August 22, 2025 • 31 mins
Something a little different this week...
In a first for Unexplained, we hear a first hand account of strange and terrifying events said by one family to have taken place in their home in Christchurch, England, back in 1997...
Thank you to Theresa and Shaun for sharing their story and to Diane Hope for finding it and recording Theresa's interview.
Written and produced 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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Transcript
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
Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan
coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
you on board. In the year eleven thirteen, the third
(00:54):
Abbot of Saint Martin of Tournay documented something extraordinary in
christ Church, a small town on the south coast of
England just east of Bournemouth. It was a five headed
dragon that, according to the abbot, emerged from the sea
before taking flight toward the town and destroying the church
along with the number of nearby houses. Nine centuries later,
(01:19):
the rebuilt priory still draws reports of phantom footsteps in
its ruins, and the supposed apparition of an old caretaker
nicknamed Old Joe, claimed by some to have been seen
wandering about its gardens. These are just a couple of
the strained sightings and hauntings that are said to have
(01:39):
accumulated around the town of christ Church over the years.
But perhaps the most distressing is the story of Alma Rattenbury,
whose ghostly figure has reportedly been seen sitting mournfully among
the reeds on the banks of the River Stour, not
far from the priory. It was back in June nineteen
(02:00):
thirty five that Alma, her handbag gripped tightly in her hand,
wandered forlornly through the meadows down to the water's edge,
as buttercups swayed gently in the breeze and swallows warboard above.
She pulled a knife from the bag and proceeded to
stab herself in the chest six times. Having pierced her heart,
(02:24):
the bloody knife slipped from her grip and Alma fell
dead into the water. Almer's was a tragic and fascinating
story that gripped the nation at the time. A talented
musician born in Canada in eighteen ninety seven, the dark
haired Alma lost her first husband to the First World War,
(02:45):
with her second marriage ending in an acrimonious divorce. She
eventually settled in Bournemouth, England, with a third husband, the
architect Francis Rattenbury, who was forty years her senior. By
all accounts, the marriage was a stale one in which
the couples let in separate rooms. After the birth of
(03:06):
their first child in nineteen twenty eight, they were said
to have remained celibate. The couple often quarreled, with Francis Rattenbury,
at times physically assaulting his wife. In nineteen thirty four,
they took on a seventeen year old servant named George Stoner.
Within a year, Stoner and Alma began an affair, which
(03:29):
was known about and tolerated by Almer's husband. Nonetheless, clearly
the situation was not to every one's liking. In March
the following year, Francis Rattenbury was brutally battered in the
head by a carpenter's mallet. He died five days later
from his wounds. Alma quickly confessed to the murder, and
(03:53):
both she and George Stoner were arrested for the crime.
After a gripping court case covered by all the daily papers,
Alma Rattenbury was found not guilty for the murder of
her husband. George Stoner, on the other hand, was not
(04:16):
so lucky. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Alma
was devastated by the decision, and in the court of
public opinion, was still very much a guilty party, having
been blamed for coercing the impressionable Stoner into doing the deed.
In the days after the conviction, Alma struggled desperately with
(04:38):
the guilt of what had happened to George. Feeling very
much the pariah the nation believed her to be, she
made her way to the banks of the Stour on
the southern fringes of Christchurch and ended her life. As
it transpired. Not long after Alma's death, after a public outcry,
(04:58):
George Stoner was oldultimately spared the death penalty. His sentence
was reduced to life imprisonment instead. Only seven years later,
in return for signing up to fight in World War II,
he had his conviction quashed entirely. He returned a free
man and eventually died in the year two thousand. But
(05:20):
why am I telling you all this, I suppose just
to demonstrate that no matter how quaint or small a
town may be, tragedy and emotional distress is never far away.
The sort of things that some believe can linger as
dark and malicious energies, only to then manifest in invisible
(05:42):
and terrifying ways, just as they are believed to have
done by one family who lived in christ Church back
in nineteen ninety seven. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm
Richard mc lean smith. Before we go any further, I
(06:08):
should explain that we're going to try something a little
different with this week's episode. Earlier this summer, one of
our writers, Diane Hope, spent some time in Bournemouth, hosted
by a family who once lived in christ Church. One evening,
they began telling Diane of a strange series of events
that took place in their former christ Church home. Amazingly
(06:31):
for us, they agreed to share their story. However, we thought,
rather than write it up for me to tell, why
not just let the couple speak for themselves. It was
back in nineteen ninety six that Teresa and her husband
Sean moved down to Bournemouth from the northeast of England,
along with their young children, looking for a change of scene.
