0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising

0:05

outside the UK.

0:30

I'm told it's super easy to do at Mintmobile.com

0:32

slash switch.

0:34

New activation and upfront payment for three-month

0:36

plan required. Taxes and fees extra. Additional restrictions

0:38

apply. See Mintmobile.com for full terms.

0:44

BBC Sounds. Music, radio,

0:47

podcasts.

0:51

How do you feel talking about this now? Erm,

0:56

it's a bit emotional actually, being

0:58

taken back to that place. This

1:01

is Amanda. She's a successful businesswoman

1:03

based in Lincolnshire. It's one

1:05

thing talking about it with your family,

1:09

and another thing telling a stranger. It

1:12

brings it back. Her story is

1:14

going to transport us all back to the place where

1:16

she grew up, Manchester,

1:19

in the early 1980s. And at

1:21

its heart is something that we've not talked

1:23

about that much on Uncanny before. The

1:26

idea

1:27

of a haunted object. An

1:29

object that sits on the table

1:31

next to Amanda right now. How

1:34

does it make you feel having it here? Well,

1:37

it has concerned me a little bit. And

1:40

when I showed it to Elton, he

1:42

said, oh, it gives me the heebie-jeebies

1:44

that.

1:45

We are all

1:48

about to get the heebie-jeebies, I'm afraid, because

1:50

this is a story that has stuck

1:52

with me since I first received Amanda's email.

1:55

A creepy, enigmatic mystery

1:57

that together we must

1:59

try to solve.

1:59

to solve. I'm Danny Robbins, and

2:02

this is Uncanny.

2:34

Case 4, Elton's

2:37

Phone. Hello,

2:42

thank you for all of your emails on Case 3,

2:45

Suki's Story. Lots and lots of great theories

2:47

coming in. We will update on it soon,

2:49

but right now, let's dive straight

2:52

into another brand new case. Our

2:54

story starts when Amanda

2:57

and her family move to the Manchester

3:00

suburb of Moston into

3:02

a seemingly unremarkable house. Number 19.

3:06

I would have said it's quite a typical

3:09

terraced house, not indifferent

3:11

to the terraced houses you see in Coronation Street.

3:14

So, Amanda is 10 years

3:16

old back then, and she has two siblings,

3:19

Elton, a brother who is 6, and

3:21

sister, Lindsay, who is 4. They

3:24

live with their mum, a nurse and dad,

3:26

who is a heating engineer working on projects

3:29

that take him all around the country.

3:31

So he would be travelling away a lot,

3:34

and he would come home on a Friday evening.

3:36

So the weekends are special, and what's even

3:39

more special? We have Christmas. So

3:41

let's jump into our story on

3:43

Christmas Day, 1982.

3:46

We'd all be charging down

3:48

the stairs, flinging open the

3:50

door, where the Christmas tree would always

3:53

be, full of presents underneath.

3:54

Did you get good ones, are you?

3:56

I seem to remember we

3:58

got something called an attack.

3:59

Atari.

4:01

That was a joint present to all of us

4:03

from Father Christmas. There

4:05

were other presents under the tree. My

4:08

sister had got this

4:11

telephone with a red handle.

4:13

You would put your finger in

4:15

it and move the dial round.

4:17

So lots of

4:19

you will be familiar with this particular toy. It's

4:21

the Fisher Price Chatter Telephone. It's

4:24

got that little face on it with eyes that move

4:26

as you push it along, a smiling mouth

4:29

and an old fashioned rotary dial.

4:31

There's no batteries in this toy

4:33

whatsoever. It's a completely mechanical

4:36

toy. You would put your finger

4:38

in the dial hole, move it

4:40

around and then move it and then

4:42

it will make the ringing sound.

4:46

It is a classic toy loved by several

4:48

generations but on

4:50

this Christmas day Amanda's sister

4:52

Leslie is not interested.

4:54

However

4:56

my brother Elton was and

4:59

I don't know if it was because he made the association

5:02

of the telephone we had at home was

5:05

an old fashioned one with the dial

5:07

face. That was how we communicated

5:10

with Dad during the week because he would be working

5:12

away. So Elton invariably

5:16

was always the first to the telephone when Dad was

5:18

calling.

