Ep252 - The Haunting Of The Union Inn - Creep Street Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to this old Haunt on HGTV, the only
renovation show where the ghosts are restless and the equity
is metaphysical.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hey, folks, I'm Gary and I believe every building has
a story.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
And I'm Chad and I believe every story has a ghost,
or at the very least wet footprints that end just
outside the nursery door.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
After renovating Moonset's own house three point thirty three, we've
headed over to jolly Old England, where we are renovating
the Union Inn now the Union Steakhouse, a modern restaurant
with a sleek interior and a deeply haunted foundation.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
It's got exposed beams, rustic brick, and one confirmed Victorian
woman who won't move on until someone finds her baby's
bones and gives her a proper apology. And here is Malcolm,
owner of the Union Inn. Uh. We've tried holy water,
We've tried Latin. Eventually, I just put out of heighthchair.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
We've got a lot planned reclaimed wood tables, industrial fixtures,
and we're finally replacing the glass panel that showcased the
baby skeleton in the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
We're thinking tasteful sconce instead, warm light, soft shadows, fewer
historical tragedies staring directly at you. In the dining room,
the corner asked me to remove the bones. I said sure,
but they crumbled when he breathed on them. I still
hear them cry when it rains.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Now. The pub was originally three cottages, home to fishermen, tailors,
and at least one mournful specter who wanders the halls
looking for her lost child.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
We're preserving that charm by integrating nautical accents and warning
sigils in the grout lines. The are out bled once,
only once, and then it stopped when I started sobbing.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
In the toilet. Ghosts.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
We're not ignoring them, not this time, Gary. We're putting
in motion activated lights with a soft close ghost portal,
keeping the vibes mellow and the spirits contained. They like
the lights. It makes looking in the mirror less terrifying.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
We're calling the color pellette coastal elegy think a soft
oyster white, barely covering the unspeakable sins of the past.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
It's all about balance, Gary. Sometimes I like to put
a single bullet and a revolver give it a spin.
They love to play games. It's so much character in.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
This place, So stick around because we're transforming this two
hundred year old ghost trap into a stake forward fine
dining experience without compromising mood or your appetite.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
This old haunt is brought to you by lay line
floor wax. But when the portal on the floor really
needs to shine, Christ welcome. No, we'll be right back
to this old haunt on HGTV, Citizens of the Milky Way.

(03:34):
My name is Dylan Hackworth.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And i'm Gage Hurley, and.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
You have arrived at check in time. That's right, folks,
you are checking into the dusty old halls of Creep
Street Podcast, where the scares just keep coming. We got
you soaking wet with our episode on Great Lake Sea Monsters,
so we thought we'd take another hop over to jolly

(03:59):
old England for another tale of haunting and woe, this
time concerning a particular establishment, a place that has existed
for centuries and been used for many different things, from
a sailor's home to a steakhouse. Folks, today's episode is

(04:20):
the Haunting of the Union Inn. That's right, folks, that's right.
Let me serve it up to you medium rare with
my sources here. Main source really was one book, The
Best of British ghost Stories, Volume two by Sophie Jackson.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well Folks. For nearly two centuries, the Union Inn has
stood proudly at eight East Street, serving up food, drink
and good conversation for the folks of Rye in East Sussex, UK.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
The locals knew it well. It was the kind of
place where the floors creaked to announce your arrival. The
ale was always flowing, and you could count on overhearing
at least one conversation you weren't supposed to hear. But
alas times change, Today that same building is home to
the Union Steakhouse, a sleek modern restaurant dishing out thirty

(05:21):
day aged Hereford stakes to a whole new kind of clientele.
The dim, smoky interiors of the old pub are gone,
and in their place are the clean linens.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
The polished tables, and a wine list.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
That could even make Edgar Allen Poe's Fortunado cream as pants.
Needless to say, it's a new chapter with a new look.
But not everything in the Union was so easy to renovate. No, no, no.
The building's oldest residents, the ones who don't need reservations.

(05:58):
They have no interest in trendy lighting or dry aged beef.
They've been here far longer than the menu, and they're
not going anywhere because beneath the fresh paint and updated finishes,
the ghosts of the unions passed, still lingered, and no
amount of modern charm or fung shwe is going to

(06:20):
chase them out. Long before it became a pub, or
even a steakhouse for that matter, the Union Inn was
something else entirely. In fact, it wasn't even an inn.
The building began its life as two small cottages and
a shop, all constructed during the late medieval period, which

(06:41):
means the walls now hosting medium rare Hereford steaks have
seen more than their fair sheriff history and probably a
few plagues. It wasn't until eighteen thirty that the transformation
into what we know it as now began. A man
named John Hunter took one of the cottages and turned
it into a pub. He called it the Union Beer House,

(07:04):
a name that even now raises a few questions, specifically
the word union. Some say it might have been inspired
by a political union or a high society marriage arrangement,
though whose Union exactly is still a mystery. There's even
speculation that John named it after his own marriage, perhaps

(07:25):
hinting it just how central his wife Sarah was to
the operation, and that checks out, because while John worked
as a tailor by day, Sarah was actually the one
who ran the bar between suits and pints. The couple
made it work, but the business was far from booming then.