(06:53):
Eight months later, the landlord of the flat they were
renting decided to sell the property, forcing the fact family
to move again. The couple ran a used car business,
buying cars from the north of England and bringing them
down south to sell, so they needed somewhere with a
good amount of space to park the cars. They settled
(07:14):
on the perfect place in the nearby town of christ Church,
not far from the banks of the River Stour. Now,
I said the couple would tell us their story. However,
in the end Diane decided only to interview one of them.
A little more on that later, but for now, this
is Terresa.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
This property came up in christ Church and it had
a very long drive up to it, and we could
park a number of cars in the drive. It was
like the manor house at the back of the other properties,
so it was an older house which had been built
before the properties around it. It was secluded, like a
(07:56):
little forest at the back of it, so we thought
this is ideal.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Almost immediately, strange things began to.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Occur when we watched into the house. The first night
we moved in, I felt something touch my back. I
couldn't really explain what it was I felt. I just
thought it was strange, you know, like something was touching
my back. It was the first night we'd been in there,
and I'd never experienced anything like that previously.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Then it happened again the next day.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I was in the kid's bedroom and I felt it again,
a touch, you know, just touching me back. I just
couldn't explain how it happened.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Theresa wasn't one to think it might be anything supernatural.
In fact, the thought couldn't have been further from her mind.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I didn't even mention it to Sean because I didn't
think it was worth mentioning something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
But it wouldn't be long before Sean too became aware
of strange goings on because the creepy of events began
to escalate.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We were in the living room one night, which faced
the garden. The window face the garden, and we're just
watching Telly and we heard somebody run past the window.
You could literally hair running, maybe like they had big
boots on or something.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
The garden was equipped with motion Sense, a security lights
designed to be triggered if anyone was trying to break in.
Or trespass on the property.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We looked out and the lights hadn't come on. So
Shark got up and you know, went outside, and as
soon as he went outside, the lights lit up. It
seemed strange how you could hear something and then as
soon as he went outside, everything lit up. So that
was the first experience after what happened to me, which
(09:47):
we couldn't explain.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There was no hiding it now. Theresa confessed to her
husband that she'd been sensing something strange going on in
the house for a while, and soon the couple began
hearing the supposed footsteps inside their home.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
They'd be sat in the living room on a night
and we could hear running up and down the hallway.
Because it was a bungalow, we all slept downstairs, big
kid's bedroom at the back. Our bedroom was opposite the lounge,
the hallway was in between, and we could literally hear
somebody running up and down the hallway, and we'd open
(10:28):
the living room door and there was nobody there.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Perhaps, wandered Terresa, it was all just in their imaginations,
a combination of the stress of adapting to life in
the new home and the unfamiliarity of their surroundings, but
she couldn't quite shake the sense that there was something
more going on, and that they might even be in
danger of somehow inviting it in.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
We kept trying to pass things off as if did
we hear it are I didn't really like to talk
about in the house. I was scared that something might progress.
Shan was start of thinking what's going to happen next,
and now thinking I hope nothing happens and.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Eggs a few nights later to raise her and Sean
was sat in the lounge watching television when Sean started
hearing something, a peculiar squeaking sound that seemed to be
coming from the back of the room. It sounded like
the lounge door handle.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
We thought we heard it creaking, so we turned Helly
down and Chan said I heard that handle. I said, yeah,
I'm sure I heard it. We both sat there, face
in the door, looking straight at the handill. My eyes
were literalist into water. I was looking at it so closely,
and all of a sudden it just went I mean
(11:50):
the shock. Shan flew back on the chair. It were like,
how did that just happen? And I jumped up and
I opened the door and the kids weren't there. Nobody
was there.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Suddenly it wasn't so easy to dismiss it all as
an overactive imagination, and before long others started to sense
it too. It had been a while since the couple
last had some quality time together, so one night they
hired a babysitter and went out to dinner.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
This young girl baby sat one evening when we were
back in the house. She was in the living room
with the door open. The telly wasn't switched down. She
just sat there and I thought, eyes everything okay, because
obviously I hadn't mentioned anything, as she just went yeah,
but with a really she looked scared.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
There was no doubt in Teresa's mind that the girl
had heard or seen something, but Teresa couldn't possibly say anything.
For a start, she didn't want to scare the girl
unnecessary if she hadn't actually experienced anything untoward. But there
was little doubting the look on her face. The next
(13:08):
time the babysitter came round, she made sure to bring
a companion.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
She came with her mom then the next time, but
then they didn't want to come back to the house again.
