Wandry+ subscribers can binge all episodes of Ghost Story ad-free. Join Wondry+ in the Wondry app or an Apple podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence and suicide. Please take care while listening. All right. Is that our bus? Yeah, we can get on. Yeah. It's early morning in London, and Annie and I are boarding the first bus of for what will be a very long day. What we're about to do is ill-advised. What is it? Well, we're going on a mad cap assault course, crossing London on a abnormal wild goose chase. At this point, Annie and I have attempted to contact everyone who's lived in my childhood home. We've tried talking with nearly every descendant of Naomi Dansey, with dozens of experts and specialists. Basically, to our knowledge, we've talked to every person, even peripherally connected to the ghost or the murder story. We're in your gardens. Well, every living person. What do you think the chances are that we're going to have a revelation today? I don't know. It's time for a slightly unorthodox approach. Time to contact Naomi and Fethe directly via a good old-fashioned sales. Have you ever seen a psychic before? Never.

Have you? No. Regrettably, neither Annie nor I know how to make contact with the other side. We need a professional. That's why we're spending the day travelling around London, auditioning psychic mediums for the role of spirit liaison. I'm going to have to try quite hard to remain calm and not take the piss. Which means? To make fun of, to tease, to not be serious. Yeah. Look, this isn't my bag, but I figured how much could it hurt? I'm almost embarrassed to report. The day took a much more disturbing turn than I expected. From wandering in Pineapple Street Studios, this is Ghost Story. I'm Tristan Redman. Episode 6, The Uglie Truth. 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 their grubby mits on it. What do you all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous, it's not always easy. I'm Emily Lloyd-Zaney. And I'm Anna-Leon-Browfy. And 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 eyebrow-raising lows 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 Plus on Apple Podcasts or The Wondery app. Turns out, when you start looking for them. Hello. Hello. Mediums are all around us. Come in, we're on the third floor and there's a lift. We visited one in a posh apartment complex. She'd left the corporate boardroom to do readings in her living room. What are you doing in the corporate world? Oh, you won't believe it. I was just seeing her. Our second medium works out of an old church down an alleyway. Oh, hello. Hello. Hello. Please come in. And the third- Oh, there it is. There it is. I set up shop in the basement of one of London's biggest department stores. Next to the Nespresso outlet. And next to Homegoons. Looking every bit the part of a shopping mall psychic. Can I just say you have incredible eyelashes? Thank you.

I let my eyelashes technician know that. Well, yeah, please pass on my compliment. Well, do you want me to do a message? Yes, please. Okay, so let me just focus on you for a second. We sat down. They stare into my eyes or wistfully out the window, and I waited. Juggle the cards, please. But when each of these mediums cracked the door to the other side. Okay, I need to give you what comes through. They didn't show us, Fathor or Naomi. Have you got a grandma that's poor? I feel lost. Yes. I feel she's here with you. Instead, it was just some run of the mill ancestors. I am aware of a gentleman's energy that's stepped in with you. I feel a strong link with your dad, basically. Grandfather, he's in spirit now, and he's the one that's been pushing you to do this. Did you have a dog as a child? I'm seeing a dog for some reason. Medium-sized dog. I'm not seeing a massive dog. I mean, who wouldn't want to make contact with a medium-sized dog? Sort of sandy-colored dog. If you had a dog like that or been friendly with a dog like that.

Yeah. Well, I think he comes back to say hello. I couldn't help myself. Yeah. What's his name? Let's see if I can get the letter. P. Does it begin with P? No. I'm not so good with names. I'm sorry. That's okay. What is his name? Scoop. Scoop. There was one moment actually that took me by surprise. Is that the name of Margaret, please? I need to give you this name. Can you understand this name? Margaret. I'm hearing the name Margaret. Okay. Someone else said Margaret today, but we don't have any Margaret connection. Well, I do have my dad. My dad has an aunt. My great aunt is called Margaret. I was talking about her last week with my sister. Okay. Well, she knew all of that. She heard it all, the reminiscent about her. For a second I thought they might be onto something here. But come on. If you had to pick one name in the ancestors of a white British man in his 40s, Margaret would be a pretty good guess. I think it's all rubbish, of course, but the mediums are clearly ready to handle skeptics like me. You pretend being skeptical, but you are not that skeptical.

