GRIM REAPER APPEARS IN HOSPITAL: A Nurse Comes Face To Face With The Angel of Death

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hospitals train their staff to expect death. They teach nurses
how to recognize the signs, how to document the process,
how to support families through those final moments. There are
protocols for everything, clinical language that turns the end of
a human life into a series of checkboxes on a form.
Most healthcare workers develop a professional distance from it after

(00:26):
a few years on the job. They have to, or
they wouldn't last. But no training manual prepares you for
the moment you walk into a dying patient's room and
see someone else standing there, someone who shouldn't exist, someone
wearing a black cloak towering over the bed at an
impossible height, bent toward your patient with what feels like

(00:48):
deliberate intent, And when you back out of the room,
finish your other rounds, and return fifteen minutes later to
find that same figure still there in the exact same position,
that professional distance collapses entirely. Doctor Andrea O'Connor collects stories
like this from medical professionals around the world, accounts that

(01:10):
don't fit into standard medical understanding. The one she shared
recently came from a nurse working at ordinary night shift
at a hospital where a terrified patient was dying alone.
The nurse saw something in that room twice during her
observation checks. She reported it to the incoming shift using
very specific language. She told them she thought she had

(01:33):
seen the Grim Reaper. I'm Darren Marler and this is
Weird Darkness. Welcome, weirdos. This is weird Darkness. Here you'll
find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange

(01:58):
and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming
up in this episode, a century old inn's resident poltergeists
are moving guests, belongings, and sparkling arguments between couples who
blame each other for the paranormal mischief. First up, though,

(02:22):
a hospital nurse making routine checks on a terrified dying
patient saw a seven foot cloaked figure bent over his
bed twice in one night, and by morning the patient
was dead. Was this a real account of an appearance
of the Grim Reaper? We begin with that story. Now,
bult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,

(02:47):
and come with me into the weird Darkness. Hospitals are
places where death happens every single day. Nurses and doctors
see people die so regularly that it becomes part of

(03:09):
the job, another task to document and process. There are
protocols for it, paperwork, routines that turn something profound into
something procedural. Most medical professionals will tell you they've learned
to compartmentalize it, to build walls between what they witness
and what they take home with them at the end
of a shift. But then there are the experiences that

(03:32):
bypass all that training, all that professional distance, and hit
you somewhere deeper, the things that make seasoned nurses stop
in doorways and question whether what they're seeing is actually possible.
This particular patient was actively dying. There's no general way
to say it. Everyone on staff knew he didn't have

(03:54):
much time left. They'd put him on fifteen minute observation checks,
which means someone had to physically go into his room
and verify he was okay, that is alive, every quarter hour.
They don't do that for every dying patient. They do
it when there's a specific concern. In this case, the
concern was his fear. He was terrified. Not just anxious

(04:18):
about his prognosis or sad about leaving loved ones behind.
This was a consuming, visceral terror that had been building
for hours, the kind of fear that makes medical staff
worry a patient might try to hurt themselves or pull
out their lines in a panic to escape whatever they
think is coming for them. His anxiety had ramped up

(04:39):
so high that leaving him alone felt dangerous. The isolation
probably didn't help. No family members were listed on his chart,
no friends stopped by during visiting hours. He was facing
the end of his life in a hospital room by himself,
with only the rotating shifts of nurses to keep company

(05:00):
during those fifteen minute check ins. Doctor Andrea O'Connor runs
a YouTube channel that's become something of a repository for
stories like this one. She collects accounts from medical professionals
around the world, doctors, nurses, EMTs who've experienced things in
healthcare settings that don't fit neatly into their training or understanding.

(05:22):
She approaches these stories with a certain clinical distance, acknowledging
both the medical explanations and the undeniable fact that people
in this profession report seeing things that defy easy explanation.
The account she shared in October twenty twenty five came
from a nurse working a routine night shift. At least
it started as routine. The nurse went to do one

(05:45):
of her scheduled checks on the dying patient. She walked
down the hallway, probably reviewing her mental checklist of what
she needed to observe and document. She reached his room
and looked through the doorway. She stopped moving. The patient
was in his bad yes, but he wasn't alone. There
was someone else in the room, someone tall, exceptionally tall,

(06:07):
maybe seven feet. The figure wore what looked like a
black cloak, the kind of flowing, dark fabric that doesn't
really exist in modern hospital settings. And this figure was
bent over the patient's bed, stretching out toward the dying
man in a posture that felt deliberate, purposeful. The nurse

(06:27):
didn't walk into the room. She stood there in the doorway,
her body refusing to move forward. Doctor O'Connor talks about
this moment with an understanding of both clinical neuroscience and
genuine strangeness. She explains how the human brain works when
it encounters something it can't immediately categorize, the brain runs
through its catalog of known things, trying to match the

(06:50):
input with something familiar. When it can't find a match,
When what you're looking at violates everything you understand about
what should or shouldn't exist in a particular. There's a
lag the mind short circuits trying to reconcile the impossible
with the directly observable. That's where the nurse was standing

(07:10):
in a doorway, looking into a room that should have
contained exactly one person, her dying patient, and instead seeing
two figures. There was no one else on the visitor
log for this patient. The hospital room door had been closed.
She had just been there fifteen minutes earlier, yet this
towering presence in dark, flowing fabric occupied the space between

(07:33):
her position at the door and the man in the bed.
The nurse backed out of the room. She continued with
her other duties, checking on other patients, doing the things
you do during a night shift. But she had to
go back. Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes, and that patient
was on a strict observation schedule, so she returned to
his room. The figure was still there, same height, same

(07:57):
dark cloak, same posture bent over the bed, same impossible
presence that her rational mind kept insisting couldn't be real,
while her eyes kept showing her something very different. She
saw it twice, two separate room checks, two separate observations
of something that by all conventional understanding should not have existed.

