0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising

0:05

outside the UK.

0:28

Your

0:30

business deserves a customized solution. And

0:32

that's NetSuite. Learn more when you

0:34

download NetSuite's popular Key Performance

0:36

Indicators Checklist. Absolutely

0:38

free. At netsuite.com slash

0:40

ACAST. That's netsuite.com

0:42

slash ACAST. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At

0:45

Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite

0:47

of what Big Wireless does. They charge

0:49

you a lot, we charge you a little. So

0:52

naturally, when they announced they'd be raising

0:54

their prices due to inflation, we decided

0:56

to deflate our prices due to not

0:58

hating you. That's right. We're cutting the price

1:00

of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.

1:03

Give it a try at

1:05

mintmobile.com slash switch. New activation

1:07

and upfront payment for three-month plan required. Taxes and fees extra. Additional restrictions

1:10

apply. See mintmobile.com for full terms.

1:18

BBC Sounds. Music, radio,

1:20

podcasts. It was a space about

1:23

the size of a single garage. The

1:25

walls were covered in more Enochian symbols.

1:28

There were old candles everywhere, burned

1:31

down into dusty pools of solid wax. And

1:34

on the floor, a complex diagram

1:36

laid out in chalk. Don't

1:39

break any of the chalk lines. This

1:41

was a ritual space, and Byron was

1:43

worried that whatever Gibson may have been trying

1:46

to summon 12 or more years ago might

1:48

still be trapped within the interlocking lines

1:50

on the floor. I

1:51

found this hard to believe, but like

1:54

Byron said earlier, reality doesn't care

1:56

what you believe. There

1:58

was a small antique roll-top desk. over in the

2:00

corner. Inside there were several old-looking

2:03

books

2:05

of magic, which presumably

2:13

Philip Gibson had

2:14

used for reference. Alongside

2:16

this was a stack of notebooks,

2:17

nothing fancy, just

2:20

generic A5 hardback books you could

2:22

pick up on any high street. Every

2:24

page of every book was covered in an almost

2:27

indecipherable scrawl punctuated by

2:29

diagrams, maps, and newspaper clippings

2:31

that had been pasted in. Is it that?

2:34

Blank's notebook, no, but

2:36

maybe Gibson talks about it somewhere in his own notes.

2:43

Someone else with a unit there?

2:45

I would be a little late if I may. That

2:54

really could be anyone. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't know

2:56

what I'm saying. Keep

3:00

walking.

3:02

Keep walking.

3:33

It's going to take a while to get through these

3:35

notebooks. Philip

3:38

Gibson was a wizard as well. Gibson

3:40

is the missing piece of an earlier puzzle for you, something

3:43

you miss, but I don't know whether it's relevant.

3:46

Which puzzle? There have been a few. Gibson's

3:49

mother was a woman called Emily Gladwin.

3:51

Emily was a member of the same new forest cavern

3:54

as Amelia Fenno. But

4:01

that means that Philip Gibson and Destiny Cartwright

4:03

were half-siblings. And they got married.

4:06

Yep. They probably didn't know

4:08

at the time. Then they had Samantha

4:10

and she had all those health problems. This is what

4:12

you were talking about when you said there was inbreeding in the family.

4:14

These people. So

4:17

how does Gibson come to have

4:18

Robert Blake's notebook? Gibson and

4:21

Blake were working together.

4:22

Blake was into exposing fascists,

4:25

going all the way back to the 1930s specifically.

4:28

A guy called Ernest Gladwin. She's

4:30

in the British far-right movement and a leader.

4:33

The church of story wisdom. And Ernest

4:35

Gladwin would be Emily's dad?

4:38

Yeah. Gibson's grandfather. At

4:40

some point, Blake crossed paths with Gibson

4:42

and they started working together. Why?

4:44

If Gibson is the grandson of Blake's

4:47

nemesis. Gibson was one of ours. Not

4:49

in the department, but he was an asset. He

4:52

provided information. On your

4:54

show, an impact talked about the three kinds of people

4:56

he and Indiana Jones. And actually, Gibson

4:59

was one of the Joneses. He

5:01

understood that whatever people had his granddad's fault,

5:04

I was summoning or communing with, was

5:07

actually something much worse.