5:19

Whatever the reason, Elton falls in love

5:21

with the toy phone.

5:22

And for most of Christmas day

5:25

he was driving everybody potty. He

5:28

would pick up the red hand piece,

5:30

make the ringing noise on the dial and

5:33

then he would shout,

5:34

Grandma it's telephone for you.

5:36

It is the soundtrack

5:38

for the rest of Christmas and beyond. I took

5:40

it up to bed with him.

5:41

He would carry the phone everywhere. He

5:43

would really become his favourite toy.

5:47

Christmas slides into the melancholy

5:49

wilderness of January and then one weekend

5:52

the fortnight or so into the new year. It's

5:55

Saturday night and Amanda is

5:57

lying in bed. When

5:58

Dad was downstairs. And

6:02

Elton had come into my bedroom

6:05

and was shaking me, saying,

6:06

Mandy,

6:08

Mandy,

6:09

I can hear the telephone ringing. It's

6:11

scaring me. It isn't me. There's

6:14

someone playing with it. I don't like it. He

6:17

didn't want to be in the bedroom with the telephone. So

6:19

I said to him, come and

6:21

sleep. I'm here

6:24

with me on the top bunk. And

6:26

he eventually did settle down and go

6:28

off back to sleep. But

6:29

what do you actually think is going on here, Amanda?

6:32

I thought probably that he

6:35

was making it up. He had been playing

6:37

with it. And then he

6:39

heard a noise of mum or dad moving around downstairs.

6:42

I probably thought, oh, I've

6:45

been found out. I'm in trouble now. I

6:47

think that's what I believed at the time.

6:50

Amanda thinks nothing more of it. But over the

6:52

next few weeks, there

6:54

are some other odd things going on at number 19. With

6:58

her dad away so much and her mum often

7:00

working night shifts, the kids are regularly

7:02

babysat by their grandmother, who

7:05

has started complaining of

7:07

nocturnal noises.

7:09

My grandma would say to

7:11

my mum when she came home, oh,

7:13

I was sure the children were out of bed last night.

7:16

I could hear footsteps running up

7:18

and down the landing, up and down the stairs. But

7:21

each time I would go up to check, it looked like

7:23

they

7:24

were fast asleep.

7:26

We miss hear things all the time. It is probably

7:28

nothing. Except

7:31

one morning as Amanda's mum gets

7:33

back from night shift, she is greeted

7:35

by their neighbour.

7:36

She's getting out of the car to come into the

7:39

house and then Bryn from

7:41

next door at number 17 said, oh,

7:44

I think your kiddies have

7:46

been giving Ma the runaround

7:48

last night. That was the name

7:51

that we all used to call Grandma. We

7:53

used to

7:53

call her Ma. So Bryn had heard footsteps running around too? Yeah,

7:55

so he'd been up to

7:58

check on his children. He

8:00

was quite convinced that his children were fast

8:02

asleep, so came to

8:04

the conclusion that it was us in number 19.

8:07

Amanda's mum apologises and goes

8:09

inside, but Amanda and her siblings swear

8:12

it was not them, and Mar, their

8:14

grandmother, is sure they were asleep.

8:17

Strange, but let us return our

8:19

attentions to Amanda's brother, Elton.

8:22

After the night, when he came into her bedroom, upset

8:24

about his phone ringing, Amanda

8:26

has noticed a big change in him.

8:28

Elton had taken a dislike

8:30

to the telephone. He

8:33

didn't want it in his room.

8:34

He had taken it upon himself

8:37

to hide the telephone in

8:39

the cupboard under the stairs because

8:42

he was adamant that he didn't

8:44

want to have anything to do with his telephone anymore.

8:47

But on one of her rare days off,

8:49

Amanda's mum is cleaning the house and

8:52

goes into that cupboard. She

8:53

kept the yining board and the hoover in there,

8:56

and she found the telephone in there.

8:59

And she took it back

9:01

upstairs into Elton's bedroom.

9:03

And she has no idea of how Elton feels about

9:05

it.

9:05

No. She just

9:07

took it back upstairs, put it in his bedroom,

9:10

and gave no further fault to what she'd

9:13

done.