(08:23):
Healthcare workers seeing some personification of death at patients' bedsides
has documented research going back decades. In the nineteen seventies,
doctor Carlos Osis from the American Society for Psychical Research
decided to take these anecdotal reports seriously enough to study
them systematically. He spent years collecting case studies and conducting

(08:44):
interviews with over one thousand doctors and nurses about what
they had witnessed at deathbeds. His nineteen seventy seven book,
At the Hour of Death compiled all this research into
patterns and consistencies that kept showing up across different hospitals,
different countries, different types of patients. The research revealed certain

(09:04):
commonalities that couldn't be easily dismissed as random imagination or
cultural contamination. Medical professionals across various backgrounds and belief systems
report similar experiences around dying patients. The classic image we
all carry in our heads the skeletal figure and a
hooded black cloak holding a Scythe that specific version traces

(09:28):
back to the fourteenth century Europe and the Black Death.
The plague swept through the continent and killed somewhere between
thirty and sixty percent of Europe's entire population, depending on
which historical estimates you trust. Some regions saw even higher
mortality rates. This wasn't a disease that killed the weak
and spared the strong. It killed everyone indiscriminately, massively, relentlessly.

(09:55):
During that time period, death wasn't an occasional visitor. Death
was the dominant force of daily life. Everyone knew someone
who had died, Everyone had watched people die. The psychological
impact of that kind of sustained mass mortality event fundamentally
changed how people thought about and depicted death itself. Artists

(10:18):
started showing death as an active entity, a skeletal figure
in dark robes carrying a scythe harvesting human souls the
way a farmer harvests wheat. The dance macabre artistic movement
emerged from this era, showing people from all social classes
dancing together with skeletal figures, all heading towards the same
inevitable end. Kings, peasants, clergy children. Death came for everyone equally,

(10:45):
and medieval society obsessively documented this reality in their art
and literature that imagery never really left our collective consciousness.
It evolved slightly over the centuries, but the core image stuck.
Modern sighting reports rarely describe actual skeletons. Medical professionals who

(11:06):
claim to see something at deathbeds describe shadows more often
than bones, tall dark figures, shapes that seem to have
no face under their hoods, or faces that can't quite
be focused on. Some witnesses report an intense, unnatural cold
accompanying these appearances. Others describe a sense of certainty and

(11:28):
knowing that what they are seeing directly relates to the
patient's imminent death, even if they can't explain how they
know that. In November twenty twenty three, a nurse who
goes by Teddy Love on TikTok posted a video that
spread through medical communities online. She worked in an Alzheimer's
and dementia unit, and during one of her night shifts,

(11:49):
she was on the phone walking past patient rooms, which
she glanced into a darkened room and saw what she
described as a figure reaching over one of her patient's faces.
The room should have been empty except for the patient.
She was certain of that the next day, when she
returned to work that patient had diet. Her post generated
hundreds of responses, and many of them came from other nurses, CNAs,

(12:13):
and medical staff sharing their own similar experiences. Not people
seeking attention or trying to go viral, medical professionals quietly
admitting they had seen things they couldn't explain. Doctor O'Connor
does offer the standard medical explanations for what the nurse
might have experienced. Night shift workers are chronically sleep deprived.

(12:36):
That's not an opinion, that's documented fact. Working against your
body's natural circadian rhythms creates cognitive effects and stress. On
top of that, the emotional weight of watching people die regularly,
the physical exhaustion of twelve hour shifts, and you create
conditions where the brain might generate visual experiences that don't
have an external source. Hallucinations aren't uncommon in extremely fatigued individuals.

(13:02):
The human mind under pressure can create sensory input sites, sounds,
even physical sensations that feel completely real to the person
experiencing them, but don't correspond to any objective reality. These
explanations work perfectly well for isolated incidents. One person, one time,

(13:22):
under specific stressful conditions, sees something unusual. You can shart
a reasonable path from exhausted brain to visual hallucination without
requiring anything supernatural. The explanations work less cleanly when you
start looking at the patterns, when multiple staff members report
seeing similar things, when the sightings correlate consistently with patient deaths,

(13:48):
not sometimes, not occasionally, but reliably, when nurses see these
figures and the patients die hours or days later, repeatedly
across different hospitals in different circumstances. The nurse in this
specific case saw the figure twice during two separate observation checks.

(14:08):
She wasn't in a state of microsleep or experiencing a
single hallucinatory episode that passed. She saw it, left the room,
continued working, came back fifteen minutes later, following protocol, and
saw it again, same details, same presence, same position, bent
over the patient's bed. She reported the experience to the

(14:30):
incoming shift using very specific language. She told them she
thought that she had seen the grim Reaper, not I
saw something weird or I might have hallucinated. She named it.
Whether that name reflects literal reality or just the closest
cultural reference point she could find for what she witnessed.
She was clear about what she believed she had encountered.