This is what's coming through. You are spiritual. Your energy is quite open. I mean, I don't feel very spiritual. I've never shown any interest in any of this stuff. Because you know. You know, in your heart of heart, you know. Do I? Yes, you do. Look at the face. How can you be so sure? You are pretty red. Well, it's because it's hot and we're in a very small room. There's three of us in here. Annie and I headed back to our Airbnb, where our fourth and final sidekick was meeting us. We were knackered from connecting with the ancestors all day. It was fun, sure, but no one had got anything meaningful right, and we were nowhere near closer to finding a medium that we could trust to do a seance for us. When our last candidate went to the wrong address, we thought about canceling, but we didn't. Will we start recording right away? Yes, that's the plan. The fourth medium's name was Nicola. He's thin and small with short blonde hair and a skinny black blazer. How did you end up in London? It was just by feeling. I just felt like it was where I needed to be.

He was definitely the softest-spoken of the mediums. He didn't make a lot of eye contact, and he kept his head tucked towards the ground. Do you always work with pictures? Yeah, mostly pictures or just people. His method was a bit different than the other three. He asked us to show him pictures of the people we wanted him to connect with, and we started with Naomi. Let's talk about the woman in the photo. Sure. Okay, just one second while I connect with her energy. There's a lot of silent waiting. In these moments, Nicola is staring at the photograph, fiddling with a long string of beads. He started pretty slowly. She makes me feel like in some way she could be related to you in some way and to ancestry. She's related to me by marriage. Okay. By marriage, not ancestry. Okay. He got a lot of things wrong at first, and I worried that this would be just another failed reading. But then… Okay, she draws me towards pieces of furniture in the place where you be living that could at some times have some shake or vibration towards it, something in the room that sometimes could shake or vibrate that's not supposed to or that normally wouldn't and would cause you to question where that's coming from and who that may be.

Does that make any sense? Now, that was something. My mind immediately went to Sonia's bed shaking. I keep seeing, from what she shows me, is like a nightstand or a lamp that would be shaking, vibrating at times. Flickering or turning off of lights too. The lights are actually flickering in here, slightly weirdly. It happens often with me. Say more about the night stand. Every time I ask her to show me something, she shows me objects moving in the room at times. She's also making me feel that those are signs of her energy. You might not remember this, but the vars in my room that used to move around, it often wound up on the bedside table. You might call it a nightstand. I mean, that's weird, but I don't know. Was there someone else you wanted me to connect with? Yeah, for sure. We showed him another photo, this time a fathr. Okay, he somehow passed away at the age of 67? No, he was older than that when he died. He's either 67 or 76. If not, then I'm just not connecting with him. He died in 1976. Okay, I have some of his energy here.

Again, it took Nikler a minute to find his feet with Fever. Like he was warming up. I'm being shown a knife in connection with his passing. I have to see if I can go deeper. Does that make any sense? If I connect his energy as if someone took a knife to him or there's a knife involved with the time that he passed? Because I keep being shown a knife. There's no knife involved in his passing. Oh, okay. Okay. Fever died in old age. But of course, I was thinking of the razor that was involved in Morris' death. He also keeps talking about some suicide. It was either his or someone else really close to him, didn't die a natural death and somehow took their own life. That's what he's telling me. What's he telling you exactly about that? It's as if the person had taken their own life in a short period of time and it was not expected of them. Does that make any sense? I mean, this is a person who has known people close to him who've committed suicide. We spend another 20 minutes on Fathr, not really getting much further, and then show him a photo of someone else.

He makes me feel like he was either a friend or a brother to the previous gentleman. It's Morris. He is the brother-in-law of the previous gentleman. Okay. First of all, his nervous system was really bad. He had anxiety and a lot of stress towards the end of his life. That's what he's telling me. He might have had suicidal tendencies because of the amount of post-traumatic stress and anxiety I get from him is far more than the average person. Okay? Okay. I've said this so many times, but one more reminder. Morris was a classic case of World War I shell shock. He shows me alcohol in some way. Does that make any sense? It does. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. If you can find out anything about how he died, that would be useful. With the mechanism? Okay, so... What are you doing with your hand? Nicola has his hands holding the front of his neck. Did he somehow suffocate himself around his neck in any way? Like, does that make it because he keep showing me as if he hung himself in some type of way? Or wrapped something around him to stop himself from breathing?

