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I think he gets- When you're a journalist, can you just go places and ask random questions to people? Yeah.

Well, I mean, it depends what journalist you're looking at. Annie and I are standing in the kitchen of my cousin's house in Sussex. We've come here as part of our Tell the Family about Fathr World Tour. But while we're setting up, we strike up a conversation with a couple of the youngest generation of danceies.

What journalism do you do?

Well, at the moment we do Fathr and Naomi Dancy Family journalism. Heby is 11, her brother Max is 14. And unlike some other members of the family, our project is very relevant to their interests.

I like murder stories.

I like. Why do you like murder stories so much, Haby?

I don't know. Because I can't tell you.

Is it all you read.

What? Look. Yeah, it's all I read.

After months of challenging conversations with adults, these kids are refreshingly hard to spook.

He's a totally normal child obsessed with death.

I'm obsessed with death.

What's your favourite mystery? I don't know.

I'm reading Agatha Christie at the moment.

You're reading at the moment? Okay, which one?

The mystery of the Blue Train.

And what happens on the Blue Train?

Someone dies.

Mystery. And why do you like mystery stories so much? It's because I can.

Try to figure out.

Who did it. Yeah, okay.

I like investigating things.

All right, well, our story is a little bit like that.

That's why I'm interested.

The story these kids know about Fethe, the version that's been passed down to them, is Fethe is a swashbuckling hero, dodging bullets, sliding down a banister to escape the homicidal Morris. The story they know about Naomi is, well, not much.

What did happen to Naomi?

Well, she died in 1937 and was killed by her brother, we think.

But did that really happen?

Who knows?

It's one of the questions. What would you say? I might have killed her and then killed him, and then blamed on him.

What makes you think that? Well, if it were in a.

Book, it wouldn't be the brother because that's just boring.

Okay. It would look.

It was the brother. It would look like it was the.

Brother and then it'd be someone else. It's never the simplest option of... It's always going to be the other one.

In about five minutes, Hebe has landed on the conclusion that the cops from 1937 barely considered that Fathr did it and framed his brother-in-law. When you read a murder mystery book and you get to the end, is there always a solution? Do you always find out who the killer was.

Most of the time, yeah. Why would you read it if you don't? There's no thing to read. I don't know. It's hard to explain.

No, no. The problem with what we're doing is that we're never going to.

Really know. Yeah. Well, that feels like unsatisfying because you just really want to know and you can't.

Right. Life is a little more boring than an Agatha Christie novel.

And.

So, yeah, we can't know for sure about what happened in that house.

Well, why don't you go to that house?

Well.

We are going to that house tomorrow.

Are you taking a say on this?

How did you know that? Words got around, apparently. Because Hebe's right, we are planning a sales.

How do you do a sales?

I don't know. I've never really done one before.

How are you going to do it then?

Well, we've got a guy who's coming, a psychic medium. We've brought back our guy, Nicola, the quiet psychic, who got a bunch of stuff right and totally freaked me out last episode. If you end up.

Speaking to a ghost, then that's cool.

I can't guarantee we're going to find any ghosts because they may not even exist, but we're going to try tomorrow. When we go to try and speak to your great-great-grandmother, are there any questions you would like us to ask?

Who are you mad at you?

From.

Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios, this is Ghost Story. I'm Tristan Redman. Episode 7, The conjuring.

What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the designer clothes, the worst dress list, the big house, the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account, the people trying to get the grubby mits on it. What are you all about? I'm just saying being really famous, it's not always easy. I'm Emily Lloyd-Saney. And I'm Anna-Leon-Growfy. We're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favourite celebrities from their perspective. Each season, we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrowing their raising loes and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it? Follow Terribly Famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wandery+ on Apple Podcast or the Wondery app.

I think we're ready. We don't.

Have any candles.

We're.

Candleless. Does it say that.

That is a thing? Well, that's what the spiritualist said in the 19th century, is you've got to have candles. We're driving through London. Me, Annie, my wife, Kate, and another producer from our team, Chloe, on our way to.

