Morbid: Listen Now: Ghost Story

Hey, weirdos! On Morbid, we tell the kind of spooky and macabre stories that send chills

down your spine. But we have a new story to tell you about, and we're not the ones telling

it. It is a spooky tale at the center of the new podcast, Ghost Story. The host, Tristan

Redman, is a journalist investigating a supernatural murder suicide in his own family. Tristan

would be the first to tell you. He never used to believe in ghosts. Sure, odd things happened

in his childhood bedroom in London. You know, objects moved around inexplicably, lights

switched themselves on and off. But ultimately, he just shrugged it all off. That is, until

a couple of years ago, when he discovered that every subsequent occupant of the top floor

of that house was convinced they'd experienced something inexplicable too.

From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets,

overwhelming coincidence, and the things that come back to haunt us. I'm about to

play a clip from Ghost Story. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondery app or wherever you

get your podcasts.

I want to tell you a story. Well, it's really three stories all wrapped around each other.

It's a ghost story. It's a murder mystery. And it's a family drama. By which I mean,

it's about my wife's family, her family's history. And there's a chance they'll disown

me for doing this.

If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer, then I will be sorry that

we ever said we would contribute to it.

But before we get into any of that, let's start at the beginning. With the thing that

set all of this in motion.

When I was 16 back in the 90s, my family moved to an old Victorian house in London on a street

called Queens Road. I slept in a bedroom tucked into the creaky top floor and weird things

would happen up there. I'd wake up and objects would have moved across the room, specifically

this one vase. When I go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece. And then in the morning,

I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back. And the next morning I'd find it somewhere

else. Lights would flash on and off on their own. And I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling

whenever I was alone in the house.

It freaked me out at the time. But the truth is, I didn't really think much of it. I was

a teenager. I had other things on my mind. Every now and then, I'd ask my sister if she

was messing with me. But she always swore she wasn't. I grew up, left home, and became

a journalist for Al-Dazeera. I cover things like French labor strikes and the war in Ukraine.

I don't believe in ghosts. So when my family moved out of the house on Queens Road, I completely

forgot about the weird stuff that happened in there. Until that is, a few years ago,

a man reached out, an old neighbor of ours, with a story about that very room.

I mean, it's quite a story.

His name is Charles Peneliz, and he knows everything about this neighborhood. You could

say he's a bit of a gossip, but you probably shouldn't.

Anyway, this is what he told me. Charles was walking around my old neighborhood one day,

going door to door, collecting donations for the local museum.

I was there rattling a tin.

And definitely not gossiping.

Well, I mean, it was just Sanseh who's still there, and Sanseh's moved out, and they've

had a divorce and all that sort of business.

Eventually, he gets to my old house and knocks on the door. A woman answers, she's the mother

of the house. After chatting for a bit, she invites him inside, and she tells him a story

unlike anything he's ever heard before.

The story goes, the American swans up with a hello.

Here's what she tells him. One day, the woman is at home at my old house. She looks out

of the window, and she sees a man standing on the driveway.

So the mother of the house opens the door.

It's someone who used to live in the house. An American man who'd lived there with his

wife and two children.

The American says to her, I'm so sorry to bother you, but I just have to know.

Do you still have that ghost in the top bedroom? Straight, like that.

What the American man proceeds to tell her.

The things his family experienced on the top floor, it makes her go completely white.

Because this isn't the first time she's heard of something going on up there. She just never

believed it before.

This struck a chord since the daughter had always insisted that there was a ghost in

her bedroom, which would manifest itself on occasions and sit on her bed.

The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10, began complaining about a ghost

visiting her room at night, specifically the ghost of a faceless woman.

She said to me, oh yes, my daughter told me about some goings on, some sort of faceless

woman who comes and sits on my bed. And she said, I always batted them away on the basis

that we don't believe in that sort of thing.

So I rang your father and he said, that was Tristan's room. So I imagine he phoned you

and the cat was out of the bag.

I promise you, and I hope you believe me, that I don't normally find myself having conversations

like this, or even entertaining these sorts of ideas. But it's kind of weird, right?

We now have three completely unconnected families who have had some sort of strange

inexplicable experience on the top floor of that house. I think it's wonderful.

It was definitely intriguing, but it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a story

I'd tell my friends in the pub. Except I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless

woman. And that's because there's another coincidence, something I hadn't thought about

in years.

So I guess Tristan and I just started going out and they invited my parents around to his

house to come and say hi.

I first learned about it when my wife, Kate and I, had just started dating about twenty

years ago. My family still lived in the house on Queens Road, the one with the supposed ghost.

And Kate was staying with us.

And my granddad was in London, so they invited him over too.

She was very close to her grandfather, so my folks asked if he'd join us.

So granddad arrived. He's got nice rosy cheeks, granddad, like all the men in my family. He

wore a berry every day to keep his bald head warm. And then my granddad walked into the

house. And before he said anything else, he said my mother was murdered in the house

next door.

And I don't think we had ever put two and two together between where Tris lived and this

big murder that happened in the family.

To be clear, I'd never heard about this murder before. In fact, Kate didn't know a lot about

it either. Just that her great grandmother had been killed decades before. She had no

idea that it happened here. Neither of us had any clue at the time that my new girlfriend's

family had any connection to this neighborhood, let alone the house next door.

But the details of the murder make the coincidence even stranger. Because just next door to my

house, the house supposedly haunted by a faceless woman, Kate's great grandmother was killed

by two gunshots to the face.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.