July 13, 2025 • 56 mins
In The Crease (ITC) is where history, mystery, and the human condition collide. Hosted by J E DOUBLE F, each episode blends storytelling, analysis, and dark humor to explore the strange, the forgotten, and the unsettlingly relevant.
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
🎧 New episodes release bi-weekly.
📅 Current Season: ITC Season 4 (Episodes 61–80).
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M the streshold comens step pass impressive future. We are
(00:30):
not time.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Think Think Think.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
A time?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You think you think? Do you think? You think? Sia?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You are listening to in the Crease, the show that
slices deep in the history, strangest footnotes, where blood sometimes
seeps through the old stone and echoes never quite die.
I am your host, J E. Double Lefn. Tonight We're
gonna march onto cursed ground. This is episode sixty five,
(02:40):
the Phantom Battle of edge Hill. We're gonna get into
our little time machine and go back to October twenty third,
sixteen forty two. And for those that may not be
into history, this is when the English Civil War was
just beginning. Brother is fighting, brother King faces parliament. God's
(03:07):
will is invoked from both sides by cannon, by sword,
and by fire. And in the quiet hills near a
village called edge Hill in Warwickshire, thousands will clash, hundreds
will die, and the dead, some say, did not stay buried,
(03:28):
because what happened at edge Hill didn't apparently end when
the sun went down, not that night, not for weeks,
and not even for centuries. Soldiers have seen them, priests
have heard them, and Kings have been warned of their return.
(03:50):
This is the story of a battle that never stopped,
a haunting that's been officially recorded by the British Crown,
a battlefield that keeps up again and again and again.
Tonight we will walk the fog drench more of Edge
Hill and ask the questions no history, what really wants
to touch? Did something supernatural happen here? Or was it
(04:15):
even something far worse? War memory trauma given shape and voice.
This is in the Crease episode sixty five, the Phantom
Battle of Edge Hill. Now let's go to war. So
(04:36):
in October of sixteen forty two, England is not just
to bite it, it's cracking apart, like a frostbitten pane
of glass. On one side, King Charles the First, a
monarch who believes his power flows straight from God's own hand,
divine right, unquestioned authority, an absolute rule the Kings, whose
belief in hierarchy is as firm as the stone in
(04:57):
his throne room. On the other, Parliament, furious, embolden and
increasingly armed, tired of taxes, of royal whims, of papast sympathies,
and iron fisted decrees, they see tyranny, or importantly, they
smell blood and they want control, and the result is war,
(05:21):
a civil war. Never understood the civil part of war.
It's not like it's very civil most of the time.
But this is the first in a series that will
convolse England, Scotland and even Ireland for nearly two decades,
And like so many civil wars, it begins not with
ideology but honestly geography. Charles has fled London, the capital,
(05:46):
along with the Puritan majority, is solidly parliamentarian, so the
King sets up court in Oxford and begins raising a
Royalist army in the north and the west. In return,
Parliament raises its own army in London and in the southeast,
under the command of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.
Two armies, one kingdom, and let's face it, neither side
(06:10):
is ready to blink. And by mid October sixteen forty two,
these forces are marching blindly toward each other through the
middle of England. And there, halfway between Oxford and London,
lies a quiet stretch of moorland, between the villages of
Kyneton and edge Hill. The ground a little sloped, the
trees a little thin, and the fog often clings low
(06:33):
and cold to the hedgerows. The land, this unassuming patch
of Warwickshire, it's about to become soaked in history, and
probably not just history, if you catch my meaning of
King Charles may be God's appointed monarch, but as a
general he's no Alexander. His army is divided among noblemen
(06:55):
with massive egos and conflicting agendas. At his side is
Prince Rupert the Rhine, just twenty three years old but
already a season commander with a fearsome cavalry reputation. Rupert
will become a legend in this war, both as a
military genius and as a hot head. His realist army
(07:16):
is about thirteen and a half thousand strong, roughly equal
number to the parliamentarian force under Essex, which is slower,
more methodical, and frankly not the most inspiring presence. Feel
Most of these men have never fought in a real battle.
They're more or less farmers, apprentices, doc workers. Their uniforms
(07:38):
are a patchwork joke, their muskets misfire as often as
they shoot. Their pikes are recycled from Tudor armors, and
a militia warris scrappy, desperate and you know, soaked in
fears what their plan is you would think, Oh, I
don't know. One hundred years later the English would have
learned from most battle. But hey, what can we say.
(08:01):
The British conquered half the world for spices and forget
the use it on their food, So they're not the
brightst Bob and the bunch. But by the evening of
October twenty second, the two armies finding themselves facing each
other against across the rolling plain near the village of England,
Rupert's Royalists take the high ground, occupying the ridge. The
(08:21):
parliamentarians are still slightly scattered, disorganized, and apparently caught off guard,
but there is hesitation, the sun is sinking fast, and Charles,
ever cautious, ever pious, and very stubborn, refuses to order
an attack on the sabbath, So instead of launching the
war's first major battle, both sides camp in the midst
(08:44):
barely a cannon's throw apart, waiting and watching and listening
to the wind whistle overground that will by dawn become unrecognizable.
That night was huddled in their cottages, horses spooked in
their stables, and campfires were flickering dimly across the damp,
(09:07):
and something something odd is said to happen. Some soldiers
claim they heard voices echoes, as if men were speaking
behind them, but no one was there. Others say the
air is colder than it should be, like winter is
pressing through a crack in autumn. And a few report
(09:27):
dreams that they just couldn't simply shake. Dreams of fire,
of men with no eyes, of battlefield smoke that tastes
way too similar to blood superstition. Sure, but remember this
is an Anglan still tangled in old beliefs. The Civil
War may be political on paper, but on the ground
(09:50):
it feels more apocalyptic. Every omen seems to matter, Every
shadow could be divine judgment or devilish trickery. As midnight passes,
the fog thickens, and at first light the thunder begins.
(10:14):
At or approximately two pm on October twenty three, the
royalists begin to descend from the ridge. Prince Rupert leaves
the cavalry on the right flank his personal specialty. They're
mounted their past and the very vicious charging parliamentarian troops
with sabers drawn and cries afore the king. Now, the
(10:36):
parliamentarian left wing collapses almost instantly. Some do try to fight,
others just simply run. It's chaos, hooves, blood confusion. Rupert's
cavalry chase of the fleeing soldiers for nearly two miles,
but it was a tactical blunder. In retrospect, it actually
removed them from the main field and gives Parliament center
(10:58):
a chance to regroup. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers clashed in
the center like iron jaws closing pike. Stab Muskets would roar,
but the smoke ended up so thick that visibility drops
to mirror fat. It's less a coordinated bat on kind
of more of an Irish bar brawl happening in a thundercloud.
(11:21):
Commander screen mortars, but seems like no one can hear them.
Regiments vanish into the mist, only to reappear in pieces.
A unit of Royalists, mistaking another Royalist regiment for the enemy,
opens fire, killing dozens.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Of their own.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
There is no strategy, it's just simply slaughter on the
Royaltists left. Lord Wilmot's cavalry charges Essex right, but the
Parliamentarian infantry holds firm. Here, musketeers and pipemen form dense
lines and repel the horseman with a very grim resolve.
By nightfall was clear no victor was going to emerge.
(12:00):
Both sides were holding the field, and both sides were bleeding.
Some say up to a thousand died that day. Others
put it a high, a little bit higher, some others
a little bit lower. But what is agreed upon is
this the field of Edge Hill drank deep, and something,
(12:20):
something remained behind. Now within days, strange reports start to emerge.
Villagers claim to hear the sounds of battle at night,
but no soldiers were there. Cannons booming in the distance,
the ring of steel on steel horses. Horses were even screaming.
(12:43):
A local shepherd, alarmed by the noise, climbed the ridge
to investigate, only return wait as linen, claiming to have
seen men fighting in the sky, not metaphorically literally in
the sky, spectral soldiers clashing above the ridge in ghostly silence.
(13:05):
This news would spread quickly, and well it didn't take
long for word to reach the King himself. Now, in
a move so unusual it's actually worth emphasizing here, Charles
I ordered an official inquiry into the Edge Hill phenomena. Yes, yes,
(13:31):
you're hearing me right. The English crown sent investigators to
look into a haunting. Reverend Thomas Broomhall is dispetched to
examine the reports. He speaks to local soldiers and the clergy.