The seance. Surely this guy, Nicola, will bring what.

Is.

Necessary to connect.

You'd hope so. -to connect. Nicola is meeting us there. Last time we spoke with him, I threw a wobbly, lost my head, which Kate, love of my life, won't let me forget. I think.

You're quite scared, aren't you, Chris?

Well, yeah, there's definitely some of that. Will anyone ever take me seriously again? As a journalist? Kate is hardly a believer herself, but she agreed to join me for this on the very off chance that we do happen to make contact with one of her ancestors. I mean, how do you feel about going and seeing the house, Katie? Yeah, that's quite weird.

Go on. I mean, apart.

From the.

Ghost, it's just a bit sick, isn't it? To go into the room where your great grandmother was murdered.

It's like-You think it's a bit morbid?

Yes, it's a bit morbid. And it's slightly asking.

For trouble. Why? Because...

You know, you're meant to let these things lie.

This is Queens Road? Yeah. It's weird to be back in this neighbourhood. All my memories now have this whole history of Kate's family mixed in with them. There's the pub I worked in when I was 18. That place used to be a video shop. I went on a few dates with a girl who worked there and she cancelled my finds. But also… That's the church where Naomi used to go and sat on the church council. Then that's where Bindle got married as well.

Wow, amazing. You're like my family historian.

Just here is great, thank you. We pull up in front and clamber out of the car, and there, right in front of us, is my old house. And just next to us. This is the house. This is the murder house. The house where Naomi was killed and where Fethe lived for another 30 years. So weird. But I'm clearing my mind and I'm going in totally zen.

Totally zen.

We gather our equipment, walk up to the front door and ring the bell. I'm calling now.

Please wait a moment.

Hi, sorry. Hi. Hello. Go on in. You go first. Thank you. The woman who answers the door is Kirsten. Her family has lived here for more than 15 years. It's beautiful.

Come in.

Yes, please. Thank you. When I called several weeks before to ask her and her husband what they thought of this plan, Hello, my name is Tristan, and also mind if a few strangers host a sales in your bedroom. I was shocked that they were up for it. Kirsten even wanted to join us for it. Kirsten, you used to live down there? I used to live next door. Oh, next door. No. Yeah. The house is almost exactly the same layout as my old house next door. Whenever I picture the murder, I picture it in my childhood home. I picture Naomi sleeping in my parents' room, Fethe breaking down our bathroom door to find Maris. I mean, how much do you know about the history of.

This house? Not that much, no. I just know about the murder.

And-.

Kirsten's known about the murder for about a decade, but she tries not to think about it.

I pushed it aside, that thought, because I thought, Oh, don't want to think about any killings in the house. It's in the back of my mind, but in a box put away not to be opened. But here we are go. I'll open it up again.

I hope we haven't disturbed you.

The box is open now.

The box is open. It's a huge relief that Kirsten is so game, because once Nicola arrives, things aren't going to get any less weird. Hi. Hey. Good to see you, Nicola. It's good to see you. Hi. This is Kate, a small wife, Kate. Nicola is not interested in small talk. He seems well aware that the person he's here to speak with, she's been dead for nearly 100 years. We all head upstairs. Here we are on the landing, Katie. This was your great-grandad's study. I think this is where the bathroom was. This was where Maris was sleeping in here. This was Fathir and Naomi's room. Go ahead. I have to say, it's intense being in here. It's a beautiful bedroom, bright and airy with a thick white carpet. But also, this is the room where Naomi died. Look through the door and across the landing, you can see Fathir's study. Next to that is the room where Morris slept and the bathroom where he died. We stand in the room looking at each other, waiting for Nicola to take the lead.

Yeah, then we could sit on the floor, I guess. That's fine.

Yeah?

Okay.

We sit in a circle on the carpet, all of us cross-legged. I glance at Kate, trying to get a sense of what's going on inside her, whether she's regretting her decision to come. Nicola doesn't pull out any candles, doesn't draw the curtains.

