Ep244 - Isabella: The She-Wolf Queen - Creep Street Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Get used to the cell, because this is where you'll
be spending the next few days until you die.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, there's nowhere for you to run now, you trador
is scum.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
What do you plan to do with me? Well, torture, execution,
maybe a little bit of both. Speaking of which, go
get the hot poker.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm on it, my god.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
You bastards truly are sick. Yeah that's right. Well, when
you betray the crown, you get what's coming to you.
Oh here, it is nice and hot. All right, I'm
not afraid do your worst. Take that hot poker and
go ahead and shove it up my ass. What you

(00:57):
heard me, I'm not afraid. Take that red hot poker
of yours, spread these cheeks and shove it in my ass.
No one said anything about shoving it in your ass. Well,
what were you gonna do with it?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Maybe hold it to the bottom of your feet at
the worst, gouge your eyes out.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
But oh, I see getting soft on me now, huh,
finally growing a conscience. Well now it's too late. Go ahead,
do what you were intending to do. Shove it in
my ass. Listen, no one wants to shove anything up
your ass. Okay, ha cowards.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
You know what, whatever tomorrow, you're gonna die anyway at
the end of a rope.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Okay, tomorrow, why wait until then? Do it? Now? Bundle
up that rope and shove it in my ass. No,
no one's gonna shove anything up your ass. Don't have
the guts for it, do you.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
It sounds like you want someone to show something up
your ass.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Come on, I'll even make it easy on you here. Whoa, whoa,
Come on here, it is right there. I'll even put
this funnel in there. Yeah, go ahead, do your worst. Jesus,
would you put your pants back on?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's disgusting.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
God, you are obnoxious. I can see now why they
threw the book at you. Yeah, that's right. Take that
book and shove it right here in my ass.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
You know what, this job is not even worth it.
I can't take this anymore. I'm done. I quit.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Come on, Steve, I just got you this job.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Bill. You can take this job and shove it up
your ass.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Or you can shove it up my ass. Shut up.

(03:09):
Citizens of the Milky Way. My name is Dylan Hackworth
and I'm Gage Hurley, and you have arrived in the
medieval village. Just outside the castle. That's right, the windsor howling,
crickets chirpin. Then off in the distance. That's right, the

(03:32):
hounds of Creep Street are calling. Folks. Once again, we
are headed over to the wind swept heart of the UK,
this time in the midlands little area known as Norfolk.
There you can find the ruins of Castle Rising, still
looming like the bones of a long dead giant, a

(03:53):
silent reminder of a time when knights clashed in iron armor,
and every noble of wealth and title needed stone walls
to keep the world at bay well. Castle Rising is
famous for sheltering a woman who was both royal and reviled,
and she is the subject of today's episode. Isabella the

(04:16):
She Wolf Queen. That's right, that's right, and let me
just claw at you with my source here the Best
of British Ghost Stories, Volume eight by Sophie Jackson, and

(04:37):
of course, Queen Isabella the so called She Wolf of France.
She was the wife of the doomed Edward the Second
and Isabella's story is one soaked in scandal, and rumors
have traveled through the centuries that claim she may have
even orchestrated her husband's murder. And that she pulled the

(04:59):
string that led to his bloody inn. Now some say
that her son, King Edward I banished her to Castle
Rising as punishment for her traitor's deeds. The truth, as always,
is a little more complicated. As we have well learned
here on Creep Street, Isabella wasn't a prisoner here, not technically.

(05:23):
She lived out her final years surrounded by luxury tapestries,
fine gowns, hunting parties and feasts. But depending on who
is telling the story, well, that story might change considerably.
Because if Isabella did betray the English crown, well it
would make sense why English histories would not paint her

(05:45):
in the best lights. The same goes for Castle Rising,
because for all of its splendor, it would become the
stage for something much darker. The story of Castle Rising
doesn't begin with Isabella, though, like so many old structures
across England, it was born from ambition and blood. The

(06:09):
castle itself was erected around eleven thirty eight by William
d Agbigny the Second, a man whose family had crossed
over from Normandy in the wake of the conquest. Born
just a few years after William the Conqueror stormed the
island di Agbogny grew up in a brutal world, one
that prioritized power, loyalty, and the strength of your sword

(06:34):
arm Well, ambitious and cutting, William rose through the ranks quickly.
He fought for King Stephen during the bitter civil war
that ripped England, depart after Henry the First's death. Then
he served Henry the Second with fierce loyalty, helping him
to earn titles in Land. First he was made the

(06:55):
Earl of Arundale, and then the Earl of Lincoln.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Lincoln. Isn't Matthew McConaughey the Earl of Lincoln?

Speaker 1 (07:04):
I think, if you ask anyone today, absolutely, Earl of Lincoln.
Tom was a flat circle here at Castle Rising, right,
al right, all right? But William, he wasn't just another
blood soaked noble, No, no, no no. William also had
a streak of something rare for his time, a bit

(07:24):
of charity. He used part of his fortune to build
a leper hospital not that far from Castle Rising, a
place where the sick and abandoned were shown mercy in
a historical landscape otherwise ruled by violence and greed. Well
the year that William d Abigny laid the first stones
of Castle Rising. He also made a power move that

(07:48):
would change his fate forever. He married at Eliza, the
widow of King Henry the First, and with her came
not just beauty, but serious wealth, serious Chiching folks. Flush
with new fortunes and new influence. William Ziego began to
swell a little bit to match the towers he was building.

(08:11):
One chronicler at the time cynically posited that William had
become quote intolerably puffed up and looked down upon every
other eminence in the world except the King. Well once again,
perhaps that is true, but history, as we know looks
different depending on where you're viewing it from. And William

(08:35):
didn't waste time in flaunting his new found wealth and status.
With at Eliza's riches burning a hole in his pockets.
William built two newcastles and expanded on a third. Stone
and mortar weren't just for defense anymore, baby, No, no, no,
They were monuments to a man that thought he could

(08:56):
carve his legacy into the very bones of England itself. Well,
but legacies have a way of twisting themselves into curses.
Despite all of its grandeur, Castle Rising was never truly
built for war. Strategically, it was rather useless. The land
was poor and the surrounding area barely populated, and from

(09:19):
a military point of view, it held no real value.
Some would say that William chose the spot simply because
the land itself was cheap. At first, it might have
been meant as nothing more than an oversized hunting lodge,
a place to show off without worrying too much about
battle or sieges. But like everything else William di Agbigny touched,

(09:43):
Castle Rising began to grow. By eleven forty five, it
had swelled into something much more powerful. William was even
granted the right to open a mint within the castle walls,
meaning he didn't just rule from Castle Rising. He literally
made his own money there, stamping his name into the