5:10

If you're keeping all these names straight in your head, then

5:12

you're doing better than I am. If I was Matt,

5:15

I would provide you with a really succinct summary.

5:17

But I'm not.

5:19

So here's what you need to know.

5:21

I was looking for a notebook belonging

5:23

to a guy called Robert Blake, who died in 1987. Blake

5:27

was an anti-fascist journalist who

5:29

seems to have made enemies

5:30

of some kind of mystical fascist

5:32

group called the church of story wisdom. Along

5:34

the way, Blake found himself

5:37

working with a man called Philip Gibson.

5:39

Gibson may well have taken possession of Blake's notebook

5:41

before Blake died.

5:43

Gibson himself disappeared in 2010. The

5:46

Department of Works, which technically doesn't exist

5:48

anymore, wanted to find the Blake notebook

5:50

solely because their enemies were looking for it. And

5:52

they judged that it falling into the wrong hands would

5:55

be bad for, so far, non-specific reasons. I

5:58

was helping out because...

5:59

Actually, I'm not sure. I hadn't stopped

6:02

doing enough to ask myself that question.

6:08

Yeah, it's just a load of wizard shit. I was in Lewis

6:10

at Eleanor Peck's house. I figured if

6:13

anyone could make sense of Philip Gibson's notebooks,

6:14

it was her. Gibson went

6:16

missing when? It's like 2010. Hmm.

6:26

Oh shit. What? How did we miss this? Blake?

6:29

The person? The family? What

6:31

do you mean? Gibson went missing in 2010? From where? From

6:35

home, I guess. Finsbury Park. I

6:37

mean, that's as much as we know. And when? I

6:40

don't have the date. November.

6:44

November 2010. Could he

6:46

have been in Suffolk? I mean, I guess. Why? Hold

6:48

on. Yeah.

6:56

The

6:59

Marston house.

7:00

Marston? As in April Marston?

7:02

Well, different branch of the same family. In 1935,

7:05

this branch of the Marston family were all murdered in their

7:08

beds by Mary Marston, who was 11 years old at the

7:10

time. I know this story. Yes, you

7:12

do. She stabbed them all with a pair of dressmaking scissors,

7:14

then burned the house to the ground. But look here.

7:19

The original report from the local newspaper

7:21

isn't online, but there's an archive reference

7:23

to it.

7:25

Look who the reporter was. Robert

7:27

Harrison Blake.

7:28

So Blake was belly out of his teens at

7:30

this point. The East Angley and Daily News

7:32

must have sent him along just to get the police report

7:35

and some eyewitness stuff after the event. Okay.

7:38

Anyway, off the point. Because Blake

7:40

probably never believed the woo woo stuff anyway.

7:42

The Marston house is the point. Or

7:45

rather, what it became. You have

7:47

to understand that the specific size of this house

7:49

is significant. There are a whole bunch of myths

7:52

and folk tales anchored here. Specifically,

7:54

the story of a woman called Faith Mills,

7:57

who was accused of witchcraft in a nearby town.

8:00

She ran away and the villagers caught

8:02

up with her and they murdered her and buried

8:05

her dismembered body on this side, which

8:07

was a crossroads. The idea being that her

8:09

evil spirit wouldn't know which way to go to return

8:12

to the village. So, over

8:14

the years various legends grew up

8:16

about how either the spirit of Faith Mills

8:19

haunted the area or that her

8:21

murder had awoken some demonic

8:23

entity that lived there. This all feels

8:25

very unbrand. So then in 1935,

8:28

the Marston Kid murdered her whole family and

8:30

burned some place to the ground. Back then,

8:32

in occult circles, it was assumed that the kid was

8:35

possessed in some way. And

8:38

this came to the attention of the Church of Stary Wisdom because

8:40

there's nothing crazy fascist like more than an

8:42

ancient folk horror that is uniquely

8:44

theirs. They believe this

8:46

was some kind of vengeful spirit of

8:49

ancient Albion. The Germans had the Tula

8:51

Society and all their North mythology and

8:53

now their British counterparts finally

8:56

had something of their own to let on to. So,

8:59

there are all these rites and rituals

9:01

performed on the site throughout the late 1930s

9:04

and into the early years of the war. Now,

9:07

I know Robert Blake believed these guys carried

9:09

on with their far-right nonsense well after that, but

9:11

we don't have much evidence for it. What we do

9:14

know, though, is that Robert Blake, who only

9:16

lived up the road, got so sick

9:18

of nutty white supremacists tramping all over

9:20

the forest in search of their pet demon that

9:22

he bought the land in the 1950s and fenced it all off.

