officer on the other line,
though they weren't picked up on tape the recorder had
failed to work. The officer in question would go on
to describe the noises as distressing. She later resigned from
her post, speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, who ran
(19:46):
an early piece on the possibility of a serial killer
operating on the Manchester Canal network. The incident still haunts
me to this day. With every death I see reported
in the news, more and more convinced that these are
murders and not accidents. As David's father, Mike also put it,
(20:08):
the screaming I heard made me feel like David had
seen something that terrified him. Like Suvic. It was a
long time before David's body was found eventually washing up
two weeks later in the Manchester Ship Canal. The coroner
ruled it as drowning, and like Suvic, there was a
(20:29):
lot of alcohol in David's bloodstream, so much so that
the coroner publicly admonished the organizers of the event for
ejecting someone in his vulnerable state when it was known
that he would not have had the coordination to look
after himself. The third, and one of the most high
profile cases for amateur sleuths on the hunt for what
(20:51):
many have taken to calling the Manchester Pusher is that
of Nathan Tomlinson. Nathan was a twenty one year old
student student who disappeared after a Christmas party on seventeenth
of December twenty ten. His last confirmed sighting was at
the Mita Hotel near Manchester Cathedral. Anecdotal evidence picks up
(21:14):
his whereabouts on Victoria Street in the center of the city,
where he is said to have hopped a war before
making his way toward Chapel Street in Salford to the west.
A man fitting his description was seen asking a passing
bus driver how he might get home to Stockport, about
five miles away to the south, A figure also matching
(21:36):
his description was spotted by CCTV walking toward the River Irwell.
At that point, no more sightings were picked up of Nathan,
speculative or otherwise, after which he is said to have
disappeared completely. An agonizing three month search followed, during which
(21:57):
time police focused their efforts on the area around the
University of Salford, nearby Peel Park and Salford Crescent Railway station.
His body was recovered from the River Irwell three months later,
washing up at a bridge near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton.
(22:18):
An inquest into the search for Nathan found that police
had failed to do basic investigative work to ensure that
his body was uncovered more quickly. Pathologist Naomi Carter said
that although Nathan had water in his lungs, she couldn't
determine whether he'd died before going into the river or
(22:39):
whether he'd drowned. Nathan was found with its phone and wallet,
though his coat was missing, and his mother even suggested
at one point that she thought the discovery scene might
have been staged to make it look as though Nathan
had gone into the water of his own accord. Behind
(23:05):
each of these high profile cases. The men's families insists
there is more to the story, and perhaps there is.
It wasn't until twenty fifteen, when a newspaper published an
article featuring criminal psychologist Professor Craig Jackson from the University
of Birmingham that whispers began about the deaths of Nathan,
(23:28):
David and Souvic, and possibly scores of others being connected.
The professor was quoted as saying that it was extremely
unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in
the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides,
and that it was entirely possible a serial killer was
(23:51):
responsible for at least some of the deaths. A theory
arose that because Manchester's waterways had been used over the
decades as a cruising area for gay men, an elusive
murderer may have been targeting the gay community and catching
potential cruisers unaware. In twenty sixteen, British TV station Channel
(24:13):
four commissioned a documentary called Manchester's Serial Killer, which featured
a more cautious, though no less intrigued Professor Craig Jackson
expounding on his theory. Once again, forums exploded with hypotheses
and innuendos, and Detective Chief Inspector Pete Marsh of the
(24:34):
Greater Manchester Police was even instructed to reopen investigations into
all the deaths linked to the theory. Marsh reported that
he did not believe young men or those that were
gay made up the majority of the deaths, and added
that it was his belief that many of the individuals
who died on Manchester's waterways had died accidentally. Skepticism remained, however,
(25:01):
Almost all victims identified were young men aged between eighteen
to thirty. Last scene after dark, walking alone, found in
or near one of the city's rivers or canals, with
no witnesses, no clear cause of death, and no sign
of struggle against their likely impending doom. Rumors of the
(25:30):
so called Manchester Pusher might have eventually died out were
it not for the number of supposed survivors who claimed
to have had near brushes with the elusive serial killer.