(07:45):
In eighteen thirty nine, John died, leaving Sarah to run
the show. She held the license for a time before
passing it on to their son, James Hunter. And here's
the thing. Nothing about the Union's early years's success. At
this point, the place wasn't much more than just the
front room of a house with a partition thrown in

(08:07):
to separate the bar from the bar parlor. Cozy and
ntman it sure was. Customers back then got very well acquainted,
mostly because they were practically sitting right on top of
each other, and James, like his father before him, found
that keeping the pub afloat would be no small task.

(08:27):
He too worked as a tailor on the side, trying
to stitch together a living while pouring pints in between.
But by eighteen fifty eight, the numbers just didn't add up.
James was petitioned as an insolvent debtor and hauled into court.
It wasn't until the other two cottages finally folded into

(08:48):
the main structure that the Union began to resemble the
kind of pub that we recognized today. And more importantly,
this is when it began to turn a profit. The
expand help, for sure, but the pub's location was also key.
Just a short stroll from the coast, the Union quickly

(09:08):
became a favorite haunt of fishermen and boat owners, folks
who knew their way around a pint, a storm and
the occasional sea shanty, and some of them would never leave.
You see, the Union didn't just serve drinks. It also
hosted inquests, legal proceedings held to determine how a person died, and,

(09:33):
when it came to coastal communities, death at sea was
a more than common cause of demise. These inquests were
a common practice at the time. In small fishing villages.
Taverns were often the largest public buildings available, big enough
to handle a crowd and practical enough for whatever else
needed doing.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
So.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
When a fisherman or a sailor went missing and was
later found dead. It wasn't unusual for their body, sometimes
badly decomposed, to be laid out at one of the
pub's old wooden tables for inquest. And yes, when I
say table, I mean the same tables where folks might
have eaten their supper the night before, or may breakfast

(10:15):
at in the morning rigamortis and roast beef under the
same roof. And it wasn't just a one off. Multiple
inquests were held at the Union over the years. Each
one was accompanied by a hushed crowd, the salt of
the sea clinging to the air, and the stark reminder
that commercial fishing, then in even today, remains one of

(10:38):
the most dangerous jobs on the planet. The Union may
have finally started making money, but the cost was steep,
and some debts, as we've seen, aren't measured in pounds
and pence, but in flesh and blood. One can only
imagine what the local fishermen thought when their beloved watering hole,

(11:00):
the place where they shared drinks, stories and the occasional inquest,
suddenly found itself under the banner of the People's Refreshment
House Association for the uninitiated. That's not a new name
for a pub trivia league. It was a temperance organization,
the kind that promoted the sale of non alcoholic beverages, which,

(11:23):
for a coastal tavern full of sea hardened drinkers must
have landed like a fishing net full of trash. Imagine
the same pub that once hosted soggy sailors and strong
spirits and the occasional corpse, now offering lemonade and a
stern lecture on straight edged living. It's fair to say
the Union Inn has seen an evolution of sorts, from

(11:46):
humble beginnings as a cottage, to a courtroom by the sea,
to a temperance outpost, and now a modern steakhouse. This
building has seen lifetimes stacked on lifetimes, moments of joy, grief, laughter, loss,
and more than a few rough and tumble nights. So really,

(12:07):
it's no surprise that a few spirits of the non
alcoholic variety have decided to linger. After all, when a
place carries this much emotional weight in its walls, sometimes
the dead just don't feel like leaving. For all its
years of history, revelry and sorrow, the Union has unsurprisingly

(12:28):
adopted a full supporting cast of specters to fill its rooms.
And halls. The three most commonly reported are as follows,
a woman, a sailor, and something something that's a bit
harder to pin down, a weeping voice with no visible source.

(12:50):
Let's start with the woman. According to local legend, she
was an unmarried mother, a fact that, in less forgiving times,
was gandalous enough to ruin a life and keep it ruined.
It's said that she died after falling down the stairs
to the cellar, though some say that she didn't fall
at all. Rather, the poor lady was pushed either way,

(13:16):
her neck was broken in the fall, and her spirit
has never left the union in to this day. Her
specters said to linger near the stairs, forever tethered to
the sight of her final brutal descent. And then there's
the sailor, or perhaps a fisherman of some kind, often

(13:36):
seen upstairs. Nobody is certain who he is. Some say
he's just a regular of the pub who loved the
place so much and just didn't want to leave it behind.
Other specter he might be one of the poor souls
pulled from the sea. His final chapter played out on
one of those old tavern tables during an inquest. His

(13:57):
spirit now wandering the room where his story was last told.
And then there's the weeper, a specter, not seen but heard.
Sometimes the voice is soft, sometimes sharp, but always mournful,
the sound of someone crying in the empty corners of

(14:19):
the Union. Some believe it's the woman who fell down
the stairs, still mourning her fate, while others think it's
a child, a child whose cries are not for themselves
but for someone else, perhaps the child of the single
mother whose life ended on the stairs. And here's where

(14:42):
things take a darker turn, because for several years the
Union was in possession of something deeply unsettling, the bones
of a child that were kept at the pub. But
why and how well We'll get to that in due time,
But for now, just know this, the Union Inn isn't

(15:07):
just haunted by stories, but by people with names lost
to time, but whose grief, joy and tragedy can never
be given an identity. There's also talk of a fourth
figure haunting the Union, this one dressed in a Victorian
soldier's uniform. He's occasionally spotted loitering on the property, always quiet,

(15:32):
always alone. But here's the thing about this lurking spirit.
Some believe this might not be a soldier at all,
it could simply be the sailor. Uniforms from this period
can be tricky, especially in the flickering light of a
haunted pub. One man's navel coat is another man's military tunic.