9:25

I like this guy. Yeah, he's not taking any shit, is he? Crucially,

9:28

though, according to these notebooks, Philip

9:31

Gibson was an occultist and he

9:33

was a direct descendant of this Gladwin guy

9:35

who was running Stary Wisdom in the 1930s. Now,

9:38

if the department says Gibson was one of the good guys,

9:41

maybe they're right, but he knew the significance

9:43

of this site and, unlike Blake, he

9:46

believed something was there. So

9:48

anyway, the site all goes quiet

9:51

until Christmas 1980. You

9:54

know where I'm going with this. Rendlesham. The

9:56

Rendlesham Forest incident. Henry

10:01

Akeley and Amelia Fenner and their gang think they're

10:03

doing a Babylon working but they're on

10:05

this site, the exact same place. Yeah,

10:08

so if they contacted anything at all, and I'm not

10:10

saying they did, it would presumably have been the

10:12

same entity that the story wisdom guys were worshipping,

10:15

the thing that supposedly possessed poor

10:16

Mary Marston in 1939. There's no

10:20

record of anything very much happening after 1980.

10:23

Robert Blake dies at home in 1987, this

10:26

patch of land passes to his son who has no interest

10:28

in it, and then he passes it down to his

10:31

son, Jonathan, who is an architect. In 2008,

10:34

Jonathan Blake starts building a new house on this

10:36

site. In 2010, he moves in there with his wife

10:38

and their eight-year-old son, and in November of

10:40

that year, all three of them vanish without a

10:42

trace. At the same time as Philip Gibson, who

10:45

knew Robert Blake, who knew the site, who

10:47

believed in all of this stuff. You

10:49

think he vanished with the Blake? It's a leap, but

10:52

maybe Gibson went to the house, and if there's no son of

10:55

Blake's notebook anywhere else, maybe he

10:57

took it with him. 1935. What about it? That was

11:00

when the Marston

11:03

house burned down. What month? I was

11:05

with Marcus Byron again, heading through Rendles from

11:07

Forest and Suffolk. I hadn't been here in a

11:10

while, since the events at the end of the Whisperer

11:12

and Darkness. It's a nice part of the country,

11:14

but because of what happened

11:16

last time I was here, it was another spot

11:18

I wasn't eager to return to. June,

11:21

June 7th, you need an exact date. June's

11:23

enough. This house is how far from Orford

11:26

Nest? I don't know, a few miles? Not far. So

11:30

you've got an ancient evil lurking in the area.

11:33

So the story goes. It's like Dorman

11:35

for a long time, and it suddenly

11:38

wakes up and possesses this little girl.

11:41

You know what else happened in June 1935? If

11:43

I did, this conversation would be easier to edit. Orford

11:45

Nest. The birthplace of radar.

11:48

The Chain Home system. Same thing they had

11:50

at Cunudan during the Second World War. The

11:53

trials

11:54

for that were conducted at Orford Nest, starting

11:57

in June 1935. It

12:00

would be very easy to miss the Blake House.

12:03

It's up an unmarked track off a narrow single

12:05

lane road that runs through the forest. You

12:08

drive along the track for about half a mile

12:11

and then you come to a gate. This it? I

12:15

think we can climb a gate. I don't want to get

12:17

crap on my suit. Because it's the only clothing

12:19

you have? Because otherwise what will you sleep

12:21

in? Alright Coco

12:24

Chanel, have it your way. The

12:40

Blake House would have really stood out in this

12:42

area when it was built 12 years ago. It's

12:45

an entirely modern structure, mainly

12:48

wood and glass. It's

12:50

actually cool. Or like

12:52

I said it would have been back then. Now

12:55

the area around it is completely overgrown. Like

12:58

the forest is reclaiming

12:59

the land.