One anonymous source calling himself Tom, a thirty four year
old cyclist who regularly frequented Bridgewater Canal, felt an arm
(25:52):
knock him off his bike and into the water one
April evening in twenty eighteen. As he struggled to get out,
found that someone was waiting at the edge of the
water for him, kicking his hand away repeatedly as he
struggled to clamber over the embankment. By the time he
eventually managed to haul himself out of the water, all
(26:14):
signs of an attacker had disappeared. He'd heard rumors about
the apparent pusher and had likely been on his guard,
especially given that there were no lights where the attack
was alleged to have occurred. With all that said, Tom
freely admitted that he'd heard about the pusher rumors before
his near drowning, and with the shock of going into
(26:37):
the water, he may have been in a state of
mind suggestible enough for his unconscious to invent a dark
figure that was responsible. With no new evidence to go on,
and with Greater Manchester Police having effectively shelled their investigation
into all searches for a murderer, its likely will never
(26:59):
know whether someone or something was responsible. Was it murder,
misadventure or something older, colder and harder to explain. Either way,
the water doesn't care. Perhaps only one thing is for
(27:20):
certain that wherever water lies, the grim Reaper is never
far away, just watching, waiting, I Will be. This episode
(27:49):
was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard
McLean Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His
debut collection of poems titled Bandit, exploring the Hinterland between
the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the
twenty twenty two t S Eliot Prize and is out
now to buy, so do check it out. Thank you
(28:13):
as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of
the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now
available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes
and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and
(28:37):
rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
have an explanation or a story of your own you'd
like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
podcast dot com and reaches online through x and Blue
Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
(29:00):
Forward Slash Unexplained podcast
Speaker 2 (30:00):
D
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, meet and greets,
Creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. What is it about water that
(00:54):
haunts us? Perhaps it's the way that great bodies of it, locks,
canals and ponds sit like amorphous entities beneath the moonlight, quiet, patient, indifferent.
Perhaps is the thought of what they might conceal, their
mirror like surfaces, offering the perfect metaphor and sometimes genuine
(01:18):
hiding place for whatever unknown horrors might lurk within its depths.
Perhaps it's to do with waters awesome power to overwhelm
and destroy we see footage on the news of tsunamis
and extreme weather events. We know what it means when
a region reports higher than average rainfall, and can almost
(01:41):
feel the creak of the levee when a storm assaults
the coastline. It's the ultimate irony that the most abundant
element on Earth, the one thing other than air, which
is non negotiable for survival, is also a deadly killer.
Just as gods are granted the power to give and
(02:01):
take life, we might do well to see water in
just those same terms. In nineteen forty one, T. S.
Eliot wrote in The Dry Salvages that the Mississippi River
was a strong brown god, unhonoured, unpropitiated by worshipers of
the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting, and that in
(02:25):
keeping his seasons and rages, the river was also a destroyer,
reminder of what men choose to forget. It was Eliot's
contention that attempts to outgrow the natural world would wreak
havoc of the kind we see today as a result
of global warming. It should therefore come as no surprise
(02:46):
that in almost every culture around the world, from the
Japanese kappa to the figure of Poseidon. In Greek mythology,
water is depicted as a jealous and unforgiving supernatural force.
We ignore it at our peril, and if we fail
to pay it due deference, it has the power to
(03:06):
claim us and our loved ones and drag them impassively
to its depths. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard
McLean Smith. The English legends of Peg Powler and Ginny
(03:29):
Green Teeth, from the northeast and northwest of England, respectively,
might at first give the appearance of a more frivolous
take on the subject of elemental destruction. Both are spirits
or old crones, said to haunt inland waterways. Both prey
on children and old people, using their elongated arms, talon
(03:52):
like fingers, sharp teeth, long straggly hair, and green skin
to petrify and insight ne'er anyone unlucky enough to encounter them.