9:14

And Elton doesn't realise the phone

9:16

is back until one

9:18

night. It's a Saturday again. Amanda's

9:21

mum and dad are out at the local social club, and

9:23

her grandmother, Mar, is babysitting.

9:25

Amanda's siblings have been put to bed

9:28

a while back, but she is still awake.

9:30

I like to read

9:32

in bed. I'd often have a torch

9:34

under the covers, and I'd be reading

9:37

things like Enid Blight and the famous five.

9:40

Amanda's torch skims the pages

9:42

under her, do they? When

9:44

she hears a noise.

9:46

And it was Elton's little toy telephone.

9:49

So I thought, Elton, the

9:51

little monkeys, not sleepy, is awake. So

9:55

I got out of bed, sneakily,

9:57

because I thought, right, I'm going to catch him this time.

9:59

And silently along the landing, and

10:02

throws open the door to Elton's room.

10:05

And the first thing that I noticed was that

10:08

the cold hit me. It

10:09

was like a blast of cold air.

10:12

I could actually see my breath in his room.

10:15

It was that cold.

10:17

But Amanda is focused on one thing only, catching

10:19

her little brother in the act. I switched

10:22

to light-switching really quick, expecting

10:24

to see him with the telephone.

10:26

But what greets her is not what she

10:28

expects.

10:29

Elton was huddled under the blanket,

10:32

and I thought, oh, you've got to huddle the blankets with him. So I

10:35

whipped the bed cup back, and

10:38

the telephone wasn't there. Where

10:39

was it?

10:40

I discovered it underneath the bed. Could Elton

10:42

have put it there?

10:43

I could hear it ringing up until

10:45

the point that I opened the door. So

10:48

there was no way in a split second that it

10:50

took me from hearing the telephone

10:52

ringing through the door to me opening

10:54

it, that he could then be huddled

10:57

under the covers and the phone be under the bed. And

10:59

how does Elton seem?

11:01

He was shaking. He was absolutely petrified,

11:03

hiding underneath the blankets. He

11:05

just said, somebody has been in my bedroom

11:08

playing with my telephone underneath my bed,

11:11

and I'm scared.

11:19

What is going on with that phone? Let

11:21

us bring in some experts. I'm joined by

11:24

psychologist Dr Kieran O'Keeffe and

11:26

writer and parapsychologist Evelyn Hollow.

11:29

Evelyn, we've had poltergeist

11:31

cases before where objects have

11:33

been perceived to move of their own accord. But

11:36

this feels like it takes us into the realms of

11:38

haunted objects, the idea that the object

11:41

itself is somehow supernaturally possessed. Yes,

11:44

for several years I've had a really core interest in

11:46

what we call cursed and enchanted objects. Scientifically,

11:49

I'm interested in how an everyday object suddenly

11:52

becomes a paranormal object. What is the

11:54

fundamental change in it, whether that's molecular,

11:58

chemical or spiritual?

11:59

So with this case, the first

12:02

interesting thing is that it's not an electronic telephone,

12:04

it's mechanical. It needs somebody to physically

12:06

interact with it. Yes, we've got multiple witnesses

12:09

to the noises as well, and

12:11

we've also got it being observed that

12:13

it's going off when he's nowhere near it. So

12:16

we've either got an object that is constantly

12:19

malfunctioning, or we've got an object that's being

12:21

interacted with in the context of paranormal

12:23

activity, and we have to ask why that object.

12:25

It's a good question. Karen, it is weird,

12:28

isn't it? This toy is dependent

12:30

on somebody physically moving that dial

12:32

to make a noise. It is, but then it

12:34

doesn't necessarily mean it's paranormal. Although

12:37

the mechanics require somebody to

12:39

actually turn the dial to produce the ringing

12:41

sound, who's to say that the

12:43

inner mechanics of that particular toy

12:46

are malfunctioning to an extent,

12:48

that the ringing sound is heard, and people

12:51

are interpreting that as somebody turning

12:53

the dial? All right, we'll come back to the phone, but it's not

12:55

the only thing going on in that house. Evelyn, we've also

12:57

got that situation with Amanda's grandmother,

13:00

Ma, hearing the sound of footsteps running

13:02

around the house

13:03

at night. We do. We've had the

13:05

noises of footsteps

13:05

in lots of cases that we've worked on, but

13:07

this case is special

13:09

because we have two sets of witnesses

13:12

who are both experiencing the phenomenon on either

13:14

side of the wall. So the grandmother

13:16

is hearing these footsteps. She's going to

13:18

check. Kids are in bed, can't see an explanation,

13:21

and simultaneously the next door neighbour

13:23

in the connecting house is also hearing them,

13:25

and they're going to check, and their kids are in bed.