He cut his neck. Okay, with the knife. Well, we don't know if he cut his neck. Okay. But his neck was cut. Okay, so I want to say it's with the knife that I saw earlier. Because he shows me around the neck. Did he do it to himself or did someone do it to him? Now he makes me feel like someone did it to him. He makes me feel like someone did it to him. Nicholas staring at the floor and practically whispering. It's hard to hear him, but he says, He makes me feel like someone did it to him. I feel this anger start to well up in me for falling into it, feeding him information by saying, Did he do it? Or did someone do it to him? I'm sorry, I don't mean to, but he makes to me feel like it was someone that he knew who took his life. Does that make any sense? I don't know. I don't know. Well, I feel like this has been really helpful. Yeah, we've been talking to you for a long time. I think we should let you go. Thank you for coming to see us.

It takes some time to get going, but once I get going and everything, this picture really did a lot for me. Okay, all right, cool. Thank you so much, Nikola. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're fine. I was relieved to have Nicola out of the apartment, but I couldn't understand what I was feeling and why. Do you want to talk for a bit? Yeah. Yeah. I feel deeply disturbed by that experience. Yeah. I feel really, really uncomfortable. Because I refuse to believe that that is a real thing. Yeah. I really feel like that conversation held with the wrong person could be misleading and dangerous for somebody. But why do you feel like it's threatening? What about it? It's interesting that you feel disturbed and it's dangerous because I don't feel upset about it. I feel weird. I just think there's something to dig around in there because your body language and your whole vibe during that is like you just want to punch him. Okay, what do you think is driving that? I think you're mad at him. Why do you think I'm mad? I think you're mad about the moments where he says something that's true, and you're mad about the moments where he says something that's not true.

But you're really mad when he gets it right. Annie informed me that during Nicola's reading, I was sitting as far away from him as possible, my arms and legs both tightly crossed. She said I look furious. I don't... It's like if you're sitting in front of a magician, watching them do a trick, you know it's a trick. You know they're not cutting the lady in half, right? But you can still be wowed by the performance. But the thought that other people might both be wowed by the performance and believe it is disturbing to me. I just think it's so weird that you're so worried about these future other people. No, I can see what the trick is. I can feel what they're trying to do, and it just makes me very worried there are certain people who would be susceptible to that. I think you're worried that you would be susceptible to that. You're very worried about other people could be convinced by this guy, which doesn't sound like other people. It sounds like you. What do you think it is about me then? I think that you're upset that sometimes you believe it, and you don't want to believe it, but it bothers you that there are times where you do.

She was right. What I actually felt with Nicola is that I couldn't see the trick, which meant he was either fooling me or we actually could talk to the dead. And both of those things made me deeply uncomfortable. But it occurred to me later that this uncomfortable moment with Nicola, serves me right. Before we hold our seance in the next episode, I was going to be sharing with the dancees everything we'd found out about the murder and asking them to re-evaluate their long held beliefs about Fathor and the family. And I suppose it's only fair to have some of my own beliefs challenged, to have a taste of my own medicine. And if this guy, Nicola, could do all of that to me, well, I think we found ourselves a medium. 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 undeniably a genius, but also a less-than-perfect human. From Wondry and Goalhanger Podcasts, I'm Afwaherch.

I'm Peter Frank-I-Pen. And this is legacy. And 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 was constantly 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. Inexplicable pains, sudden fevers, and strange rashes, they usually turn out to be nothing. But for an unlucky few, these symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery. Stay tuned until the end of this episode to hear a preview of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, the newest podcast from one of the internet's most popular storytellers, Mr. Ballon. After over a year of reporting this story, it was time for the big reveal. Time to tell my in-laws all I'd learned. Specifically, I was going to talk with Kate's dad, Johnny, and her uncle, Mark, and walk them through what I found in my research. Not long before that conversation was set to happen, I sat Kate down and I told her everything I planned to tell her dad and uncle.