I never mentioned anything. They never mentioned anything. To me.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Then there was the time their friend Lee came down
to visit from London. By now, Theresa and Sean were
beginning to talk openly about the possibility that their house
was being haunted.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We'd been friends with him from the previous house and
moved her and he was very confident and outgoing. We
came around and he was sort of laughing and joking like, oh,
come on, then, where's this girls? It would just trying
to make a big joke of it. Shoun said, Oh,
it doesn't like it when you turn the Telly up loud,
that's when things start to happen.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Lee, who was planning to stay the night with the family,
couldn't help but laugh. So Sean offered to give him
a demonstration, and so it was with everyone gathered in
the living room. The skeptical Lee watched on with a
right smile as Sean took the remote and switched on
the TV. Then he steadily increased the volume.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Sean just switched to Telly at full blast, and all
of a sudden we had this almighty bang. It went.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It felt as though the entire house were shaking.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It sounded like something crashing down on us. I mean
we didn't have any big speakers. Where did this noise
come from?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
The message was clear.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
You were almost like, don't mess with me. I mean,
that's how it.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Felt as for Lee. He wasn't laughing anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Lee were like shocked. He was absolutely petrified from it
being just one big joke all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He was so scared that night, rather than stay with
the family, he immediately left the house and drove away
as fast as he could, white faced and extremely shaken.
As far as the family were concerned, there was no
(15:22):
denying it now. In such circumstances, the first question people
tend to ask is why didn't they just leave? But
the couple had paid six months rent in advance, and
not only had they only been there for six weeks,
they didn't have nearly enough money to move again, so prematurely,
appeals to the agent fell on deaf ears.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
They weren't even interested. They didn't come back to us
with any advice or anything, but didn't even ring us back.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
At first, the family stuck it out as best they could,
only for things to get even more disturbing.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
It was a beautiful sunny day. We'd just come back
from being out and we'd come back in. The kids
ran into their bedroom and all of a sudden they
were screaming. We ran into the bedroom. There was literally
like black sand and grit mixed with water dripping down
the walls, and there were circles of it on each bed.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The children claimed the sandy substance had been thrown at
them the moment they entered the room to raise Her
and Sean couldn't get their heads around it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's not like they had bucket and spade and a
bit of sound in the bedroom and they'd been messing
with it.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And as for the possibility that someone had thrown it
into the house from outside, we couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Even open the windows in their bedroom. They'd been painted shut.
This is something now that couldn't explain. Before we could say, oh, well,
we heard these noises. It might have been the radiator
of you could sort of try to explain your off
out of it. Whereas now this was something which we
couldn't explain.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
More than that, Theresa now had to face a new
horror that whatever this appeared to be turning its attention
on the children.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
That was really frightening. After that, I saw a big
spider in the kid's bedroom. It looked like a transler.
It was huge. I had this tape recorder deck thing
and it crawled into it. So I shut the tape
recorder and threw it in the bit and Shan would
why would you do that? I was so scared of
(17:38):
it coming back in because it was absolutely huge. I
didn't want to getting back out of that tape deck.
That's how scared I was. First it was outside, then
it's in the hall. Then it's like the banging, then
the sand in the kid's bedroom, and then the spider.
I just felt everything was, you know, why is this happening?
Thought of thing, and it was all drawn towards a
(17:58):
kid's bedroom as well.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
The spider was the final straw. The family needed help.
But where do you even turn to for that sort
of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
There wasn't the Internet in them days. We just didn't
know what to do. But that was really frightening.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
In the end, Theresa and Sean reached out to a
friend from back home in Bradford.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
We ran a friend of ours who was a preacher
in Bradford called Bob's given us his Bible as a
leaving pression. We just tesked him if there's anything, if
what we could do, because it keeps happening and we
just don't know what to do. First, he said you
need to leave, and we said we're with pay six months.
In our fans, there are only two months. Saying it's
(18:51):
cat hard to just upsticks.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Bob suggested he leave it with them. A short time later,
he called them back.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's brought to the elders of his church, and he said,
you need to read in the Bible here though what
through the vallee of no able to our fear, and
read these verses and go with the children into every room,
the garage, the call shed, everywhere. You need to recite
these verses.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And so together the family gathered first in the living
room and did exactly as Bob told them to do,
moving steadily from one room to the next, reciting Psalm
twenty three from the Bible. The last space to exercise
was the garage. When that was done, Theresa felt the
(19:40):
change almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I said to Sean, do you feel like something is
just lifted off you? And he said, yeah, we actually
felt it lift off us. It's like you have this
heavy feeling overa which I didn't even realize. We had
it literally lifted away from us.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Not only did the negative feelings disappear, the couple's work
even began to pick up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
For the last three or four months, it was just
a different feeling altogether. There were trading cars to the
main dealers at the time, and every time I rang something,
it were almost like it turned to gold. We were
making more money than we'd ever made, even just trading cars,
and before that we hadn't done half as much as
what we met in that house. So it's almost like
(20:25):
it was a good thing from a bad thing, which
I can't explain.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Although Theresa no longer felt the unwanted presence in her house,
she often found herself wondering what on earth it was.