Everyone can put their hands in the centre. I will start off by saying that in today's session, we've all gathered to communicate with those energies who have crossed over on the other side. And we seek answers and closure from all of those spirits who are willing to come forward in love and light. Thank you.

I unwrap a porcelain teapot and slide it across the carpet to Nicola. It's one of the few mementos of Naomies that the family has. A wedding present given to her when she married Fathir in 1918. What is that teapot telling you?

The owner of this teapot, her energy is very confused and she's very frightened. She's not so cooperative, I will say that.

A producer on our team, Chloe, asked one of the first questions. Is she.

Here, Nicola? Not here. Here, I feel her. You're pointing to the corner of the room? Yeah, in this chair.

A chair sits in the corner. It's black leather seat empty.

What? Can you see her? What does she look like? She wears a purple dress right now, and it's either dark brown hair that I'm seeing or black.

We hand in one of the few portraits surviving of Naomi, black and white. She wears a white blouse with a darker overcoat. Her head is slightly tilted. Her eyes are big and striking, and she stares into the camera intensely.

Is that.

That picture?

Is that the same woman in the chair? Yeah, same woman. Absolutely same woman.

Last time that we talked to you about her, you said that her energy could be felt in things shaking that were not supposed to shake. I'm wondering what she was trying to do with shaking things and moving things.

She said that it's very relevant. She chooses to manifest her spirit in that way because at the time of her crossing, there was a lot of fear running through her.

How did she die?

She's saying that leading up to her death, she could no longer breathe. Now I'm being shown suffocation. Not being able to breathe.

Well, I guess the good news is, Nicola didn't research the murder before coming here. Google it and the first thing that comes up is that Naomi was shot in the eyes. The bad news is, he's very wrong. But last time he got a bunch of stuff wrong at first too, and we all know how that turned out. So we might as well keep going. I guess my question would be, who was responsible for it? Who did it?

Well, now she's showing me her husband. That's what I'm being shown.

Can.

You see what the husband looks like?

Is he here?

Oh, no. Now I'm being shown someone lying on the ground when you ask, is he here? And then there's a cut at the neck.

Nicola motions like a man is lying on his side in front of him, his head in the middle of our circle.

Now I'm being shown someone with a cut at the neck. So when someone asked me to describe him, I'm being shown a guy laying on the ground, almost decapitated. Does that make sense?

It's not her husband, but….

Okay, so then… Okay, let's see what she says. She said the guy who got cut at the neck was the one that killed her.

The guy who got cut at the neck is the one who killed her? Yeah.

Then I kept asking her why she's saying her husband. It's not him who did that to her. She said shesure to me, that makes me feel like he was trying to help her. So no, it wasn't him. It was the guy who got cut at the neck.

It was the guy who got cut at the neck who killed her? Mm-hmm.

Morris.

Morris. I'm not exactly buying it, but I want to keep going. I ask him if it's possible to ask Fathir about this too.

-name?

-john. Nicola writes down Fathir's name on a small notepad and stares at the carpet.

He's telling me that he didn't kill him. He didn't actually get to kill him. That's what he keeps saying.

What do you mean by he didn't get to kill him?

He makes me feel that he wouldn't have killed him that way. He said that there's something surrounding the neck and the way that he died that proves that he didn't do it and that Maurice killed himself.

Can you say anything more about what that thing is about the neck that proves that Maurice did it himself?

Yeah, some mistake where he didn't go all the way or he didn't go deep enough. Something regarding that combination of those. Okay. He said that that itself proves that it wasn't him.

Bloody hell. Some mistake on Morris' neck where he didn't go all the way or he didn't go deep enough. It sounds like Nicola is talking about the hesitation wounds on Morris' neck, but there's no way he could have known about them. Even if Nicola had looked up the murder online, and I can't believe he did, there's no description of the hesitation wounds that I can find anywhere on the internet. It wasn't in the news reports at the time. It wasn't in the blog post that the woman at the National Archives wrote. We definitely didn't tell him. It only exists buried in the pathologist reports, which are buried deep inside historical archives. We're all nervously giggling or silent. So Annie explains what has shocked us so thoroughly.