She was supportive, as always. Sorry, hang on, I'm just taking the wrong turn. But a few days later, we were in the car with our two daughters when she said she wanted to talk. From my own interview, it's only actually afterwards that you start wondering, does that have any implications? What exactly does that mean? How does that change the way I think about the past? Does it matter at all? I think these things take a while to digest. She told me it felt like something had changed for her. I mean, that makes total sense. Having had some time to digest it, how have your feelings changed since we last spoke about it? I think that I spend more time thinking about what the whole family will think about it and what that means for us as a unit. I think it's sad. Sad in what way? Well, I think, yeah, it's a little bit of a cut in our side that is just there now. What do you mean by a cut in our side? It's a wound, isn't it? It's a change in our own narrative. It's put us off kilter a bit, and I guess why should it change anything?

We've always been the way we are. I don't think that necessarily right now we're all going to change just because of something in our foundations has altered. But at the same time, but something is different. I mean, I can't put my finger on it, but something is. Kate wasn't the only one whose feelings were changing. My brother-in-law, Hugh, had expressed something similar to me. He'd also started out excited about the project. At some point, something descended on me, which was a different feeling, which was more along the lines of, What the hell is he doing and why? As in, What the hell am I doing and why? I don't know where that sense of protectiveness or defensiveness came from. What is the concern there? Is that we'll somehow will be traduced as a family that our bloodline will be spoiled? I don't know. Obviously, my line about tainting our bloodline is knowingly absurd. But nonetheless, the feeling was real, a momentary feeling of back off. I have no idea why. Both Hugh and Kate seemed genuinely surprised at how all of this was affecting them. It was all several generations removed. They didn't even know Naomi's name at the start of this project.

Why were they now feeling so unsettled? Hugh had a theory about this. I read a while ago, probably as a parent, desperately seeking any useful advice that the most helpful thing a child could be given in terms of their emotional stability in later life was a sense of where they came from. Our sense of who our parents were grandparents, great-grandparents, et cetera, is maybe more important than we tend to think about it because we don't tend to think about it, but it nonetheless is what gives us or doesn't give us a sense of security and stability. So when that shifts, I could see how it would be disturbing. All of this was on my mind as Annie and I drove down to West Sussex, a couple of hours south of London, on the Coast, back to my uncle-in-law, Mark's house. Knowing how Kate and Hugh were wobbling, I was nervous about Mark and Johnny's reaction. Apart from Bindle, these two guys are the closest in the family to Fathr. Mark actually goes by Fathr with his grandchildren, and Johnny has John Dancy's name. If anyone was going to resist this information, it'd be them. Oh, there he is.

Oh, Johnny. I wanted to give Mark and Johnny the information at the same time, but Johnny teaches philosophy at the University of Texas, thousands of miles away from Mark, so we decided to have him joined by Zoom. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah. Why are you wearing that funny hat? Their headphones. To distinguish you from me. Here in Sussex, Mark's wife, Zana, will also be joining us. Should we start talking about things that we've learned? Yeah, maybe the stuff that's outside of the police file. Yes. Our plan is to start with the easy stuff. Walk through some of Fathr's more harmless lies, see how that goes. Then if things seem okay, move on to our panel of detectives and their various theories about Naomi's murder. Yeah, let's have a cracket bringing you up to date in a relatively chronological order. I began with something straightforward. Fevered's grammar school education. Fevered was born in 1891, and the story about Reverend Crabber coming to see him and recruiting him to go to Favirsham grammar school appears to be true because- I tried to throw them a bone there because the next step in Fathir's educational journey wasn't so shiny.

Remember, Fathir went to Cambridge on a scholarship? We have been in touch with Cambridge. They sent quite an extraordinary long email, and they said to us, I checked under the spelling Tristan gave me of John Horace Dancy, and also under any potential alternative spellings of Dancy I could think of, plus Horace as a potential part of the surname. This might seem like a trivial detail, but in this family, educational stature, it's a big deal. They've done a very, very thorough research. There is no record of favour at Cambridge University. Just then, my mother-in-law, Sarah, joins Johnny on the Zoom. Oh, I missed that. Yeah, he never went to Cambridge. It's all a complete fiction. There's no evidence, whatever, of that. Johnny, in particular, had been attached to this piece of information, in part because it's a prestigious university, but also because it's something you could check. So many of Fathr's stories are impossible to verify. This one was something tangible, something you could find out. I always assumed that if we're bothered, it would be quite easy to find out if one bothered. But you find out it wasn't true. Your father would have been more surprised.