Perhaps she thought it had something to do with the
mysterious box they found in the attic shortly after they
moved in.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
There was an upstairs bedroom. There were ladders what you
had to pull down to get up there. There this
box there. It was probably three foot by two for something,
but the weight of it you couldn't possibly lift it.
I don't even know how they got it up there,
because you couldn't physically put it up there.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Though they couldn't get into it, they could tell it
had something inside it.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
They could hear something rattling around in it, but we
never found the key for it.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Whatever it was, the family never found out in any case.
As the weeks went by, they soon forgot all about
those peculiar and terrifying first few months as their lives
moved on. But the terror wasn't over. When the sixth
(21:42):
month Lise was up, the time came to leave the property.
After packing everything up inside, Teresa and Sean headed into
the garden to gather all the toys that their kids
had left scattered about. Then Sean turned and looked up
at the attic.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Win though he just turned round to look at the windows,
and Sean said he felt like somebody were looking at
him through that window. He just dropped the toys.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sean hustled Theresa and the kids into the car and
drove off at speed, leaving the toys strewn on the lawn.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
He didn't see anybody, he knew there was somebody looking
at him, or something looking at him, which really scared him.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It wasn't until years later that the family realized that
the attic was the one room where they hadn't recited
Psalm twenty.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Three, we had prayed in that room. Bob said, make
sure you praying everywhere the garage outside, and we hadn't
physically gone up there with the kids. It was almost
like we trapped it.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Upstairs, but that wasn't all.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Years and years later we're talking about it and my
son said, well, you never liked that lady who we
used to stand next to a car. She used to
be stood next to carry along black hair, carrying wood.
My kids said, mum, musa ignoris used to be stood
next to the car. Obvious they hadn't seen anybody. They
could actually see something, which they never even said to
(23:12):
me until years later. Maybe because me and Sean never
said anything to them to scare them that they never
mentioned it to us.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Having had enough of old properties, the couple moved into
a newly built housing estate on the north side of Bournemouth. Thankfully,
whatever they felt had stalked them in christ Church didn't
follow them into their new property.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Before that, I would have said absolutely that I didn't
believe in the paranormal or girl's share. Since that experience,
there's definitely some form of activity. And also when we
did pray about it, it did go away or nearly
went away.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Recently, Theresa has watched a number of pro guns featuring
people who claim to have experienced poltergeist hauntings the way
events Onfold are only too familiar to her.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I've seen programs on telling where mediums go in there
and they do pray to lift the spirit away from
the house, and the owners do feel like this way
it's being lifted off the And I know exactly how
that feels, because I've experienced it. I understand, and if
people haven't experienced it, they can't relate to it until
you have to go through it.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Almost thirty years later, Theresa has never stopped wondering if
there was a reason for it all.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I didn't know how previously lived there. I didn't know
any past history. Even now I've looked on the internet.
Maybe somebody will know. Somebody will know. Maybe it was
quite a not so pleasant ending for somebody. Maybe that's
what drew them. They say that manor houses and like
coach houses can be counted, and this was the manor house.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
You may remember. Back near the start of the episode,
I mentioned that Diane, who recorded this interview, decided only
to record Theresa's version of events. The reason is because
when Diane first spoke to Theresa and Sean about the story,
it was clear that Sean found it uncomfortable. It seemed
to Diane like he was reliving the whole traumatic experience
(25:32):
all over again. The couple had avoided speaking about it
for thirty years, worried that by doing so they might
somehow invite the darkness back into their lives, So Diane
decided it was probably best not to push Sean to
formally record his account. Just then, Sean said he felt
(25:55):
something in his back, as though someone had just prodded
him with a finger. They carried on talking, then Sean
felt the prod again, and that was enough to make
him stop. After all, it was exactly how things had
started all those years ago. If there's anyone out there
(26:16):
who's heard anything about possible strange goings on in an
old manor house in christ Church with a long driveway
alongside it, feel free to get in touch with us
at Unexplained pod at gmail dot com. We'd love to
hear more. In the meantime, whatever it was that occurred
into Resa and Sean's home back in nineteen ninety seven
(26:40):
remains to this day unexplained. Thank you so much to
Teresa and Sean for sharing their story with us, and
thank you to Diane for finding and recording it. The
rest of the episode was written and produced by me
Richard mcleaye Smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
(27:04):
records in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianhope dot com and on Instagram
at in the Soundfield. Thank you as ever for listening.
Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard
McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
(27:24):
are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The
book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You
can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
(27:46):
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, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast O M.
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
Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan
coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
you on board. In the year eleven thirteen, the third
(00:54):
Abbot of Saint Martin of Tournay documented something extraordinary in
christ Church, a small town on the south coast of
England just east of Bournemouth. It was a five headed
dragon that, according to the abbot, emerged from the sea
before taking flight toward the town and destroying the church
along with the number of nearby houses. Nine centuries later,
(01:19):
the rebuilt priory still draws reports of phantom footsteps in
its ruins, and the supposed apparition of an old caretaker
nicknamed Old Joe, claimed by some to have been seen
wandering about its gardens. These are just a couple of
the strained sightings and hauntings that are said to have
(01:39):
accumulated around the town of christ Church over the years.
But perhaps the most distressing is the story of Alma Rattenbury,
whose ghostly figure has reportedly been seen sitting mournfully among
the reeds on the banks of the River Stour, not
far from the priory. It was back in June nineteen
(02:00):
thirty five that Alma, her handbag gripped tightly in her hand,
wandered forlornly through the meadows down to the water's edge,
as buttercups swayed gently in the breeze and swallows warboard above.
She pulled a knife from the bag and proceeded to
stab herself in the chest six times. Having pierced her heart,
(02:24):
the bloody knife slipped from her grip and Alma fell
dead into the water. Almer's was a tragic and fascinating
story that gripped the nation at the time. A talented
musician born in Canada in eighteen ninety seven, the dark
haired Alma lost her first husband to the First World War,
(02:45):
with her second marriage ending in an acrimonious divorce. She
eventually settled in Bournemouth, England, with a third husband, the
architect Francis Rattenbury, who was forty years her senior. By
all accounts, the marriage was a stale one in which
the couples let in separate rooms. After the birth of
(03:06):
their first child in nineteen twenty eight, they were said
to have remained celibate. The couple often quarreled, with Francis Rattenbury,
at times physically assaulting his wife. In nineteen thirty four,
they took on a seventeen year old servant named George Stoner.
Within a year, Stoner and Alma began an affair, which
(03:29):
was known about and tolerated by Almer's husband. Nonetheless, clearly
the situation was not to every one's liking. In March
the following year, Francis Rattenbury was brutally battered in the
head by a carpenter's mallet. He died five days later
from his wounds. Alma quickly confessed to the murder, and
(03:53):
both she and George Stoner were arrested for the crime.
After a gripping court case covered by all the daily papers,
Alma Rattenbury was found not guilty for the murder of
her husband. George Stoner, on the other hand, was not
(04:16):
so lucky. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Alma
was devastated by the decision, and in the court of
public opinion, was still very much a guilty party, having
been blamed for coercing the impressionable Stoner into doing the deed.
In the days after the conviction, Alma struggled desperately with
(04:38):
the guilt of what had happened to George. Feeling very
much the pariah the nation believed her to be, she
made her way to the banks of the Stour on
the southern fringes of Christchurch and ended her life. As
it transpired. Not long after Alma's death, after a public outcry,
(04:58):
George Stoner was oldultimately spared the death penalty. His sentence
was reduced to life imprisonment instead. Only seven years later,
in return for signing up to fight in World War II,
he had his conviction quashed entirely. He returned a free
man and eventually died in the year two thousand. But
(05:20):
why am I telling you all this, I suppose just
to demonstrate that no matter how quaint or small a
town may be, tragedy and emotional distress is never far away.
The sort of things that some believe can linger as
dark and malicious energies, only to then manifest in invisible
(05:42):
and terrifying ways, just as they are believed to have
done by one family who lived in christ Church back
in nineteen ninety seven. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm
Richard mc lean smith. Before we go any further, I
(06:08):
should explain that we're going to try something a little
different with this week's episode. Earlier this summer, one of
our writers, Diane Hope, spent some time in Bournemouth, hosted
by a family who once lived in christ Church. One evening,
they began telling Diane of a strange series of events
that took place in their former christ Church home. Amazingly
(06:31):
for us, they agreed to share their story. However, we thought,
rather than write it up for me to tell, why
not just let the couple speak for themselves. It was
back in nineteen ninety six that Teresa and her husband
Sean moved down to Bournemouth from the northeast of England,
along with their young children, looking for a change of scene.
(06:53):
Eight months later, the landlord of the flat they were
renting decided to sell the property, forcing the fact family
to move again. The couple ran a used car business,
buying cars from the north of England and bringing them
down south to sell, so they needed somewhere with a
good amount of space to park the cars. They settled
(07:14):
on the perfect place in the nearby town of christ Church,
not far from the banks of the River Stour. Now,
I said the couple would tell us their story. However,
in the end Diane decided only to interview one of them.