13:28

So we've got two sets of people experiencing

13:30

the same phenomena, same noises,

13:32

having the same reactions and verifying them,

13:35

and it's happening again and again, up until

13:37

the point where the neighbours felt strongly enough

13:39

about it to approach the mother to say, listen, your

13:41

kids were out of bed in the middle of the night thundering

13:44

up and down the stairs. Like, that's quite serious, no?

13:46

Yeah, I think it is quite a big deal for us Brits

13:48

to confront our neighbours. You were taught

13:50

to just politely ignore things. Kieran,

13:53

we've got that second night then when the phone

13:56

rings of its own accord and Amanda walks

13:58

in to find... Elton hiding

14:01

under the covers with the phone

14:03

under the bed. You know, for a sceptic at a

14:05

lovely moment, if it was in with him underneath

14:08

those covers, you could say, oh, maybe he is

14:10

actually doing it. But remember my

14:12

initial sceptical explanation, which is that we're

14:14

dealing with a mechanical fault. It doesn't matter where

14:16

the phone is. It's still going to

14:18

cause that thing to ring. Actually, I would

14:20

counter that. Because when

14:23

Elton is terrified that the phone he tries to get rid

14:25

of it, they put it in the cupboard downstairs in the cleaning

14:27

cupboard. At no point does it ring when it's in the cleaning

14:29

cupboard. Surely if it was just a mechanical malfunction,

14:32

you would still hear it ringing in the cupboard. I think it's a good point.

14:34

This is a very well timed mechanical

14:36

malfunction. It's not happening repeatedly. It's

14:39

just happening at these two key moments. Two

14:41

key moments where you've got witnesses involved. And

14:43

do we know, have we done controlled experimentation

14:46

to show that you can actually hear that phone

14:48

if it goes off in a cleaning cupboard? It's going

14:51

to be difficult for us to hear. Evan, Kieran

14:53

is right. We cannot know if the phone is ringing at

14:55

points when no one's there. But

14:57

if we are exploring the paranormal possibilities

14:59

here, what are you currently feeling about

15:02

these two incidents where it

15:04

seems to go off at night in Elton's room?

15:06

It makes me think of the beating aspect. So

15:09

in haunting cases, we constantly

15:11

see that there's phenomena, usually with things

15:13

like everyday objects, things we haven't thought twice

15:15

about,

15:16

suddenly start behaving in a strange way.

15:18

And they behave exactly to the

15:20

point where we get to go and investigate them and then they suddenly

15:23

stop. And it always feels like something

15:25

is at you, like it's winding you up.

15:27

All right. Thank you both. Back in 1992,

15:30

following on from her own strange experience, a

15:33

man that is no longer so dismissive of Elton's

15:35

feelings about his toy telephone. And

15:38

he really does seem scared.

15:40

So by now, Elton

15:42

was sleeping on the top bunk with me

15:44

because he'd go to sleep in

15:46

his own bed and then at some point in the night

15:49

he would come and get in bed with

15:51

me.

15:51

And Elton's not the only one sleeping

15:54

badly.

15:54

It was one particular night, my

15:56

young sister, Lindsay, who slept

15:59

on the bottom bunk. said to me, I wish

16:01

I was a sheep and I said why

16:03

do you wish you were a sheep and she said

16:05

because I can't get warm Can

16:08

I come and get up on the top bunk with you?