(15:55):
So is the Union home to another distinct ghost, or
is our sea faring friend just moonlighting his infantry. The
lines blur, as they often do in haunted places. In
the nineteen nineties, the Union was run by a landlord
named Steve Dartnell. At the time he was raising a
young son in the building, But not long after settling

(16:18):
in strange things began to happen. It started with the sounds,
thumps and bangs from the upstairs room, heavy and deliberate noises,
and whenever Steve or a staff member went up to investigate,
of course they'd find nothing, no one there, and no

(16:39):
reason for the ruckus. Then came that feeling. Steve and
the others began to describe a heavy, unsettling atmosphere on
the upper floors, not constant, but certainly present and fluctuating
and intensity. Sometimes it was like walking into a room

(17:00):
that didn't want you there. Cold air, tense silence, and
that tickle in your spine when you know you're not alone,
even if you can't see what's watching, and the cause
is still a mystery. There's no official record to show
a history of violence at the end, just a creeping
sense that something upstairs isn't thrilled about the new management.

(17:25):
It was around this same time that Steve Dartnell's young
son began to talk about someone visiting his bedroom at night.
The visitor, according to the child, was Postman Pat. Now,
for those unfamiliar, Postman Pat is a beloved children's television
character who first appeared on TV in the early eighties.

(17:49):
He's a kindly postman with a bright red van and
a black and white cat named Jess, delivering letters and
gentle life lessons around the fictional village of Greendale. He
is not exactly terrifying. In fact, he's made of clay.
It's a claymation, sort of plastic scene, sort of Wallace
and Grommet style animation. So when Steve Dartnell's young son

(18:13):
began saying that Postman Pat was visiting his bedroom at night, well,
it seemed innocent enough, cute, even until a full grown,
shadowed figure started walking through locked doors, and then it
became significantly less charming. Now under normal circumstances that might

(18:36):
sound cute and harmless. Even the whole idea of the
child saying Postman pat is visiting me at night.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
It'd be like Steve from Blues Clues paying a.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Visit, exactly a child's imagination Blend's bedtime cartoons with their
sleepy dreams. And at first, that's exactly what Steve assumed,
that it was just a little game, maybe something the
boy had invented to make the dark less scary. But
there's a post actually that I shared in a Patreon episode,

(19:08):
and I went to find the actual story at Lon
Strickland's website Phantoms and Monsters, but the whole website's down.
I couldn't find it. But it's essentially someone's personal story
about seeing an entity that literally looked like Charlie Brown,
but they just had the feeling that it was not
there with good intentions. And as we know we've talked

(19:32):
about many times, it would make sense that an evil
presence appearing to a child in order to make it
less afraid at first, so it could kind of worm
its way into the lives of the family, might present
itself as a fictional character that the child loves, like
Charlie Brown or like Postman Pet. You know, obviously not

(19:53):
as well known here, but when I did the research,
I went and looked who Postman Pat was. Yeah, no,
it would make sense, this sort of suite, sort of
like Wallace and Grammet, like male man. But there's also,
as we'll get into, reasons why he might be seeing
that and calling it Postman Pat when it's not that
at all. But then something happened that made Steve think

(20:14):
twice about that old claymation creep Postman Pat. One night,
Steve was in his own bedroom when he saw a figure,
a shadowy form, walked directly into his room through the
closed door. It was hard to make out first the details,

(20:37):
of course, but Steve was certain that the figure was male,
and it crossed the room in silence and moved to
the window. But this figure wasn't just passing through. It
seemed as though it was there to watch him. Steve
had the distinct, unnerving impression that this shadow man was
not just wandering aimlessly, not playing out some long forgotten routine,

(21:00):
as might happen in a residual haunting, but rather this
was something else this ghost seemed to notice him, and
when it comes to hauntings, that changes everything. Because it's
one thing to see a ghost, it's another thing entirely
for a ghost to see you. After a long moment,

(21:23):
the shadowy man turned and left the room, exiting through
the same closed door through which he entered, and without
a sound. Suddenly, the idea of old postman Pat visiting
his son's room at night didn't seem so whimsical or
far fetched. While curious and more than a little unsettled,

(21:45):
Steve began to make a few quiet inquiries about what
he'd seen, and what he found out was rather chilling.
Turns out, he wasn't the only one. The figure was
known amongst the locals who had seen him before and
sometimes often, And while Steve had only a glimpsed a shadow,

(22:07):
others described this figure in far more detail. That he
wore a dark blue jacket adorned with gold buttons, a
uniform crisp and formal. Some even noted the resemblance to
postman Pat, which gave Steve's son's bedtime visitor a whole