(10:05):
kingdom one coin at a time. And when William di
Abigny finally died, Castle Rising didn't fall silent. It passed
like a crown from hand to hand, first to his
son and then to his grandson. William the Fourth, the
man who served the infamous King John and died overseas

(10:27):
coming home from the bloody sands of the Fifth Crusade,
the curse of the castle seemed to direct itself around them.
His great grandson inherited the estate next, but he died childless,
so it then passed to his brother, Hugh, and Hugh
likewise left no heirs to walk its halls. So with

(10:48):
no bloodlines left to claim it, Castle Rising passed to
a new name, Roger de Montau, But no matter who
owned it, the stones kept its memories of blood and ambition.
The Montalts were a big name, once a solid baronial family,

(11:09):
but by the early thirteen hundreds, their fortunes were starting
to rock. In thirteen twenty seven, Roger de Montalt's younger
brother Robert, who had inherited Castle Rising, sold the rights
back to the crown. He negotiated a lifetime lease for
himself and his wife Emma, a desperate attempt to cling

(11:30):
to a fading legacy. At the time, the country itself
was a house of cards, and holding it all together
for the moment were Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
They ruled England as regents for the young King Edward
the Third, but everyone knew it couldn't last. When Edward

(11:52):
came of age, he moved fast against his mother and
her lover. Mortimer was executed hanged like a common trade,
and Isabella, his own mother, was spared but pushed into
the shadows. She didn't fight it either. She retired from
public life, disgraced, but still a royal and very much alive.

(12:13):
Emma de Montalt, now a widow, sold her rights to
Castle Rising to Isabella, and thus the fallen queen moved in.
This lonely fortress in the windswept Norfolk fields would become
the last stage for the she Wolf of France. A
queen without a throne, a predator without a hunt. Isabella

(12:35):
stayed at Castle Rising for the rest of her life,
a queen without a crown, but never without comfort. With
a generous yearly income courtesy of her son, King Edward
the Third, she lived in luxury behind the greystone walls
of the castle. Minstrels sang for huntsman rode out into
the tangled woods at her command. Grooms tended to her stable,

(13:00):
her silks, and her aging but still formidable dignity. And
yet despite all of the wealth flowing into Castle Rising,
Isabella still managed to drown herself in debt. Mama like
to spend local merchants grumbled that the she Wolf of
France was quick to take but slow to pay, another

(13:23):
queenly habit she never quite shook off. The walls might
have been filled with music and feasting, but something inside
them was quietly festering. When Isabella's long and complicated life
finally ended in thirteen fifty eight, Castle Rising didn't fall
silent for long. The castle passed into the hands of

(13:44):
her grandson, Edward the Black Prince, one of the most
feared and celebrated warriors of his age. Under his watch,
Castle Rising got a second breadth of light. He ordered
repairs to one of its towers, a structure known back
then as the Nightingale Tower, though today no one's really
sure which crumbling piece of stone it actually was. The

(14:08):
Black Prince never lived long enough to wear the crown
he was promised. He died before his father, leaving behind
only a young son to carry the weight of a kingdom.
When King Edward the Third finally passed, the crown, and
Castle Rising with it, fell into the hands of Richard
the Second, a boy of just ten years old, too

(14:29):
young to remember the wars, too young to understand the
blood that still clung to the castle walls. But in England,
youth has never been a shield against the demands of power.
Richard the Second's reign was chaos stitched together with gold thread,
beautiful from a distance, of course, but always fraying at

(14:51):
the scene. During his rule, Castle Rising passed through several hands,
including two of Richard's own uncles, but after Richard's downfall
and subsequent death, the courts stepped in, declaring those transfers illegal.
The castle was yanked back into royal control, falling into

(15:13):
the possession of Henry the Fifth, a king who knew
a thing or two about blood and legacy. And as
the years rolled forward, Castle Rising's roll began to change.
It wasn't a fortress anymore. It became a hunting lodge,
a country retreat for nobility who wanted the thrill of
the chase without the burden of remembering all the battles

(15:35):
fought in the shadows of its walls. Ironically, very similar
to what di Abigny had first constructed all those years ago.
But stones refused to forget, and so did the dead.
By the end of the fifteenth century, Castle Rising was crumbling.
The grandeur was gone eaten away. By time whether and neglect.

(16:00):
A report written somewhere between fifteen oh three and fifteen
oh six described the place as being in quote evil repair.
The great roof of the keep rotted clean away, letting
the cold rain pour straight into the heart of the ruin.
Another survey wasn't any kinder. It suggested that the castle
needed to be repaired immediately or simply torn down completely.

(16:25):
It had become dangerous to even step foot inside of
either way. The message was clear, Castle Rising's time was over.
Only its bones still stood. Everything else was too broken,
and indeed even too haunted to be buried. Some half
hearted attempts were made to save Castle Rising. A new

(16:47):
set of lodgings was built among the ruins, but that
was just like slapping a fresh coat of paint on
a sinking ship. It wasn't enough, not even close. By
the fifteen forties, the castle was a wreck. The roof
and inner floors of the Keep had collapsed into themselves,
and every year the cost of repairing the heap crept higher.

(17:10):
Time was eating away at both the castle's structure as
well as its prestige. It was in this crumbling, sad
state that Castle Rising was gifted to the Duke of Norfolk,
Thomas Howard in fifteen forty four by none other than
Henry the Eighth himself. Howard himself wasn't just another noble.

(17:31):
He was the uncle of two of Henry's doomed wives,
Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. At first, the castle must
have surely seemed like a prize, but as we know,
fate can often have a sick sense of humor. Only
two years after receiving Castle Rising, Thomas Howard fell out

(17:54):
of favor with the king and was soon rotting in
the Tower of London, waiaiting for the axe to drop,
the same axe that had already claimed so many of
his bloodline. The only thing that saved him, though, was
the death of Henry the Eighth himself, one final twist
of fate in a kingdom built on betrayal. Castle Rising

(18:17):
now had a new master, but it remained, as ever
a place where loyalty meant little, and looking over your
shoulder was the name of the game. It's doubtful that
Thomas Howard, ever, actually even laid eyes on Castle Rising,
and if he did, he clearly had no desire to
breathe any life back into the rotting stone. Let's face it,

(18:39):
Henry the Eighth dying was a dang close call for
Thomas Howard, and it wouldn't at all be surprising if
he didn't want anything to do with the place. The
castle was essentially a poisoned gift, and Howard treated it
like one, letting it fester quietly on the edge of
his holdings. Thirty years after he inherited it, another survey

(19:01):
was taken, and boy, the findings were grim. It was
estimated that about two thousand British pounds a staggering fortune
at the time, would be needed to make the place
livable again. And if they knocked the whole thing down
and sold the materials, they doubted they could even scrap
together sixty six pounds to give you an idea, two