The findings, well, his findings were inconclusive. Now I know
what you're saying. Inconclusive. That's not a dismissal. In fact,
(13:56):
some court records suggest the operations were seen repeatedly over
the course of several weeks, always at dusk, always in
the same place, and always with the sound of battle
ringing out across the empty fields. One chronicler writes that
the king's men saw quote phanfasms of soldiers and arms
flying and striking, retreating and charging again and again, with
(14:18):
the thunder of drumming, and the moaning of the wounded
unquote the official line God's warning to the kingdom. But
the people of Edgehill knew better. They've seen the fog,
they've heard the cries, they felt the ground rumble. The
(14:41):
war may have moved on to a different battlefield, but
this field, this field remembered now should be noted. The
morning after the Battle of Edge Hill was still eerily still.
(15:05):
What had once been a rolling pistoral more had transformed
into a smoking charnel ground. Corpses and lie in rows
versus were stiff in the frost, muffled weeping from the
few who survived long enough to realize what had just happened.
There were no cries of victory, no tears of triumph.
For the most part, only silence and smoke. By some accounts,
(15:31):
a damp fog settled that morning, thicker than any before.
It strange or a late October even in Warwickshire. Some
men reported not being able to see the tips of
their own pikes. Others claim they heard the dead still
moving just out of view. But that's that's the fog
(15:51):
of war, isn't it. War plays tricks on the mine,
especially civil war, where truth be known. You may have
known the man you just struck down. You may have
once shared your house with your ale, maybe even your
bible with As bodies were gathered from the field by
(16:17):
conscripted locals, pressed villagers, and scavengers, stories began to form
the condensation to a blade. The Royalists dead were said
to be buried hastily in mass graves dug too shallow,
some not at all, others simply looted and left to
the crows. The parliamentarian forses, those not reclaimed by fleeing comrades,
(16:41):
were heaped into mounds and covered with sod. In one
account later repeated by clergymen and travelers alike, a group
of parliamentarian bodies were stacked like timber near a bit
of trees, only to be gone by the more. Their
prints remained blood soaked the grass, but the bodies the
(17:04):
corpses nowhere. Locals whispered that the men had refused to
be buried. They'd been distributed by the way they were treated,
or perhaps by the fact that they'd never finished what
they'd come to do. This became the root of the
edge Hill curse, they'd say, unfinished battle.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
The first official sighting came less than a week after
the battle. A man named John Davies, a carpenter from Kennington,
reported to his parish vicar that he had seen armored
men floating above the ground, clashing blades without noise. They
vanished when he approached, leaving behind only the crushed grass
where their boots should have stood. The vicar, of course,
(17:49):
dismissed it until the next morning, when two boys hurting
sheep near the ridge ran screaming into the village, claiming
to have seen quote ghost soldiers unquote, not one, not
alone figure on the edge of dawn, but entire units, marching, drilling,
dying again, and returning to formation once more. The description
(18:16):
they gave mesh the armor worn by Royaltist's cavalry, pauldrons,
buff coats, curved sabers. They feeled the set, they said,
had come alive again. Now as words spread, people began
avoiding the edge Hill ridge until after sunset. Even soldiers
on furlough or on patrol came it a wider berth
(18:39):
than they normally would. But not everyone. Not everyone stayed away.
Some came to see, some came to listen, and of
course some came the prophet. Taverns in the nearby village
of Radway offered drinks to travelers daring enough to sleep
quote within reach of the haunted more unquote. A few
(19:05):
even sold phantom tokens scraps. A rusted iron supposedly found
at the site, bearing ghostly cold to the touch. More
likely it was pulled from, you know, an abandoned royalist
supply coach, or maybe even refashioned old garden tools. But hey,
profits a prophet, right. But there were witnesses who weren't
(19:28):
selling anything. Like the schoolmaster from Warwick who claimed in
a letter to his brother that his horse had quote
refused to cross the northern track at Edgehill, eyes wide,
heith chattering though there was no visible threat unquote. Or
how about the local herbalist, Margaret Way, who reported hearing
(19:49):
quote thickly drumming unquote that no one else could hear
at regular intervals near twilight. Now her health declined within months,
she stopped sleeping, claimed she'd begun to hear her own
name called from the tree line. She died in sixteen
forty three. Fever, they said, but her apprentice would tell
(20:14):
a different story. She died, saying over and over, they
never left, they never left, They never left. Now, these
weren't isolated superstitions like they did reach the court, and
(20:35):
King Charles the First, himself shaken by a spiritual weight
of civil war, ordered the official inquiry. Now once again,
the result was Reverend Thomas Broomhill and a small retinue
of witnesses, not soldiers, not clergy, but scribes, harolds and couriers,
people with royal connections and reputations at stake. They came
(20:56):
to Edgehill in December sixteen forty two, and apparently what
they saw took at least some of them, According to
Edward Wooten, who compiled the events in a letter to
Lord Digby preserved in several royal papers. By the way,
the group stayed two knights in the manor house overlooking
(21:17):
the ridge. Both knights they saw lights orbs of pale
blue flame floating over the battlefield. They heard musket volleys
timed at precise intervals, but there were no flashes, no soldiers,
and no bodies. And perhaps most disturbingly, they saw what
(21:39):
appeared to be entire lines of troops, shadowy and indistinct,
marching from one end of the ridge to the other,
vanishing near that tree line. It looked less like a
mass haunting and more like a reenactment. The battle itself
just kept seeing to play again and again and again,
(22:04):
line for line.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Now.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
On January fifth of sixteen forty three, a report was
submitted to the Royal Council. It's titled quote the True
Relation of the Apparition at Edgehill unquote. Let me be clear,
this is the first officially recorded and sanctioned ghost story
(22:31):
in English history. It describes, in stiff formal prose, multiple
sightings of quote, specters in the shape of soldiers unquote
by quote persons of quality and repute unquote. Here's an
actual excerpt. Quote. These strange apparitions appeared in the same
(22:52):
form in equippage as they had lived, fighting one another,
with as great a noise and clashing of swords as
might be imagined, even to the terror and amazement of
all that beheld them unquote. Now King Charles the first, Oh,
(23:13):
you know he's gonna laugh this off, right, No, he
did not laugh it off. He didn't condemn it either.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
What did he do?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
He included it in the court ledger for a war
torn king fighting not just parliament, but maybe a bit
of his own conscious This must have struck a nerve. Now,
(23:44):
after the report, sightings continued. One local rector described the
haunting as persistent, occurring most dreadfully near the turning of
the seasons. Usually it was always almost all the time
late October. It was always near dusk, and always when
the wrists missed rolled in first from the east. Now,
(24:09):
as the war raged on across York, Marston Moore and
eventually to naser Bay, Edgehill became less a place of
strategy and more place of memory. It was a memory
that England just simply couldn't bury. When Oliver Cromwell came
to power and the monarchy fell, many such ghost stories
were repressed. Puritans were not fond of spirits living or otherwise,
(24:35):
but yet Edgehill persisted. In sixteen fifty two, a wandering
preacher named Elias Throckmorton claimed to have seen a figure
quote in warlike form, bleeding from the mouth and staring
at me from behind a hedge unquote. He wrote it
in his travel Journey, buried in the Archives Cambridge. He
(24:57):
described the figure as wearing quote a sash of crimson
bad faded and no eyes were eyes should be unquote.
But yet it watched him until it didn't. For the record,
he never returned to Edge Hill.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
So what what?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
What were they? Was it residual energy, mass hallucinations, a
psychic echo triggered by trauma, geography and atmospheric conditions. The
answer really isn't simple, because these weren't singular shocking events.
They were rhythmic predictable, as though the battle had been
(25:40):
carved into the land itself, not just the people, not
just the memory, but the soil. You could almost say
edge Hill wasn't haunted by ghosts. Edge Hill itself was
the ghost, and perhaps, just perhaps it still is.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
Rising toss the art in shapeashion building my way still
remember savery soul, But your voice out shines the walls.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
And so by sins.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I never chose plod on banner song, the close still riding,
not for the clown, but for the light that ball me.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You are the fire that fog.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
The blood the table Dad.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I never made each mile.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
A burn, you carrying man through testalmain through man. You
gave me when I was allowed, You made me see wild.
You are the dream I had to follow, the reason
(27:35):
I can find a James Wapen name.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
The cold, host, deniron, train and sword.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
But then I saw you feed me a son small
and knew what was in fall would fall. You are
the fire that fought the blade.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
The name be hide.
