Page 33 of Murder Most Haunted

Extract from They Do It With Strings podcast

‘The Tin House’: Episode Three

[Music: Rona RX’s last hit single fades in and then out]

Noah: So, I’ll just ask a few questions and you answer into the microphone there.

Rona: This is not my first rodeo, Noah.

Noah: Of course not, but I suspect technology may have changed a little since then. What do you make of what we know of the White Lady of the Moor, so far?

[Audible exhale]

Rona: Well, obviously, she visited Charles Atherton to punish him.

Noah: Perhaps Charles could have been a psychic, able to access the higher frequencies that spirits operate on.

Rona: Yeah, but he ended up dead, didn’t he? More likely, he was the one who could see her because he was the one who had wronged her.

Noah: Well, that’s a bit of a leap . . .

Rona: Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.

I’ve spent my whole career being exploited by men.

Even now I can’t get away from them. Some sodding weirdo has been stalking me for the past year.

Sending me letters in rehab when no one was supposed to know where I was – telling me he loves me and we’re meant to be together.

Noah: How do you know it’s a man?

Rona: Because he’s been quite explicit about what he would like to do when we meet and parts of it involve specifically male anatomy.

[Pause]

Noah: Have you always been interested in the paranormal?

Rona: God, no. I mean, I suppose I’ve always thought I was a bit psychic and stuff, you know, when I was younger, knowing when things were going to happen before they happened – that sort of thing – but as I got older, after being in the band for a bit – then it got more intense.

Like, a feeling like I was surrounded by things trying to speak to me but not quite managing to get through.

I was always having out-of-body experiences at parties.

That’s when the colours around people started as well.

Course, thinking about it now, some of that could have been the drugs.

Noah: And have you ever seen a ghost?

Rona: An actual ghost? No . . . wait. Actually, yeah.

I did. Once, when I was little. I’d come home from school early and I heard all these noises from Mummy’s room.

Anyway, just as I was going up to see, this person came running out of the room and passed me in the corridor.

When I called, she came out and said it was the gardener who’d been helping her move some stuff.

Noah: And?

Rona: We lived in an apartment building.

[Long pause]

Noah: Umm, I’m not sure that was really a ghost, Rona.

Rona: I’m pulling your leg, Noah. Of course it wasn’t a ghost. Mother always had some side hustle on the go .

. . No, in all seriousness, though, I suppose I did once think – when I was very young – that I saw a ghost. It was a little girl, dressed all in red with a white bow in her hair.

She looked just like me, so much so that at first I thought I was looking in a mirror.

She was sitting on my chair in the sitting room, and she said my name, then she was gone.

Noah: Did anyone else see her?

Rona: No. It was just me. The thing is, I had a twin, but she died when we were born. I like to think it was her.

[Silence]

Rona: I’ve never told anyone that before.