13:01

It's very quiet. The

13:05

big windows are filthy, several

13:07

of them cracked or broken. Along

13:10

the side you can see the fire damage.

13:12

Squat is probably a kid coming

13:15

in smoking away. Look out! Cripe!

13:19

That's a

13:21

nasty hole. What's down there?

13:25

Looks like an old cellar. Probably

13:27

a left over bit of the master now. Well,

13:29

watch where you're walking. We

13:32

want to ruin that suit.

13:34

The front door was jammed shut,

13:37

but it wasn't locked. The hallway

13:39

had a stone floor, which seemed out of

13:41

keeping with the design of everything else. The

13:44

windows were so dirty that not much light was getting

13:46

in. What's that stuff?

13:49

It's like old sound equipment. If I'd

13:52

known they were all set up, I'd have left mine in the car. The

13:55

kitchen felt like it had been abandoned in a hurry. There were

13:58

plates still on the table. dusty and covered

14:01

with some kind of mold. Ah, it's in this

14:03

ink. Like the Blake family

14:05

had just dropped everything and gone. Any

14:08

stuff in the notebook? No, not

14:10

in here. Off the hallway was a room

14:12

that had presumably been Jonathan Blake's study.

14:15

There were still framed architectural drawings on the wall

14:17

and shelves of books. This is more promising.

14:26

These

14:31

are all Blake's notebooks. Blake's? I

14:34

mean the one who lived here, the architect. Okay,

14:37

well, there's not a trace

14:39

of the notebook we're actually looking for here. Yeah, I think it was a longer

14:41

shot.

14:48

Upstairs?

14:48

I mean, I guess.

14:51

I don't know why it'd be upstairs, but

14:53

let's hope it's still structurally sound

14:56

up there.

15:00

I'm not ignoring that sound, by the way. The

15:02

little girl giggling. But

15:04

it wasn't happening in the room. It's an artifact

15:06

on the recording that I still can't really explain.

15:09

Do you smell that?

15:12

Maybe? Something...

15:17

Smells like old burnt toast? Fix

15:20

your eyes on a point. On a point. Like

15:23

the corner of that door frame. Okay.

15:27

Whoa, what

15:28

was that? The door frame, it moved.

15:31

Like I closed one eye and then the other, but I had it. Yeah,

15:33

we need to leave. Walk

15:35

and talk. What's

15:38

going on? I'm not

15:40

sure, maybe a liminal space. A what now?

15:48

Alright, I think we're okay out here. Careful

15:51

where you walk.

15:51

What do you mean by liminal space? It's

15:54

a whole thing hard to get your head round. I could be wrong.

15:58

Try me. Just spook. It doesn't really

16:00

matter anyway because...

16:01

Okay, well, pretend it does matter. Believe

16:03

it or not, I'm actually interested to know how a whole building... Kennedy.

16:06

What is a liminal space in this context and why does it have to be... Shut

16:08

up!

16:10

Are you seeing this? Am I seeing...

16:14

And when I looked past Byron, towards the

16:16

gate, I did see him, standing

16:18

right there, staring back at us. I'm

16:22

Kennedy Fisher. Matt?

16:25

And I'm Matthew Haywood. And

16:29

this is The Haunter

16:31

of the Dark.

16:47

This ACAST podcast is sponsored by

16:49

NetSuite. 36,000, the

16:51

number of businesses which have upgraded to the

16:53

number one cloud financial system. NetSuite

16:56

by Oracle. 25, NetSuite

16:58

just turned 25. That's 25 years

17:00

of helping businesses streamline their finances

17:03

and reduce costs. One, because

17:05

your unique business deserves a customized

17:07

solution. And that's NetSuite. Learn

17:10

more when you download NetSuite's popular Key

17:12

Performance Indicators Checklist. Absolutely

17:14

free at netsuite.com slash

17:17

ACAST. That's netsuite.com

17:19

slash ACAST.