Graham Turner:
In this show, we're going to meet David Leadbetter. He's the author of a book called Paranormal Purbeck. In his research for this book, he interviewed many, many people from the Purbeck area to document their experiences of unexplained supernatural paranormal events. And in it, he's not only included their accounts but some of his own. And in this interview we'll be discussing the contents of that book. Good morning David. Good morning. How are you?
David Leadbetter:
I'm fine, thank you.
GT: It's lovely to for you to come and see us. So thank you.
DL: Thank you for inviting me.
GT: Well, it's a pleasure. I've been reading a book that you wrote about. It was about ten years ago, wasn't it?
DL: Yes. Published nine years. Just over nine years ago.
GT: Yeah. Okay. And just just, you know, right at the top there that just tell our listeners what it is about and.
DL: Yes, Paranormal Purbeck. It was it was started in the spring of 2011 and really developed out of my reading of paranormal books. And I've recently moved back to Swanage, and I decided I'd like to write a local book and see how much information I could get. So I contacted a local historian in Langton, Reg Saville. Very, very knowledgeable and lived there most of his life. He sent me a number of stories some related to his own family, but also he suggested I contact contacted the landlady of the Royal Oak, Rachel Aplin, who said, I think you'll find it well worth your while to do that. Yeah, and it certainly was. And all sorts of activity going on at the Royal Oak, I suppose probably about a third of the contributors to my book, because I've got over 100 people I interviewed for the book, and it took two years to actually write it. And I think during that that time I interviewed about 40 people in the Royal Oak who'd had experiences in the pub, and in some cases they'd had experiences elsewhere. And I'd also appealed in the local paper and got a few accounts like that way. And then I called at likely locations, mostly pubs, but a few other places, and got more unusual stories.
GT: Not stories, but accounts.
DL: Accounts, yes, indeed.
GT: That interestingly when I was, when I was reading your book and you know, right at the top, I think it's very important to, to make this you know, to frame our conversation. You and you've used the word already. You described them as experiences. So now what we're talking about, first of all, let's let's just have a definition of paranormal. Yes.
DL: I mean, paranormal covers a range of phenomena, mostly apparitions, ghosts, whatever you want to call them. Poltergeist activity, the precognition. Telepathy, near-death experiences out of the body experiences, possibly UFO accounts. Maybe it's a slightly grayer area. Yeah. And I would say it's really phenomena that lie just off the edge of science. Slightly, slightly beyond the range of our normal senses. I mean, you can provide evidence for them as well, but the evidence is more in the experience themselves. I mean, critics will certainly say, well, it's it's anecdotal, but I would then say, well, yes, but if you take an organization like the society for Psychical Research, for example, they've been collecting literally thousands of accounts of the paranormal, right, since the 19th century. And if you add it all up, add up all those accounts together. It's quite amazing what they have. And then you start to see patterns as well. Right? I think when you start to see patterns in some of the phenomena, oh, I had a similar experience in the people start to.
GT: Communicate and talk to each other.
DL: Yeah. That's that's it. Yeah.
GT: So I mean, in a nutshell, what we're talking about here is it's something that science can't explain. Paranormal activity is outside of the realms of our norms, if you like. And scientific explanation. Is that correct?
DL: I think so, yes.
GT: Or on the edge of it.
DL: I think I would say at the edge of it, because it depends how you how you define science. Okay. I mean, I think with I make this point quite early in my book that it's, it's the what we're looking at a lot of the time in our lives is the rational. We most of our lives revolve around how we've rationalized our, our activities, our life. The paranormal, I think is, is often intuitive. And it happens just like that spontaneous spontaneously. I think people who just sit there waiting for something to happen. Generally it doesn't happen. It just happens when you you don't expect it. I mean, quite a number of. The accounts, for example, of people experiencing ghosts or shadows in pubs were when the pubs were not particularly busy and something they weren't thinking about anything in particular and not concentrating, and something just seemed to impinge on their consciousness. I think that's where it often happens.
GT: So we'll go to a piece of music, but just before we do. So we're talking peoples experiences here, not about beliefs or anything else. It's what they've experienced.