(22:28):
new layer of meaning. But make no mistake, this was
not your average ghost and sailor's garb. The cut and
quality of the coat suggested that this specter was once
a man of rank, wasn't just any old seaman. He
looked like a skipper, possibly a first mate, someone who

(22:49):
gave orders to those around him, which raises a question.
Did this man die at sea? And if so, was
his body ever recovered and possibly laid out in the
Union for an inquest like so many others before him,
And the mystery only deepens because the shadowy specter of

(23:09):
a sailor didn't confine himself to the Union alone. He
was frequently seen wandering into and throughout the house next door.
The elderly woman who lived there had her own encounters.
They were impactful enough that she refused to go upstairs alone.
There's speculation that the two buildings were once connected, possibly

(23:32):
by a door now long sealed up or hidden beneath
modern renovations. And if true, the spirit may be following
a blueprint that he walked in life. But as we know,
this isn't just a residual haunting. This ghostly seaman isn't
simply pacing old paths. People describe him as a dark presence,

(23:57):
very aware and very observant of the living, able to
react to them, and not always with kindness. Some feel
passively watched, and others feel wholly unwelcome. And if you'll remember,
I mean House three point thirty three. Remember it was
a duplex and the people that owned it, the in laws,

(24:20):
lived next door, and there was like a passageway in
their closet. Remember where it would go from one house
to the other. Maybe something as similar. Maybe there used
to be a door there of some kind. Or it's
simply just passing through the wall of the structure into
the old lady's house.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Right, he could be basically retracing the layout of whatever
it was when he was there.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Right, he was alive, Absolutely, you got it. Well. Steve
eventually reached a point where he could no longer bring
himself to enter the bedroom where he'd seen the figure.
The seaman, it turns out, wasn't shy. He'd been known
to strut freely throughout the pub, completely unconcerned with things
like walls, personal space, or even the delicate social etiquette

(25:08):
of not popping in to scarce someone in the men's toilet.
That's exactly what happened to one unfortunate customer who went
from midstream to midstream when the bearded figure calmly walked
straight through the wall and into the room, a full
bodied apparition, quiet and intimidating, and just to really drive

(25:30):
it home, seemingly disinterested in the living man's very mortal,
very vulnerable moment. To no one's surprised, the man didn't
stick around to see where the ghost went next. He
gave it a shake, zipped up, and dipped out, hopefully
washing his hands first. And then, just when Steve thought

(25:52):
he'd gotten a handle on the place's hauntings, his regulars
led him in on another local legend, one he had
yet to encounter himself. Her name was Emily. According to
those who remembered the story, Emily lived in the middle
cottage long before the three homes were merged into the union.

(26:14):
Her life spanned the eighteen fifties, during the same era
that James Hunter was struggling to keep the pub afloat.
Emily's father was the town mortician, a man whose line
of work required being surrounded by death every day, and
it was he who reported her tragic end. She had

(26:34):
slipped on the steps going down into the cellar and
broke her neck in the fall. But accidents happened, right,
especially on narrow stairs and old buildings. Well, that was
the story at least, But small towns have long memories,
and they know how to keep their oral histories alive.

(26:58):
The local rumor concerning Emily's demise was much darker. They
said Emily had been pregnant and unmarried, a disgrace in
the eyes of her father, and when he found out,
he didn't comfort her or help her. No, No, as
the story goes, the bastard pushed her down the stairs,

(27:22):
causing her death, his own daughter, an unborn grandchild. Of course,
there's another version, one no less tragic. Some say that
Emily herself was so ashamed, so overwhelmed by her circumstances,
that she took her own life, throwing herself down those
cellar steps in a moment of desperation.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, and so if the father did it, how does
that make sense. He's like, you're a disgrace, So he
kills his daughter, an unborn child, and that's somehow less disgraceful.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, exactly, right, slutely? Well, which version is true? No
one can really say. But what is known as this
Emily has never left the union. Her presence lingers delicate, mournful,
and seemingly tethered to the place where her story ended
in tragedy. Whether she was pushed, fell, or even jumped,

(28:22):
her memory remains. Witnesses still report seeing her around the property,
usually in a red dress, not a specter in white,
nor even is she pale or translucent like so many
textbook apparitions. Instead, the ghostly woman wears a bold red dress,

(28:44):
red a color of passion and danger, depending on what
you think she's trying to say. And if the story
ended there, well it would be tragic enough. But there's more,
and it's rather ma cob ooh. Just had to take
a quick pause there, creep Street, just to give your

(29:06):
poor palpitating hard arrest. If you're enjoying this episode, go
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That's right, And if once a week is not enough
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(29:28):
something for every tier, so get your fixings. We even
got a free tier where you can listen to the
weekly sketches before they go live on the episode Now
without further ado, Back to today's story. Years ago, during
a round of renovations by the pub's previous owners, the

(29:52):
workers made a discovery that shifted Emily's story from ghost
tale to cold reality. Inside a wall, they found the
remains of a baby. The small bones were fragile, old,
and clearly had been there for a very long time.