Speaker 7 (28:20):
The vowel made each breath of old.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And you said he free.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
You are the lie inside of me.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
You gave me off when I was hollow.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
You saw my blade to something trap, I faced a
dark contempted.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Father for a time, A wrong logging, no dream, long dream,
(29:17):
to check some try a song, A second to reading.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
Lord, you gave me when I was hollow, You made
(29:58):
me see but I read.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Gone and welcome back. It's great to be back. Just
programming update. Tonight was supposed to be a lost Wonder
(30:33):
but because of events in my personal life, last two
weeks have not been kind. So you're getting a makeup
ITC episode sixty five that should have aired last Sunday
and next week ITC will be back again in this
time spot for episode sixty six or a really really
(30:53):
unfortunately perhaps timed episode. More on that later. So here
we are after the break. Time is rolling forward, as
is the way Kings are replaced parliaments. While they rise
and they fall, red coats will give way to khaki,
(31:17):
savors to rifles, and England begins to forget the chaos
of sixteen forty two because not everyone. Not everyone forgets
edge Hill because let's face it, edge Hill, Oh, it
won't let you. As the eighteenth century dawns, the battlefield
fades into the hedgerows of history, but locals are still
(31:40):
speaking in hush lowered tones, and the stories they grow stranger,
not less, not even fainter stranger. In seventeen o six,
references to Edgehill speck reenactments had returned in newly printed
(32:02):
chap books, those cheap, thin little pamphlets filled with ghost tales,
miracle cures and scandalous poetry. One particular pamphlet titled The
March of Dead Men was sold in Oxfordshire ends and
including an account of a traveler who quote was set
(32:23):
upon by drumming specters and chased a full mile. Now
that's probably a bit of an embellishment, you know, for
story telling flair. But what stands out as the tone.
These are not moralistic tales, not even cautionary ones. They
(32:46):
aren't even trying to scare centers straight. They're more or
less just reports, quiet, grim and treated with a sense
of local truth. A few decades later, in seventeen fifty two,
Reverend Alicia Wharford or elisha On, one of the two
(33:07):
of Warwick, writes in his Parish Notes that quote, twice
I have witnessed men bearing arms across the old field
in silence. Their dress is of a former time. I
could hear their boots upon the earth, but no voices
would escape their lips unquote. And that line I think
really needs to be reemphasized here, boots upon the earth,
(33:32):
but no voices, as though even the dead knew they
weren't allowed to speak any more.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
Now.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Edgehill developed a
particularly strange pattern fightings involving horses. Over and over again.
Witness reports the sounds of galloping hoofs, thunderous, like a charge,
rushing past in full formation, only to vanish. One coachman
(34:02):
passing near Kenton in seventeen ninety fourths quoted in a
local newspaper saying he was quote nearly overthrown by a
cavalry he could not see unquote. He said the noises
were deafening, iron shod hoooves, men barking commands, the scream
of horses in terror. But when he stopped his carriage, nothing,
(34:27):
no dust, no prints, just sheer silence. But what is
important here is his own passengers were pale and trembling.
Now this isn't a single tall tale. It's part of
(34:48):
a pattern.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Not ghosts.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Is simply standing around saying hey, how you doing? Not
blurry figures and doorways, but something bigger, a scene that
just simply seems to play itself out again and again
and once more with feeling. Now in the eighteen hundreds,
(35:12):
the romane citticism is in full swing. In England's love
affair with the ghost story is entering its golden age.
The Edgehill hauntings got picked up by a new kind
of chronicler, the gentlemen antiquarian. These were well to do
hobby historians, men with powdered wigs, pipe tobacco, and, let's
(35:35):
face it, too much time on their hands. But they
did document ruins and folklore and lavish journals.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
One such man, Sir Nicholas Thornton, visited edge Show in
eighteen twenty one and claim to have seen quote a
regiment of infantry arms the shoulders ghostly white, preceding an
absolute lockstep across the lower Moor unquote now throw. Despite
writing like a man trying to win a duel with
someone with his vocabulary, he was considered a serious amateur historian.
(36:10):
He didn't believe in witches, he thought astrology was bunk,
but he did believe in Edgehill, and he claimed the
ghost weren't random they didn't just simply wander around. They
weren't some sort of confused spirits. They were very organized,
They followed orders. They were very, very, very disciplined. And
(36:36):
that unsettled him far more than the idea of just
random wandering souls, because discipline requires a cause. Might even say,
it requires a will, and it requires a purpose. And
who he asked was giving the orders. By the Victorian era,
(37:01):
England was straddling two worlds, the world of steam and
science and the world of seances in spirit boards, and
of course Edge Hill was now caught in that cross fire.
In eighteen sixty four, a new railway was proposed that
would run right through part of the edge Hill Ridge.
Local protesters, both from historical societies and well, let's face it,
(37:26):
ghost lovers, argued that the land was quote scarred and
sacred by war and haunted by fate unquote. A bizarre
compromise was reached. The line was rerouted to run just
south of the most infamous area, but not before the
railway survivor surveyor a named that has sadly been lost
to time, filed a report saying his team quote encountered
(37:50):
unnatural resistance when attempting to break round near the old
Burial Hill unquote. He would later rape about the soil.
Quote it moaned like a man wounded unquote. Now we
love to speak truths and facts. Here it was probably metaphor,
(38:12):
but I'm going to stress the word here. Probably, but
it's the kind of metaphor you don't make lightly in
a railway report. And more importantly, the locals.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
They believed him.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
They said the land did not want to be disturbed
because it was still occupied. Now, in nineteen fifteen, during
World War One, a group of soldiers training in the
Warwickshire area reported quote a phantom unit unquote near Edge Hill.
According to Captain Jonathan Drayton, his unit saw quote a
(38:50):
line of marching soldiers crossing the ridge at twilight unquote,
wearing what appeared to be outdated gear, breastplates, leather boots
and iron helmets. They just simply assumed it was some
sort of reenactment they had no clue about, or maybe
just homeguard exercises or something fun. But when they asked
(39:12):
command the next day, no such unit had been dispatched,
no reenactments were even scheduled, and the area was under
restricted training protocol. The men men that talked about it
were ridiculed, but they swore what they saw was real.
It was not ghosts, it was not with It was
(39:32):
a functioning, operating platoon, moving with precision and glear gleaming
like it had just come off the line. Draydon never
forgot it now. Unfortunately he was killed two years later
in Your Priest, but his journal survived and the entry
simply ends with quote, I saw the dead. They were
(39:55):
on time, and they had to be and they had
somewhere to be on.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
The twentieth century brought cameras, newsreels, documentaries, and Edgehill did
not disappoint. In nineteen seventy four, an ITV special special
titled Haunted Britain featured Edgehill prominently. A cameraman claimed to
(40:24):
see men in shadow moving in the distance while filming
brol only to find no trace in the footage, but
he said he remembered the exact moment because the air
went suddenly cold, like he stepped into a walk in freezer.
In nineteen ninety two, a BBC radio team covering haunted
locations broadcast live from Edgehill on Halloween. During the show,
(40:44):
a sound technician recorded what he claimed was drumming faint,
but the rhythmic playing under their own voices during playback.
It was dismissed as ambient interference. That is, until it
happened again, this time under completely different atmospheric conditions, different
(41:06):
time of day, different like and different engineer.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
The beat.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Was the same, just a slow rat attack rat attad
rat attad, like a distant snare tuning up for something. Now,
you would think in the age that we currently are
in a smartphones and satellite imaging, the hauntings would stop
(41:35):
right or maybe at least become very easy to disprove.
But edd chill, oh ed chill, it just doesn't care
about any of this modern bull crap. In two thousand
and nine, two hikers nar Ratley claimed they saw quote
three men in old war dress standing motionless at the
(41:55):
base of the trees.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Unquote.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
They took photos blurry, disordered and indistinct, and both their
phones crashed minutes later. The images were unrecoverable. More recently,
in twenty twenty one, a paranormal investigator named Sarah Lockhart
posted a night vision video from Edgehill in which a
(42:18):
figure seems to walk from right to left through the
mist disappearing behind some trees. She thought it was a
prank until she checked the thermal footage. There was no
heat signature, and the figure, roughly six feet tall, moved
without displacing any air, according to her light oar scans. Now,
(42:44):
let's just pause for a moment here, not not for
any dramatic effect. I think this show's been quite dramatic,
if I do say so myself. But maybe let's just
catch your breath, because you hear is where it gets uncomfortable.
