Page 54 of Murder Most Haunted

Extract from They Do It With Strings podcast

‘The Tin House’: Episode Four

Noah: One of the strongest points of evidence for the authenticity of a particular paranormal activity is when patterns of behaviour are reported by more than one source and these accounts corroborate each other accurately and consistently.

It is always exciting for a paranormal investigator to unearth just these types of phenomena.

Such moments are the jewels in the ethereal tiara of the spectral world.

So, imagine my excitement at finding the following entry buried deep within Dr Rawlings’ journal.

‘Between March and April of 1872, I was regularly called to Atherton Hall to sedate a disturbed and agitated master. Lord Rupert Atherton had become a shell of his former self, emaciated and withdrawn. He appeared as a man tortured by his own shadow. Food no longer held any interest for him and all sense seemed to have fled his mind. His days were spent flickering between wild bouts of laughing, interspersed by severe headaches and vomiting. His voice, hoarse from the screams, will forever haunt me. The only coherent words in his all too brief moments of lucidity referred to the White Lady, who it seemed tortured his own sleep as much as that of his kin.’

Which begs the question, how did Rupert Atherton eventually die?

The answer is just a page further on in the journal.

‘Rupert Atherton – died As.’

So, there we have it, an incomplete entry. Was the doctor too scared to accurately record the full details? What else could have caused him to abandon the journal so abruptly?

And Dr Theodore Rawlings’ journal holds an even greater mystery, on a page marked by a single canary feather shoved deep into the spine.

The entry, from 1868, refers explicitly to the name ‘Beth Hallow’, and is one of the most chilling historical records that we have unearthed on They Do It With Strings – a harrowing account of a secret birth in the house, one that had fatal complications for both Beth Hallow and her newborn. Rawlings ends his brief account thus:

‘And then the housekeeper asked for my assistance in the most terrible of deeds, one that will haunt my nightmares for eternity. With my help, the maid’s baby was disposed of, in secret, and denied a Christian burial. May God have mercy on their souls and on mine.’