DL: This this is what I would emphasize. And people say, oh, you've got to believe in the paranormal or whatever. I said, well, no, it's not really about belief. It's about what you've experienced. And there are it happens to so many people. Some people just dismiss it or say, oh, well, I think it must have been my imagination or whatever, but there's an awful lot of people out there. What I did in my book really was to set out that there were so many people in a small area that have had these experiences, and I know that there are other people, maybe, who didn't want to talk about it that had had these experiences. And it's just the tip of the iceberg, really. I think you could you could probably write a similar book of almost any other part of the country and get get a similar number of accounts.
GT: And one of the things that you mentioned right at the get go of your book, which I was quite taken with, but, you know, I could really visualize this was the tower experience. Do you want to tell us?
DL: I think beginning of the book I mentioned the the two kind of views that we can have of life. One is the keyhole vision. And I give an example of being imprisoned in a castle tower. And all you can see you've got, you're just looking at through a little a tiny little arrow slit. And so your, your view of reality is, is very, very very small. And then suddenly you can't see to the left or the right or behind you. Then suddenly you're projected out onto the, the parapet of the castle, and your vision has greatly expanded. You can see all around you, your consciousness has expanded. And I use that as a kind of analogy, because I think that's how we often view reality. Most of us are sort of living in a sort of small, tightly knit world. We're focused on one basically on our daily lives and getting about our business, which which is what most of us do. Fine. But we don't always see the what lies behind the reality. The why do you think that might.
GT: Constrain you in some way? I think it.
DL: Does. For, for some sometimes for some of these experiences. Yeah.
GT: So did you have, you know, as a child, what was your motivation for writing the book? I mean, have you had experiences in early life or.
DL: I had
GT: A family, my my.
DL: Family particularly had had some experiences. My my grandmother was certainly quite psychic. And she had a remarkable experience. I mean, I wasn't born at this time. But my mother told me about this, where she, her her mother, my grandmother, her had turned as white as a sheet. This was during the Second World War. And so my mother said to her, you look as though you've seen a ghost. And she said, well, actually, I think I have. It's your brother. I think something's terrible. Something terrible has happened to him. And at the time he was fighting in North Africa, and a couple of weeks later they had a telegram to say that he'd been very, very badly wounded. And in fact, he'd been given the last rites. Although he wasn't a Catholic, they been given a Catholic priest around. He was given the last rites. But he hadn't died. He'd he'd survived that somehow. But he was very close to dying. And I think it was that moment that my grandmother had this vision. It was a kind of telepathic apparition sort of mother son sort of thing.
GT: And she shared that.
DL: She shared that? Yeah. My mother told me about that, actually. Yeah. My grandmother had also apparently seen her, her husband, my grandfather about six weeks after he died as well, and met him at the garden gate. And she described it, I think it was to one of my uncles in quite a matter of fact, matter of fact way, as though it was normal. Really? Yeah. So she was quite psychic.
GT: There's, there's quite a, there's quite a few accounts like that. Aren't there, of people meeting relatives that have gone I.
DL: Call postmortem apparitions.
GT: Yeah, yeah. So you, you obviously you grew up as a child here in Purbeck. I did.
DL: Yes.
GT: So did was there any sort of did you want to be a bit of a ghost hunter or anything like that yourself, or did you.
DL: I was, I must say, I was interested in it as a boy. And I can remember going out I was only 15 years old at the time with, with a friend and his father, and we went to to try and see the The ghost of the White Donkey, which is quite a well-known ghost story supposed to appear on the night of 22nd of December along Studland Heath. And we spent a couple of hours out along this heath on what was quite a quite a cold night. We didn't see it, I have to say. But but I don't know what what we were expecting to see, but so even at 15, I was, I was sort of quite interested in it.
GT: Now that that particular that particular story goes back to what I found quite interesting with the donkey was the the story is that it was being ridden by deserting naval or army. Yeah.
DL: Naval officer. Yeah. Yes.
GT: Who was murdered? Murdered?
DL: It was attacked. Attacked and robbed and and then murdered and the donkey ran off. But the strange thing is that it's the ghost of the donkey. Yes. Rather than the man.
GT: Yeah, you wouldn't expect that.
DL: Which is an odd thing, but I have since I remember when I was doing research and I read lots of other books from different counties, and I came across two other ghost donkeys. I think they were, I think it was from Sussex which was quite surprising. So it's not impossible to have a ghost donkey.
GT: One of the things again in your book that struck me was the heightened awareness. You were again going back to your, you know, seeing the world in a much more complete way as opposed to being in your tower, you know, through the little slit that you described. Animals are good at this. They're really, really good at this, aren't we? Aren't they? They've got this. They're very intuitive. They're very what's linked in to. Yes. Paranormal.