We have six centuries of documented sightings from perish records,
(43:04):
royal scribes, and modern investigators describing the exact same thing.
Troops marching, ghostly reenactments, timed appearances, cold zones, and unnatural
sound phenomena. What are we looking at here? A timely
(43:25):
residual psychic energy, a battlefield so soaked in trauma that
reality itself has given way. Or maybe it's a story
so powerful, so repeated it's so believed that it burned
itself into the earth. It might be a cultural echo chamber,
a myth so sustained, so retold that the human brain
(43:47):
keeps remapping it into reality. But if that's true, a
loy do the sightings all occur in the same place
at the same times and match across the centuries. Face it,
that's not any kind of hysteria. That's a pattern, and patterns, well,
(44:08):
patterns means something is still moving out there even now. Now,
let's face it, the story of edge Hill is not
a neat one. There's not a single ghost, no tidy
seance can sum in it. There's no final exorcism, no
(44:28):
priest crossing himself and walking walking away as the credits roll. Instead,
we just have simply echoes and echoes that won't fade.
They're bouncing and they're bending, and sometimes if the shape
of the place is just right, they persist. What makes
the haunting of Edgehill so different, so defiant, is that
(44:49):
it has never stopped. It didn't peak in the superstitious
sixteen hundreds, it didn't fade in the Enlightenment age. It
didn't even flinch in the base of electricity, steam engines,
or microchips. Edge Hill is just simply remembering, and the
land itself has deemed that it was worthy to play
back over and over and over again. And one of
(45:18):
the strangest things about the edge Hill phenomenon isn't just
that people keep reporting it. It's when they report it
time after time, citing they spike in late October, usually
within a week of the original battle fought on October
twenty third, sixteen forty two. Not just in the seventeenth century,
(45:40):
not just in folklore, but in modern police logs, university archives,
and private journals. In nineteen eighty three, a team from
Oxford Paranormal Research conducted field recordings at Edge Hill for
six straight nights between October twentieth and twenty six. These
instruments picked up sub base frequency pulsing at one point
two hurts on three of those nights, each between seven
(46:02):
to fifteen pm and seven forty five pm. Now, that's
an audible to the human ear, and it causes anxiety, chills,
in nausea, and mammals. Now, these are the same symptoms
that have been reported by multiple witnesses for over three
hundred years infrasound, like what tigers used to paralyzed prey,
(46:29):
or what nature uses to announce a coming storm. But
in this case, it doesn't come from the wind.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
It came.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
From the ground beneath the field. Now, in nineteen ninety six,
a freedom of information request was filed with the UK
Ministry of Defense regarding quote, anomalous military sightings in Warbrickshire unquote.
The mod returned a brief clip to reply quote no
(47:00):
such incidents recorded by official personnel. Edgehill is not considered
a location of military interest unquote. But in two thousand
and three, during the partial declassification of Cold War archives,
an internal nineteen sixty eight document surface and a redacted
MOD planning memo among the topics quote recurrence of historic
battlefield phenomenon colon Edgehill unquote. It was buried kind of
(47:27):
in a footnote with no contact, no author, just a name,
but it was was there. Now, what would the Ministry
of Defense want with a battlefield that hasn't hosted a
military engagement over three hundred and eighty years? Or maybe
the better question to ask is what made them think
it still did? Now let me take you to a
(47:50):
slightly more modern case. In October two thousand and eight,
a retired police officer named Alan Wright was walking his
dog along the ridge near Edgehill. He lived in the
area his whole life. Never believed in the stories, he
just considered them drunken pub talk. But that night, he
swore he saw something a line of figure seven or
eight at least, moving across the field in full kit,
(48:13):
not modern fatigues, but buff leather bandolier's helmets, like inverted bulls.
What did he do well? He stopped, and then he watched.
They didn't speak, They didn't even acknowledge him. They moved
like a drill team, hands snapping to invisible commands. Now
Right would eventually call out. There was no response. Then,
(48:38):
just as the last figure reached the edge of the ridge,
they turned their head and he saw nothing, no face,
just a flat black void beneath the helmet. All Right,
by his own account, didn't run. He just simply walked, slowly, deliberately,
until he reached his car and drove home, with the
dog still shivering in the back seat. He told the
(49:03):
story to his daughter, and his daughter alone, that is
until twenty twenty one, when he agreed to share it
on record for a BBC Radio four interview. When asked
what he thought he saw, his reply was simple, quote,
I think the field doesn't know it's done. I think
(49:25):
it keeps the men it needs unquote. Now let's step
back a little here, because maybe you're wondering, how, how
can any any of this be real. I mean, come on,
we live in the age of quantum computing, mars rovers
and crisper gene editing. Are we still really talking about ghosts?
(49:46):
Maybe not as much in the traditional sense. Here, what
Edgehill gives us isn't just really, isn't just a haunting.
It is like a trauma loop. The field has a
version of PTSD that it just relives and relives and relives.
(50:06):
You know, look at a trauma loop. The even brain
process is just streamed violence to a surge of neurochemical
activity epinephrine, cortisol, and adrenaline. When this happens in mass,
in the same physical space, like on a battlefield, it
creates kind of a shared trauma field. I'll take that
and multiply it by thousands, men screaming, men dying, hating,
(50:29):
and then praying, layer after layer after layer of emotional devastation,
all focused on a single patch of earth. This is
less a ghost story and more a telling of a
scar at geological memory, a trauma that has been burned
into the land itself, and like all scars, sometimes it aches.
Speaker 6 (50:52):
Now.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Edge Hill isn't alone. There are dozens of battlefields around
the world with similar stories. Gettysburg my favorite place in
pennsylvani And you were tourists and rangers before hearing Civil
War bugles from empty fields. And by god, do not
go to Sniper Hill on the night of the on
the night of one or of the battles, because oh,
you have places in Turkey where Turkey soldiers have seen phantom,
(51:14):
an zax Bradoon in France where a fall gathers unnaturally fast,
and certain bunkers remain cold year round. But Edge Hill
remains unique for one reason. It's the first officially recorded
military haunting in English history. And unlike the others, it
isn't reactive. It's repetitive. It doesn't lash out. It replays
(51:37):
like a record with a scratch, And that kind of
raises one final question, what is it trying to tell us? Well,
Edgehill doesn't just spook, It instructs, and maybe maybe that's
the whole point, because every time a ghost replays itself,
(51:58):
it's telling a story it was never allowed to finish.
Every time we glimpse it, were being reminded. We're reminded
of the cost we bury, We're reminded of the wars
we whitewash, of the pain we refuse to name. And
(52:18):
maybe Edge Hill isn't cursed, maybe it's just simply honest.
Because the truth is England's Civil War never really ended.
The monarch return, the Parliament survived, but the division, the fear,
the willingness to bleed your neighbor, to defend an idea
that's still here. Edgehill isn't the ghost we are. We
(52:41):
carry the grudge. We remember the flags, the banners, the
divine rights, and so the field remembers us, not out
of vengeance, not out of hate, but because we were
never told we were done. Now, if you visit Edgehill today,
you'll find a mostly peaceful rise, trees, grass, There are
(53:04):
a few plaques, a commemorative stone, and very little noise.
But wait until the light dies, wait until the fog
rolls in, Wait until your ears begin to deceive you,
and ask yourself was that the wind? Where is it?
The boots on the ridge. And if you see a
line of soldiers walking from east to west, blades drawn,
heads bowed, don't call out, don't follow, don't interrupt, because
(53:28):
this battle, this battle never about us. Weave just inherited
the noise. So you've just heard the story of phantom
Battle of Edge Hill, a fight that started on a
cold October afternoon and somehow, some way, never quite ended.
(53:53):
Maybe it's ghost maybe it's history carved into the bone
of the earth, or maybe it's just the sound of
a country trying to remember what it's trying to forget.
The dead don't always stay down in some battlefields. Don't
really care who wins, They just want to fight. I
am je double f This has been an increase the
(54:17):
show that drags history out of the ground and dares
to ask what really happened. If you enjoy the show,
follow us on Kloranradio dot com and on Kylorin Radio
at X or wherever you tune into podcast. And remember,
if you hear drums in the distance tonight, don't worry unless,
(54:37):
just unless, they start to get closer.
Speaker 7 (54:41):
And next time.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
On ITC We're going to go somewhere I never thought
would be timely. We're going to explore near death experiences
in the afterlife. Until then, stay strange, stay curious, and
remember the past. It isn't dead, he's just waiting for orders.