There's a very interesting piece of evidence where the pathologist decides that the reason why Morris had to have killed himself is that there are hesitation marks. So they're basically are like - Small cuts. -small cuts, like attempt wounds that are, and then one that goes all.

The way. He really struggled like he was going soft and then pulling out. And so.

The question is whether or not Fathir could have faked the hesitation wounds.

I'll say no. I'll say no. He didn't fake them. It was really him.

So you believe, from what you've been told today, that Naomi was killed by Maris and then Maris killed himself? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Sounds pretty truly to me, Nicola.

Is that helpful?

That is helpful.

Mark will be happy.

In case you didn't catch that, that was Kate whispering, Mark will be happy. In fact, an unexpected wave of relief washed over me after Nicola told us this. I mean, I wasn't putting all my eggs in the psychic medium basket, but to have someone, anyone, be so sure that Fathr didn't do it was strangely comforting. The mood in the room lightened.

How does he feel about what Tristan's doing? Is he okay with Tristan sometimes accusing him of being a murderer?

He said, No. Then I said, Why not? He said, Because I wasn't. He said I was innocent.

Does he.

Feel.

That it's unfair that I'm looking into this? Or does he understand why I'm doing it?

He said that he knows that you mean well and that you don't draw conclusions from anything. He has no hard feelings towards it.

He's incredibly mature about this.

Yeah, I mean, he's being big.

Wouldn't he lie just on the other side if he's a liar? That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Why is he dead and telling the truth?

Good question. Yeah. Can ghosts lie?

Spirits. Spirits can lie? Mm-hmm.

That's a twist. Nikolai, you've just blown it wide open again. Everything's back in play, Nicola.

Everyone leaves a legacy.

I.

Like Mr. Gorbachev.

We can do business together.

For some, the shadow falls across decades, even centuries.

It.

Is.

Unacceptable to have figures like Rhodes glorified.

But it also changes. Reputations are.

Reexamined.

By new generations who may not like what they find. Picasso is undeniable a genius, but also.

A less-than-perfect human.

From Wondery and Goalhanger Podcasts, I'm Afwaherch. I'm Peter Frankipane. This is Legacy, a brand new show exploring the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. To find out what their past tells us about our present.

Nina Simone.

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Told to sit down and shut up. You're the angry black woman.

The name of Napoleon still rings out in the pattern of the guides who thrive on the tourist trade.

Search and follow Legacy to listen to the full trailer.

A few days before the seance, Annie and I took to the stacks of a medical archives library in London. I think you have some materials for us, please. Yeah. What's in here? Tristan Redman and Annie Brown. It had occurred to me by then that the seance could turn out to be a total bust. What if I dragged Kate to her family's old house and it's all a pointless waste of time? And what if that leads her to think this whole thing, the past year and a half was a pointless waste of time? Like Mark had said to me more than once, if you can't prove anything, then why are you even doing this? The answer I arrived at was Naomi. Naomi was erased from the Dancy family history, and that's true no matter who killed her. I figured even if we end up in this bedroom and Nicola gives us nothing, well, I could still conjure Naomi through something I was perfectly comfortable with. Good old fashioned research. I want to find him if I see her name mentioned anywhere. The library is quiet, so we try to keep it down as we hunch over these old books: medical journals, old photographs, the minutes of health council meetings from the 1930s.

Oh, my God! Dr. Naomi Dancy. Looking for traces of her. Oh, my God! We found her. What does it say? We learned that it was during World War I that her career took off. The men had gone off to fight, and Naomi was one of the first women doctors to be recruited as a surgeon at her hospital. Her job previously held exclusively by men. This is another one by Nami. She rose in the ranks, but also kept working with mothers and babies in some of the poorest corners of London. Page three, five, two. When she wasn't seeing her patients, she was known as one of the most gifted lecturers on social issues. She gave as many as 120 lectures a year. That's at least two nights a week, sometimes more. This one is about conversations with children. In one lecture, she spoke about the importance of not lying, specifically not lying to your children. She tells the audience that to deceive a child is to commit a grave sin. Childhood and dancing. There you go.