16:09

It seems the intense colder

16:12

Amanda experienced that night in

16:14

Elton's bedroom has spread to

16:16

the rest of the house Which is

16:18

odd because

16:20

dad was a heating projects engineer

16:22

and he loved a warm house But

16:25

for some reason it just felt cold

16:27

all the time So dad

16:29

had hired some workmen to come in whilst he

16:31

was away to put in some more loft insulation

16:34

However, as time went on it

16:37

didn't seem to have made a difference

16:40

The house just feels bloody cold

16:42

Amanda Elton and Lindsay are now all squeezed

16:45

into the same bunk bed Thanks to a mixture of

16:47

wanting to stay warm and

16:49

fear and then one

16:52

night

16:53

Dad said that he'd heard Lindsay

16:55

crying out in the sleep So

16:57

he'd come in for our bedroom

16:59

and he laid on the bottom bunk

17:01

with my sister. She was a bit unsettled

17:04

and He was stroking her

17:06

head and fell asleep.

17:07

But as her dad lies there Something

17:10

strange happens

17:11

and he said at some point he

17:13

was awakened by someone shaking

17:15

his foot He said something

17:18

definitely shook my foot and woke me

17:20

up. He felt somebody had actually touched him.

17:22

Yeah To this day

17:24

he can't explain what that was

17:27

He did ask my mum and she said that

17:29

she hadn't got out of bed So

17:31

it wasn't her and all of us

17:34

were all fast asleep

17:38

It unsettles him perhaps he

17:40

was just dreaming in any situation where

17:42

people are experiencing Disturbances at

17:44

night. We have to look at sleep

17:46

related factors

17:48

But that does not explain what

17:50

is going on with the phone or the unnatural

17:53

cold in the house Increasingly

17:55

as I go on this journey making uncanny

17:58

I realize that trying and neatly tie

18:00

up cases with one cover

18:03

all explanation is wrong. They are complex

18:05

and we can potentially explain

18:08

away certain aspects whilst finding

18:10

other things that feel

18:12

utterly inexplicable. And

18:15

we are about to hit one of those moments.

18:17

It involves not Amanda and Co at

18:19

number 19 but their neighbour Bryn's

18:21

family at number 17. Remember

18:24

like Amanda's grandmother he complained

18:26

before about hearing footsteps running

18:28

around when the children were

18:30

asleep. And then one

18:32

night

18:33

when Bryn's mother-in-law

18:35

is babysitting his kids.

18:37

She could hear the usual running up

18:40

and down the stairs and feet

18:42

running up and down the landing. So she'd

18:44

come out of the lounge to check on the

18:46

children and as she was at the bottom

18:48

of the stairs looking up she

18:51

said that she saw a young girl

18:53

in a brown dress walk through the

18:55

wall of number 17 into number 19. Oh hang on a minute,

18:58

is

18:58

this a big day? A

19:02

girl walking through the

19:05

wall?

19:05

Yeah she thought the child

19:07

was about eight years of age

19:10

and dressed in a brown old-fashioned

19:12

smock dress and that she

19:14

walked straight through the wall into number 19.

19:17

She said that she saw her quite

19:19

clearly.

19:20

So this girl

19:21

was walking into

19:24

your house? Yes down the landing

19:26

through the wall into number 19.

19:36

Kieran Evelyn some serious revelations

19:39

here. For a brief moment we will ignore

19:41

the child ghost elephant in the room

19:44

as hard as that is and rewind to the phenomenon

19:47

at the start of this section. That extreme cold

19:50

Evelyn. It's something that we first saw when Amanda

19:52

walked into Elton's room that night the phone was ringing.

19:55

Yeah I think it's very interesting because as

19:57

Amanda says her father is a heating systems engineer

19:59

and he's

19:59

a likes a warm house. And then suddenly

20:02

when we get this strange phenomena happening,

20:04

the house becomes cold and initially it's just

20:07

Elton's bedroom.

20:08

And then as the phenomena escalates,

20:10

it's to the point where all three kids are sleeping in the same

20:12

bed, they're so

20:13

cold. So what is going on there?