(55:11):
And scary thought is we might still be on that battlefield.
Good night.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
A peak
Speaker 1 (56:36):
In
M the streshold comens step pass impressive future. We are
(00:30):
not time.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Think Think Think.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
A time?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You think you think? Do you think? You think? Sia?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You are listening to in the Crease, the show that
slices deep in the history, strangest footnotes, where blood sometimes
seeps through the old stone and echoes never quite die.
I am your host, J E. Double Lefn. Tonight We're
gonna march onto cursed ground. This is episode sixty five,
(02:40):
the Phantom Battle of edge Hill. We're gonna get into
our little time machine and go back to October twenty third,
sixteen forty two. And for those that may not be
into history, this is when the English Civil War was
just beginning. Brother is fighting, brother King faces parliament. God's
(03:07):
will is invoked from both sides by cannon, by sword,
and by fire. And in the quiet hills near a
village called edge Hill in Warwickshire, thousands will clash, hundreds
will die, and the dead, some say, did not stay buried,
(03:28):
because what happened at edge Hill didn't apparently end when
the sun went down, not that night, not for weeks,
and not even for centuries. Soldiers have seen them, priests
have heard them, and Kings have been warned of their return.
(03:50):
This is the story of a battle that never stopped,
a haunting that's been officially recorded by the British Crown,
a battlefield that keeps up again and again and again.
Tonight we will walk the fog drench more of Edge
Hill and ask the questions no history, what really wants
to touch? Did something supernatural happen here? Or was it
(04:15):
even something far worse? War memory trauma given shape and voice.
This is in the Crease episode sixty five, the Phantom
Battle of Edge Hill. Now let's go to war. So
(04:36):
in October of sixteen forty two, England is not just
to bite it, it's cracking apart, like a frostbitten pane
of glass. On one side, King Charles the First, a
monarch who believes his power flows straight from God's own hand,
divine right, unquestioned authority, an absolute rule the Kings, whose
belief in hierarchy is as firm as the stone in
(04:57):
his throne room. On the other, Parliament, furious, embolden and
increasingly armed, tired of taxes, of royal whims, of papast sympathies,
and iron fisted decrees, they see tyranny, or importantly, they
smell blood and they want control, and the result is war,
(05:21):
a civil war. Never understood the civil part of war.
It's not like it's very civil most of the time.
But this is the first in a series that will
convolse England, Scotland and even Ireland for nearly two decades,
And like so many civil wars, it begins not with
ideology but honestly geography. Charles has fled London, the capital,
(05:46):
along with the Puritan majority, is solidly parliamentarian, so the
King sets up court in Oxford and begins raising a
Royalist army in the north and the west. In return,
Parliament raises its own army in London and in the southeast,
under the command of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.
Two armies, one kingdom, and let's face it, neither side
(06:10):
is ready to blink. And by mid October sixteen forty two,
these forces are marching blindly toward each other through the
middle of England. And there, halfway between Oxford and London,
lies a quiet stretch of moorland, between the villages of
Kyneton and edge Hill. The ground a little sloped, the
trees a little thin, and the fog often clings low
(06:33):
and cold to the hedgerows. The land, this unassuming patch
of Warwickshire, it's about to become soaked in history, and
probably not just history, if you catch my meaning of
King Charles may be God's appointed monarch, but as a
general he's no Alexander. His army is divided among noblemen
(06:55):
with massive egos and conflicting agendas. At his side is
Prince Rupert the Rhine, just twenty three years old but
already a season commander with a fearsome cavalry reputation. Rupert
will become a legend in this war, both as a
military genius and as a hot head. His realist army
(07:16):
is about thirteen and a half thousand strong, roughly equal
number to the parliamentarian force under Essex, which is slower,
more methodical, and frankly not the most inspiring presence. Feel
Most of these men have never fought in a real battle.
They're more or less farmers, apprentices, doc workers. Their uniforms
(07:38):
are a patchwork joke, their muskets misfire as often as
they shoot. Their pikes are recycled from Tudor armors, and
a militia warris scrappy, desperate and you know, soaked in
fears what their plan is you would think, Oh, I
don't know. One hundred years later the English would have
learned from most battle. But hey, what can we say.
(08:01):
The British conquered half the world for spices and forget
the use it on their food, So they're not the
brightst Bob and the bunch. But by the evening of
October twenty second, the two armies finding themselves facing each
other against across the rolling plain near the village of England,
Rupert's Royalists take the high ground, occupying the ridge. The
(08:21):
parliamentarians are still slightly scattered, disorganized, and apparently caught off guard,
but there is hesitation, the sun is sinking fast, and Charles,
ever cautious, ever pious, and very stubborn, refuses to order
an attack on the sabbath, So instead of launching the
war's first major battle, both sides camp in the midst
(08:44):
barely a cannon's throw apart, waiting and watching and listening
to the wind whistle overground that will by dawn become unrecognizable.
That night was huddled in their cottages, horses spooked in
their stables, and campfires were flickering dimly across the damp,
(09:07):
and something something odd is said to happen. Some soldiers
claim they heard voices echoes, as if men were speaking
behind them, but no one was there. Others say the
air is colder than it should be, like winter is
pressing through a crack in autumn. And a few report
(09:27):
dreams that they just couldn't simply shake. Dreams of fire,
of men with no eyes, of battlefield smoke that tastes
way too similar to blood superstition. Sure, but remember this
is an Anglan still tangled in old beliefs. The Civil
War may be political on paper, but on the ground
(09:50):
it feels more apocalyptic. Every omen seems to matter, Every
shadow could be divine judgment or devilish trickery. As midnight passes,
the fog thickens, and at first light the thunder begins.
(10:14):
At or approximately two pm on October twenty three, the
royalists begin to descend from the ridge. Prince Rupert leaves
the cavalry on the right flank his personal specialty. They're
mounted their past and the very vicious charging parliamentarian troops
with sabers drawn and cries afore the king. Now, the
(10:36):
parliamentarian left wing collapses almost instantly. Some do try to fight,
others just simply run. It's chaos, hooves, blood confusion. Rupert's
cavalry chase of the fleeing soldiers for nearly two miles,
but it was a tactical blunder. In retrospect, it actually
removed them from the main field and gives Parliament center
(10:58):
a chance to regroup. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers clashed in
the center like iron jaws closing pike. Stab Muskets would roar,
but the smoke ended up so thick that visibility drops
to mirror fat. It's less a coordinated bat on kind
of more of an Irish bar brawl happening in a thundercloud.
(11:21):
Commander screen mortars, but seems like no one can hear them.
Regiments vanish into the mist, only to reappear in pieces.
A unit of Royalists, mistaking another Royalist regiment for the enemy,
opens fire, killing dozens.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Of their own.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
There is no strategy, it's just simply slaughter on the
Royaltists left. Lord Wilmot's cavalry charges Essex right, but the
Parliamentarian infantry holds firm. Here, musketeers and pipemen form dense
lines and repel the horseman with a very grim resolve.
By nightfall was clear no victor was going to emerge.
(12:00):
Both sides were holding the field, and both sides were bleeding.
Some say up to a thousand died that day. Others
put it a high, a little bit higher, some others
a little bit lower. But what is agreed upon is
this the field of Edge Hill drank deep, and something,
(12:20):
something remained behind. Now within days, strange reports start to emerge.
Villagers claim to hear the sounds of battle at night,
but no soldiers were there. Cannons booming in the distance,
the ring of steel on steel horses. Horses were even screaming.
(12:43):
A local shepherd, alarmed by the noise, climbed the ridge
to investigate, only return wait as linen, claiming to have
seen men fighting in the sky, not metaphorically literally in
the sky, spectral soldiers clashing above the ridge in ghostly silence.
(13:05):
This news would spread quickly, and well it didn't take
long for word to reach the King himself. Now, in
a move so unusual it's actually worth emphasizing here, Charles
I ordered an official inquiry into the Edge Hill phenomena. Yes, yes,
(13:31):
you're hearing me right. The English crown sent investigators to
look into a haunting. Reverend Thomas Broomhall is dispetched to
examine the reports. He speaks to local soldiers and the clergy.