(19:24):
k pounds in the fifteen seventies would be anywhere from
ten to twenty million in today's currency. Castle Rising had
become a ghost, too broken a fix, but oh baby,
too stubborn to die. The future of Castle Rising once
the glittering refuge of Queen Isabella was past the point

(19:45):
of saving. The outer walls and the buildings that had
once bustled with life were torn down leaving behind only
the hollowed out keep, the broken stone latrines, and the
battered remain of the chapel. The grandeur was gone, the laughter,
the scheming, the betrayals, all of the drama of history,

(20:08):
all swallowed by the indifferent gulf of time. The only
inhabitant now was nature, rabbits digging their burrows through the
dead foundations, turning the ruins into a home for creatures
who couldn't care less about the blood that was spilt there.
And over the next hundred years, Castle Rising was picked

(20:28):
apart like a carcass. The gravel floor of the keep
was dug up, carted away to patch roads, while stones
were stripped from its walls to build a simple sluice
gait piece. By peace and somewhat poetically, the castle bled
into the countryside it once ruled, and yet somehow the

(20:50):
Howard family still held on to what was left of it.
It wasn't until Mary Howard and her husband, FULK Greenville
Howard came along that anyone seemed to care about preserving
the battered ruins. They ordered repairs to the keep, They
excavated the inner bailey, and for the first time in centuries,

(21:10):
Castle Rising seemed to breathe with new life again, but
restoration comes at a price. They're digging uncovered the old
Norman chapel, but it also destroyed layers of medieval history
that can never be recovered. Saving the castle came at
the cost of a racing part of its soul. The

(21:32):
restoration efforts dragged on into the new century. By nineteen hundred,
the castle was finally opened to the public, a battered
monument to its past, both good and ugly. A lone
caretaker was assigned to watch over the ruins, living in
a rough little house tucked into a corner of the
crumbling keep. It wasn't much of a living quarters, with

(21:56):
just enough shelter to survive the cold and damp, but
some thing other than the caretaker still lurked in the
ruins of Castle Rising. By nineteen fifty eight, the place
was once again falling into a dangerous state of disrepair.
The Ministry of Works stepped in, taking legal custody of
the site, though technically it still remained under the name

(22:18):
of the Howard family. Regardless, though real conservation could finally
now begin. The ancient stones were stabilized, crumbling walls short
up and after centuries of tunneling through the ruins, those
pesky rabbits were evicted from their warrens their burrows, having
done as much damage to the castle as any siege

(22:40):
or battle could ever do. In nineteen eighty three, English
Heritage took over the care of Castle Rising, locking it
in place as one of Britain's officially protected ancient monuments.
Now visitors can walk its tattered halls, climb its battered stairs,
and even stand in the same places where power once

(23:00):
whispered and conspired. But the castle is more than just
weathered stone and roped off corridors. Anyone who's been there
will tell you that the castle still feels watched. And
it's not surprising, of course that the most famous ghost
tied to Castle Rising is, of course, Isabella herself, the

(23:21):
she Wolf of France. Her reputation and nickname alone is
enough to fill one with a sense of foreboding. She
was a woman accused of regicide, treason, forbidden love, and
a murderous insanity. Some say she never truly left.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
She was almost a canine.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Karen, that's right, exactly exactly now. What we just did there,
we gave you kind of a quick run of just
the whole castle's history up until today. Now we can
sink our teeth into the meaty parts here the main
course passed. The we all gro out and potatoes. I'll
have a second helping, because Isabella's story begins far from

(24:07):
Castle Rising, across the Channel in the courts of France.
Born the daughter of a king, she was handed over
to England for marriage aka a cynical diplomatic offering a
royal child exchanged for a tenuous peace. She married Edward
the Second when she was still just a girl, and folks,

(24:30):
he was a grown man. She was literally twelve years old.
Quite nasty, quite nasty.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
She's twelve, she's grown. She's ready to get married.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
I know twelve, good lord.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
She's just sitting at home taking up space.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
I know. Get a job, Yeah, get a job.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's time.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
But like I said, her childhood was already marred by
death and mystery. Her mother had died when she was
young under suspicious circumstances, and though some at the time
suspected murder, modern historians cast doubt on it. Still it's
set the tone. Isabella's world was one where queens were

(25:13):
exchanged like chess pieces and power always came at a cost.
By sixteen she had given birth to their first son,
Edward the Third. She was a teenager, crowned in motherhood,
trapped in a kingdom not her own, married to a
man more interested in his male favorites than his queen. Aka.

(25:37):
Edward the Second was actually into dudes. Isabella was learning
early in royal courts that love is very, very rare,
but leverage, leverage is everything. Well. Edward the Second, he
was a king who never quite fit the mole. Controversy

(25:58):
clung to him like a second skin. Rumors of affairs
with his male favorites, specifically with Piers Gaveston and h.
Dispenser the Younger followed him everywhere, and whether or not
they were actually true wasn't the point. What mattered was
that everyone believed it regardless. Edward's relations with his favorites

(26:20):
infuriated the barons, turning allies into enemies and his court
into a political battlefield. Revolts against his reign flared again
and again, and through it all Isabella stood by his side,
at least at first, but naturally a rift began to

(26:41):
form between the two of them. Their mirage of a
marriage became like a wound for Isabella, festering with estrangement, resentment,
and betrayal. But finally Isabella made her move. While on
a diplomatic mission in her home country of France, she

(27:02):
got together with her lover, Roger Mortimer, and with him
at her side, she launched a full scale revolt against
her own husband. Edward the Second was captured, humiliated, and
not long after died in captivity. Some say he was
murdered in a way so brutal that the very telling

(27:25):
of it turns the stomach. Of all the brutal ends
that have befallen history's fallen royals, few match the macabre
infamy of the legend surrounding Edward the Second's death. Buckle
up if you're a little squeamish, because this one is.
It's a little rough, folks, it's a little rough. According

(27:46):
to the legend, King Edward the Second of England didn't
die by the blade, or even by poison, but by
something far more grotesque. It's said that in thirteen twenty seven,
inside the cold, damp walls of Berkeley Castle, Edward was
murdered with a red hot poker forced up his ass

(28:10):
in a calculated act of torture so horrific its haunted
English folklore for centuries. Here is how the legend goes.
After being ousted, Edward was thrown into a miserable cell
in the bowels of Berkeley Castle. Now executing a former
king outright risked stirring up rebellion from his remaining allies.