(30:14):
Instead of calling for immediate removal or a proper burial,
the owners made a choice, and a very odd one.
They left the remains where they were, placing a glass
brick in the wall so that customers could see them
on full display, like some sort of grim curiosity from
a traveling show. Some found it fascinating and others, of

(30:38):
course found it disrespectful and no shit. And adult's bones,
I think is depending on the circumstances, is one thing.
But a child's bones, especially a baby's bones, well, there's
not too many avenues where you can make that seem okay.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
And at least in my opinion, Oh yeah, I think
that would be the Lows.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, absolutely, And being the man was a mortician, he
would probably know how to remove an unborn child from
the body. Of its mother, and he may have done
so once again to hide something that he found shameful.
When the choice was made to display the child's bones

(31:22):
like some attraction at a freak show, the local corner
certainly was none too pleased. He formally requested that the
bones be removed and given a proper Christian burial, but
the request was denied, if not outright ignored, So the
remains stayed and in plain sight, and with them perhaps

(31:45):
the source of the ghostly weeping that is so often
heard around the Union. Is it Emily or is it
perhaps her child? Or is it something more primal, greed
of a tragedy manifested into an entity all its own.

(32:05):
Because if a soul can't move on, maybe it's because
something was left behind that it doesn't want to leave.
Whether the modern steakhouse has kept this grim architectural feature
is anyone's guess. No one seems to know if the
baby's remains once displayed behind glass like a morbid exhibit,
or even still there today. Given the restaurant's hip, cosmopolitan style,

(32:30):
it seems unlikely. I know, I personally would probably have
trouble enjoying a t bone with a child's bones stored
right next to me. By the turn of the millennium,
it may not have mattered. Exposed to years of light
and air and the constant hum of human curiosity, the
remains would have begun to deteriorate, slowly fading, until all

(32:55):
that was left was the story. Well, Steve Dartnell believed
the child had been Emily. He thought she may have died,
maybe even during childbirth or shortly after. Maybe the baby
was stillborn. And if the baby was not stillborn, well,
maybe we're looking at an even darker possibility, one that

(33:17):
adds infanticide to the list of unspoken crimes committed beneath
the Union's old roof. Steve suspected that Emily's father, the
town mortician, had hid the baby's corpse himself, that he'd
fabricated the story about her fall to cover his crimes,
that the shame of an unmarried daughter bearing a child

(33:40):
was just too much for him to face, and so
he covered it up with murder and stone. Well, whatever
the truth, the echoes remain, be it the footsteps upstairs,
the weeping in the dark, or the lingering presence of
a woman in red one who walks the boards of

(34:00):
a place she never really got to leave, And I
like the idea I wanted to discuss real quickly. The
idea of women in red now woman in white, is
a very common paranormal phenomenon. I like the idea of
the red not being so much what the person might
have worn in life, but what they might be trying

(34:22):
to say, being a color of passion or danger or
what have you. The color red is interpreted so many
ways throughout cultures around the world. When you look at history,
some saw red as a color of evil, some saw
it is a color of love or royalty. You know. Marshall, Michigan,
our hometown, has a woman in red story that also

(34:43):
kind of similar. Obviously not nearly as grim, obviously, but
that the woman was stood up by a lover or
a fiance or a husband and either died or took
her own life, and is often seen wearing red. It's
sort of like a lingering symbol of passion or.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
A love, maybe even fury.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Maybe even fury, you're right, maybe rage. Absolutely so, the
red I think is an interesting thing to kind of
factor in here.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, you're right. I haven't heard very many stories of
women in red as far as supernatural entities go right.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
There's obviously entities in black, entities in white, but red
is such a unique statement and it could mean a
lot of things.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
It could mean that ghost fashion is.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Changing, absolutely absolutely. She was a hip gal. She was
with the times well. Eventually, the weights of the haunting
became too much for Steve Dartnell and his family. By
nineteen ninety three, something had to give, so an exorcism
was arranged, and with it came an attempt to sort

(35:49):
of rebalance the lay lines that are even said to
run through the property. Lay lines, of course, will be
an episode all their own. They've come up in the
periphery of many epdes throughout creep Street. Crystals were placed
in specific areas of the inn. Rituals were performed, attempting
to redirect the paranormal energy. But if the spirits were

(36:11):
affected by all of this, they sure didn't show it.
The ghosts remained seemingly unbothered, uninterested, and certainly showed no
signs of leaving. One of their favorite little games was
messing with the lights. Every night, Steve would make his
rounds before bed, locking the doors, shutting off every switch,

(36:33):
confirming the place was cleared. Out, and every morning the
lights and the toilets were back on. Always just the toilets,
a daily memento to remind the owner we're still here,
and how about a courtesy flush. The exorcisms may not
have worked, the lay lines may not have shifted in

(36:56):
the ghosts. They just flipped switches like a gang of rapscallions.
Sometimes a haunting doesn't need to be violent, it just
needs to be consistent. Nearly a decade after Steve's attempts
to exercise the place, the Union Inn still had its ghosts,
and in two thousand and two, a team of paranormal

(37:19):
investigators decided to pay them a visit, and they were
not disappointed. During their investigation, they claimed to make contact
with none other than Emily herself, a woman in red
whose death had long haunted the old cellar stairs of
the Union. But the most striking detail wasn't her appearance