The findings, well, his findings were inconclusive. Now I know
what you're saying. Inconclusive. That's not a dismissal. In fact,
(13:56):
some court records suggest the operations were seen repeatedly over
the course of several weeks, always at dusk, always in
the same place, and always with the sound of battle
ringing out across the empty fields. One chronicler writes that
the king's men saw quote phanfasms of soldiers and arms
flying and striking, retreating and charging again and again, with
(14:18):
the thunder of drumming, and the moaning of the wounded
unquote the official line God's warning to the kingdom. But
the people of Edgehill knew better. They've seen the fog,
they've heard the cries, they felt the ground rumble. The
(14:41):
war may have moved on to a different battlefield, but
this field, this field remembered now should be noted. The
morning after the Battle of Edge Hill was still eerily still.
(15:05):
What had once been a rolling pistoral more had transformed
into a smoking charnel ground. Corpses and lie in rows
versus were stiff in the frost, muffled weeping from the
few who survived long enough to realize what had just happened.
There were no cries of victory, no tears of triumph.
For the most part, only silence and smoke. By some accounts,
(15:31):
a damp fog settled that morning, thicker than any before.
It strange or a late October even in Warwickshire. Some
men reported not being able to see the tips of
their own pikes. Others claim they heard the dead still
moving just out of view. But that's that's the fog
(15:51):
of war, isn't it. War plays tricks on the mine,
especially civil war, where truth be known. You may have
known the man you just struck down. You may have
once shared your house with your ale, maybe even your
bible with As bodies were gathered from the field by
(16:17):
conscripted locals, pressed villagers, and scavengers, stories began to form
the condensation to a blade. The Royalists dead were said
to be buried hastily in mass graves dug too shallow,
some not at all, others simply looted and left to
the crows. The parliamentarian forses, those not reclaimed by fleeing comrades,
(16:41):
were heaped into mounds and covered with sod. In one
account later repeated by clergymen and travelers alike, a group
of parliamentarian bodies were stacked like timber near a bit
of trees, only to be gone by the more. Their
prints remained blood soaked the grass, but the bodies the
(17:04):
corpses nowhere. Locals whispered that the men had refused to
be buried. They'd been distributed by the way they were treated,
or perhaps by the fact that they'd never finished what
they'd come to do. This became the root of the
edge Hill curse, they'd say, unfinished battle.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
The first official sighting came less than a week after
the battle. A man named John Davies, a carpenter from Kennington,
reported to his parish vicar that he had seen armored
men floating above the ground, clashing blades without noise. They
vanished when he approached, leaving behind only the crushed grass
where their boots should have stood. The vicar, of course,
(17:49):
dismissed it until the next morning, when two boys hurting
sheep near the ridge ran screaming into the village, claiming
to have seen quote ghost soldiers unquote, not one, not
alone figure on the edge of dawn, but entire units, marching, drilling,
dying again, and returning to formation once more. The description
(18:16):
they gave mesh the armor worn by Royaltist's cavalry, pauldrons,
buff coats, curved sabers. They feeled the set, they said,
had come alive again. Now as words spread, people began
avoiding the edge Hill ridge until after sunset. Even soldiers
on furlough or on patrol came it a wider berth
(18:39):
than they normally would. But not everyone. Not everyone stayed away.
Some came to see, some came to listen, and of
course some came the prophet. Taverns in the nearby village
of Radway offered drinks to travelers daring enough to sleep
quote within reach of the haunted more unquote. A few
(19:05):
even sold phantom tokens scraps. A rusted iron supposedly found
at the site, bearing ghostly cold to the touch. More
likely it was pulled from, you know, an abandoned royalist
supply coach, or maybe even refashioned old garden tools. But hey,
profits a prophet, right. But there were witnesses who weren't
(19:28):
selling anything. Like the schoolmaster from Warwick who claimed in
a letter to his brother that his horse had quote
refused to cross the northern track at Edgehill, eyes wide,
heith chattering though there was no visible threat unquote. Or
how about the local herbalist, Margaret Way, who reported hearing
(19:49):
quote thickly drumming unquote that no one else could hear
at regular intervals near twilight. Now her health declined within months,
she stopped sleeping, claimed she'd begun to hear her own
name called from the tree line. She died in sixteen
forty three. Fever, they said, but her apprentice would tell
(20:14):
a different story. She died, saying over and over, they
never left, they never left, They never left. Now, these
weren't isolated superstitions like they did reach the court, and
(20:35):
King Charles the First, himself shaken by a spiritual weight
of civil war, ordered the official inquiry. Now once again,
the result was Reverend Thomas Broomhill and a small retinue
of witnesses, not soldiers, not clergy, but scribes, harolds and couriers,
people with royal connections and reputations at stake. They came
(20:56):
to Edgehill in December sixteen forty two, and apparently what
they saw took at least some of them, According to
Edward Wooten, who compiled the events in a letter to
Lord Digby preserved in several royal papers. By the way,
the group stayed two knights in the manor house overlooking
(21:17):
the ridge. Both knights they saw lights orbs of pale
blue flame floating over the battlefield. They heard musket volleys
timed at precise intervals, but there were no flashes, no soldiers,
and no bodies. And perhaps most disturbingly, they saw what
(21:39):
appeared to be entire lines of troops, shadowy and indistinct,
marching from one end of the ridge to the other,
vanishing near that tree line. It looked less like a
mass haunting and more like a reenactment. The battle itself
just kept seeing to play again and again and again,
(22:04):
line for line.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Now.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
On January fifth of sixteen forty three, a report was
submitted to the Royal Council. It's titled quote the True
Relation of the Apparition at Edgehill unquote. Let me be clear,
this is the first officially recorded and sanctioned ghost story
(22:31):
in English history. It describes, in stiff formal prose, multiple
sightings of quote, specters in the shape of soldiers unquote
by quote persons of quality and repute unquote. Here's an
actual excerpt. Quote. These strange apparitions appeared in the same
(22:52):
form in equippage as they had lived, fighting one another,
with as great a noise and clashing of swords as
might be imagined, even to the terror and amazement of
all that beheld them unquote. Now King Charles the first, Oh,
(23:13):
you know he's gonna laugh this off, right, No, he
did not laugh it off. He didn't condemn it either.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
What did he do?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
He included it in the court ledger for a war
torn king fighting not just parliament, but maybe a bit
of his own conscious This must have struck a nerve. Now,
(23:44):
after the report, sightings continued. One local rector described the
haunting as persistent, occurring most dreadfully near the turning of
the seasons. Usually it was always almost all the time
late October. It was always near dusk, and always when
the wrists missed rolled in first from the east. Now,
(24:09):
as the war raged on across York, Marston Moore and
eventually to naser Bay, Edgehill became less a place of
strategy and more place of memory. It was a memory
that England just simply couldn't bury. When Oliver Cromwell came
to power and the monarchy fell, many such ghost stories
were repressed. Puritans were not fond of spirits living or otherwise,
(24:35):
but yet Edgehill persisted. In sixteen fifty two, a wandering
preacher named Elias Throckmorton claimed to have seen a figure
quote in warlike form, bleeding from the mouth and staring
at me from behind a hedge unquote. He wrote it
in his travel Journey, buried in the Archives Cambridge. He
(24:57):
described the figure as wearing quote a sash of crimson
bad faded and no eyes were eyes should be unquote.
But yet it watched him until it didn't. For the record,
he never returned to Edge Hill.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
So what what?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
What were they? Was it residual energy, mass hallucinations, a
psychic echo triggered by trauma, geography and atmospheric conditions. The
answer really isn't simple, because these weren't singular shocking events.
They were rhythmic predictable, as though the battle had been
(25:40):
carved into the land itself, not just the people, not
just the memory, but the soil. You could almost say
edge Hill wasn't haunted by ghosts. Edge Hill itself was
the ghost, and perhaps, just perhaps it still is.
Speaker 6 (26:21):
Rising toss the art in shapeashion building my way still
remember savery soul, But your voice out shines the walls.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
And so by sins.
Speaker 6 (26:41):
I never chose plod on banner song, the close still riding,
not for the clown, but for the light that ball me.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
You are the fire that fog.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
The blood the table Dad.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I never made each mile.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
A burn, you carrying man through testalmain through man. You
gave me when I was allowed, You made me see wild.
You are the dream I had to follow, the reason
(27:35):
I can find a James Wapen name.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
The cold, host, deniron, train and sword.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
But then I saw you feed me a son small
and knew what was in fall would fall. You are
the fire that fought the blade.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
The name be hide.
Speaker 7 (28:20):
The vowel made each breath of old.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
And you said he free.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
You are the lie inside of me.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
You gave me off when I was hollow.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
You saw my blade to something trap, I faced a
dark contempted.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Father for a time, A wrong logging, no dream, long dream,
(29:17):
to check some try a song, A second to reading.