(28:34):
So allegedly, the conspirators chose a method of murder that
would leave no marks, nothing that would scream regicide on
the outside, But boy, oh boy, would it sure hurt
on the inside. On the night of September the twenty
first of thirteen twenty seven, Edward's captor supposedly held him

(28:58):
down in some kind of a horn or funnel into
his rear, and then slid or red hot poker through it,
incinerating his internal organs without leaving a trace on the
outside of his body. They say his screams rang through
the castle halls, bouncing off the stone walls, echoing with agony,

(29:21):
but no one came to help. No one wanted to
know the goal cleaned corpse with no evidence, just the
announcement of a sickly monarch who conveniently didn't make it
through the night. It's a tale so lurid and depraved
that even centuries later, historians can't decide whether it was

(29:42):
just propaganda or some sort of sick poetic justice, or
just England's most horrifying royal urban legend.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
God, I can't imagine that.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
I mean, I know, and let's be honest, obviously we're
talking medieval times. If he actually did have same sex
dalliances with other men, obviously that would not be you know,
given the time looked down on, so you can also
imagine it was probably a dark, cruel way of kind
of commenting on that as well, so very hateful whether

(30:15):
or not he was a good king or a you know,
obviously he didn't mind marrying a twelve year old and whatnot,
but his homosexuality, obviously, looking through it to today's lens,
we know is obviously not a crime and whatnot. But yeah,
while we don't know for sure if that happened, it's wow. Wow,
it makes.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
For a about as cruel a punishment as you can imagine.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
It's very Game of Thrones. It's like something like a
like something you'd hear in like an episode of Game
of Thrones. It's brutal, absolutely brutal, and they say that
the order came from Isabella herself. Whatever the truth behind
Edward's death, for a time Isabella lived like a queen, reborn, powerful,

(30:58):
unchallenged and raped and the rewards of treason, but nothing
bought with blood ever last, because when her son, Edward
the Third, came of age, the boy wanted revenge, and
not even a crown could soften the memory of his
murdered father. Still, Edward the Third couldn't just outright bring

(31:20):
himself to kill his own mother, so he turned his
rage onto her lover instead, Roger Mortimer, the man who
had risen from nothing to rule England behind Isabella's throne.
By the order of Edward the Third, he was dragged
through the streets and hanged like a common criminal.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
Poor guy. I mean, he's suffering for her actions. That
really doesn't seem fair at all.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Right, I mean, obviously, I'm assuming we have to imagine
there was true love there, least on Isabella's part, because
if she's gonna make that risk to turn on her
husband invading, you got to think she loved Roger Mortimer.
And you know, who knows what his intentions were like
if he was that power hungry or not, or if

(32:09):
he just loved Isabella and would do anything she wanted,
and who really knows, But yeah, he died like a
common criminal, didn't get anything shoved in his ass.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah it could have been worse, but still wasn't good,
I guess. So, Hey, anytime you're going through a rough
patch in life, just be thankful you don't have a
red hot poke or shoved up your ass.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yes, it gives take this crown and shove it a
whole new meeting. Some say, though, that the trauma of
Mortimer's brutal execution broke Isabella, and while she stayed in
solitude at Castle Rising, visitors to the Ruin today speak
of horrible, disembodied screams echoing through the crumbling halls, cries

(32:53):
of a woman in deep grief who had lost everything.
And no, it wouldn't be the screams of Edward, because,
like we said, he died at Berkeley Castle, so not
those kinds of screams, like of immediate pain, but like
emotional agony rather than physical agony. Because at first I
thought that, I was like, well, maybe it's Edward, but
then I thought, oh, he died it at a different castle,

(33:15):
so the cries of a woman in deep grief who
has lost everything. The she wolf was now alone.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
She was a lone wolf.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
That's right. She was now a lone wolf in the
worst kind of way. And it's on the upper floors
of the keep, in the castle's shattered heights, where Isabella
may once have had her chambers, and it's there that
her spirit is said to still linger. And think about it.
Obviously there were less cruel ways to kill Edward. The second,
of course, if that was indeed how they killed him,

(33:49):
you know, who knows if if that was really if
it was by Isabella. We do know Isabella led a
an uprising against him. Who knows if it was her
word that gave the order to kill him, especially in
that manner. Who knows? But think about it from Isabella's perspective.
While she did live the royal life, a life far

(34:09):
more blessed than the average life of someone living in
medieval Europe, can you really blame her for any resentment
that she might have held against Edward? Since she was
even a teenager, she was nothing more than a bargaining chip,
married away and shipped off at the age of twelve
from her home to a full grown man, and then

(34:31):
when she perhaps did find love for the first time
in Roger Mortimer, he too is taken from her and
killed without dignity. I'd probably be haunting some too. Visitors
have reported often hearing a manic laughter trailing through the
hollow Stone Corridor, a wild, broken kind of laughter, one

(34:54):
of hatred and disdain. The laughter is often tied to
the she Wolf herself, a queen gone mad with grief, betrayal,
and guilt. But there's another layer to the legend. The
Howard family once claimed that during the eighteenth century, a
mental patient was actually housed within the ruins. And if

(35:18):
that's true, and in a building so ruined it's hard
to say where they could have even kept someone, then
the laughter and screams that chill the blood today might
not even belong to Isabella at all, but rather to
the fading, forgotten soul, a lost life buried not by
history books but by sheer neglect. In twenty sixteen, the

(35:42):
Essex ghost hunting team made their way to Castle Rising,
drawn by stories of the lingering spirits that may still
roam its empty halls, and while exploring the so called
White Room, they snapped a series of photographs, and what
they captured still stirs debate. In one image, a figure

(36:02):
appeared a woman in medieval style dress, standing silent and still,
with what looked like a large dog seated faithfully at
her side. The investigators couldn't explain it. No living soul
had been standing there when the photo was taken. Of course,

(36:24):
investigator Andy Radley was behind the camera at the time
and took the snapshot, and he was quoted saying, I
was in the White Room, which is a lovely room
thought to be where Queen Isabella spent a lot of
her time sewing and so on. There were around seven
of us in the room at the time. My friend

(36:44):
turned to me and whispered, can you hear anything? So
I listened carefully, and it sounded like just the sound
of a long dress wishing over the stones coming up
the shadowy stairway outside. I decided to take a picture
to see what I might capture, and then realize that
there was what appeared to be a figure who stood

(37:07):
in the middle of the room. When I looked at
it on the small lens, I didn't initially think much
of it. It was definitely interesting, and I showed everyone,
But it wasn't until later when we looked at the
picture on a computer that I realized just what I
had caught on camera. There is a clear figure from

(37:29):
the clothing and the shoulder pads that looks like someone
wearing medieval dress. They even looked to have something on
their head like a queen might wear. But what's most
striking is the fact that there is a dog like
shape at her feet. It is very clear, and considering
that she was known as the Wolf Queen, it made

(37:52):
everyone think that what I had captured could have been
the ghost of Queen Isabella. So the whole notion of
wolf it kind of comes from two fold. People think,
did she have some sort of a dire wolf beast
that she had as a pet, or it might just
be like a nickname, like like the Wolf of Wall Street.