Yeah, right. Okay, well... Oh, dear. Just like that, already I can see the cracks forming in the foundations. English men of a certain age do not fall apart in a very demonstrative way. Trust me, I'm slowly becoming one. You need to look out for quieter cues. Johnny is holding his head in his hands. He's sighing a lot. Mark has his arms crossed. Well, no, what you found out is that you can't trace it. But then he was very keen on covering it up anyway. We tick through some other doubts about Fathor's life story, that there was no mention of him anywhere as a member of British intelligence. The song he wrote that hit number one in America, he didn't write it. In fact, we found evidence that he wasn't responsible for any of the songs he claimed to have written, including I Married a wife. There's no trace of him in the famous club for magicians either. There's no sign of him at the Magic Circle. He was never a member. Goodness. Okay. Finally, we moved on to his military service. What about the painting? Do they know about the... Of Lyban? Oh, we never talked about that.

This one is a bit of a funny lie about a painting. Fahdur claimed in the memoir that he fought in a famous battle during World War I in Galipoli, Turkey. Fadher says he landed on the beach at Galipoli, and he describes this wild story where on his way to Galipoli, the ship he was on, the SS Leibon, sunk in the Mediterranean, horses drowned, hundreds of men, but Fever survived. It was quite a famous shipwreck, and there's a famous painting of it. It basically was a maritime hit and run where the live band was hit by another boat and the other boat just carried on and let the live band sink. So this is a historically verifiable shipwreck. It definitely happened. The issue is that there's no way could have been on that ship. Problem is that the SS Leiban sank a few years before the First World War. But this is the name of the boat that he- They do use ship's names again, once the ship sank. Well, it seems like an extraordinary coincidence that two ships called the Leiban leaving Marseille should sink within ten years. Yeah. There is no record of any ship called the Leiban sinking in that month in 1915 that I've been able to find.

Goodness. One thing I did find out, which seems worth mentioning, is that there was a real war hero in the family, Morris. Morris was highly decorated in World War I. After risking his life to save five of his men on the heavy fire, he won the military cross for bravery. A news report after his death pointed out that few people knew the story of Morris's valor. And unlike Fathr, he didn't leave behind a memoir about it. God, his whole life has been a war to miss you. It's tragic. I was just thinking it's sad. It's starting to feel like a pylon, and we haven't even got to the hard stuff yet. Well, it's not. It isn't tragic. Well, all the things you say that are falsities are, on the whole concluded to be false because you can't find any evidence that they happened. Well, there are plenty of ones which clearly are false, though. There are plenty of things which are clearly false, yes. But it also feels like there's no turning back now. I'm about to play a clip from Mr. Ballin's Medical mysteries. Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical mysteries wherever you get your podcast.

Prime members can listen early and add free-on Amazon Music. One summer afternoon, a French farmer stood at his kitchen door, watching in fear as his dog ran in manic circles around his barnyard. The normally gentle animal had gone insane. Every time the farmer tried to grab him by the collar, the dog snapped at him and then went back to running in its crazy circles. But suddenly, the dog stopped running. He sniffed at the ground, then bit down on a rock and chewed on it so hard his mouth started to bleed. Nothing the farmer did could get him to stop. The dog just kept chewing on more and more rocks until blood was running down his mouth and his teeth were starting to fall out. What the farmer couldn't know as he watched his beloved dog go crazy was that only two days later, he, the farmer, would be the one running around that same yard, screaming incoherently like a mad man. It was an inexplicable horror that would spread throughout the entire village, and no one would know how to stop it. Prime members can listen to Mr. Bolen's medical mysteries early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today. We've come to the hard part of our conversation with Mark and Johnny. There's nothing left to do but walk them through the conversations we had with the murder detectives, starting with Jackie Malton, who strongly suspected that Fathr was the killer, not Morris. Then I made a point of emphasizing how much Hamish Campbell disagreed with her perspective. We've now spoken to, I think, another six detectives, and every single other detective we have spoken to believes that Fathr killed both Naomi and Morris, or at least they believe that there was not enough evidence to rule that it was a murder, suicide. The four of them are all staring at me, silent. Annie takes the reins. I guess I just want to pause in case people have questions. Sarah wants to ask a question. Yeah, go ahead. My mother-in-law, Sarah, offers a theory. Did anybody ever suggest what sometimes we've wondered might be quite a possibility, is that Morris did murder Naomi and then Fathr killed Morris. Yeah, I quite agree. That seems to be the most likely if it wasn't a murder of a suicide. And then the question of whether Morris killed himself or Fahd had killed Morris doesn't concern me so much because I think one could understand Fahd had wanted to kill Morris.