The presence of duckweed is usually an indication that either
Ginny or Peg is close by, keeping their presence mostly
(04:13):
to rivers and ponds, with occasional forays into haunting canals
and sewer systems. In more industrialized urban landscapes like Liverpool
and Newcastle. Both have been invoked to warn people away
from dangerous bodies of water, and both can trace their
origins within a long folkloric tradition stretching as far back
(04:36):
as the thirteenth century. Some scholars, however, think that the
legends date further, noting striking similarities between the figure of
Grendel from the tenth century epic Beowulf and the Welsh
myth of Haffron or Sabrina, who was drowned in Britain's
longest river, the River Seven, and curse to haunt its
(04:58):
waters forevermore. But not all stories to do with Ginny
Green Teeth or peg Powler are quite so esoteric. On
thirteenth of January eighteen sixty a recently constructed iron bridge
over the River Tees near Yarm in North Yorkshire collapsed
(05:18):
into the water, leading many locals to believe that the
spirit of peg Powler had somehow been angered. A local
paper wrote at the time the new bridge was built
adjacent to the old one, but peg Powler, the mythical
spirit of the River Tees, objected to the effrontery offered
by these new fangled ideas, rose in her wrath and
(05:41):
before the much vaunted new way was opened to the public.
It collapsed at midnight on January twelfth, eighteen sixty. The implication,
of course, is that, like T. S. Eliot's depiction of
an ancient water got disturbed by modern industrial lifedzation, the
figure of peg Powler rose up in anger to foil
(06:05):
modern man's tampering with the order of the natural world.
Not only do mortals in this story fail to show
respect to the spirit of the river, they are punished
for their transgressions through physical violence and economic sabotage. Thanks
(06:32):
largely to more advanced public understanding of scientific natural processes,
the prevalence of mythbusting on social and traditional media, and
sustained government efforts to clean up and make safe dilapidated waterways,
stories about Peg Powler and Ginny Green Teeth have mostly
been forgotten, and yet many urban legends of this nature
(06:55):
have not been completely consigned to history. Still whispers about
malevolent beings ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims who stray
too close to the water's edge. Many in Britain will,
no doubt remember the brilliant and haunting public information films
released by the suitably Orwellian sounding Central Office of Information
(07:19):
that proliferated on British TV in the nineteen seventies. The
drowning awareness film Lonely Water was perhaps the most haunting
of them all.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready
to trap the unwary, the show off, the fall. And
this is the kind of place you'll expect to find
me that no one expects to find me. Here it
seems too order me, but that call is deep. The
boys showing off. The bank is slippery, The shops are easy,
(08:02):
but the unwary ones are easiest too. This branch is weak, rotten.
It will never take his way. Only a fool would
ignore this. But there's one born every minute. Under the water.
There are traps, old cars, bedsteads, weeds, hidden depths. It's
(08:29):
the perfect place for an accident. Oh I love the.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Stamin wah, great you step big sticks came out?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Since children, I have no power over them. Why am
I that stupid cries to swim? Hi, go and get
that thing to reckon me. You do have to call
my own resum. I'll be back back back.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
The somber narrator was, of course, the Green Reaper himself
forever lurking in the background, watching on patiently as one
child after another fails to heed his warnings to stay
away from the water. Perhaps the most chilling British urban
legend of recent times concerns an alleged serial killer that
(09:19):
some believe has been using the warren of isolated waterways
that snake through much of England's northwest as a hunting
ground for their victims. Police have dismissed this as a
modern moral panic, though for those who believe it, this
phantom figure is said to be responsible for upwards of
(09:39):
eighty six deaths. For more than two hundred and fifty years,
Manchester and its surrounds such as Salford, has been a
Northern English powerhouse. In the nineteenth century. It was there
that Friedrich Engels and Carl Marx studied the industrial working classes.
So important was their labour for the manufacture and distribution
(10:03):
of cotton and linen to international markets. The city's burgeoning
textiles industry earned it the nickname Cottonopolis, and required the
construction of a vast network of shipping canals, docks and
fire ducts to bring raw materials from the New World overnight.