(14:54):
Medical staff had been dealing with the patient's escalating anxiety
for hours. He didn't have any document metted psychiatric conditions,
no history of paranoia or anxiety disorders on his chart.
He wasn't delirious from medication, at least not in any
way that was noted as concerning before this. He was
simply terrified, and that terror kept growing more intense as

(15:16):
his condition deteriorated. Healthcare workers see a lot of fear
in dying patients. That's expected. Most people are afraid of
death on some level, and when you're actively dying in
a hospital bed, that fear becomes immediate and visceral. But
nurses and doctors can usually recognize when someone's experiencing a normal,

(15:37):
understandable fear of mortality versus when something else is happening.
This patient's anxiety had reached levels that prompted them to
put him on constant observation. That's not a standard response
to typical end of life fear. The nurse who saw
the figure started wondering about the timing the patient's fear

(15:58):
had been ramping up. Then she sees this dark presence
looming over him. She starts to consider whether maybe the
patient's terror wasn't irrational at all, Maybe he had been
seeing something or sensing something that she couldn't perceive, at
least not until those specific moments when whatever barriers normally
exist between visible and invisible temporarily dropped. We know that

(16:23):
dying patients sometimes reports seeing deceased relatives or experiencing visitations
from people others in the room can't see. That's documented
enough to have its own category in medical literature, death
bad visions. My own father experienced exactly that when he
was in the hospital and we came close to losing him.
He saw an entire family in old, possibly Victorian era clothing,

(16:46):
standing in the corner of his room, while the nurse
treating him saw nothing. My dad also had the experience
of meeting the grim Reaper himself. We didn't lose my
dad that day, but we did come close, and he
described exactly what this nurse described to her other staff members.
A tall figure, dark cloak, no discernible face, but definitely

(17:08):
a feeling of morose and sadness. Doctor Osis's research from
the nineteen seventies found that dying people often reported being
visited by deceased family members or friends. These weren't random
hallucinations pulling from the patient's subconscious fears. They were specific,
consistent experiences that followed certain patterns. The dying person would

(17:31):
suddenly become peaceful, sometimes reaching out or speaking to someone invisible.
To others present, they'd report seeing their mother who had
died years earlier, or a sibling or a friend. But
sometimes the visitations aren't comforting family members. Sometimes they are
dark figures, hooded shapes, presences that feel threatening rather than welcoming.

(17:55):
The patient died later that evening. His chart would list
the medical cause, the biological cascade of failures that led
to his death, organ systems shutting down, vital signs ceasing,
the clinical terminology that reduces the end of a human life,
to measurable data points. But the nurse who had been
checking on him every fifteen minutes, who'd stood frozen in

(18:17):
that doorway twice, watching a seven foot figure bent over
his bed, she knew there was more to the story
than what would be written in the official records. Doctor
O'Connor's video about this incident collected thousands of views and
generated significant response, particularly from medical professionals. The comments section

(18:38):
became its own repository of similar experiences. One person, identifying
themselves as a trauma nurse and former ICU nurse, wrote
about having witnessed many similar phenomena throughout their career. Healthcare
workers occupy a unique position in society. These are people
who exist in spaces where death happens with regularity between life,

(19:01):
and its cessation becomes part of the routine rather than
an exceptional event. They see things most people never see
in circumstances most people never experience. Another commenter described a
male colleague who worked night shifts and arrived on the
ward one morning looking visibly shaken. The comment doesn't provide

(19:21):
full details about what happened, but the implication sits heavy.
He had seen something during those dark hours that his
professional training couldn't explain or prepare him for. One comment reads,
I'm a trauma nurse and former ICU nurse. I've seen
many things like this in my career. I'm most likely
to believe anything a nurse, doctor, etc. Would tell me.

(19:43):
We're in a profession that no others could have these experiences.
The weight of that statement isn't in dramatic language it's
in the quiet acknowledgment that medical professionals share a specific
type of experience that exists outside most people's frame of reverence.
Another commenter was even more direct, saying, I believe she

(20:04):
did see the Grim Reaper, no doubt. Then there's this one.
I've worked in healthcare in my entire life, had weird
things happen and heard freaky things from co workers as well.
The Grim Reaper is real. A very trusted male colleague
was freaked out one morning when I joined him on
the unit. He was just coming off the night shift.
The nurse in the original account fully believed what she

(20:26):
witnessed was the Grim Reaper, not something that looked like
cultural depictions of the Grim Reaper, not a shadow that
her tired brain misinterpreted. She believed she had seen the
actual entity, the personification of death itself, in that hospital
room with her dying patient. Doctor O'Connor, despite acknowledging all
the possible explanations involving fatigue and stress and the brain's

(20:49):
capacity for generating false sensory input, states, I believe her.
I swear we see things in healthcare you just can't explain.
She follows that up, I mentioned, she's heard similar accounts
from other healthcare workers describing dark shadows and rooms, figures
that appear near dying patients, presences that vanish when directly confronted,

(21:10):
but leave behind a certainty in the witness that they
saw something. Real. Hospital's function as threshold spaces in ways
most of us don't fully consider. People pass from life
to death there so frequently that medical staff have to
find ways to normalize it, or they'd never be able
to do their jobs. You can't break down emotionally every

(21:30):
time a patient dies. When patient deaths are part of
your weekly or even daily experience, healthcare workers develop a
kind of professional detachment out of necessity emotional armor that
lets them continue functioning in an environment that would psychologically
devastate most people. But every so often, something breaks through

(21:51):
that carefully constructed detachment. Something appears that can't be easily categorized, dismissed,
or explained away with standard medical knowledge. The seven foot
figure draped in black, the shadow that has mass and
presence and intent, the entity that correlates so precisely and
consistently with death that even trained medical professionals with the

(22:14):
years of education and experience start using terms like grim
reaper because they don't have better language for what they've witnessed.
These experiences carry a weight of isolation. You see something impossible.
You know what you saw, but you also know how
it sounds when you try to explain it to someone
who wasn't there. The nurse in this account had to

(22:37):
decide whether to report what she had seen to the
incoming shift. She chose to tell them. She used clear,
specific language. I think I saw the gram reaper. That
is not a casual statement. That's not hyperbole or dramatic exaggeration.
That's a medical professional stating what she believes happened, knowing