Speaker 7 (29:29):
Lord, you gave me when I was hollow, You made
(29:58):
me see but I read.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Gone and welcome back. It's great to be back. Just
programming update. Tonight was supposed to be a lost Wonder
(30:33):
but because of events in my personal life, last two
weeks have not been kind. So you're getting a makeup
ITC episode sixty five that should have aired last Sunday
and next week ITC will be back again in this
time spot for episode sixty six or a really really
(30:53):
unfortunately perhaps timed episode. More on that later. So here
we are after the break. Time is rolling forward, as
is the way Kings are replaced parliaments. While they rise
and they fall, red coats will give way to khaki,
(31:17):
savors to rifles, and England begins to forget the chaos
of sixteen forty two because not everyone. Not everyone forgets
edge Hill because let's face it, edge Hill, Oh, it
won't let you. As the eighteenth century dawns, the battlefield
fades into the hedgerows of history, but locals are still
(31:40):
speaking in hush lowered tones, and the stories they grow stranger,
not less, not even fainter stranger. In seventeen o six,
references to Edgehill speck reenactments had returned in newly printed
(32:02):
chap books, those cheap, thin little pamphlets filled with ghost tales,
miracle cures and scandalous poetry. One particular pamphlet titled The
March of Dead Men was sold in Oxfordshire ends and
including an account of a traveler who quote was set
(32:23):
upon by drumming specters and chased a full mile. Now
that's probably a bit of an embellishment, you know, for
story telling flair. But what stands out as the tone.
These are not moralistic tales, not even cautionary ones. They
(32:46):
aren't even trying to scare centers straight. They're more or
less just reports, quiet, grim and treated with a sense
of local truth. A few decades later, in seventeen fifty two,
Reverend Alicia Wharford or elisha On, one of the two
(33:07):
of Warwick, writes in his Parish Notes that quote, twice
I have witnessed men bearing arms across the old field
in silence. Their dress is of a former time. I
could hear their boots upon the earth, but no voices
would escape their lips unquote. And that line I think
really needs to be reemphasized here, boots upon the earth,
(33:32):
but no voices, as though even the dead knew they
weren't allowed to speak any more.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
Now.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Edgehill developed a
particularly strange pattern fightings involving horses. Over and over again.
Witness reports the sounds of galloping hoofs, thunderous, like a charge,
rushing past in full formation, only to vanish. One coachman
(34:02):
passing near Kenton in seventeen ninety fourths quoted in a
local newspaper saying he was quote nearly overthrown by a
cavalry he could not see unquote. He said the noises
were deafening, iron shod hoooves, men barking commands, the scream
of horses in terror. But when he stopped his carriage, nothing,
(34:27):
no dust, no prints, just sheer silence. But what is
important here is his own passengers were pale and trembling.
Now this isn't a single tall tale. It's part of
(34:48):
a pattern.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Not ghosts.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Is simply standing around saying hey, how you doing? Not
blurry figures and doorways, but something bigger, a scene that
just simply seems to play itself out again and again
and once more with feeling. Now in the eighteen hundreds,
(35:12):
the romane citticism is in full swing. In England's love
affair with the ghost story is entering its golden age.
The Edgehill hauntings got picked up by a new kind
of chronicler, the gentlemen antiquarian. These were well to do
hobby historians, men with powdered wigs, pipe tobacco, and, let's
(35:35):
face it, too much time on their hands. But they
did document ruins and folklore and lavish journals.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
One such man, Sir Nicholas Thornton, visited edge Show in
eighteen twenty one and claim to have seen quote a
regiment of infantry arms the shoulders ghostly white, preceding an
absolute lockstep across the lower Moor unquote now throw. Despite
writing like a man trying to win a duel with
someone with his vocabulary, he was considered a serious amateur historian.
(36:10):
He didn't believe in witches, he thought astrology was bunk,
but he did believe in Edgehill, and he claimed the
ghost weren't random they didn't just simply wander around. They
weren't some sort of confused spirits. They were very organized,
They followed orders. They were very, very, very disciplined. And
(36:36):
that unsettled him far more than the idea of just
random wandering souls, because discipline requires a cause. Might even say,
it requires a will, and it requires a purpose. And
who he asked was giving the orders. By the Victorian era,
(37:01):
England was straddling two worlds, the world of steam and
science and the world of seances in spirit boards, and
of course Edge Hill was now caught in that cross fire.
In eighteen sixty four, a new railway was proposed that
would run right through part of the edge Hill Ridge.
Local protesters, both from historical societies and well, let's face it,
(37:26):
ghost lovers, argued that the land was quote scarred and
sacred by war and haunted by fate unquote. A bizarre
compromise was reached. The line was rerouted to run just
south of the most infamous area, but not before the
railway survivor surveyor a named that has sadly been lost
to time, filed a report saying his team quote encountered
(37:50):
unnatural resistance when attempting to break round near the old
Burial Hill unquote. He would later rape about the soil.
Quote it moaned like a man wounded unquote. Now we
love to speak truths and facts. Here it was probably metaphor,
(38:12):
but I'm going to stress the word here. Probably, but
it's the kind of metaphor you don't make lightly in
a railway report. And more importantly, the locals.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
They believed him.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
They said the land did not want to be disturbed
because it was still occupied. Now, in nineteen fifteen, during
World War One, a group of soldiers training in the
Warwickshire area reported quote a phantom unit unquote near Edge Hill.
According to Captain Jonathan Drayton, his unit saw quote a
(38:50):
line of marching soldiers crossing the ridge at twilight unquote,
wearing what appeared to be outdated gear, breastplates, leather boots
and iron helmets. They just simply assumed it was some
sort of reenactment they had no clue about, or maybe
just homeguard exercises or something fun. But when they asked
(39:12):
command the next day, no such unit had been dispatched,
no reenactments were even scheduled, and the area was under
restricted training protocol. The men men that talked about it
were ridiculed, but they swore what they saw was real.
It was not ghosts, it was not with It was
(39:32):
a functioning, operating platoon, moving with precision and glear gleaming
like it had just come off the line. Draydon never
forgot it now. Unfortunately he was killed two years later
in Your Priest, but his journal survived and the entry
simply ends with quote, I saw the dead. They were
(39:55):
on time, and they had to be and they had
somewhere to be on.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
Now.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
The twentieth century brought cameras, newsreels, documentaries, and Edgehill did
not disappoint. In nineteen seventy four, an ITV special special
titled Haunted Britain featured Edgehill prominently. A cameraman claimed to
(40:24):
see men in shadow moving in the distance while filming
brol only to find no trace in the footage, but
he said he remembered the exact moment because the air
went suddenly cold, like he stepped into a walk in freezer.
In nineteen ninety two, a BBC radio team covering haunted
locations broadcast live from Edgehill on Halloween. During the show,
(40:44):
a sound technician recorded what he claimed was drumming faint,
but the rhythmic playing under their own voices during playback.
It was dismissed as ambient interference. That is, until it
happened again, this time under completely different atmospheric conditions, different
(41:06):
time of day, different like and different engineer.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
The beat.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Was the same, just a slow rat attack rat attad
rat attad, like a distant snare tuning up for something. Now,
you would think in the age that we currently are
in a smartphones and satellite imaging, the hauntings would stop
(41:35):
right or maybe at least become very easy to disprove.
But edd chill, oh ed chill, it just doesn't care
about any of this modern bull crap. In two thousand
and nine, two hikers nar Ratley claimed they saw quote
three men in old war dress standing motionless at the
(41:55):
base of the trees.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Unquote.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
They took photos blurry, disordered and indistinct, and both their
phones crashed minutes later. The images were unrecoverable. More recently,
in twenty twenty one, a paranormal investigator named Sarah Lockhart
posted a night vision video from Edgehill in which a
(42:18):
figure seems to walk from right to left through the
mist disappearing behind some trees. She thought it was a
prank until she checked the thermal footage. There was no
heat signature, and the figure, roughly six feet tall, moved
without displacing any air, according to her light oar scans. Now,
(42:44):
let's just pause for a moment here, not not for
any dramatic effect. I think this show's been quite dramatic,
if I do say so myself. But maybe let's just
catch your breath, because you hear is where it gets uncomfortable.
We have six centuries of documented sightings from perish records,
(43:04):
royal scribes, and modern investigators describing the exact same thing.