(37:40):
or her voice, it was her confusion. According to the team,
Emily didn't know she was dead. When asked, she said
she was nineteen, She lived with her family, and she
claimed she was very happy. She said she remembered falling

(38:01):
down some stairs, but didn't seem to realize that the
fall had killed her. To her, it was just something
that happened, a moment, not an ending. Even her answers
about the red dress were strangely detached. She said she
wasn't wearing it when she fell. It wasn't even her favorite,

(38:23):
just something she likes to wear from time to time.
And when the team tried to gently press the question
of whether she had been pregnant, well, Emily gave no
answer at all.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
It's interesting, I wonder if it's under circumstances where you
die so quickly you don't know, you know, you don't
even have time necessarily to process that your death is imminent. Right,
If that is why a lot of spirits think they're still.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Alive, right right? Just given modern pop culture, most famously
probably the sixth sense, the whole idea of the specter
not knowing spoiler alerts what twenty five years later the
idea of the specter not knowing they're dead or spoiler
another movie, the others with Nicole Kidman, this idea of
them not knowing that they had died. Where does that

(39:15):
come from? Now? We do know in many cases, like
psychics and stuff have said that spirits don't know they're dead,
because maybe especially in the residual sense, because like we said,
in the residual sense, those people might not even actually
be there, it's just their energy replay. So that could
be the case if you're able to interrupt that cycle

(39:36):
and maybe somehow coax an intelligent reaction. It's hard to
say why a ghost would not know they're dead, but
it also I don't see why not. I could see
it being both cases a ghost knowing, especially if it
was through malice, not just say like a you know,
someone's no fault car accident, but especially something like murder.

(39:59):
I could see why a specter then might know they
were dead because of the circumstances surrounding that death, whereas,
like you said, compared to maybe it was something quick,
maybe it was like a car accidental.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, I mean, even on the subject of murder, you
could be murdered and know that, oh no, this is
then I've been shot in the heart, I'm bleeding out.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Right, is it for me?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Or you could be shot in the back of the head,
you know, execution style, and if you're just dead instantly
and you never even knew it, that probably would explain.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
That right exactly exactly absolutely, that's a great point. It
maybe literally the your last memory, right, the vantage point
of where you were at the time of the death.
If you didn't know you were murdered, or like we said,
or if it was just something you didn't see coming,
how you might not even know if it was so

(40:54):
quick and so yeah, that totally makes sense. Later, a
second contact was made, this time with a seaman, the
shadowy uniformed figure who wandered the union freely. His responses
were minimal and blunt. Yes he was male, Yes he

(41:18):
had made his living at sea. No, he didn't mind
the team being there. But then he added something else.
He admitted to being responsible for a few unexplained touches,
specifically pinches and slaps experienced by female members of the
team during the investigation. No apology from the salty old sailor,

(41:41):
just quiet acknowledgment, which leaves us with two ghosts that
we know of definitively, one confused and caught in a
moment of heartbreak, and the other far more aware, maybe
a little too aware. A girl in red who doesn't
know she died, and a man in blue who knows
he's dead and exactly where he is well A year later,

(42:05):
in two thousand and three, a second investigation was carried
out at the Union Inn, and this time the old
Seaman had a lot to say. Gone was the tight lipped,
stoic presence of the previous session. Instead, something had shifted
in the grizzled old sailor, something made him willing to
speak on this occasion. According to the team, he identified

(42:27):
himself as a former member of the Royal Navy. He
said he had lived at the cottage in that very
building with his wife and children, that it was their home.
Remember that before it became one place, it was like
three different separate buildings, so very possible that he could
have But then came the turn. While he was away

(42:48):
at sea. He said his wife had been murdered in
the bedroom, the same bedroom that he's so often seen
pacing room where Steve Dartnell had once seen the shadowed
figure enter his room and watch him in the dark.
According to the ghost, he knew who had committed this crime.

(43:12):
It was the first time the seaman had ever offered
any reason for his presence. Before this, there had been
only impressions his awareness, his coldness, and the occasional pinching
of an investigator. But this was a ghost that felt
less like a memory and more like someone still processing something.

(43:32):
But this new revelation changed things. Was his looming presence,
that uneasy feeling in the bedroom not necessarily malice, but grief.
Was the tension that soaked the upstairs hallway really just
unresolved anger, rage that the killer who took his wife

(43:54):
had walked free. And in a darker moment, Steve even
wondered when the ghost had walked into the room that
night and fixed his gaze upon him, was he really
sizing him up? Asking silently are you the one who
took her? Like so many things pulled from seances and

(44:16):
spirit boards, the story is hard to verify. No official
records of a navy man's wife murdered at the union,
no headlines, no dates, no names. But what do you do?
And the ghost gives you a motive and no way
to prove it. Maybe he's telling the truth, maybe not,
But if he is, then there's more than just memory

(44:37):
haunting the Union. Further probing during the two thousand and
three investigation peeled back even more layers of the unions
already tangled past. Oh, and things got much stranger. This time,
the seamen had even more information to share. He claimed
that the woman in red, the one everyone believed to

(44:58):
be Emily, was actually named Sarah. And more than that,
he said that he had been her father and that
it was her baby in the wall, which, if Drue
would flip this entire legend on its head. Remember Sarah
very briefly. There's a Sarah mentioned at the top of