By.

The end of our research, I felt like we had a real sense of Naomi, the doctor. But Naomi, the person? Still not so much. Then we found one more document. It was written by a friend and colleague in the days after her death. Later, I would send it around to the whole family. I wanted Mark to read it. My father-in-law, Johnny, Hugh, all of Kate's cousins and the youngest generation of Dancy's too. And of course, I asked Kate to read it. It's titled In memoriam, Dr. Naomi Dancy.

All those, and they were indeed many, who were privileged to be associated with Dr. Naomi Dancy and the work of the Council, will mourn the passing of a colleague of outstanding ability and truly remarkable attainments of character.

And personality.

It is indeed given to few to realise the almost complete identification of ideal and achievement that was so wonderfully expressed in the life and work of one whose place can never be filled. As a.

Member of.

Committee, as a doctor, and as a lecturer, we shall long.

Remember her and the unique contribution she made to all our end of us.

But most of all, but most of all, will she be missed as a friend of deep understanding and unfailing helpfulness.

Nothing could have been more fitting than the Memorial Service at the Church of St. Catherine Coleman.

For in the congregation, which filled the church, were to be seen so many mothers with little children clustering around them.

So many mothers with little children clustering around them.

It was to the comradehip of such that Dr. Dancy gave her life.

And no company could have honoured her more.

At that memorial service, the vicar ended his sermon with this.

If she were standing in my place today, she would ask first that you would extend to her brother the most merciful judgment that is possible. She would ask you to realise that he never, never wanted to go to the war. That he went because he felt it was his duty. Those of us who knew her knew her so well for her beauty. But the beauty we admire more is the beauty of the high soul and noble character. I quote something, Matt.

Yeah, it's pretty powerful.

I mean, I never thought about her. I never thought about her.

Makes me feel a bit sad. She must have been a very nice lady.

Grandad was obviously very clever, and Johnny is very clever, and I feel like it was always assumed that that very cleverness came from... That very fathor. But now I'm wondering if maybe that wasn't the case, and it's just because she.

Was a woman.

In a time when women were overlooked.

I think that it's cool. It's like she's the clever one rather than him because it's expected that men are cleverer than women. It's nice to think that I was related to her.

Talk about ghosts and all that, it's brought her back to life, really. Amazing.

Yeah.

I love the idea of the church stuffed with all the children.

Kate read the Imanwariam for the first time there in Naomi's bedroom, and we were all sitting around her, watching her read it.

I know.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

It's interesting because the twin messages that I get from Naomi and Fathr, is that for Fathr, it's all about this fantastical story that he tells about his life, and it doesn't really matter if it's true or not. And Naomi is the geometric opposite.

And she did all this stuff in her life and didn't talk about it and no one knows about it. And we all talk about what he did, when actually most of what he did, he didn't do at all. Yeah.

Exactly. We've been here for several hours now. The shadows are getting longer. We're all a little wiped out from the seance, but also from all of it. And for some reason, it hits me in this moment how surreal it all is that we're here. My wife is sitting across from me in the room where her great grandmother was murdered. And only feet away is the bedroom where I grew up, the one with the yellow vars, where Kate and I became more than friends, where our life together started in earnest. It's all right there. We didn't even know then that her family had ever lived in this house. We knew nothing about what happened here. The coincidence of all this is what drew me to the story to begin with. It felt cosmic almost, like the past was a silent hand moving us like pieces on a chessboard. That Naomi herself was slow playing a long game to bring me and Kate to this moment. Now at the end of this journey, I wonder if Kate feels that way at all. Like maybe all of this was inevitable. Maybe this project, despite all the havoc it's wreaked, was worth it.