(22:58):
it sounds impossible. It defies everything she was taught about
how reality works. The nurse will probably carry those images
for the rest of her career, probably the rest of
her life. Wouldn't you the memory of that towering figure,
the dark cloak that seemed to absorb light rather than
reflect it, the way it bent over the dying man

(23:19):
with what felt like purposeful intent. These aren't the kinds
of images that fade with time or get explained away
with rational thought. They stay with you. They change how
you move through hospital hallways during night shifts. They change
what you look for when you approach a dying patient's room.
The next time she does her rounds checking on dying

(23:40):
patients in darkened rooms, there's going to be that moment
of hesitation before entering, that pause when she looks carefully
into the shadows, scanning the space before stepping inside, because
she knows now what she didn't know before those two
observation checks. She knows that sometimes death isn't just a

(24:00):
biological process that happens to a body. Sometimes it's an
active presence that arrives. Sometimes it has a form. Sometimes
it's visible, and sometimes if circumstances align in exactly the
right way, if you're in the right place at the
right time, looking in the right direction, or the wrong

(24:23):
place at the wrong time, looking in the wrong direction,
you can actually see it standing there. Hospital staff who
work night shifts talk about the quality of darkness in
those buildings during the quiet hours. It's not the same
as darkness in other places. Hospitals are never fully silent.
There are always machines beeping, monitors humming, the distant sounds

(24:46):
of staff moving through hallways. But there are pockets of
stillness rooms where dying patients sleep or don't sleep, where
families have gone home for the night because they can't
bear to watch anymore. We're the only company. The rotating
shifts of nurses doing their rounds. Doctor O'Connor's collection of
stories reveals a pattern healthcare workers across different hospitals, different countries,

(25:11):
different specialities, reporting similar experiences. Dark figures appearing near dying patients,
shadows that move with purpose, Presences that witnesses feel certain
are connected to imminent death. These aren't people with a
history of believing in supernatural phenomena. They're trained medical professionals

(25:31):
who work in evidence based fields and are taught to
trust observable, measurable reality. But the accounts keep coming. Nurses
seeing figures and doorways, CNAs witnessing shapes bent over beds,
doctors glancing into rooms and catching sight of something that
shouldn't be there. Most of them don't talk about it publicly.

(25:54):
They mention it quietly to colleagues they trust, sharing these
experiences in break rooms or during shift changes, looking for
confirmation that they're not losing their minds. The nurse in
this particular account made the choice to share her story
with doctor O'Connor, who then shared it with a wider audience.
This creates space for other medical professionals to acknowledge their

(26:16):
own experiences without fear of being dismissed or ridiculed. It
validates something that medical training explicitly doesn't prepare you for
the possibility that death might be more than just the
cessation of biological functions, that it might have presence form,
perhaps even intent. The figure appears, the patient dies, and

(26:39):
the medical staff who witnessed the figure are left trying
to reconcile what they saw with what they know about
how the world is supposed to work. They file their reports,
complete their documentation, and continue with their shifts. But they remember,
and they watch the shadows a little more carefully from
then on. Up next, couples checking into England's Most Haunted

(27:07):
in keep blaming each other for removed belongings and soaked clothes,
never realizing a six hundred year old poltergeist is enjoying
the chaos from the corner of Room one. Heywards, as

(27:31):
you know, October is birthday month for Weird Darkness for
celebrating ten years of doing the show this year, and
while it is Weird Darkness's birthday, we want to give
the gifts to those who help people who struggle with depression, anxiety,
or thoughts of suicide or self harm. And that is
what our annual Overcoming the Darkness campaign is all about.
It is the only fundraiser that I do all year long,

(27:54):
and you can bring hope to those who are lost
in the darkness of depression. You can make a donation
right now by this sitting Weird Darkness dot com slash hope.
This is our last week of doing this. It ends
Halloween night, so please if you are planning on making
a donation, do so tonight. I really appreciate that Weirddarkness
dot com slash hope Big Joe in the four forty

(28:17):
gave twenty five dollars a few days ago, saying this
is such an awesome cause. As someone who's been battling depression,
it's comforting knowing there are places to find help and
that there are people who care. Keep up the great work. Well,
thank you, Big Joe. I do appreciate that we had
an anonymous giver give fifty dollars. They left a message
saying thank you, Darren, you are such a good, god
fearing man. Well, thank you. Another anonymous giver gave one

(28:39):
hundred dollars Wow, saying thanks for this campaign and bringing
awareness of depression. Often felt rarely discussed and it's a killer.
I couldn't agree more. It's something that when you struggle
with it, you don't want to talk about it, and
so it doesn't really get discussed nearly as much as
it should. We had another anonymous giver give one hundred
dollars saying, Hi, Darren, I didn't hear my donate donate

(29:01):
donate comments this year. Thanks for the mental health awareness.
We all need a little help, especially right now. Thank
you again. That was Jamie. Actually she decided not to
stay anonymous. I know what you're talking about, Jamie. In
years past, I did have some testimonials or comments that
people had made in the past about it, and I
just decided not to use them this year because I

(29:21):
thought they were getting a little bit old and I
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Twenty five dollars came in from another anonymous giver saying
love your podcast. Thank you for all you do in
the name of our Lord and Savior. Keep up the
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(29:43):
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By the way, we are currently at fourteen hundred dollars
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came in just yesterday saying thank you for what you're doing, sir.