DL: Yeah, I think I think so. And it's interesting how sometimes they seem to experience paranormal phenomena before. Before people do dogs and cats especially. And I, I found a number of cases of that in, in pubs. There was also one some a man who wrote to me from Bournemouth and described his how his dog was always aware that a visitor was coming about 15 minutes before the visitor appeared. Really? And they could. Yes. And his wife could actually time the visitor by the behaviour of the dog, and she'd put the kettle on.
GT: That's amazing. And so the visitor would be 15 minutes away from knocking on the door, but the dog would. That's right.
DL: They weren't even expecting the visitor either. That's that's another that's another unusual thing. But I also had I mean, I've experienced it myself. I mean, a friend of mine Phil Murray who was very, very ill about ten years ago and he spent a couple of months in Southampton Hospital. His wife was there with him, and I would go in to feed their two cats Jin and Lily. But both ginger cats. And the week when he was really, really, seriously ill and his life was in the balance, the behavior of the cat seemed to change, and they both became very lethargic. Hardly any activity at all. No interest. And it was whether they were picking this up, possibly from mu, his wife, I don't know, because she's very close to the cats. And I did notice the change in the behavior. Well, certainly unusual.
GT: Amazing. I mean, animals generally, they've helped in all sorts of ways in life and helped humans, haven't they? But that's probably an area where
DL: It seems especially dogs and cats. But it may be because because these are these are the most popular pets, you know, I mean, not so many people keep donkeys, perhaps, but I mean, you can still get ghosts of other animals.
GT: And human beings try and get themselves in some ways, you know, through, you know, their religious beliefs or whatever it is, into heightened states of awareness. Don't they do meditation? And I think we discussed this the other day where there are some, some religions that will wake up to, to meditate at 4:00 in the morning. Yes. So the melatonin is is high.
DL: It might be a connection with the chemical melatonin which, which is it seems to produce more these particular times. Yeah. Certainly with meditation and I think some Christian meditation as well. In the past people would get up at that, that time to do it. So there might be a connection there.
GT: So it suggests there's a lot more to our physical world we live in and yes, than we're aware. Yeah. What's your most what stands out for you which, which which paranormal activity is sort of stayed with you, I think.
DL: I think there are quite a number that stood out. Yeah. I mean, there were certainly two in. Wareham. I mean, there are other other ones in Warum as well, and in Swanage too, which we'll get on to later. But why I decided I would do Wareham in detail was I, I was interviewing a barmaid in Corfe, and she described how, how she'd had this experience at Wareham one summer evening. She was standing outside quite late in the evening. So it was it was dark and she was standing outside the Ingleborough House hotel, and she looked through one of the windows, and there were two fireplaces in there. I think it was the main fireplace. And she said she could see on one side of the fireplace a figure of a cavalier, and on the other side a woman dressed in as a sort of serving maid. So it's like 17th century dress. And she she momentarily looked away, looked back, and it had completely vanished. And she'd also got a friend who worked there at the time saying how the scones used to sort of literally jump off the counter onto the floor. So I had my wow, had my interest arose. So I contacted the owner of of the Ingleborough, Jane, and she said yes. So we have had a number of things. I went there myself to, to visit and to interview her and her son. And her son described how he, he could feel the ghost of a young girl at the foot of the stairs. And Jane herself had had several strange experiences. I mean, one of the most unusual was where. She was in the kitchen with the with the chef Carol, I think her name was. And Carol opened the fridge door and the milk jug fell out onto the floor. Nothing unusual about that. But what was unusual was that the milk followed the jug in slow motion and actually went back into the jug that was back.
GT: Into the jug. Yes. Oh my goodness me, that.
DL: Was really I mean, both of them witnessed that.
GT: There were two people that witnessed that.
DL: Wow. It was that was very strange. Oh, so that was one account and one, one location. I think I got about 16 or 17 accounts from where more together. Was the Priory?
GT: Another one? Yes.