(10:24):
It seemed the city was transformed from a sleepy market
town into a kind of infernal red brick inversion of Venice.
Instead of gondolas and churches, cobbled squares and famous art expositions,
it was schooners and warehouses, dirty terraces, and row upon
(10:44):
row of red bricked factories breathing hell fire into the
choked streets. As the population exploded from just a couple
of thousand at the start of the eighteenth century to
more than three hundred and fifty thousand by eighteen sixs
the canals were the arteries that fed the city's heart,
(11:06):
though by the end of the nineteen seventies, with the
decline of heavy industry cruelly accelerated by Margaret Thatcher's government
of the day, Manchester began a steady decline into unemployment
and deprivation. The disintegration of the city's literal and psychological
horizons would later define much of Greater Manchester's local music scene,
(11:30):
as exemplified in the timeless work of bands like Joy Division,
The Smiths and The Four. Over time, the canals fell
into disuse and disrepair, and what had once been vital
transport lanes connecting the city to the rest of the
world suddenly became something far less edifying and much closer
(11:53):
to the kind of still water favoured by those dark
legendary figures like Ginny Green Tea. By the early nineteen nineties,
a new Manchester was beginning to emerge, driven by the
city's intrinsically indomitable spirit and blossoming out of the detritus
(12:19):
of its former glories. From its resurgent music scene dubbed
Manchester to the unrelenting success of the city's Manchester United
football club, Manchester at once again established itself as one
of the nation's most heralded cities. By two thousand seven,
work was well underway to redevelop the Bridgewater and Manchester
(12:42):
ship Canals to cater to what would eventually become Media
City UK, a sprawling two hundred acre site in Salford
that became home to much of the nations leading media organizations.
With that came bars and artisanal restaurants, glass fronted hotels
and the kind of sophistication that would have been unimaginable
(13:06):
on the banks of the Manchester Shipping Canal just one
hundred years previously. The redeveloped waterways with their newly installed
towpaths became popular walking routes for everyone from young professionals
on their way to work to joggers, and, most crucially
for this story, drinkers and nightclub revelers making their way
(13:27):
home after an evening on the town. Greater Manchester is
home to over thirty six miles of criss crossing rivers
and canals, many of which are lowered from street view
to allow for the easy passage of a boat or
transport vessel. It stands to reason that after a few drinks,
(13:48):
straying too close to the water's edge could spell disaster.
After only a few units of alcohol, your heart rate
speeds up, your reaction time lessons, your inhibitions lower, and
your hand to eye coordination becomes impaired. With increased consumption,
performing even simple tasks like holding a conversation or walking
(14:12):
in a straight line can become difficult, let alone the
prospect of treading icy, treacle thick water having taken a
tumble over the edge of an embankment. Add to that
the precarious living situation many homeless people find themselves in,
and it should come as little surprise that between two
(14:32):
thousand and four and twenty eighteen, the bodies of at
least eighty six people, most of them young men, were
recovered from the water. Some had been out clubbing before
they disappeared. Many were last seen walking near the canal,
often after dark, sometimes intoxicated and always on their own.
(14:55):
Nineteen year old engineering student Suvic Powell was one of them,
having grown up in a strict Indian household before traveling
to the UK to study at Manchester's Metropolitan University, Suvic
(15:16):
Powell had never been much of a drinker, much less
of regular fixture on the city's famous clubbing scene. Nonetheless,
according to his friend Charlotte Wilson, on New Year's Eve
twenty twelve, he found himself out celebrating at a club
called Warehouse Project in the Trafford area of the city.
(15:37):
CCTV footage showed Suvac's last movements with friends as they
entered the venue before being escorted off the premises by
a security guard, ostensibly for being too intoxicated. Three weeks later,
the young student's body was pulled from Manchester's Bridgewater Canal,
(15:58):
a thirty nine mile stretch of water running through Manchester.
The autopsy revealed no obvious signs of trauma, no signs
of injury caused by a third party, and no defensive
wounds showing that he'd put up any kind of struggle.