A little more on that later, but for now, this
is Terresa.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
This property came up in christ Church and it had
a very long drive up to it, and we could
park a number of cars in the drive. It was
like the manor house at the back of the other properties,
so it was an older house which had been built
before the properties around it. It was secluded, like a
(07:56):
little forest at the back of it, so we thought
this is ideal.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Almost immediately, strange things began to.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Occur when we watched into the house. The first night
we moved in, I felt something touch my back. I
couldn't really explain what it was I felt. I just
thought it was strange, you know, like something was touching
my back. It was the first night we'd been in there,
and I'd never experienced anything like that previously.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Then it happened again the next day.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I was in the kid's bedroom and I felt it again,
a touch, you know, just touching me back. I just
couldn't explain how it happened.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Theresa wasn't one to think it might be anything supernatural.
In fact, the thought couldn't have been further from her mind.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I didn't even mention it to Sean because I didn't
think it was worth mentioning something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
But it wouldn't be long before Sean too became aware
of strange goings on because the creepy of events began
to escalate.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We were in the living room one night, which faced
the garden. The window face the garden, and we're just
watching Telly and we heard somebody run past the window.
You could literally hair running, maybe like they had big
boots on or something.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
The garden was equipped with motion Sense, a security lights
designed to be triggered if anyone was trying to break in.
Or trespass on the property.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
We looked out and the lights hadn't come on. So
Shark got up and you know, went outside, and as
soon as he went outside, the lights lit up. It
seemed strange how you could hear something and then as
soon as he went outside, everything lit up. So that
was the first experience after what happened to me, which
(09:47):
we couldn't explain.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There was no hiding it now. Theresa confessed to her
husband that she'd been sensing something strange going on in
the house for a while, and soon the couple began
hearing the supposed footsteps inside their home.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
They'd be sat in the living room on a night
and we could hear running up and down the hallway.
Because it was a bungalow, we all slept downstairs, big
kid's bedroom at the back. Our bedroom was opposite the lounge,
the hallway was in between, and we could literally hear
somebody running up and down the hallway, and we'd open
(10:28):
the living room door and there was nobody there.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Perhaps, wandered Terresa, it was all just in their imaginations,
a combination of the stress of adapting to life in
the new home and the unfamiliarity of their surroundings, but
she couldn't quite shake the sense that there was something
more going on, and that they might even be in
danger of somehow inviting it in.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
We kept trying to pass things off as if did
we hear it are I didn't really like to talk
about in the house. I was scared that something might progress.
Shan was start of thinking what's going to happen next,
and now thinking I hope nothing happens and.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Eggs a few nights later to raise her and Sean
was sat in the lounge watching television when Sean started
hearing something, a peculiar squeaking sound that seemed to be
coming from the back of the room. It sounded like
the lounge door handle.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
We thought we heard it creaking, so we turned Helly
down and Chan said I heard that handle. I said, yeah,
I'm sure I heard it. We both sat there, face
in the door, looking straight at the handill. My eyes
were literalist into water. I was looking at it so closely,
and all of a sudden it just went I mean
(11:50):
the shock. Shan flew back on the chair. It were like,
how did that just happen? And I jumped up and
I opened the door and the kids weren't there. Nobody
was there.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Suddenly it wasn't so easy to dismiss it all as
an overactive imagination, and before long others started to sense
it too. It had been a while since the couple
last had some quality time together, so one night they
hired a babysitter and went out to dinner.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
This young girl baby sat one evening when we were
back in the house. She was in the living room
with the door open. The telly wasn't switched down. She
just sat there and I thought, eyes everything okay, because
obviously I hadn't mentioned anything, as she just went yeah,
but with a really she looked scared.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
There was no doubt in Teresa's mind that the girl
had heard or seen something, but Teresa couldn't possibly say anything.
For a start, she didn't want to scare the girl
unnecessary if she hadn't actually experienced anything untoward. But there
was little doubting the look on her face. The next
(13:08):
time the babysitter came round, she made sure to bring
a companion.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
She came with her mom then the next time, but
then they didn't want to come back to the house again.