(30:07):
Junebug gave twenty five saying depression has affected me, my child,
and my grandchild. Oh my gosh, my heart goes out
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available to those who need it. June Bug, you are
so very welcome, and I'm really sorry that all of
you are struggling with it. I think it does run
in families. My dad used to suffer from depression too,

(30:28):
and Bridget gave twenty five dollars just earlier today. Bridget
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(30:51):
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(31:14):
and thanks to everybody who's made a donation so far,
and thanks in advance if you're planning on making a donation.
Some hotels offer room service and complimentary breakfast. The Mermaid
Inn in Rye, East Sussex, offers something extra, a poltergeist

(31:36):
that moves your clothes while you sleep, then sits back
to watch you and your partner accuse each other of
gas lighting all the way to the parking lot. The
Mermaid Inn stands on cobbled Mermaid Street in Rye, the
building with roots that tunnel deep into England's medieval past.
The original sellers were constructed in eleven fifty six, carved

(31:57):
from stone during a time when the Normans still held
considerable power in England. Those cellars are still there beneath
your feet if you visit today, holding up everything built
after them. The main building came later reconstructed in fourteen twenty,
after the original structure fell to time and weather. Throughout
medieval times, this place functioned as a working alehouse. They

(32:21):
brewed their own ale on site and charged sailors a
penny per night for a place to sleep. A penny
doesn't sound like much now, but for a sailor in
the fourteen hundreds, it meant a dry roof and a
relatively safe place to pass out after drinking. The location
made sense for an inn. Rye operated as a functioning
port town, providing ships for the Chinkwa ports Fleet, a

(32:43):
confederation of coastal towns that supplied vessels to the English
crown until fifteen fifty eight, sailors needed somewhere to stay,
and Mermaid Street served as one of the main routes
into the Citadel of Rye, making the Inn a natural
stopping point. During the fifteen thirties, the buildings purpose shifted
to include something more dangerous. Catholic priests fleeing the Reformation

(33:06):
found refuge within its walls, hiding from authorities who would
have arrested or killed them. These weren't just passing guests
staying a night or two. Evidence of their extended presence
remains carved into the oak paneling of what's now called
Doctor Sinn's Lounge, where you can still see the inscription
JHS scratched into the wood. The letters stand for Jesus

(33:28):
Hominum Salvatore, and they tell you these men felt safe
enough here to leave permanent marks of their faith. The
building itself reflects its age in ways that can't be faked.
Wattle and daub construction, lath and plaster, timber framing that's
gone black with centuries of exposure. The ceilings slope at
angles that modern building codes would never allow. The floors

(33:51):
creak with every step. Multiple staircases wind through the structure
in ways that don't quite make architectural sense until you
remember the building wasn't planned all at once, but grew
and changed over six hundred years. During the seventeen thirties
and seventeen forties, the Mermaid Inn became headquarters for the
Hawkhurst Gang, one of the most violent criminal organizations in

(34:14):
eighteenth century England. These weren't romantic robin hood types. They
were brutal smugglers who controlled territory stretching from Kent to Dorset,
moving tea, brandy rum and other contraband while murdering anyone
who got in their way. Their primary base operated from
the Oak and Ivy Inn and Hawkhurst, but they used

(34:34):
the Mermaid Inn as a crucial secondary location. The choice
made tactical sense. Rye still functioned as a port. The
town's position on the coast provided access to ships from
France and the Channel Islands, where smugglers purchased their contraband.
The Mermaid Inn offered something even more valuable, escape routes.

(34:54):
A network of secret tunnels ran beneath the Inn, connecting
to other buildings and Rye. One tunnel led to the
old Bell Inn, located on the Mint, a street running
parallel to the north of Mermaid Street. The tunnel ended
at a revolving cupboard that gang members could use to
vanish when authorities appeared. These weren't small crawl spaces. The

(35:15):
tunnels had to accommodate men carrying heavy loads of contraband,
sometimes in a hurry. The gang operated with stunning arrogance.
Contemporary accounts described them seated at the Mermaid Inn's windows,
visible from the street, smoking pipes, with loaded pistols laid
out on the tables in front of them. They weren't hiding,

(35:36):
they were displaying their weapons as a warning. No magistrate
and ride dared to interfere, which tells you exactly how
much control the Hawkhurst Gang had over local law enforcement.
The violence was casual and frequent. On one occasion, approximately
twenty gang members walked from the Mermaid Inn to the
nearby Red Lion Pub, firing their guns into the air

(35:59):
as they went. A young man named James Marshall made
the mistake of watching them too closely, showing too much
interest in their activities. They grabbed him and took him away.
He was never seen again. Nobody was ever found. The
gang didn't even bother hiding what they had done because
who's going to arrest them. In seventeen forty four, the

(36:21):
gang unloaded contraband from three large ships at Pevensey, a
coastal town east of Rye. The operation required approximately five
hundred pack horses to transport to goods inland. Think about
the logistics involved in coordinating five hundred horses, the riders
to control them, and the routes to move that much

(36:41):
contraband without getting caught. The Hawkhurst Gang didn't just operate
as criminals. They functioned as a paramilitary organization. Their downfall
came in seventeen forty seven after a raid on a
customs house in Poole, Dorset. The gang successfully stole back
approximately thirty hundredweight of tea that authorities had confiscated, along

(37:03):
with thirty nine casks of brandy and rum. The government,
furious at being made to look incompetent, offered a five
hundred pounds reward for information. The investigation that followed led
to the execution or transportation of at least seventy five
gang members. Fourteen of them were gibbeted, meaning their bodies
were hung in chains after execution. As a public warning.