DL: The the the Priory was very interesting. I, I called there and I, I spoke to the, the owner, Jeremy Marchant who still works, who's still the owner actually. And he described how this figure of a lady, the grey lady they called her had been seen by three different people. So I made a, made a, took her down all this in notes and, and then I went back some time later and he told me that his sister had then actually seen, subsequently seen this figure in one of the rooms. And most interesting of all I would say, is that a man who was living in my road at the time contacted me because I'd appealed for information about another location. He didn't have any about the other location, but he mentioned that he'd stayed in the Priory with his wife for a special anniversary, and described how he'd woken up in the middle of the night to find this figure standing over him, a woman standing over him, and he thought, oh God, we must have overslept. And then she just vanished. This was in the middle of the night. Yeah. Goodness. And he couldn't explain it. Nothing happened. His wife was. Yeah. Nothing happened. Happened to her. But then some time after this. And this was after I'd written the book I happened to meet him, and he said, well, there was a strange sequel to that because his sister, other relatives had also been staying in the Priory at the same time as they had. And she'd had the same experience. She'd woken up in the night and had this figure standing over her. So in total it was about six separate accounts of this figure, which is why I think this is sort of the evidence for the paranormal, where you've got six separate accounts independently and not.
GT: Pre not preconceived.
DL: Not preconceived, and where they've not, not been aware of any anybody else. I mean, like this man's sister had not been aware that he'd even seen it. So very strange.
GT: But we're coming. We're coming into Swanage now aren't we. We're just talking about the Priory and also Ingleborough house, but hotel, but we've got quite a place here, haven't we?
DL: Oh, yes. Yes.
GT: Go on then. Yes. Off you go. Yes.
DL: Well the Royal Oak in Swanage. Yeah. This has actually has a whole chapter in paranormal Purbeck which is certainly deserved. And I think as I said earlier in the interview, they, I interviewed about 40 local people in the pub in total. And remarkable accounts of female apparitions, male apparitions time slips all sorts of strange.
GT: You mentioned a time slip there. That's interesting. So just quickly, we'll come on to that in a little bit. But time just explain what that is.
DL: Where you seem to find yourself in this, either in very unfamiliar surroundings or where you seem to have moved back perhaps a couple of hundred years or so. And I've got accounts in the book of where in the book of several places where that happens. There was one account in the, in the Royal Oak where a man who gave me this account described how he went out into the he was playing a game of pool. Suddenly the pool board shot, pool ball, shot off the table. And he went out to get the ball and went into the, into the sort of back room and then found himself almost in a completely different environment. And it felt it felt as though he'd gone back 200 years in the pub. Wow. And other people had had sort of similar experiences. So you momentarily moved back in, in time, and you spoke about how the how he felt there was a strong emotion there that couldn't pass. It was all related to emotion. And it's true that with the Royal Oak, there were lots of psychic activity, lots of mediums. There was a Mecca for mediums. Unusual things going on, but I have to say that probably the majority of people I interviewed were actually customers or people who'd worked there and not necessarily connected to the mediums which which made it, which made it even more interesting. Just as many men as women also had these accounts. The men tend to be a little bit more reluctant to talk about their experiences than than the women on the whole. Right. Which is interesting.
GT: But again, you know, this point that it's not a preconceived thing. It's just, well, actually, you're it's interesting you asked me that because this happened to me, you know, and this is what I saw. That's right. And then and then people actually sort of collaborating, not collaborating. Sorry. They're cooperating their story or what? They've seen their evidence by actually saying the same thing independently, which is quite.
DL: That's it. Yes. Yeah.
GT: Yes. Okay. So the Royal Oak now you in your book, you talk about probably one of the longest in distance sightings of a apparition. Yes.
DL: It was, it was a a Polish man, Lucas who was who was staying in the pub for some months. And I interviewed him several times. He he actually had probably seen the ghost of, of the of the young girl that was the most frequently seen apparition. And it was actually while I was there speaking to Rachael, the the landlady. Right. And she'd asked him to go upstairs for something, and he came back downstairs and he was listening to our conversation. It was about the young girl. And he said, actually, he said, I think, I think I've just seen her. And so several of us followed him up and he explained what had happened, how he'd gone to this one room and could see this girl's face at the other end, gone then to to that, the end of that. And then she'd reappeared at sort of the end of the other room, as though she was like playing a game with him. Oh my goodness, it was, it was quite. And there was, it was possible we, we never really knew this, but there was a girl, Elizabeth Stevens, who had actually died in the pub. I think it was about 1859. We wondered whether some of the paranormal activity was related, related to her, but he'd also he was on a video link on another occasion in one of the rooms, which was haunted, he was on a video link and he was speaking to his wife, who was in Poland, and suddenly she said, well, who's that there with you? And she, she's she's.