I never mentioned anything. They never mentioned anything. To me.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Then there was the time their friend Lee came down
to visit from London. By now, Theresa and Sean were
beginning to talk openly about the possibility that their house
was being haunted.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We'd been friends with him from the previous house and
moved her and he was very confident and outgoing. We
came around and he was sort of laughing and joking like, oh,
come on, then, where's this girls? It would just trying
to make a big joke of it. Shoun said, Oh,
it doesn't like it when you turn the Telly up loud,
that's when things start to happen.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Lee, who was planning to stay the night with the family,
couldn't help but laugh. So Sean offered to give him
a demonstration, and so it was with everyone gathered in
the living room. The skeptical Lee watched on with a
right smile as Sean took the remote and switched on
the TV. Then he steadily increased the volume.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Sean just switched to Telly at full blast, and all
of a sudden we had this almighty bang. It went.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
It felt as though the entire house were shaking.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It sounded like something crashing down on us. I mean
we didn't have any big speakers. Where did this noise
come from?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
The message was clear.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
You were almost like, don't mess with me. I mean,
that's how it.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Felt as for Lee. He wasn't laughing anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Lee were like shocked. He was absolutely petrified from it
being just one big joke all of a sudden.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He was so scared that night, rather than stay with
the family, he immediately left the house and drove away
as fast as he could, white faced and extremely shaken.
As far as the family were concerned, there was no
(15:22):
denying it now. In such circumstances, the first question people
tend to ask is why didn't they just leave? But
the couple had paid six months rent in advance, and
not only had they only been there for six weeks,
they didn't have nearly enough money to move again, so prematurely,
appeals to the agent fell on deaf ears.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
They weren't even interested. They didn't come back to us
with any advice or anything, but didn't even ring us back.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
At first, the family stuck it out as best they could,
only for things to get even more disturbing.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
It was a beautiful sunny day. We'd just come back
from being out and we'd come back in. The kids
ran into their bedroom and all of a sudden they
were screaming. We ran into the bedroom. There was literally
like black sand and grit mixed with water dripping down
the walls, and there were circles of it on each bed.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The children claimed the sandy substance had been thrown at
them the moment they entered the room to raise Her
and Sean couldn't get their heads around it.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
It's not like they had bucket and spade and a
bit of sound in the bedroom and they'd been messing
with it.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
And as for the possibility that someone had thrown it
into the house from outside, we couldn't.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Even open the windows in their bedroom. They'd been painted shut.
This is something now that couldn't explain. Before we could say, oh, well,
we heard these noises. It might have been the radiator
of you could sort of try to explain your off
out of it. Whereas now this was something which we
couldn't explain.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
More than that, Theresa now had to face a new
horror that whatever this appeared to be turning its attention
on the children.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
That was really frightening. After that, I saw a big
spider in the kid's bedroom. It looked like a transler.
It was huge. I had this tape recorder deck thing
and it crawled into it. So I shut the tape
recorder and threw it in the bit and Shan would
why would you do that? I was so scared of
(17:38):
it coming back in because it was absolutely huge. I
didn't want to getting back out of that tape deck.
That's how scared I was. First it was outside, then
it's in the hall. Then it's like the banging, then
the sand in the kid's bedroom, and then the spider.
I just felt everything was, you know, why is this happening?
Thought of thing, and it was all drawn towards a
(17:58):
kid's bedroom as well.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
The spider was the final straw. The family needed help.
But where do you even turn to for that sort
of thing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
There wasn't the Internet in them days. We just didn't
know what to do. But that was really frightening.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
In the end, Theresa and Sean reached out to a
friend from back home in Bradford.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
We ran a friend of ours who was a preacher
in Bradford called Bob's given us his Bible as a
leaving pression. We just tesked him if there's anything, if
what we could do, because it keeps happening and we
just don't know what to do. First, he said you
need to leave, and we said we're with pay six months.
In our fans, there are only two months. Saying it's
(18:51):
cat hard to just upsticks.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Bob suggested he leave it with them. A short time later,
he called them back.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It's brought to the elders of his church, and he said,
you need to read in the Bible here though what
through the vallee of no able to our fear, and
read these verses and go with the children into every room,
the garage, the call shed, everywhere. You need to recite
these verses.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And so together the family gathered first in the living
room and did exactly as Bob told them to do,
moving steadily from one room to the next, reciting Psalm
twenty three from the Bible. The last space to exercise
was the garage. When that was done, Theresa felt the
(19:40):
change almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I said to Sean, do you feel like something is
just lifted off you? And he said, yeah, we actually
felt it lift off us. It's like you have this
heavy feeling overa which I didn't even realize. We had
it literally lifted away from us.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Not only did the negative feelings disappear, the couple's work
even began to pick up.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
For the last three or four months, it was just
a different feeling altogether. There were trading cars to the
main dealers at the time, and every time I rang something,
it were almost like it turned to gold. We were
making more money than we'd ever made, even just trading cars,
and before that we hadn't done half as much as
what we met in that house. So it's almost like
(20:25):
it was a good thing from a bad thing, which
I can't explain.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Although Theresa no longer felt the unwanted presence in her house,
she often found herself wondering what on earth it was.