(37:25):
Gibbeting was typically reserved for murderers, so its use against
smugglers demonstrated how seriously the authorities took the Hawkers Gang's crimes.
Some of those gibbets still stand empty in villages throughout
Sussex and Kent today, rusted metal cages, serving as reminders
of what happened when you pushed the authorities too far.

(37:46):
Judith Blinkow has spent forty three years working at the
Mermaid Inn. She purchased the property with Robert Pinwell in
nineteen ninety three, but she had been working there before that,
learning every creek in the floorboards, every cold spot, every
story guests told about things that shouldn't have happened. She
finds the hotel's supernatural reputation hilarious, even when guests don't

(38:09):
share her amusement. Six rooms attract the most attention from
paranormal investigators and thrill seekers. Ruin one, also called the
James Tops every ghost hunter's wish list. Blinkow regularly overhears
the aftermath of what happens when couples stay in that room.
The arguments start inside the room, but continue as guests

(38:30):
pack their belongings and carry them down the stairs. They
spill out into the parking area behind the hotel, where
Blinkow can hear them from her office. The disputes follow
an identical pattern. Every time one partner accuses the other
of moving their clothes during the night, the accused partner
denies it. Getting defensive, the first partner insists they left

(38:51):
their shirt or pants on a specific chair and now
they're somewhere else, or they're wet for no reason. The
accused partner suggests the first partner simply for got where
they put things, which only escalates the argument. Both of
them are wrong. Neither partner moved anything. The hotel's resident
spirits have a documented habit of relocating guests possessions. Clothing

(39:14):
seems to be a particular target. Guests staying in Room
one consistently report finding their clothes soaking wet on the
chair positioned by the fireplace, despite the complete absence of
windows or plumbing anywhere near that piece of furniture. The
chair sits at a dry part of the room, away
from any possible water source. The clothes aren't just damp

(39:35):
from humidity. Guests describe them as thoroughly soaked, as if
someone had dunked them in water. The figure appears in
that room regularly enough that guests describe similar details without
having talked to each other first. She's typically identified as
a woman wearing white or gray clothing, and she sits
in that same chair by the fireplace. Some guests see

(39:57):
her clearly, Others report a more indistinct presence, a sense
of someone sitting there rather than a fully formed apparition.
Some wake up during the night and find their belongings
have been moved from where they left them to completely
different locations in the room. Suitcases get relocated, personal items
disappear from nightstands and turn up on the bathroom counter

(40:20):
or tucked into corners. Room sixteen, the Elizabethan Chamber hosts
what paranormal researchers have described as one of the most
well organized ghostly scenarios documented anywhere in Britain. The events
follow such a consistent pattern that investigators use the word organized,
as if whatever's happening has been choreographed and rehearsed. Guests

(40:42):
report waking during the night to witness two men engaged
in a sword duel near their beds. The men wear
clothing consistent with sixteenth century fashion doublets and hose that
no modern person would own as casual NightWare. The duel
isn't silent. Guests describe hearing the class bush of blades,
grunting the sounds of feet and moving across the floor.

(41:04):
The fight moves through the room and into adjacent spaces
as one combatant drives the other backward. One of the
duellists eventually falls. The winner doesn't help him up or
call for assistance. He drags the body into the next
room and throws it through a trapdoor that leads down
to what was once a dungeon. That space now serves
as part of the bar area, which means the body

(41:26):
would land behind where guests sit drinking their evening pints.
Multiple guests have set up night cameras in Room sixteen,
hoping to capture evidence. The footage shows movement consistent with
sword fighting, shadows crossing the frame, shapes that suggest human
forms moving through space. Still, photographs taken at different times

(41:47):
by different guests show the same shadowy figure positioned in
the room's corner. The figure appears in identical locations across
multiple photographs, as if it's bound to that specific spot.
Room ten the Fleur de Lis features a male ghost
who walks directly through the bathroom wall into the main chamber.

(42:08):
Guests don't report seeing him enter through the door. He
appears inside the bathroom or emerges from the wall itself,
moving with purpose through solid matter that would stop any
living person. The apparition has terrified enough guests that the
room's reputation now precedes it. Room seventeen once contained a
rocking chair that creaked constantly, particularly at night when no

(42:31):
one was sitting in it. The staff eventually moved the
chair into the hallway, hoping to stop guests from complaining
about the noise keeping them awake. They solved one problem,
but created another. Guests now continuously request that the chair
be returned to their rooms, specifically hoping it will rock
on its own so they can witness the phenomenon firsthand.

(42:54):
The bottle incident in the Elizabethan Chamber resulted in a
employee's resignation. Was tending to the fireplace at one end
of the room when every bottle on the shelf at
the opposite end fell to the floor simultaneously, not one
or two bottles, every single one. The employee finished to
shift then quit, deciding that whatever salary the mermaid Inn

(43:16):
paid wasn't worth working in a building were objects moved
by themselves. The mermaid In receives approximately twelve formal requests
per month from paranormal investigators seeking permission to conduct investigations
on the premises. These aren't casual guests hoping to see
something spooky. These are people with equipment, methodology and serious

(43:37):
intentions about documenting supernatural phenomena. Each January, the hotel closes
for routine maintenance. During this closure period, Blinkow allows large
groups of ghost hunters to stay overnight. There's a condition
attached to this permission. The groups must make donations to
the National Deaf Children's Society, the ends chosen charity. The

(44:00):
arrangement benefits everyone. Ghost hunters get exclusive access to the
property overnight when it's otherwise closed. The charity receives funding.
The hotel gets maintenance work completed without other guests being
disturbed by construction noise. Guests arrive carrying wish aboards, electromagnetic
field detectors, digital voice recorders, thermal imaging cameras, and various