(45:20):
the story, back when the pub was first becoming a bar.
She was the wife of Hunter, of mister Hunter, the tailor.
During the day he would work as a tailor, and
she was actually the one who poured the drinks. But
we only briefly mention her. So now we go back
and we wonder, well, what if this isn't the woman
who supposedly died on the stairs at all? But the

(45:43):
wife of the tailor of mister Hunter. Kind of adds
a fun little layer in there, because then it's like, well,
what's all her motive? Then? Why is she in red?
But things didn't stop there. One of the sensitives present
on the scene began to suspect something deeper, that there
might be more than one seaman haunting the union. Perhaps

(46:05):
the union was covered in seamen maybe these sightings and
encounters weren't all coming from the same restless soul, but
multiple ones that were layered and overlapping, as if the
house were acting as a kind of trapdoor in time,
a seaman sample, if you will, a sample of many seamen.

(46:28):
The investigators made contact then with the girl herself or
someone claiming to be her, but her answers this time
were a little inconsistent. She now agreed that she was
under twenty, matching the earlier claim that she had only
been nineteen, but the rest had changed. Gone was the
cheerful account of a happy home with her family, and

(46:51):
this time she said that she had been pushed down
the stairs by her father. She now admitted that she
had been wearing a red dress, which she had previously denied,
but again she claimed not to know that she had died.
She also denied that the baby's remains in the wall
were her child's. So interesting that she can change her

(47:15):
story but still not remember she's dead. We'll get into
it a little bit later, because we're getting near the
end here. But you got to wonder how much of
the subconscious of the psychic or the sensitives or whomever's
on site might be playing into this, because here things
get even murkier. She stated that she had died during

(47:36):
the reign of King George the Second, which would place
her death sometime before seventeen twenty seven, but during a
second seance held that same evening, she changed her answer again,
this time saying she died in eighteen fifty six. Now
there's a problem, of course, in eighteen fifty six, King

(47:56):
George the Second had been dead for over a century.
Queen Victoria had been on her throne for nineteen years.
If Sarah or Emily or whoever it truly was had
died in eighteen fifty six at the age of nineteen,
she would have certainly known who her monarch was. It

(48:18):
would have been printed on every coin, every letter head,
and every prayer and every chapel, which made me just now,
as I'm telling the story, made me think, well, maybe
the previous person, maybe they were saying something akin to
the nineteenth year of the reign of Queen Victoria rather
than I'm nineteen or something. I don't know, I'm kind

(48:40):
of grasping its straws there, but nineteen pops up again there,
and I don't know if maybe that was something that
the specter might be tried as a way of giving
time if it can't remember a year, but for some
reason it remembers that.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
And maybe things were lost in translation a little bit too,
where they were able to pick up certain things she
was saying, but they misconstrued it somehow absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Maybe it's it's almost like you could write a letter,
but then if you cut it up into little bitty
bits and then threw it in the air and let
the pieces fall, it would look like random words, letters,
things that wouldn't You might even piece together a sentence,
and then later you realize the sentence was wrong, and

(49:27):
you might say, well, the ghost was lying or the Well,
it doesn't mean the letter was lying. It just means
the information came through all chopped up. So maybe you're right.
Maybe it's something like that. So what are we left
with here, folks? A girl in red with shifting stories,
a sailor or sailors with motives that change with each

(49:47):
passing year, contradictions layered over tragedy, truth tangled in folklore.
Maybe it's memory decay, or it's the fragmenting of the
spirit itself over time. Maybe it's things added up to
by the psychics, who may very well be in contact
with these spirits but are still adding their own concepts

(50:09):
subliminally without even realizing it. Or maybe it's something even deeper,
something elemental to the Union's bones, a sort of psychic
interference where stories bleed into one another until even the
dead can't really tell what's real anymore. And so the

(50:30):
union sits now polished and modern and welcoming, but within
a time itself almost seems to collect and mix, and
in those conditions, ghosts forget who they were, and sometimes
who they've become or what they did. Of course, seances
are notoriously prone to producing muddled results. It's part of

(50:53):
their charm and their curse. They offer just enough clarity
to pull you in and just enough confusion to keep
you doubting what you've heard. Skeptics will tell you that
this is clear evidence that the method itself is flawed.
That when you're asking questions through a person via a
Ouiji board, glass divination, or automatic writing, what have you,

(51:17):
what you're really tapping into is them the psychic that
the answers don't come from a spirit realm, but from
the unconscious thoughts of the questioner. In other words, you're
not talking to a ghost, you're talking to your own expectations.
That's harder to argue, of course, when the responses come
from knocks on walls or from unexplained electrical anomalies. And obviously,

(51:43):
I will once again repeat this does not mean that
they aren't actually in communication with spirits. But when you're
using tools that require physical contact where humans influence is unavoidable,
the waters get murky. Then again, what if the the
answers are real? What if the inconsistency isn't proof of

(52:05):
deception but a symptom of something deeper that we don't
yet understand about space and time. Maybe the entity doesn't
understand the question, maybe it's confused or disoriented, or maybe
its memory that its very identity is fractured across time
and dimensional static. And here's something that always gives one pause.