You said in one of our conversations a while back, My family is going to be more traumatized by the podcast that you're making than they ever were by the murder that took place. Do you still agree with that?

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Why do you think it is?

Well, partly because we're all traumatized because we're quite British and don't like asking all these really uncomfortable questions. Because it turns out that people care a lot more about their ancestry than we had considered when this podcast began.

Yeah.

Secondly, because you brought the past to the present. So trauma that was past and that we've all forgotten about, you brought back. So time will tell.

Time will tell. I get it, of course. I've asked a lot of Kate and her family, and they might never agree that resurrecting all of this long-buried pain was worth it. As for me, I tend to agree with our old friend nick Haley. That image of his, that we roll the past up in a carpet and carry it round with us, it stuck with me. The idea that the past doesn't need to be brought back because it's already here shaping us, nudging us here and there in ways we can't appreciate until we stop for a moment to look at it. And once you do that, then you see the past everywhere, hovering over the present. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but isn't that just another way of saying that ghosts exist? Because whether Naomi is here is an apparition, shaking beds or moving around my yellow vars. She is a ghost. A ghost in my wife's family. In my family. A mostly hidden presence. Despite any attempts to erase her, she's been here all along. Yeah.

Is Naomi still here? Is she listening to this? Yeah, she's there. She was always sitting there.

At this point, there's really just one more question left to ask, Nikola. A question that goes back to the very premise of this project. Can I? I'd like to get something really clear. Is there or is there not a link between the faceless woman in my old house and Naomi who died in this house?

It's a totally another woman. It seems different energy. Yeah, it was separate. I'm feeling separate occurrences, separate set of abnormal activity there with its own history and story behind it.

A separate ghost with its own history. What the hell could that be? I guess that's next season on Ghost Story. Driston. I'm joking, Katie. I'm joking. Katie, I wouldn't do that. Katie? Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry. Com/survey. Ghost Story is a production of Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios. It's hosted by me, Tristan Redman. Our lead producer is Annie Brown. Our senior producers are and Jess Hackel. Our producers are Zandra, Ellen, and Emerald O'Brien, and our associate producer is Natalie Peard. Joel Lovall is our editor with fact-checking by Maximo Anderson. Themed song and music by Darryl Griffith, supplied by APM Music, with mixing and original music by Hannis Brown. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhaja, with assistant engineers Sharon Badales and Jade Brooks. The senior audio engineer for Ghost Story is Davie Sumner. Jess Hackel was our senior producer of development. Our artwork was designed by Brian Klugee, legal services for Pineapple Street by Rachel Strom and Sam Cate-Gumpet from Davis Wright-Tremaine, Crystal Tupier at Audicee and David Hearst from Five R.

B. Our senior producer for Wondry is Michelle Martin, with producers Brian Taylor White and Grant Rutter. Rachel Sibley is the managing producer for Wondry, and Sarah Mathis is the coordinator and marketing producer. Our executive producers at Pineapple Street are Maddie Sprung-Keyser, Max Linsky, and Jenna Weiss-Burman. Our executive producers for Wondry are Morgan Jones, Rich Knight, Marshall Louis, and Jessica Radburn. Special thanks to Martha Dansey, Josie Rourke, John and Kirsten Howles, Dr. Peter Heinel, Bill Smith, Henry Moldowski, Grace Cohen-Chen, Alexis Moore, Leah Rees-Denis, Maggie Lang, Alison Vermulin, and Barney Lee. And my eternal thanks to the whole Dancy family and Kate, Lenny, and Maxine Redman. This episode contains public sector information licensed under the open government license, version 3.0..

Yeah, all right.

Any final messages, Nicola, before we close the seance? That woman, Without the face? Mm-hmm. She said to me that she won't leave you alone until you pay her back.

What do you mean?

She said that you should put some money in there in an envelope and seal it and offer it to her. She said then she will not haunt you.

Okay. I guess my question would be, does she accept checks?