(44:22):
electronic devices designed to detect or measure paranormal activity the
hotel means a collection of ghost hunting equipment that previous
visitors leave behind, either accidentally or because they decided they
did not want to take certain items home with them.
Some guests requested permission to conduct formal seances on the premises.
Blind Count grants these requests without much concern about what

(44:45):
might happen. Her policy involves letting people do what they
came to do, then cleaning up afterward and preparing for
the next group. She doesn't participate in the investigations herself,
doesn't sit in on the seances, doesn't ask to see
the footage they capture. She's been at the Mermaid Inn
for forty three years and hasn't personally experienced anything supernatural

(45:07):
during that entire time. The hotel maintains strict policies about
nighttime wandering. The building is six hundred years old. The
floors creak with every single step, because that's what happens
to wooden floors that have been walked on for six centuries.
Guests who leave their rooms at night to explore the
hallways or use the bathroom inevitably wake other guests with

(45:29):
every footfall. The staff emphasizes this during check in, asking
people to minimize nighttime movement as much as possible. The
policy serves a dual purpose. It keeps guests from disturbing
each other, and it prevents people from wandering around in
the dark, pretending to be ghosts and scarying other guests,
which has apparently happened enough times to warrant specific rules

(45:52):
about it. The building's age produces natural sounds that guests
unfamiliar with historic structures might interpret as paranormal activity. The
in features sloping ceilings, exposed beams that expand and contract
with temperature changes, and multiple staircases that creak and groan
as the wood settles. Blincow and her staff take pride

(46:15):
in maintaining the building in as traditional a condition as
practically possible. They upgrade only when absolutely necessary, preferring to
preserve the authentic medieval atmosphere rather than modernize for convenience.
Most Haunted, a British paranormal investigation television series, filmed its
first season at the Mermaid Inn in two thousand and two.

(46:36):
The production brought crews, cameras, lighting equipment, and theatrical smoke
machines to create atmosphere for the broadcast. The smoke machines
created a problem the producers hadn't anticipated. Guests staying at
the hotel saw smoke filling the hallways and thought the
building was actually on fire. People started evacuating, Some grabbed

(46:57):
fire extinguishers, others called emergency services. The confusion forced producers
to shut down the smoke machines, immediately abandoning their plans
to enhance the spooky atmosphere with artificial fog. The incident
reveals something interesting about the Mermaid Inn's reputation. The building's
genuine historical atmosphere, its documented age, its connection to violent

(47:19):
criminals and religious persecution apparently isn't dramatic enough for television.
Producers felt they needed to add artificial smoke to make
it look properly haunted, which suggests that real haunted locations
don't actually look the way movies and television have trained
us to expect them to look. The building just looks

(47:39):
like an old inn, because that's what it is. The
creepiness comes from knowing the history, from hearing the stories,
from experiencing unexplained events inside the rooms. It doesn't denounce
itself with Hollywood fog and dramatic lighting. Despite its supernatural reputation,
or perhaps because of it, the Mura made In maintains

(48:01):
a four point five rating on trip Advisor. Guests leave
reviews praising the food, the service, the historical atmosphere, and
the unique experience of staying in a building that's genuinely
medieval rather than themed to look that way. The restaurant
has earned two Double A rosettes and achievement that requires
consistent high quality food, preparation and service. The kitchen serves

(48:24):
both British and French cuisine using fresh, local ingredients. Guests
can dine in the large restaurant with its linen fold paneling,
choose the cozier Doctor Sinn dining room, or book the
private boardroom for evening meals, lunch, and breakfast. The property
offers thirty one rooms accommodating up to seventy guests. The

(48:44):
Giant's Fireplace bar, where hawkerst Gang members once sat with
their pistols displayed, remains operational. The function rooms host meetings,
wedding receptions and celebrations. Those sellers from eleven to fifty
six still exist beneath the building, accessible to guests curious
enough to explore them. The building earned Grade two listing

(49:05):
status from English Heritage in October nineteen fifty one. The
Grade two designation identifies it as a particularly important structure
of more than special interest, providing legal protections against demolition
or inappropriate modifications. As of February two thousand and one,
it was one of seventy five Grade two listed buildings
in Rather, the local government district containing Rye. Overnight stays

(49:30):
for two guests start at approximately two hundred pounds, with
bed and breakfast included. Packages that include dinner raise the
price to around three hundred pounds. The hotel provides on
side parking for fifteen vehicles, making it the only accommodation
within Ry's medieval citadel offering dedicated parking. That detail matters
more than it might seem. Rise medieval street layout wasn't

(49:53):
designed for automobiles. Finding parking near your hotel can determine
whether you enjoy your visit or spend hours circling narrow
streets looking for illegal spot Blincow offers a walk through
time a guided tour of the Haunted hotel on the
last Sunday of every month. The tour covers the building's history,

(50:13):
The documented paranormal activity and the architectural features that make
it unique. She shares stories accumulated over forty three years
of working there, though she is careful to distinguish between
what she has personally witnessed and what guests have reported
to her. Guests seeking thrills consistently request the same six rooms.

(50:34):
Room one remains the most requested, despite its reputation for
a relationship disrupting paranormal activity, or more likely because of
that reputation. People want to experience something they can't explain.
They want to wake up and find their clothes moved.
They want to argue with their partner about who did it,
then realize neither of them could have. They want a

(50:55):
story to tell when they get home, something that happened
to them personally, rather than something they read about online.
The mermaid Inn's guest Book reads like a history of
British royalty and international celebrity. Queen Elizabeth the First visited
in fifteen seventy three and declared Rai Royal in recognition
of the town's loyalty in sea defense. That designation still stands.