(38:14):
Someone's a look out that those guys are a pack
of wolves or something, you know, like being that you know,
as we know, probably in most English histories especially, they
would probably call her the she wolf, as she led
a whole insurrection against her husband and everything. So so
that's where the term wolf, it's not necessary, doesn't necessarily
mean she's like a werewolf. It either means she had

(38:36):
a wolf as a pet or just like the nickname
she got for being a trader essentially.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
And I mean she's also extremely cruel, so the wolf
label is certainly fitting for someone who ramra out of
the guy.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yes. Absolutely, If that's the case, you know that's one
hell of a strap on. Historians say that the dog
was likely a greyhound or a similar breed, the kind
of hunting dog that would have been right at home
in a royal household centuries ago. But of course the
real question is is that woman standing beside the spectral

(39:13):
hound Isabella? But considering Castle Rising's long history, she was
far from the only noble woman to have ever walked
its halls in silk and sorrow. Some say it might
be another lady of the castle, maybe one lost time
and left off the plaques and pamphlets. Well, whoever it was,

(39:35):
it's clear there was something sitting there now. The reason
some folks are quick to connect that ghostly woman and
her spectral dog to Isabella is because of that animal
by her side. Some have claimed that it's not a dog,
but it's Isabella's pet wolf. In her lifetime, Isabella was

(39:57):
never actually called she Wolf. It wasn't even something whispered
behind her back like a mean nickname. The infamous title
actually didn't come until nearly five hundred years after her death,
when Thomas Gray, an eighteenth century poet, decided to take
some creative liberties in the name of anti French propaganda.

(40:20):
Here we go, Like we said, history, right, it's often
you're often getting it from the eye of whoever's writing it.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
And this is i mean centuries later. So he's also
basing this on whatever documentation, whatever books were available at
the time on Queen Isabella.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
I mean all he had to read though, was red
hot Polker up the ass, and he was like she
Wolf Wolf. Yeah, I mean I feel like we're beating
that like dead horse. But when you do something like that,
I think you deserve to be stuck with that for
the rest of your existence.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yes, if she truly did order that, Whoo man talk
about spit roast in somebody. I mean, goodness, gracious, Ooho.
Just had to take a quick pause there, creep Street,
just to give your core palpitating hard ar rest. If
you're enjoying this episode, go ahead and follow us on Facebook,

(41:20):
Instagram at creep Street podcast Twitter at creep Street Pod,
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We got three different tiers there, something for every tier,
so get your fixings. We even got a free tier

(41:41):
where you can listen to the weekly sketches before they
go live on the episode. Now, without further ado, back
to today's story. In his pros, Thomas Gray painted Isabella
as a ravenu beast, a French born fiend, tearing into

(42:03):
her poor English husband with what he called quote unrelenting fangs.
It was poetic blood sport, not historical record, but the
image stuck, baby, and before long, Isabella the she wolf
became the Isabella we know today. Fact in fiction fused
together history, rewritten by a dang poet. So that ghostly

(42:30):
lady in the photo she may be many things, but
she's probably not keeping a wolf for a pet, which
brings us back to the legend. The Isabella wanders the
ruins of Castle Rising with her pet wolf walking silently
at her side. Here's the kicker. There's no historical evidence
that a wolf was ever kept at the castle, none

(42:53):
and no royal kennel lists or scribbled letters about feeding
raw meat to a snarling companion, And yet some folks
swear they have heard wolf howls in the dead of
night echoing through the ruins. And as for the photo,
the fearsome pup actually looks way more like a smooth
coated hound than a shaggy nightmare wolf, probably something closer

(43:17):
to a greyhound as we know, than a ghostly dier beast.
But whoever Andy captured in that image Isabella or not,
she is just one thread and a larger, weirder tapestry.
Because Castle Rising isn't home to just one ghost, there
have been plenty of supernatural reports to come from its

(43:38):
vacant halls. One visitor was a gal named don Clark.
She apparently got more than she bargained for. While exploring
the castle's cellar. She was walking alone in the dark
when suddenly she realized she wasn't alone. She turned around,
and there looming behind her was what she described as

(43:59):
a tall, gray looking guy. He stood completely silent and still,
just a pale figure towering over her, solid enough to
make her instinctively step back in shock. Her friend, who
was standing on the far side of the cellar, didn't
see the man, but he did see something. He later

(44:24):
said that he watched a gray shadow, maybe a mist
or a cloud circle around dawn, almost like it was
inspecting her. Some think that it might have been the
spirit of an old guard or perhaps a long dead
servant of the castle, making his usual rounds, unaware that
centuries have passed. And it's interesting, that's something we've encountered

(44:48):
a number of times in our haunting tales. Is for example,
you know, collecting like EVPs. Right, you say you have
five recorders laid out that are right next to each other.
Sometimes one can capture something clear as day and none
of the others do, and it's like, well, if someone
was talking, wouldn't they all capture it?

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Wow, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, there's belief that these that spirits can communicate using electromagnetism,
and maybe they can focus their intent on one thing.
So maybe in a similar vein, the woman turned and
happened to see a more well formed figure because for
whatever reason it was wanting to present to her. Maybe
it didn't even know the other guy was there, right,

(45:32):
and so it was presenting to her and that's why
her friend only saw like a kind of like a cloud,
like a misty cloud, rather than a bipedal humanoid form.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Right you know. And that's evidence right there, not just
the evidence of the recording, but the absence of the
recording on the other devices. That's evidence to something unusual,
something highly strange and possibly paranormal right there.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Right exactly right. It's like, you know, if we just
were to hit record on our tape deck and just
you and I were chatting, well, it would capture both
of our voices, so it would be weird if we
played it back and only one of our voices were there,
Like that would be like something like that. It's like,
for whatever reason, it must have maybe just wanted Dawn

(46:21):
to see it, rather than maybe it didn't even know
her friend was there, like I said, And so yeah,
interesting how these things may or may not work, and
how they may play. Like we always say, in our
conscious maybe there's something it's playing. It's appearing to her,
it's choosing to appear to her by whatever evoking calling

(46:42):
out to her consciousness, creating some sort of even just
some sort of a chemical reaction in the brain for her,
but not in the other guy to see whatever it
is she's.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Seeing, and like kind of what you were saying, it
almost suggests something that's non physical because of it only
appearing on one device, that maybe even if you were
there witnessing exactly what the recorder was, you wouldn't necessarily
see it either.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Right, Absolutely, that's a great point, absolutely well. An interesting
story concerning the castle spirits comes from a man named
Norman Fay. He worked at the castle as a custodian
for many years. Fay would often be there to open
up the castle grounds two paranormal investigation groups and would