Suvic's death was ruled as an accidental drowning, but questions
(16:21):
remained about the circumstances surrounding it. Why had it taken
so long to find his body between the time of
his disappearance and the likely time of his death, which
coroners acknowledged had taken place much closer to the end
of the three weeks, Where had he been for all
that time? Suvic's parents made it clear that they didn't
(16:46):
believe he'd simply fallen into the water. Members of his
family even appealed to the Indian government to investigate the
possibility of foul play, but with nothing more than a
series of patchy CCTV images to go on, the young
man's case quickly went cold. He was cremated in his
(17:08):
hometown of Bangalore in January twenty thirteen. Nine years earlier,
on seventeenth of April two thousand and four, twenty one
year old David Plunkett had also been out in the
Trafford area of the city. Like Suvic, he too, had
been out with friends at Dayton of Racetrack in Trafford Park.
(17:30):
At some point, David's friend Michael realized that David was
no longer with the group. Unknown to him, David had
been ejected by the event organizers for being too drunk.
When Michael was unable to reach him on the phone,
he contacted the young man's parents and and Mike Plunkett. They,
in turn then attempted to contact David. In the quiet
(17:55):
of the night, the deeply concerned Anne and Mike sat
in their home trying to call their son. It took
and three attempts before the call was finally answered, but
her son didn't speak, seemingly unaware that his phone had
picked up the call. What struck her first and foremost
(18:16):
was the strange quietness of where he seemed to be.
No sounds of revelry or traffic, no sound of anything
much at all. All she could hear was the sound
of him walking and his breathing. David, she repeated into
the phone, to no reply, Can you hear me? Do
(18:37):
you know where you are? Are you in Manchester? Do
you recognize anything? About seven or eight minutes into the call,
David's mother heard a series of ghastly screams. Horrified, Anne
started crying and handed the phone to her husband, Mike,
then quickly called nine ninety nine on a separate phone,
(18:59):
hoping that some one could get to David wherever he was.
As she talked to an officer on the other line,
David's screams continued until finally, a short time later, David's
phone went dead. The screams and plunkets spoke about were
(19:26):
also heard by the police officer on the other line,
though they weren't picked up on tape the recorder had
failed to work. The officer in question would go on
to describe the noises as distressing. She later resigned from
her post, speaking to the Daily Star newspaper, who ran
(19:46):
an early piece on the possibility of a serial killer
operating on the Manchester Canal network. The incident still haunts
me to this day. With every death I see reported
in the news, more and more convinced that these are
murders and not accidents. As David's father, Mike also put it,
(20:08):
the screaming I heard made me feel like David had
seen something that terrified him. Like Suvic. It was a
long time before David's body was found eventually washing up
two weeks later in the Manchester Ship Canal. The coroner
ruled it as drowning, and like Suvic, there was a
(20:29):
lot of alcohol in David's bloodstream, so much so that
the coroner publicly admonished the organizers of the event for
ejecting someone in his vulnerable state when it was known
that he would not have had the coordination to look
after himself. The third, and one of the most high
profile cases for amateur sleuths on the hunt for what
(20:51):
many have taken to calling the Manchester Pusher is that
of Nathan Tomlinson. Nathan was a twenty one year old
student student who disappeared after a Christmas party on seventeenth
of December twenty ten. His last confirmed sighting was at
the Mita Hotel near Manchester Cathedral. Anecdotal evidence picks up
(21:14):
his whereabouts on Victoria Street in the center of the city,
where he is said to have hopped a war before
making his way toward Chapel Street in Salford to the west.
A man fitting his description was seen asking a passing
bus driver how he might get home to Stockport, about
five miles away to the south, A figure also matching
(21:36):
his description was spotted by CCTV walking toward the River Irwell.
At that point, no more sightings were picked up of Nathan,
speculative or otherwise, after which he is said to have
disappeared completely. An agonizing three month search followed, during which
(21:57):
time police focused their efforts on the area around the
University of Salford, nearby Peel Park and Salford Crescent Railway station.