20:15

Why do people experience this in haunting cases? Why

20:17

is all this cold? And I think for me, there

20:20

is actually some sort of scientific

20:23

or chemical reaction happening during paranormal

20:25

phenomena. Kieran, you're shaking your head here. Why

20:27

do you think that we associate extreme cold

20:30

with paranormal activity? We talk, don't we, of

20:32

a shiver down the spine or about things being

20:34

chilling? Absolutely, we do. And I think

20:36

that provides the clue for what might be

20:38

going on. It's that fight or flight

20:41

response. And part of that

20:43

fearful reaction and that fight or flight response

20:46

is effectively our body making

20:48

sure that our blood comes

20:50

effectively to the core. You can

20:52

feel the extremities of your body, your hand, your

20:54

fingertips, bottom of your legs, your

20:56

feet. They're getting very, very cold because

20:59

our body is pumping the blood away from

21:01

them towards our vital organs to

21:03

protect them. Now, the lovely thing

21:05

about this case is that you do

21:07

have an expert in the house, Amanda's

21:10

dad, who is a heating engineer. But

21:12

he is also prone to

21:14

this fearful response, but also prone

21:16

to something interesting. And that is, are

21:20

we good at detecting temperature

21:22

drops? And I've done some studies

21:25

showing that people are very, very

21:27

good detectors of drops in temperature,

21:30

but we're not very accurate at

21:33

detecting that drop. So in

21:35

the studies we conducted, people were sitting in a room

21:38

and people reported, oh, it feels like there's a real

21:40

cold breeze that's come through, but

21:43

it had only been a degree

21:45

drop. How reliable are

21:47

the eyewitness testimonies when it comes

21:49

to that drop in temperature? Are we dealing

21:52

with such a cold front that

21:53

we can see people's breath?

21:56

Or are we dealing with their interpretation

21:59

of the drop?

21:59

temperature.

22:01

We are actually because Amanda reports at

22:03

one point that she can see her breath in the room.

22:06

So then it is done. Just throw

22:08

that in. Do you want to drop that mic? Alright

22:11

look we can't ignore it any longer. Kieran let us talk

22:13

about that moment where Bryn

22:16

the neighbour's mother-in-law sees

22:18

what she thinks is a ghost child

22:22

walking through the wall of number 17

22:25

onto the landing of number 19. The landing where Amanda

22:29

and Elton's bedrooms are.

22:31

It's a fantastic moment but

22:33

there could be other explanations. There's

22:36

fear already within that neighbour's

22:38

household but also we don't know

22:40

about her state of mind at that point

22:43

where she sees the apparition. We don't know

22:46

how sleepy she is, how disrupted her sleep

22:48

has been because of the footsteps.

22:50

She certainly has a belief in this other thing because she's reported

22:53

it as an apparition and she's

22:55

heard the other accounts. So all of

22:57

those psychological elements play

22:59

into this particular sighting as neat

23:01

as it appears to be. Evelyn

23:03

this is quite something. It's a moment that

23:05

you hear a lot in ghost stories but are

23:07

they ever at all in real life? Somebody

23:11

seeing a ghost walk through a wall? Yeah and

23:13

I actually don't think there is a priming effect here in

23:15

this particular house

23:16

because in that neighbour's

23:18

house in number 17 they

23:21

have no knowledge of paranormal activity. As far

23:23

as they know it's just that the neighbour's kids are not very

23:25

well behaved perhaps. So when she

23:27

goes to the stairs she has no reason to be

23:29

thinking of anything paranormal and then she

23:31

sees a full-body apparition,

23:34

nothing vague or shadowy about it, clear

23:36

as day, walk right through the wall to where

23:38

the landing in the other house would be. So to her

23:41

it just goes through the wall that we

23:43

know about the phenomena that's happening in the other

23:45

house. So if you look at all the different types

23:47

of phenomena that we've had you've got

23:49

the interaction with a child's telephone, you've

23:52

got the noises on the landing running

23:54

up and down the stairs and then you've also

23:56

got the dad being woke up by someone pulling on his feet

23:59

and

23:59

all of this

23:59

then culminates in them seeing a

24:02

full-body apparition of a child. So if

24:04

you join the dots together, all of the phenomena

24:06

is typical of a child haunting.

24:09

Alright, it really is quite a case. Let us hear

24:11

from Amanda one last time to

24:13

find out what happened after that incredible

24:15

revelation from number 17.

24:18

Well, at this point, dad

24:20

was like, okay, we're going to move.