(47:28):
show them around. During one of these investigations, Faye was
taking time for a break when something interesting happened, and
here's what he said. I wandered silently around the group,
snacking on potato rings, and we had four emf meters
lying on the seance table in the center of the room,

(47:50):
when suddenly all four meters sprang to life, registering a
high reading. I frivolously asked do you want one? And
a single flash confirmed the entity did so. I placed
a single ring on one of the meters and it
responded with a single flash. This experience was both profound

(48:12):
and highly amusing to think that great philosophical question regarding
after life survival was answered in such a mundane way,
And I was thinking about that it would be interesting,
especially if there were prisoners kept there and stuff, if
they're hungry, if they see someone eating, you know, it
might be a way. You know, if they're still living

(48:34):
in their time and they just see a man snacking
on something, they might it might be of like a
please or please anything, any crumb of food, any any water,
any It might be something like that why they would
react to his snacking.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Plus, if you've had those potato rings, you know they're
god irresistible.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
They're irresistible. Getting a bag of funions come on.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Funions are today's sponsor.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
And that brings us to today's spints. Well. Visitors and
staff alike have reported all kinds of strange activity, soft
weeping from empty chambers, phantom tapping on windows with no
one outside, doors creaking open on their own, as if
some unseen host is still making the rounds. And then

(49:21):
there's the mist, that strange creeping fog that drifts through
the ruins even on dry days, curling around corners and
even coiling around your ankles like the thing's gonna pants you.
I've never seen that on ghost adventures, someone just getting pants,
you know, just a purely innocent, but a good pantsing.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I mean, there's gotta be some paranormal pranksters.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Oh yeah, you have a good pantsing. None of this
spectral activity really necessarily screams for attention, like a you know,
someone screaming out in the night or something like that,
but it does seem as though something or some things
are still watching. Now, there is another infamous event in

(50:06):
the castle's history that also makes folks rightly feel uncomfortable
when visiting. And this we do know did for sure happen,
because it happened in eighteen fifty two, when records are
more you know, they're more modern and everything. And this
is we do know for a fact. This, you know.
For all the things we do know and might not
know about Isabella, this we do know. And it concerns

(50:30):
a man named John daw who was then forty nine
years old. John had some kind of a mental break.
Apparently he had long struggled with his mental health and
it was now what we might likely call something like
a manic depression. And though he'd made dark threats in
the past, saying he'd harm himself, for worse, take his

(50:52):
family with him. No one ever truly believed he'd actually
act on its chalked it up to mood swings or nerves,
and in those early days of April that year, things
actually seemed stable. But that calm was merely the calm
before the storm, because beneath that fragile calm, John daw

(51:15):
was unraveling, with something dark building within him. One Saturday evening,
his employer noticed something wasn't right. He said John seemed
in especially low spirits, even for him. He offered to
send for a doctor, and even called for one. However,

(51:35):
after a brief lookover, the doctor left with little concern,
offering no advice and no treatment, just that awful nineteenth
century dismissal of he'll be fine. But something shifted that night.
Whether it was the doctor's indifference that tipped the scale,
or whether John had already been plotting, no one can

(51:58):
say for sure. But what we do know is that
in the early hours of the next morning, John went batshit.
He took a clasp knife and attacked his forty three
year old wife, Honor and their seven year old son, Martin.
The horror was not gradual, and it came all at once.

(52:20):
What followed was a scene so brutal it still taints
the atmosphere around Castle Rising like a damp fog. There
was a terrible struggle. Honor tried desperately to escape, fleeing
for the front door in a panic, but John caught
her before she could get out. He dragged her into

(52:40):
the parlor, and there he murdered her violently. Martin, just
seven years old, also tried to run, but he couldn't
outrun his father. There was no mercy in the attack.
Both Honor and Martin were found later with their throats
savagely slashed again and again, and as their blood soaked

(53:04):
into the floors, so too did it soak into the
ground in the very aura of Castle Rising. Almost immediately
after the murder's John DAWs slipped out the back door,
his bloodied hands still clenched, his mind now a storm
of guilt and madness. It was like he had realized

(53:26):
he had done fucked up, and now he needed a
way out. His first attempt was with the same knife
he had used to kill his family with, but the
ferocity he'd unleashed on them, he couldn't summon for himself.
He brought the blade to his own throat, but could
only manage a shallow graze. Still desperate, he turned to

(53:50):
another method. He cut down the clothesline that hung between
two trees and tied himself in news. He searched for
a place to hang. The rope dumped him right into
the dirt. When he tried, thwarted again. John wandered the
property in a daze. His trail would later be found

(54:12):
zigzagging through the flower beds across the lawn, as if
his ghost had already started its pacing routine. Eventually, he
came to a decision. He walked toward the river, the
same one that flows beneath the shadow of Castle Rising,
which loomed overhead like a silent sentinel, watching him the

(54:36):
way it had every day of his life, and now
it would watch him die. John daw made his way
to a shallow bend in the river, the water barely
more than a foot and a half deep, just a trickle, really,
nothing that should have been capable of taking a life.

(54:58):
But John had made up his mind. He laid down
face first in the cold current and folded his arms
out of the way deliberately, almost ritualistically, so his body
wouldn't betray him, and so he wouldn't thrash or flench
or rise back up when instinct kicked in. And there

(55:19):
in the shadow of castle rising that had watched him
since childhood, John daw drowned himself in less than two
feet of water. So imagine that, like, it's one thing
I get the like, you know, obviously we're talking about
self harm, and I'm you know, not certainly not trying

(55:41):
to make light of anything. You would think, Yeah, that's
got to to try and work up the gumption to
like cut your own throat. You know, it's one thing
I feel like to cut like a you know, a
wrist or something, to cut your own throat. I mean,
that's got to take.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
An insane amount of willpower.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
It, truly would. You know. The hanging was probably a,
for lack of a better word, a good idea, just
because that would.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Be means to that end.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
So I'm also surprised if he to be able to. Now, granted,
drowning is a bit different than slicing your throat, but
still that's quite to be able to just hold your
hands behind your back and no less than like a
foot and a half of water. I mean that is
pretty dang determined, for sure.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah, for sure. I mean it would still require an
immense amount of willpower, because you'd almost think it'd be
easy if you tossed yourself into a lake or or
something much deeper, and maybe you know, bound yourself in
a way that you couldn't. But yeah, that's that's crazy
that he was able to just in a foot and

(56:51):
a half two feet of water actually stay there until
he drown.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Right. It's not that people haven't done it before, you know,
obviously people famously have drowned themselves, especially by swimming out
to sea or something where you would eventually submerge. But yeah,
like I said, instinct would obviously kick in, And yeah,
it almost makes you wonder. It's like, did something almost

(57:17):
help him, like hold him down in a way, like
some sort of a spectral force, you know, in a
way like because of the evil he committed. It's like,
did something almost essentially help him in a way, like
essentially hold him submerged?