(52:28):
With Ouiji boards, spirits from centuries past, people who in
life may have been completely illiterate can suddenly spell with
impeccable accuracy. They couldn't do it when they were alive,
but in death suddenly they have full command of the
written and spoken word. So it raises questions about authenticity.

(52:50):
And interpretation about what exactly we're reaching into when we
slide that planchette across the board. Because whether you believe
if you're speaking with a spirit or just listening to
the echo of your own subconscious, one thing remains the same.
The answers never come easy. And then, of course there's

(53:10):
one last theory that none of these contradictions are accidents,
That what's been speaking through the boards and rapping on
the walls and pacing through the bedroom isn't Emily or
Sarah or even a sailor, but something else, entirely, a malicious,
perhaps trickster like spirit, one that's been playing pretend, slipping

(53:35):
into borrowed names, feeding misinformation, toying with expectations, as if
the thing is improvising, just winging it. Because whatever's haunting
the Union in now the Union Steakhouse, it isn't shy,
it's active, it's aware, and it's clearly been watching the
years go by. And for the true stories behind the

(53:58):
girl in red, whether she's Emily or Sarah, and the
seaman who watches through the windows and walks through locked doors,
those details may be lost to time or buried in
shame or deliberately obscured by the spirits themselves for their
own unknown purposes. But what's not in question is that

(54:19):
something remains at the Union end, Something lives in those walls.
And perhaps the strangest thing of all, For a building
with centuries of history, ghostly inquests, sailor hauntings, and Victorian tragedy,
the Union has only ever really presented two distinct spirits

(54:40):
that we can firmly define, just two. Not a chorus
of the damned, not a ghost in every corner, just
a sailor and a girl in red, which begs the
question are they the only two spirits? Or are they
just the only two willing to be seen? Oh? Man, folks, gauge,

(55:03):
Now what do you think in here? I mean, it's
hard to say. With these buildings that go back literally centuries,
in this case the late medieval period, that had so
many purposes and probably saw so many people live in them,
move out of them, come and go. Who's to say
an entity can't be an amalgamation of many souls.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
In a way, right, which would also explain the inconsistencies
to the psychics. For all we know as a psychic
communicating with that supernatural realm. You probably hear a lot
of things from a lot of different sources, and it's
probably almost like trying to pick out a flute in

(55:49):
a sea of white noise, almost, And like you said,
this place is so old and has gone through so
many changes. Who knows who's lived in it, died in it?
How many spirits are there? And the spirits themselves too,
like we talked about, may also be kind of broken,
that their identity and that their memories are inconsistent as.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Well, exactly like certain ghosts are said to appear in
multiple places that were maybe significant to a person's life. Well, like,
does that mean that the consciousness itself is divided? And
I like the idea of what you said about radio
signals almost it's like white noise. It's like millions countless

(56:32):
indiscernible spirit signals that only a few strong ones kind
of bleep through or some kind of get tangled up
together in form a larger one. And you're absolutely right,
there's so many things to consider, especially when you're dealing
with I mean, history that just goes back so far.
But I'll tell you tell you what gauge. I got

(56:53):
a list of names that I bet would fit right
in on the specials list at the Union Steakhouse.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Oh Yeah, who's that, folks.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Give it on up for our top tier Patreon subscriber,
of course. The Dream James Watkins, the Finished Face Via Lungphist,
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, Noah Lene Vavilli, the loathsome

(57:22):
Johnny Love, the carnivorous Kevin Bogeie, 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 rapt Scallion Ryan Crumb, the Beast,

(57:44):
Benjamin Whang, the Devilish Chris Duceet, the Psycho, Sam the
Electric Emily Jong, the ghoulish Girt Hankum, the Renegade, Corey Ramos,
the Crazed Carlos, the Antagonist, Andrew Park the Monstrous MICHAELA. Sure,
the Witchy Wonder, J. P. Weimer, the Freiki, Ben Forsyth,
the Barbaric Andrew Berry, the Mysterious Marcella, the Hillacious Kale Hoffman,
and Pug Borb the Poulter Guys. Oh yes, folks, if

(58:06):
you want to be just like that, If you want
to get a nice slice of prime rib content, head
on over to patreon dot com slash creep Street Podcast
for all sorts of goodies, gauge. You got anything in
the oven, anything you're working on?

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, I've got a lot of tracks in the oven
right now, probably gonna start dropping some single So if
you want to check that out, check out vapor Verse
on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and band camp.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Yes, yes, yes, folks. As always, thank you, We love you.
We cannot thank you enough for your support the years
of listenership, and whether you're a Patreon subscriber or not,
we thank you, and we welcome all the new I
know we're getting a lot of new listeners recently, within
the last few weeks, so welcome to all of you
as well. Hope you feel right at home. We've got lots,
lots and lots. I mean, we are five years into

(58:55):
this and we are only scratching the surface. Citizens of
the Elkie Way, my name is Dylan Hackworth.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
And I'm Gage Charlotte.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Good night and goodbye.

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Ep252 - The Haunting Of The Union Inn

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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;}Ep252 - The Haunting Of The Union Inn