Perhaps she thought it had something to do with the
mysterious box they found in the attic shortly after they
moved in.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
There was an upstairs bedroom. There were ladders what you
had to pull down to get up there. There this
box there. It was probably three foot by two for something,
but the weight of it you couldn't possibly lift it.
I don't even know how they got it up there,
because you couldn't physically put it up there.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Though they couldn't get into it, they could tell it
had something inside it.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
They could hear something rattling around in it, but we
never found the key for it.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Whatever it was, the family never found out in any case.
As the weeks went by, they soon forgot all about
those peculiar and terrifying first few months as their lives
moved on. But the terror wasn't over. When the sixth
(21:42):
month Lise was up, the time came to leave the property.
After packing everything up inside, Teresa and Sean headed into
the garden to gather all the toys that their kids
had left scattered about. Then Sean turned and looked up
at the attic.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Win though he just turned round to look at the windows,
and Sean said he felt like somebody were looking at
him through that window. He just dropped the toys.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Sean hustled Theresa and the kids into the car and
drove off at speed, leaving the toys strewn on the lawn.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
He didn't see anybody, he knew there was somebody looking
at him, or something looking at him, which really scared him.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It wasn't until years later that the family realized that
the attic was the one room where they hadn't recited
Psalm twenty.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Three, we had prayed in that room. Bob said, make
sure you praying everywhere the garage outside, and we hadn't
physically gone up there with the kids. It was almost
like we trapped it.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Upstairs, but that wasn't all.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Years and years later we're talking about it and my
son said, well, you never liked that lady who we
used to stand next to a car. She used to
be stood next to carry along black hair, carrying wood.
My kids said, mum, musa ignoris used to be stood
next to the car. Obvious they hadn't seen anybody. They
could actually see something, which they never even said to
(23:12):
me until years later. Maybe because me and Sean never
said anything to them to scare them that they never
mentioned it to us.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Having had enough of old properties, the couple moved into
a newly built housing estate on the north side of Bournemouth. Thankfully,
whatever they felt had stalked them in christ Church didn't
follow them into their new property.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Before that, I would have said absolutely that I didn't
believe in the paranormal or girl's share. Since that experience,
there's definitely some form of activity. And also when we
did pray about it, it did go away or nearly
went away.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Recently, Theresa has watched a number of pro guns featuring
people who claim to have experienced poltergeist hauntings the way
events Onfold are only too familiar to her.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I've seen programs on telling where mediums go in there
and they do pray to lift the spirit away from
the house, and the owners do feel like this way
it's being lifted off the And I know exactly how
that feels, because I've experienced it. I understand, and if
people haven't experienced it, they can't relate to it until
you have to go through it.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Almost thirty years later, Theresa has never stopped wondering if
there was a reason for it all.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I didn't know how previously lived there. I didn't know
any past history. Even now I've looked on the internet.
Maybe somebody will know. Somebody will know. Maybe it was
quite a not so pleasant ending for somebody. Maybe that's
what drew them. They say that manor houses and like
coach houses can be counted, and this was the manor house.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
You may remember. Back near the start of the episode,
I mentioned that Diane, who recorded this interview, decided only
to record Theresa's version of events. The reason is because
when Diane first spoke to Theresa and Sean about the story,
it was clear that Sean found it uncomfortable. It seemed
to Diane like he was reliving the whole traumatic experience
(25:32):
all over again. The couple had avoided speaking about it
for thirty years, worried that by doing so they might
somehow invite the darkness back into their lives, So Diane
decided it was probably best not to push Sean to
formally record his account. Just then, Sean said he felt
(25:55):
something in his back, as though someone had just prodded
him with a finger. They carried on talking, then Sean
felt the prod again, and that was enough to make
him stop. After all, it was exactly how things had
started all those years ago. If there's anyone out there
(26:16):
who's heard anything about possible strange goings on in an
old manor house in christ Church with a long driveway
alongside it, feel free to get in touch with us
at Unexplained pod at gmail dot com. We'd love to
hear more. In the meantime, whatever it was that occurred
into Resa and Sean's home back in nineteen ninety seven
(26:40):
remains to this day unexplained. Thank you so much to
Teresa and Sean for sharing their story with us, and
thank you to Diane for finding and recording it. The
rest of the episode was written and produced by me
Richard mcleaye Smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
(27:04):
records in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianhope dot com and on Instagram
at in the Soundfield. Thank you as ever for listening.
Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard
McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
(27:24):
are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The
book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You
can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
(27:46):
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, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast O M.
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