This theory has been suggested by the family since my very first conversation with Mark, but it quickly deteriorates under scrutiny. If Fahd killed Morris while Morris was conscious, which he'd have to be if he'd just killed Naomi, then Marius would have fought back when Fevered came at him with a razor. You'd see defensive wounds on his arms and hands and other signs of a struggle in the house. But there was nothing of the kind. Both Jackie and Hamish rejected this idea. But I think there's a psychological function to it too. It's a bit of a compromise conclusion where you don't have to reject all of the suspicious things in the police file. Fader can still have blood on his hands, so to speak. But if he killed Morris to avenge Naomi's death, who could blame him? But I think the idea that he killed Naomi, that's the thing that's surprised me. And it surprises me because I find it unbelievable. There was one thing I was going to ask. When you went to these various experts, what a briefing did you give them? None. Well, you just said, This is the evidence. What followed was a long back and forth, where Mark interrogated our reporting process and how we conducted our interviews with the murder detectives.

The way he sees it, all the detectives must have assumed in advance that we wanted them to accuse favour. The case has long been closed, so why else would we have asked them to review it in the first place? He's suggesting that simply asking creates a bias, which fair enough. But that's why I want to get a feel for what… And you paid them to do it. No. Didn't you? No. Gosh. No money. So they do a lot of these things. Well, I think normally, families pay them. How have you felt during this conversation in terms of- Well, I was surprised. Well, the thing that surprised me is that all these experts have come around and said something quite different from the police at the time without any additional evidence. There's absolutely not a shred of important evidence to suggest that he did it, and there's no motive that I can understand. I think you mind about it a bit. That's Zanadair, Mark's wife. She reaches over and pats Mark's knee. If you didn't catch it, she says, I think you mind about it a bit. Well, I don't mind about it if it's true that he murdered his wife.

But I do mind the idea being put about if I'm not compelled by the evidence, basically. I thought there was something going on under there. I thought there was something going on under there, she says. I mean, we... Sorry, Johnny, go on. There are things coming out here that have not terribly been nice. No. The first thing that struck me was the extraordinary level of confabulation that Fever was engaging in for no reason at all, as far as I can see. I'm just for the fun of it. Yeah. And that's self-disturbing. That's got nothing ever to do with these murders or anything. But it is surprising, isn't it? I mean, it is very odd. I mean, he must have been quite a strange person. I always knew Fed that was a complicated man, but thank goodness. Yeah, I mean, how did we emerge from this? At a certain point in our conversation, Mark's questioning turned towards my motivations. There's a huge amount of trust placed on you by us because certain members of the family, myself included, do not believe that the evidence is at all as wrong to make the suggestion that Feverr killed his wife.

I think the other thing is that people have recognized that you are doing this as a commercial thing, and therefore you have to make it interesting. It's got to be interesting, or else you can't be sold. And that's a danger because it gives the feeling that you could be biased for commercial reasons rather than for factual reasons. After so many people had asked me almost this exact question, do I just have a bias against Fader? Do I just want him to be the murderer to make my podcast successful? It was impossible not to start questioning myself. I guess all of this has led to something of a crisis of confidence for me. I'm a journalist. Normally when I deal with the story, the aim is to try to get as close to the truth as I possibly can. But obviously I'm not used to doing a story which is about my own family. Yeah. And it's led me to a place where I wonder a lot about what my motivations are. I guess I've had some low points where I've thought, Well, am I just engaging in some act of family vandalism, which has no purpose?