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Right, it's also surprising to be able to commit such
an act and then to instantly feel guilt. I mean,
must have been in such a state of rage, because
you would think that that guilt would take more time
to set in if he was actually so determined to
go through with that.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Right. A case where you kind of hear that they
think that that was might have been a case was
the Cris Binois, the wrestler who in the two thousands
murdered his wife and child and then took his own life. Now,
granted that was like a combination of probably steroids and
CTE from getting so many concussions that played a role

(58:14):
in that as well. They think there's signs that because
after he did it, he placed like a bible under
the heads of his wife and his son. There seemed
to almost have been a kind of a realization that
he what he had done. And then he hanged himself
with his own weight machine, like a weight set in
his gym is like home gym, which there's also kind

(58:36):
of a dark irony there this. You know, a guy
who spent his whole life working on his body, you know,
as wrestlers do. There's kind of a dark irony in that.
That would also be where he chose to take his life,
which is an episode for another day. That's what I've
always wanted to do. It's harder with that because it's
just like, so there's no like true crime element to it.

(58:56):
It was just a awful, awful, awful tragedy, and like
there's not like a mystery to it, or there's not
like a you know, the police finally caught him, or
it's just more just kind of sad all the way around,
you know. But yeah, I've thought for a while about
doing that one, because it is an interesting story and whatnot.
But anyway, backed old Johnny Daw floating in the river,

(59:19):
no one knew what had happened to the family yet.
It wasn't until later that same day that a young
man stumbled across John's body, lying face down in the river,
and at first it must have looked like some kind
of a terrible accident. Others soon arrived and they dragged
the water log corpse from the river bank. It didn't

(59:41):
take long for them to identify that it was John Daw,
and the class knife found nearby, along with the self
inflicted cuts at his throat, led most to the same
conclusion that he had tried to end his life one
way and then eventually settled on drowning himself. But no
one yet though had gone to the house, no one

(01:00:01):
realized yet what had happened to John Dawes wife Honor,
and their son Martin. They had no idea that both
of those bodies were laying cold on the other side
of the front door, so they carried John Dawes's body
to a nearby inn, where it laid wet, lifeless, and
still clinging to the river's chill. After some hush debate

(01:00:25):
over what to do next, they made what seemed at
the time like the kindest choice. They would take him
to his home, to his wife and break the awful news.
A few of the local men volunteered to help, likely
imagining they'd arrived to find Honor in tears. But boy,
oh boy, were they in for a grim surprise. They

(01:00:50):
were all ready to offer condolences, a gentle explanation of
what had happened down by the river, maybe even help
with funeral array inments. But what they found was something
no one was prepared for. Because John wasn't going home
to be mourned. He was going home to meet the

(01:01:11):
rest of the dead. When the men reached daw cottage,
something felt off right away. The front door was shut tight,
barred from the inside, and no one answered the knock,
not a single sound, no sign of life. A chill
began to settle over the group. The quiet was not

(01:01:35):
one of grief, It was the feeling that something was
very wrong. So they circled to the back door and
found it unlocked. One man, a poor soul named mister Wilkinson,
was the first to step inside, and what he found
was not a grieving widow. It was a gosh dang massacre.

(01:01:57):
There in the parlor lay Honor and Martin Daw butchered
in their home, their blood dried and cruel patterns across
the castle floor. Whatever sympathy anyone might have held for
John Daw moments before was obliterated in that moment. The
shock and horror turned their hearts hard. He hadn't just

(01:02:20):
taken his own life, he shattered his whole family and
left a nightmare behind for others to walk in on.
And thus was added more strange feelings around castle, rising,
the sounds in the grass, the sobbing in the fields.
Maybe they aren't tied Isabella at all. Maybe it's this

(01:02:41):
a tragedy so savage it soaked the very ground the
castle stands on, and could even still be heard by
those who come too close. Perhaps whatever pleas for mercy
and screams of murder that went unheard in the dark
hours of the night and Ate teen fifty two can

(01:03:01):
still echo and be heard today. People often talk about
hearing what sounds like a weeping child, phantom cries and
screams that pierce through the fog, like something tearing at
the veil between our world and the next. Are they
the lost voices of Honor and Martin dahw trapped in
the moment that their lives were torn away? And what

(01:03:25):
about the cries that sound not like death but of
a mind coming undone, terrifying, animalistic raving. Yes, there are
rumors that a mental patient had been held at the
castle at one time, and of course stories that Isabella
herself went mad within those stone walls. So it could
really be chalked up to anything. It could also be

(01:03:47):
different generations of haunting locked within those walls. I know
Gage we talked about. They can't remember what episode it was.
But you know, if we think of like we give
off energy, and if we think of especially in terms
of maybe not necessarily intelligent hauntings, but residual hauntings as
maybe being a trapped bit of energy that's kind of
replaying over and over. You know, who's to say that

(01:04:09):
as time goes it doesn't dissipate, So a more recent
tragedy might be present a little stronger. Maybe Isabella's haunting.
It's still there, but it slowly fades with every passing year,
and maybe some more of the more obvious paranormal activity
might be coming from the daw family.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Makes sense too, that the energy would dissipate over time,
because isn't that kind of the case with anything related
to energy. I mean, eventually there's no perpetual motion or things,
so if things do die down, you would think that
paranormal activity would be the same way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
Right, absolutely, I mean it would make just on paper,
I mean, obviously it would make sense. It would seem,
especially like we said, for those more residual hauntings rather
than you know, an intelligent haunting seems to be something
different for whatever reason, the person's spirit is there, whether
by choice or trap there, or it's something that was

(01:05:08):
never human in the first place, maybe something demonic or
even I guess it could even be something angelic or
or something like that, which also.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Seems to have a goal in the case of a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Haunting, exactly right, exactly like, for example, the ghostly figure
that appeared behind that woman the gray man. You know,
it would make sense. Maybe it was a guard that
just saw some awful things. Maybe something awful didn't happen
to him necessarily. But you know, if you spent many
years walking the same path, guarding the same path, if

(01:05:38):
you saw someone kind of near the castle, you might,
you know, it might be your job to just go, hey,
can I help you? You know, is there a reason why?
Maybe that's what it was doing. Was he just saw
someone and in his mind, is just doing his due
diligence going up and saying can I help you? Is
there's a reason you're so close to the castle? Something
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
So doesn't understand why he keeps he's just trying to help.
He keeps scaring the shit out of people.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
I know, right, Yeah, it's kind of like that, Like
he might just honestly be trying to like help someone
he thinks is lost.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
It's really hurting his self confidence, He's going on. Is
it something to do with me? Is there something wrong
with me?