His body was recovered from the River Irwell three months later,
washing up at a bridge near Meadow Road in Lower Broughton.
(22:18):
An inquest into the search for Nathan found that police
had failed to do basic investigative work to ensure that
his body was uncovered more quickly. Pathologist Naomi Carter said
that although Nathan had water in his lungs, she couldn't
determine whether he'd died before going into the river or
(22:39):
whether he'd drowned. Nathan was found with its phone and wallet,
though his coat was missing, and his mother even suggested
at one point that she thought the discovery scene might
have been staged to make it look as though Nathan
had gone into the water of his own accord. Behind
(23:05):
each of these high profile cases. The men's families insists
there is more to the story, and perhaps there is.
It wasn't until twenty fifteen, when a newspaper published an
article featuring criminal psychologist Professor Craig Jackson from the University
of Birmingham that whispers began about the deaths of Nathan,
(23:28):
David and Souvic, and possibly scores of others being connected.
The professor was quoted as saying that it was extremely
unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in
the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides,
and that it was entirely possible a serial killer was
(23:51):
responsible for at least some of the deaths. A theory
arose that because Manchester's waterways had been used over the
decades as a cruising area for gay men, an elusive
murderer may have been targeting the gay community and catching
potential cruisers unaware. In twenty sixteen, British TV station Channel
(24:13):
four commissioned a documentary called Manchester's Serial Killer, which featured
a more cautious, though no less intrigued Professor Craig Jackson
expounding on his theory. Once again, forums exploded with hypotheses
and innuendos, and Detective Chief Inspector Pete Marsh of the
(24:34):
Greater Manchester Police was even instructed to reopen investigations into
all the deaths linked to the theory. Marsh reported that
he did not believe young men or those that were
gay made up the majority of the deaths, and added
that it was his belief that many of the individuals
who died on Manchester's waterways had died accidentally. Skepticism remained, however,
(25:01):
Almost all victims identified were young men aged between eighteen
to thirty. Last scene after dark, walking alone, found in
or near one of the city's rivers or canals, with
no witnesses, no clear cause of death, and no sign
of struggle against their likely impending doom. Rumors of the
(25:30):
so called Manchester Pusher might have eventually died out were
it not for the number of supposed survivors who claimed
to have had near brushes with the elusive serial killer.
One anonymous source calling himself Tom, a thirty four year
old cyclist who regularly frequented Bridgewater Canal, felt an arm
(25:52):
knock him off his bike and into the water one
April evening in twenty eighteen. As he struggled to get out,
found that someone was waiting at the edge of the
water for him, kicking his hand away repeatedly as he
struggled to clamber over the embankment. By the time he
eventually managed to haul himself out of the water, all
(26:14):
signs of an attacker had disappeared. He'd heard rumors about
the apparent pusher and had likely been on his guard,
especially given that there were no lights where the attack
was alleged to have occurred. With all that said, Tom
freely admitted that he'd heard about the pusher rumors before
his near drowning, and with the shock of going into
(26:37):
the water, he may have been in a state of
mind suggestible enough for his unconscious to invent a dark
figure that was responsible. With no new evidence to go on,
and with Greater Manchester Police having effectively shelled their investigation
into all searches for a murderer, its likely will never
(26:59):
know whether someone or something was responsible. Was it murder,
misadventure or something older, colder and harder to explain. Either way,
the water doesn't care. Perhaps only one thing is for
(27:20):
certain that wherever water lies, the grim Reaper is never
far away, just watching, waiting, I Will be. This episode
(27:49):
was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by Richard
McLean Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His
debut collection of poems titled Bandit, exploring the Hinterland between
the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the
twenty twenty two t S Eliot Prize and is out
now to buy, so do check it out. Thank you
(28:13):
as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions
podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of
the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me
Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now
available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes
and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and
(28:37):
rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel
free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
have an explanation or a story of your own you'd
like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
podcast dot com and reaches online through x and Blue
Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.
(29:00):
Forward Slash Unexplained podcast
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