Troops marching, ghostly reenactments, timed appearances, cold zones, and unnatural
sound phenomena. What are we looking at here? A timely
(43:25):
residual psychic energy, a battlefield so soaked in trauma that
reality itself has given way. Or maybe it's a story
so powerful, so repeated it's so believed that it burned
itself into the earth. It might be a cultural echo chamber,
a myth so sustained, so retold that the human brain
(43:47):
keeps remapping it into reality. But if that's true, a
loy do the sightings all occur in the same place
at the same times and match across the centuries. Face it,
that's not any kind of hysteria. That's a pattern, and patterns, well,
(44:08):
patterns means something is still moving out there even now. Now,
let's face it, the story of edge Hill is not
a neat one. There's not a single ghost, no tidy
seance can sum in it. There's no final exorcism, no
(44:28):
priest crossing himself and walking walking away as the credits roll. Instead,
we just have simply echoes and echoes that won't fade.
They're bouncing and they're bending, and sometimes if the shape
of the place is just right, they persist. What makes
the haunting of Edgehill so different, so defiant, is that
(44:49):
it has never stopped. It didn't peak in the superstitious
sixteen hundreds, it didn't fade in the Enlightenment age. It
didn't even flinch in the base of electricity, steam engines,
or microchips. Edge Hill is just simply remembering, and the
land itself has deemed that it was worthy to play
back over and over and over again. And one of
(45:18):
the strangest things about the edge Hill phenomenon isn't just
that people keep reporting it. It's when they report it
time after time, citing they spike in late October, usually
within a week of the original battle fought on October
twenty third, sixteen forty two. Not just in the seventeenth century,
(45:40):
not just in folklore, but in modern police logs, university archives,
and private journals. In nineteen eighty three, a team from
Oxford Paranormal Research conducted field recordings at Edge Hill for
six straight nights between October twentieth and twenty six. These
instruments picked up sub base frequency pulsing at one point
two hurts on three of those nights, each between seven
(46:02):
to fifteen pm and seven forty five pm. Now, that's
an audible to the human ear, and it causes anxiety, chills,
in nausea, and mammals. Now, these are the same symptoms
that have been reported by multiple witnesses for over three
hundred years infrasound, like what tigers used to paralyzed prey,
(46:29):
or what nature uses to announce a coming storm. But
in this case, it doesn't come from the wind.
Speaker 7 (46:35):
It came.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
From the ground beneath the field. Now, in nineteen ninety six,
a freedom of information request was filed with the UK
Ministry of Defense regarding quote, anomalous military sightings in Warbrickshire unquote.
The mod returned a brief clip to reply quote no
(47:00):
such incidents recorded by official personnel. Edgehill is not considered
a location of military interest unquote. But in two thousand
and three, during the partial declassification of Cold War archives,
an internal nineteen sixty eight document surface and a redacted
MOD planning memo among the topics quote recurrence of historic
battlefield phenomenon colon Edgehill unquote. It was buried kind of
(47:27):
in a footnote with no contact, no author, just a name,
but it was was there. Now, what would the Ministry
of Defense want with a battlefield that hasn't hosted a
military engagement over three hundred and eighty years? Or maybe
the better question to ask is what made them think
it still did? Now let me take you to a
(47:50):
slightly more modern case. In October two thousand and eight,
a retired police officer named Alan Wright was walking his
dog along the ridge near Edgehill. He lived in the
area his whole life. Never believed in the stories, he
just considered them drunken pub talk. But that night, he
swore he saw something a line of figure seven or
eight at least, moving across the field in full kit,
(48:13):
not modern fatigues, but buff leather bandolier's helmets, like inverted bulls.
What did he do well? He stopped, and then he watched.
They didn't speak, They didn't even acknowledge him. They moved
like a drill team, hands snapping to invisible commands. Now
Right would eventually call out. There was no response. Then,
(48:38):
just as the last figure reached the edge of the ridge,
they turned their head and he saw nothing, no face,
just a flat black void beneath the helmet. All Right,
by his own account, didn't run. He just simply walked, slowly, deliberately,
until he reached his car and drove home, with the
dog still shivering in the back seat. He told the
(49:03):
story to his daughter, and his daughter alone, that is
until twenty twenty one, when he agreed to share it
on record for a BBC Radio four interview. When asked
what he thought he saw, his reply was simple, quote,
I think the field doesn't know it's done. I think
(49:25):
it keeps the men it needs unquote. Now let's step
back a little here, because maybe you're wondering, how, how
can any any of this be real. I mean, come on,
we live in the age of quantum computing, mars rovers
and crisper gene editing. Are we still really talking about ghosts?
(49:46):
Maybe not as much in the traditional sense. Here, what
Edgehill gives us isn't just really, isn't just a haunting.
It is like a trauma loop. The field has a
version of PTSD that it just relives and relives and relives.
(50:06):
You know, look at a trauma loop. The even brain
process is just streamed violence to a surge of neurochemical
activity epinephrine, cortisol, and adrenaline. When this happens in mass,
in the same physical space, like on a battlefield, it
creates kind of a shared trauma field. I'll take that
and multiply it by thousands, men screaming, men dying, hating,
(50:29):
and then praying, layer after layer after layer of emotional devastation,
all focused on a single patch of earth. This is
less a ghost story and more a telling of a
scar at geological memory, a trauma that has been burned
into the land itself, and like all scars, sometimes it aches.
Speaker 6 (50:52):
Now.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Edge Hill isn't alone. There are dozens of battlefields around
the world with similar stories. Gettysburg my favorite place in
pennsylvani And you were tourists and rangers before hearing Civil
War bugles from empty fields. And by god, do not
go to Sniper Hill on the night of the on
the night of one or of the battles, because oh,
you have places in Turkey where Turkey soldiers have seen phantom,
(51:14):
an zax Bradoon in France where a fall gathers unnaturally fast,
and certain bunkers remain cold year round. But Edge Hill
remains unique for one reason. It's the first officially recorded
military haunting in English history. And unlike the others, it
isn't reactive. It's repetitive. It doesn't lash out. It replays
(51:37):
like a record with a scratch, And that kind of
raises one final question, what is it trying to tell us? Well,
Edgehill doesn't just spook, It instructs, and maybe maybe that's
the whole point, because every time a ghost replays itself,
(51:58):
it's telling a story it was never allowed to finish.
Every time we glimpse it, were being reminded. We're reminded
of the cost we bury, We're reminded of the wars
we whitewash, of the pain we refuse to name. And
(52:18):
maybe Edge Hill isn't cursed, maybe it's just simply honest.
Because the truth is England's Civil War never really ended.
The monarch return, the Parliament survived, but the division, the fear,
the willingness to bleed your neighbor, to defend an idea
that's still here. Edgehill isn't the ghost we are. We
(52:41):
carry the grudge. We remember the flags, the banners, the
divine rights, and so the field remembers us, not out
of vengeance, not out of hate, but because we were
never told we were done. Now, if you visit Edgehill today,
you'll find a mostly peaceful rise, trees, grass, There are
(53:04):
a few plaques, a commemorative stone, and very little noise.
But wait until the light dies, wait until the fog
rolls in, Wait until your ears begin to deceive you,
and ask yourself was that the wind? Where is it?
The boots on the ridge. And if you see a
line of soldiers walking from east to west, blades drawn,
heads bowed, don't call out, don't follow, don't interrupt, because
(53:28):
this battle, this battle never about us. Weave just inherited
the noise. So you've just heard the story of phantom
Battle of Edge Hill, a fight that started on a
cold October afternoon and somehow, some way, never quite ended.
(53:53):
Maybe it's ghost maybe it's history carved into the bone
of the earth, or maybe it's just the sound of
a country trying to remember what it's trying to forget.
The dead don't always stay down in some battlefields. Don't
really care who wins, They just want to fight. I
am je double f This has been an increase the
(54:17):
show that drags history out of the ground and dares
to ask what really happened. If you enjoy the show,
follow us on Kloranradio dot com and on Kylorin Radio
at X or wherever you tune into podcast. And remember,
if you hear drums in the distance tonight, don't worry unless,
(54:37):
just unless, they start to get closer.
Speaker 7 (54:41):
And next time.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
On ITC We're going to go somewhere I never thought
would be timely. We're going to explore near death experiences
in the afterlife. Until then, stay strange, stay curious, and
remember the past. It isn't dead, he's just waiting for orders.
(55:11):
And scary thought is we might still be on that battlefield.
Good night.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
A peak
Speaker 1 (56:36):
In
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