(51:19):
The Queen Mother attended a luncheon at the end in
nineteen eighty two when she was named Lord Warden of
the Chinqua Ports, a ceremonial title that connects back to
the medieval naval confederation. Charlie Chaplin stayed there, so did
Prince Edward Pierce Brosnan, Johnny Depp, and Andy Garcia. Lord
Alfred Douglas, better known as Bosie in accounts of Oscar

(51:40):
Wilde's life, visited the inn. These weren't publicity stunts or
promotional appearances. There were people choosing to stay at the
Mermaid Inn because of its reputation, its history, and its food.
The exterior appeared in the nineteen eighty three film Yellowbeard,
a post Monty Python project written by and starring several
Python members along with other British comedy legends. The production

(52:02):
filmed scenes around the Inn, the neighboring Church Square, and
the cobbled Mermaid Street leading to the entrance. The movie
marked actor Marty Feldman's final project. He died in Mexico
during production, making the wry footage some of his last
completed work. The building also inspired fictional characters. Author Russell

(52:22):
Thorndike created Doctor Sinn, a vicar of Dime Church who
secretly led a smuggling gang of six hundred men. Thorndyke
based the character and the actual Hawkhurst Gang and their
activities at the Mermaid Inn. George Arlis played Doctor Sin
in a nineteen thirty seven feature film. Patrick McGowan took
the role in the nineteen sixties Walt Disney version. Thorndyke

(52:44):
frequently visited The Mermaid Inn during the nineteen fifties when
the Gregory family owned it, presumably gathering material and atmosphere
for his novels. Blin Count characterizes modern guests as people
seeking excitement. Their ordinary routines don't provide the super natural
reputation draws thrill seekers who specifically request the most actively

(53:04):
haunted rooms. They arrive armed with recording equipment, cameras set
to night vision mode, and paranormal detection devices purchased specifically
for this trip. The arguments between couples continue as regularly
as the reported ghost sightings. Partners accuse each other of
pranks and sabotage. They insist they remember exactly where they

(53:25):
placed their belongings. They get frustrated when their partner suggests
they are misremembering. The accusations escalate from you moved my stuff,
to your doing this on purpose to mess with me,
to why are you lying about this? They never consider
the third option until later, sometimes not until they're driving
home and the adrenaline has worn off enough for them

(53:46):
to think clearly. The inns centuries old residents might be responsible.
The poltergeist that blin Cow finds so amusing, might have
been rearranging their possessions while they slept. The building makes
no apologies for it aged infrastructure. The promotional materials acknowledged
the sloping ceilings, the creaking floorboards, the numerous staircases that

(54:07):
wind through the structure in ways that don't follow modern
building logic. Guests uncomfortable with authentic historical accommodations receive a
straightforward suggestion stay at a travel lodge instead. The mermaid
and offers something chain hotels can't replicate. It provides genuine history,
documented connections to violent criminals and religious refugees. Architectural features

(54:31):
from fourteen twenty and sellers from eleven fifty six. The
ghost stories didn't get manufactured for tourism. They accumulated naturally
over six hundred years of operation, reported by guests and
staff who had no reason to lie about their experiences
because the hotel's reputation was already established. Research conducted by

(54:53):
simoni Is analyzed data on known haunted locations throughout the
United Kingdom, examining reporting, paranormal activity, historical documentation, and consistency
of witness accounts. Their analysis determined the Mermaid Inn ranks
as the most haunted hotel in Sussex and the most
haunted accommodation in the entire Southeast region of England. For

(55:16):
guests brave enough to book room one, the experience includes
more than antique furniture, exposed beams and linen fold paneling.
It includes the genuine possibility of waking to find belongings
relocated to places you didn't put them. It includes clothes
mysteriously dampened on a chair by the fireplace, despite the
absence of any water source. It includes the beginning of

(55:38):
an argument that will follow you down the stairs, through
the parking lot and into your car, while Judith Blinkow
watches from her office window, knowing exactly what caused the dispute,
but saying nothing. Because guests need to figure these things
out for themselves. The ghosts sit the Mermaid In don't
announce themselves with dramatic manifestations or Hollywood special effects. They

(56:00):
move your clothes while you sleep. They relocate your belongings
to different corners of the room. They cause arguments between
couples who blame each other for supernatural mischief, then occupy
whatever corner of the room they've chosen for that night.
Blink Cow has never seen them herself, but she does
believe the stories. After forty three years of hundreds of

(56:22):
nearly identical reports from guests who never spoke to each other,
the pattern becomes impossible to dismiss as coincidence or shared delusion.
Something moves those clothes. Something moves those clothes, Something soaks
them in water that doesn't come from any identifiable source.
Something enjoys causing just enough chaos to start an argument,

(56:44):
then sits back and watches the humans blame each other
for problems they didn't create. I would suggest that if
you are a married couple, you not book room one, unless,
of course, you really like that making up part of
your relationship after a heated argument. Thanks for listening. If

(57:14):
you'd like to read these stories for yourself, you can
read them on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a
link to both stories in the episode description. While there,
you can also visit my dark News blog for stories
that never make it to the podcast. If you like
the show, please share it with someone you know who
loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or
unsolved mysteries like you do. All stories used in Weird

(57:37):
Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise. Weird
Darkness is a registered trademark Copyright Weird Darkness. And now
that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you
with a little light mark thirteen, verses five and six,
Jesus replied, don't let anyone mislead you, for many will
come in my name claiming I am the Messiah. They

(57:58):
will deceive many. And a final thought, God has given
us two hands, one to receive with and the other
to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding.
We are channels made for giving. Billy Graham, I'm Daryn Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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