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Man that I'll do a number on your poor Ego.
But John Dawe and his massacre of his family that
we know is tragically real, his breakdown, his violence, and
his final act of despair all happened within sight of
the castle walls. So maybe those terrible cries that echo
through the castle at night don't come from the she

(01:06:38):
wolf of France at all, but from a man whose
torments still stains the soil, a ghost not of power
and vengeance, but one of regret. And so this sad,
sorrowful tale of murder and madness and a river that
runs far too shallow brings us to close just one
chapter in the long haunted chronicle of Castle Rising. And really,

(01:07:02):
if you think about it, I mean anywhere in the world, yes,
but like you know, if you're going back, especially Europe,
let's say England in particular, just one haunted castle that
dots the landscape of Yeah, it's when you kind of
zoom out, it's kind of just one note in a
microcosm or in a wider spectrum of history, of triumph,

(01:07:24):
of horror, of all manner of things. Yeah, it really
does put things in perspective. But Castle Rising, nevertheless is
a place where the stones have been soaked in blood
and sorrow, and behind every worn staircase or crumbling arch
there may linger the echoes of human heartache and untimely death,

(01:07:44):
ones that rattle windows and even sneak into tourist photos.
Because while Castle Rising was once the domain of a
fearsome queen, its spirits now seem a bit more mischievous
than malevolent, but still tread sawstly because not everything that
lingers here wants to be seen, and somewhere someone is watching.

(01:08:10):
I mean, that's kind of going to wrap us up
there for our tail. But yeah, so many tales like this,
especially and when you're talking about history, recorded history that
goes back thousands of years. I mean, even in the
most peaceful of places, bad things. I mean, it's just
the law of averages. Bad things are going to happen,
whether intentional or accidental or whatnot, whether it's war, murder

(01:08:36):
or you know, slavery or any numerous horrors that have
happened throughout the world throughout time. It only makes sense
that you're going to pick up something that goes bump
in the night along the way. But gage, what do
you think what I mean? I think it's probably an
amalgamation of things. Because when you talk about a building
that goes back that far, we're talking what that's like

(01:08:57):
nine hundred years. I think if it was built in
elevel I've been thirty seven, that's about roughly nine hundred.
I think it'll be nine hundred years next decade. That's
a lot of time to pick up something spooky along
the way.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Right, And a lot of these when we talk about
haunted castles, places like Pavlia, places that have been around
for centuries and centuries and had all these tragedies or
just horrors occur, might sound like places like this are cursed,
but you bring up a good point. When you go

(01:09:29):
that long period of time, the law of averages would
say that it's only inevitable that a lot of these
horrors would occur. You could probably point to a map
and find any place in the world, and if you
could look back in time, you would see all kinds
of terrible things. So it's hard to say is this

(01:09:51):
castle one of a dark energy or is it just
a case of probabilities and long stretch of time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
And it makes you wonder. We've talked about how, for example,
the Roman Empire is a good example of how how
many cultures that didn't necessarily write things down as much
like Celtic cultures. The little that we know, there's so
much we don't know. Like the same goes for the
United States, like before settlers came, Like think about going

(01:10:20):
back thousands of years, the legends that came and went
that are kind of forgotten. That there might be hauntings
around the United States that we attribute to something more recent,
like oh, this was a battlefield in the Civil War,
this was a this or that, and maybe it's actually
what's causing the ruckus is something that we don't even

(01:10:42):
know about that goes back before because especially in the US,
because of modern history, we don't think of the US.
We think of it as so young, and yes, as
a country, yes it is young, but there was obviously
people here long before was made a country. So it's like, yeah,
how much like what do we not even know of

(01:11:03):
that might cause things going bump in the night? For sure?

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Absolutely, yeah, you nailed it. I mean for all the tales,
and a lot of them, you know, are so old that,
like we mentioned earlier, we can't know for sure if
they have been altered over time or whatnot. But you're
absolutely right. Think of all of the incidents that we
don't know about, especially considering in the case here of

(01:11:29):
Castle Rising, how long it was abandoned, and so who
knows what went on? Well, there was no one around,
no record of.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
It, absolutely right, So I mean we can only point
to what we do know happened or think likely happened.
But yeah, the story never really ends. But I'll tell
you what, gate, I got a list of names full
of folks as red hot as a hot poker.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Oh yeah, who's that?

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
The names of our top tier Patreon subscribers, of course,
The dream James Watkins, the Finish Face Via Longhist, the
Madman Marcus Hall, the Tenacious Teresa Hackworth, the Heartbreak Kid,
Chris Hackworth, Theoso Swave, Sean Richardson, the Notorious Nicholas Barker,
the Terrifying Taylor lash Met, the Count of Cool, Cameron Corlis,
the Archduke of Attitude, Adam Archer, the Sinister Sam Kiker,
the Nightmare of New Zealand, noeh Leine Vivilli, the Loathsome

(01:12:15):
Johnny Love, the carnivorous Kevin Bogie, the Killer Stud, Carl
stab the fire Starter, Heather Carter, the conquer Christopher Damian Demeris,
the awfully awesome Annie, the murderous Maggie Leech, the ser
of Sexy Sam Hackworth, the evil Elizabeth Riley, Laura and
hell Fire Hernandez Lopez, the maniacal Laura Maynard, the vicious
Karen van Vier and the arch nemesis Aaron Bird, the
sadistic Sergio Castillo, the rap Scallion, Ryan Crumb, the Beast

(01:12:37):
Benjamin Hang, the devilish Chris Ducett, the Psycho Sam, the
Electric Emily Jong, the ghoulish Girt Hankum, the renegade Corey Ramos,
the crazed Carlos, the antagonist, Andrew Park, the monstrous Mikhaela Sure,
the witchy Wonder J. P. Weimer, the freaki Ben Forsyth,
the barbaric Andrew Berry, the mysterious Marcella, the hillatious Kale Hoffman,
and Pug Borb the Poulter Guys. Yes, folks, that's right.

(01:13:00):
If you want to get on the Good Naughty List,
Santa's Good Naughty List, just like those folks we mentioned,
head on over to patreon dot com for all sorts
of goodies, I know, gauge. By the time this comes out,
it'll already be out, but Gauge is putting out a
new album on vapor Verse on YouTube. Go check that out.
There's always links to his channel. In the description of

(01:13:22):
the episode, thank you again, Gage for joining me, this
time on a medieval journey of betrayal and at palace intrigue.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Yeah, thank you for having me man As always, this
one was very interesting for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
All Right, folks, citizens of the Milky Way, my name
is Dylan.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Hackworth and I'm Gauge.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Hurly, good night and goodbye.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Passedst used to

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Bast bastised const

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Ep244 - Isabella: The She-Wolf Queen

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep244 - Isabella: The She-Wolf Queen