24:23

Simple as that. I can't keep the house

24:25

warm. We've got unexplained

24:28

incidents of people shaking my feet. The

24:30

eldest daughter started sleeping outside the bedroom

24:33

door because she's scared. So

24:35

we're going to solve the problem by moving.

24:38

So we put the house up for sale and

24:41

we did move.

24:43

There were never any experiences

24:45

in the new house.

24:46

Despite a certain object

24:49

moving with them. So you have

24:51

still got the phone, Amanda? Yes,

24:53

I've still got it.

24:54

I can't quite believe that you've kept it after everything

24:56

that's happened.

24:56

I know, but

24:58

to all of our knowledge, it's never made a sound

25:00

since we've left number 19. So

25:03

you do sort of then start

25:05

to think,

25:06

it's clearly

25:07

not the telephone that was haunted. It

25:10

was number 19.

25:13

Now, the big news is this. So

25:15

Amanda met up with Elton recently

25:17

and showed him the phone again for

25:20

the first time in over 40 years. It

25:22

was the first moment they had talked about

25:24

this together really in all of that time. So

25:28

how did he react? So pulled it out in

25:30

front of me and I was like, what the hell is that doing

25:33

here? This is Elton.

25:35

I recognized her straight away. I just looked at it and

25:37

I was like, oh God, let's give me the creeps. And

25:40

she would then say, well, can you remember

25:42

when you was younger and having these

25:45

things happen? And I was like, well, yeah, actually

25:47

I can remember being somewhat

25:49

petrified of that phone. Liked

25:52

her for I forgot about it. But there's obviously

25:54

something there because I don't

25:56

like it now and I'm 48 years of age.

25:59

So, four to two years later,

26:02

it has some, well, excuse the pun,

26:04

it rings with me. Who

26:08

or what caused the phone to ring

26:10

in that way? It is something that Amanda

26:12

still thinks about.

26:14

I do believe that there was something going on with

26:16

that telephone that couldn't be explained.

26:19

So, you do then start to think,

26:22

was it the little girl in the brown smock dress that was

26:24

playing with it?

26:28

We are dealing with so many uncertainties here. Did

26:30

Bryn's mother-in-law really see that girl pass

26:32

through the walls of the house, or was it her imagination?

26:35

Was the phantom ringing of Elton's

26:37

phone genuinely paranormal, or could it

26:40

have been a mechanical fault? But in

26:42

amongst all of these uncertainties,

26:45

there is one fact that

26:47

we have found by going back through

26:49

the newspaper archives for Moston, that area of Manchester,

26:53

an obituary posted in

26:55

the Manchester Evening News. In

26:58

loving memory of our beloved May,

27:00

who fell asleep February

27:03

23rd, 1919. God

27:07

took her home. It was his

27:09

will. But in our hearts,

27:12

she liveth still. Sadly

27:14

missed. Mother,

27:15

father

27:17

and brother. A child

27:19

lost to her family. And

27:21

the address on that obituary

27:25

is number 19. Thank

27:27

you to Amanda and Elton. Send me your questions

27:30

and theories on this weird, unsettling

27:32

case to uncanny at bbc.co.uk

27:35

or find me, Danny Robbins, on social

27:37

media. We will definitely come back to it again. But next time

27:41

on Uncanny, we have another brand

27:43

new case. Until then, sleep

27:46

well.

27:47

Don't have nightmares.

27:48

theme

28:00

tune is by Lanterns on the Lake. This is a personal

28:02

gap production in association with Uncanny Media,

28:04

for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

28:39

music Hi, I'm Sean Keveny and I'm back

28:42

with a new series of Your Place or Mine

28:44

from BBC Radio 4, the travel

28:46

show that's going nowhere.

28:49

I'm a copper home bird me, but each

28:51

show sees another remarkable guest try

28:54

to persuade me off my sofa and into

28:56

the big white world. It is warm,

28:58

but you just

29:01

don't wear a lot of clothes and you just find a banana

29:03

tree that's wafting. Happy

29:05

days. But will I make it out of the front

29:07

door? Lots of smiles from

29:10

people. I don't know if you're against that. Find

29:13

out by listening to Your Place or Mine with Sean

29:15

Keveny and BBC Signs.