GT: Seeing this image on.
DL: A figure. Yes. She could see a figure behind him as she was speaking to him so she she could see this figure from her, from this link in Poland. So that's possibly. I mean, he wasn't aware it was there. So it was possibly the longest distance sighting of a ghost ever.
GT: Another dimension you mentioned in the book is near death experience. And a lot of people have an account or have accounted or sorry they've experienced that, or there's been accounts of.
DL: Yes, I think, I think this is a really interesting area to look at. Um, because, um, some people have had this experience when they've had some terrible accident, um, of experiencing, of rising up from their body, looking down at themselves, um, then seeing a tunnel open up above them and then going down the tunnel towards light at the end. And at the end there's like a bridge, um, or a gate, a kind of barrier, and with a guardian or being in white at the end of that, and that if they go beyond that gate, um, or bridge, then that's basically they, they've died. Um, and quite a lot of people report this and life reviews as well. And the feeling that if they were in pain, they've got no pain. This, this floating up and all that. And, um, near death experiences. It was coined, uh, after a man called Raymond Moody who, who wrote a book about this, um, in America. And he collected a number of accounts, um, of this and eventually other people did research and more and more, thousands and thousands of cases, um, were collected. And then we had the Human Consciousness project was started by a sort of consortium of scientists and neuroscientists who were interested in investigating to investigate the nature of consciousness and whether, how it's related to the brain and whether, in fact, it might be separate from the brain. Because one of the fundamental questions is obviously what happens to us when we die, but also what is consciousness? And is consciousness simply the brain function, or is it something else? Um, and I think it's something else. Yeah. Um, and I think this, you know, if you can have a near-death experience where basically your, your heart has and they've done. They can scientists can can show that your heart has stopped beating. Your lungs are not working. There's no measurable brain activity like on an Encephalograph. Um, so what it actually is, is your experience if you're basically dead. Mm. Um, according to that definition, what are you experiencing? Yes, exactly. It's very strange.
GT: Yeah. Wow. For thought, we're getting very close to, um, to finishing the show and what I'd like to do for you before you leave us this morning is. Just tell us what you've been up to, right?
DL: What? You're.
GT: What's your next project?
DL: Well, my next in terms of writing, I've been working on a book for some years now, and it's called The Woman From beyond. I'm just about ready to to try and look for a publisher, because this will be a for the international market. And it really follows on a bit from these near death experiences. There's a link here. Um, because it's about a woman in Africa who starts a new movement and, um, she's on a par with with Jesus Christ of the Buddha. Um, but she has one ability in particular and that she's able to travel, um, into the tunnel, which I've just mentioned beyond the light, um, into the next world, and actually contact relatives of people who've died and provide evidence under scientific conditions that this this has happened and how her movement. Um, she's also a great teacher and healer and how her movement starts to spread around the world from Africa, right around the world.
GT: And what's the name of the novel?
DL: It's going to be called The Woman from beyond. And when.
GT: Can we expect.
DL: That? Well, um, I would hope to get it to a publisher in the next few weeks or months. So possibly later, next, next year. Brilliant. Just depending on how successful I am.
GT: Excellent. Thank you very much. And actually, for our listeners, we can still we can still buy Paranormal Purbeck, can't we?
DL: You can buy it at a number of outlets. I mean, the best the best place probably is, um, the new and second hand bookshop in Station Road in Swanage, Gile's bookshop, where she has copies. But I think there are also a few copies in the National Trust shops. Yeah, and maybe, maybe still a few elsewhere.
GT: David, it's been a pleasure having your company. Thank you so much for enlightening us. Um, on you know why? Broadening everybody's horizons, hopefully. Certainly mine. Um, and what an interesting, well, perspective on our lives and the place, you know, we live in. Yes.
DL: And I think it could, could have quite an impact in the future as well. Well, thank you for having me.
GT: Will you come here again one day? Definitely. Maybe. When your novels published.
DL: Yes.
GT: Thank you very much. Thank you. David Leadbetter, the author of Paranormal Purbeck. I hope you enjoyed that. It was great having David with us for an hour to discuss the contents of his book and go over all those accounts is quite amazing, isn't it? Just in little old Purbeck, we'll get David back in the hot seat very, very soon for another chat.