In my better moments, I've thought to myself, Well, it's important to me as a member of the family to try to understand the past, and for my daughters, who are also members of the family, to understand where they come from, they have a understanding of what it is that I'm doing. They know who Naomi is, they know who Fevered is, they know more about the situation of their ancestors, and I think that's really valuable. Well, I would take issue right from the very word go. I think that if they had known nothing about Naomi and Fever, they would probably be happier than to take away the story that Fever might have been a murderer. I don't think that helps anybody. It doesn't give me a sense of purpose in life or shame or whatever. It doesn't contribute to my life at all. The nagging feeling that there might be some skeleton in the cupboard, I don't think helps anybody at all. I don't know what Johnny thinks. So even if I admit the objective importance of historical inquiry, I might reasonably resist certain historical inquiries. The worse it starts to look, of course, the more likely I am to resist.

Why then? Why? Why? Well, because I feel tainted to some extent by Fadher's oddities. Now I would be deeply ashamed of that. I mean, it's pitiful, really. Are you saying you'd rather not know if that were the case? No, I'd rather it were not the case. Okay. But if it were the case. Well, if it were the case, I'd still rather not know, to be blunt. I think this is a central question of what we're doing. Is it worthwhile to know the truth of your past if it's ugly, or is it better not to know it? An implicit in what Mark is saying here about my daughter's being better off not knowing about Naomi's murder or Favir's lies is a assumption. An assumption that knowing something ugly about their past can only hurt them. That having that origin story will do more harm than good. Why dig around in the past if you're only going to dredge up things that we'd rather not face? I think it's a very interesting question. Does that mean to sound patronising? No. It's a question we asked nick Haley about. He's the historian of Britain's Secret Service, who immersed himself in Fadher's memoirs all those years ago.

It turns out he's thought a lot about this. For instance, I remember for the first time I taught on summer schools as a historian, and there you get people who come to a summer school who have an idea of the past which explains how they came to be in the present and it's supportive for them. People tend to have a whitewashed view of history, nick says. One that allows them to feel proud of where they're from. It tells them who they are. It tells them they're not guilty for being who they are. And you take them. I found I was taking them as a professional historian and saying, Well, actually, none of that's quite right, and this is actually what the past was like. I did feel rather awkward that you're taking happy people and you're making them unhappy by a process of introducing them to what I would consider the truth of the past. Do you think, though, that it's actually good to destabilise those people in that way? Is there something fundamentally good about it? I don't know. I don't know. The one thing you have to remember about the past, which I don't think people tend to do, everything about the past is in the present.

It's all here. We roll up the past like a carpet and we bring it with us. Everything is in the present. My attitude to the past is that it needs sorting out because it did in many ways lead to where we are now. The price of seeing where we are now clearly, nick says, is going places we'd rather not go. So you start to feel slightly guilty as a historian because the past is not a comfortable place to be. It is challenging. It is threatening to what you believe. It is disruptive. It's a very awkward place to go. I understand Nick's guilt. I feel it too. Sitting there in front of Mark and Johnny, I see now that I wasn't just asking them to reconsider their memory of their grandfather. I was also asking them to rethink their sense of themselves. I've asked them to unroll the carpet of their past and to consider a very different history than the one they thought they were carrying around. That's incredibly destabilising. An attack not just on the past, but on the present, on who you are. And it makes perfect sense why you would resist that different story and try to poke holes in it.

I can't believe what just happened. I've got into the house on Queens Road. Next time on the last episode of Ghost Story. How? I phoned the owner. I told him, Look, there's no easy way to say this. My wife's great grandmother was murdered in your house. I'm making a podcast about it. Can I come around and see the house, please, and speak to you? He said, Yeah. We try to conjure Naomi in the place where she died and make some peace with the past. When? When? When? Next week. Oh, my God. Hold on. That's amazing. Is she here, Nicola? Not here. Here, I feel her. Yeah, in this chair. 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 Chloe Prasinos and Jess Hackl. Our producers are Zandra Ellen and Emerald O'Brien.

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 Makajah, 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 5RB. 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 coordinating producer. Our executive producers at Pineapple Street are Maddy Sprung-Kyzer, Max Linsky, and Jenna Weiss-Burman. Our executive producers for Wondry are Morgan Jones, Rich Knight, Marshall Louis, and Jessica Radburn. Special thanks to Fiona Colbert at St. John's College Cambridge, Dr. Sarah Hussein, Dr. Richard Underwood, Alison Vermulin, and Barney Lee. This episode contains public sector information, licensed under the open government license, version 3.0..