[SPEAKER_00]: Not all of our mini-cells need to be from listeners, in fact places or lesser known cases can sometimes take us to dark realms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another installment indeed our penultimate installment of Dark Rounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And today's Dark Rounds that we will look at is slightly different in the fact that it was suggested to me by a skeptical member of my family, who'd been to visit this particular area in early spring.
[SPEAKER_00]: They brought it up in conversation, stating
[SPEAKER_00]: that this place is meant to be haunted.
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course I've done some research on this place and yes to say they undersold it would be the understatement of the century.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much so in fact that I'm genuinely surprised that I've never heard of this place given it in the UK.
[SPEAKER_00]: because today's dark realm that we will take a look at is endorse it, and it's the Sandford Orcas mana.
[SPEAKER_00]: So please take a little break for yourself this Monday and join me as we find out all about this dark realm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we all know, in fact, we all listen to usually every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: that usually old houses seem to be haunted by mainly worn ghosts, mainly worn story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I murdered woman on a staircase, a great lady in a window, a phantom coach pulling up the drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sandford Ork is mana, near Sherbourne endorsed it, is one of the very few exceptions to that rule.
[SPEAKER_00]: It remembered as a house that seems to collect them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The manner stands in the small village of Sanford, Orcas.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sits beside the church built of pale ham stone, gable and unmistakably chuda.
[SPEAKER_00]: The present house was built around 1550 for Edward Noil, on land whose name reaches back
[SPEAKER_00]: The Noils, Catholic in Elizabeth singland and royalist during the Civil War, chose their loyalties badly.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the mid-17th century, the house was mortgage.
[SPEAKER_00]: By 1674, foreclosure had begun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by about 1700, the Noils were gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that came absentee owners, tenant farmers,
[SPEAKER_00]: and later the Hootchings and Medley Cop line.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 1870s the old house was restored with surprising care.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the late 20th century it was repaired once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ruth, plumbing, wiring, stonework, survival.
[SPEAKER_00]: But between these restorations came the period that created its most infamous reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, Sanford Orchestra's manor was least by Colonel Francis Clarech and his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was during their tenancy that the house's ghost population seemed to multiply.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women in red, white, green, and black.
[SPEAKER_00]: a fox terrier, monks, a priest, a farmer, a footman, a screaming young man behind a door, and perhaps even children who did not like other children entering their room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Skeptics would later argue that the legends became too numerous to trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so nerve and medley caught, who inherited the house after the Claraged Tenancy, reportedly believed the stories had been exaggerated, or even invented to attract visitors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And though even if we place these claims under the cold lamp of doubt, the stories themselves have most definitely settled into the stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: What entering them, as we do with the dark paranormal, with some of our disbelief left at the door?
[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, we will take a look as usual at the house's three best known apparitions, three histories, three steps down into the house that apparently collect ghosts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Firstly, we will take a look.
[SPEAKER_00]: at the spirit known as the woman on the lawn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our first spirit begins not in the depths of the manner, but the outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: The lawn.
[SPEAKER_00]: The house had already closed to visitors for the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that particular hour when a public building becomes private once more.
[SPEAKER_00]: the doors latched, any voices meandering and left, gravel, silent, light fading on those old windows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonel Clarridge was making his rounds, and he saw a woman coming through the gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was described, unlike the other grandeur ladies set to haunt the nara in red silk or white, as an elegant,
[SPEAKER_00]: that this woman was unkempt, dirty, out of place.
[SPEAKER_00]: She walked through the gate and onto the grass as if she had every right to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, as if Colonel Clarech himself did not exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he went after her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here the story becomes simple, and therefore slightly unnavig.
[SPEAKER_00]: the woman merely continued across the lawn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, as the colonel approached, she vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reported wording say she seemed to, and I quote, melt into thin air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another retelling adds that a chill came with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A sudden coldness on a relatively warm night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that detail matters,
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, as we all know, it's much more common for apparitions to be seen as opposed to felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: A later visitor, Julie Newman, recalled being taken on a ghost tour by Cannell Claridge in 1971, and said he showed us a few pictures of the lady in the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, that does not prove the ghost, but it does prove the tale had already become part of the man's living theater.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our first spirit, the lady on all warn is perhaps the most fitting introduction to sandford orchids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not violent, not explanatory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a woman crossing a forbidden ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still entering the house is all it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still vanishing before anyone can question her.
[SPEAKER_00]: A ghost that offers no story may be more disturbing than one that does.
[SPEAKER_00]: because it leaves the house to speak on her behalf.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, we will take a look at James Divic, the farmer in the smock, and this second tale brings us closer to the working life of the manna, to the kitchens, the service passages, the gates, the trap dolls, and debt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Among the most repeated apparitions at Sanford Orcas is the farmer in the smock.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some accounts name him as James Davich, a tenon farmer from the 18th century, who allegedly fell into financial ruin.
[SPEAKER_00]: The legend holds that, under the way to failure, he hung himself from a trapdoor inside the house, or under the gatehouse arch, dependent on the talent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that uncertainty in itself is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holded history is often blur at the edges.
[SPEAKER_00]: A name may remain, a death may remain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But where it took place can occasionally shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, what does not shift in this story is the figure.
[SPEAKER_00]: This figure is seen in old working clothes, a white smock, a farmer's hat.
[SPEAKER_00]: not a romanticized gentleman ghost, but a laboring man returning to the very house that may have witnessed his despair.
[SPEAKER_00]: During filming in the 1960s, a BBC production worker reportedly saw him.
[SPEAKER_00]: One account says he was seen from or near the kitchen area.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another
[SPEAKER_00]: The witness saw a figure in an old-fashioned farm as hat and smock.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then came the explanation, she'd not seen a member of staff, she'd seen the dead farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story goes, she became ill with fright and refused to return.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where the haunting darkens.
[SPEAKER_00]: The farmer is not said to attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't throttle smoother or scream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he intrudes into the presence like a stain the house can't screw away.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man ruined by money, a man found hanging.
[SPEAKER_00]: A man still walking in the close of labor, appearing before modern people and cameras and TV lights, as if even the 20th century
[SPEAKER_00]: If the first ghost is a question, then the farmer is a residue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a message, a repetition, and repetition in ghost law as we know is its own kind of damnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our third and arguably darkest tale is that of the footman in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman is seen on the lawn, the farmer appears, but the footman touches.
[SPEAKER_00]: The legend says he was a George in footman, tall, predatory, and feared by the female servants of the manor.
[SPEAKER_00]: In life, he was said to have abused his position, terrorizing the women in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some versions claim he attacked village girls or maids, he was arrested, he was imprisoned and died in disgrace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others say only that he was known for his cruelty.
[SPEAKER_00]: The details vary, but the character of this ghost do not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not merely restless, he is malicious.
[SPEAKER_00]: His presence is associated with one particular room, and with the tapping sound heard throughout the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonel Claridge's daughter, curious, or perhaps determined not to be frightened by family stories, decided to sleep in this room, and discover the truth for herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: That decision became the whole hinge of the legend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever sound had been heard before, whatever tapping had drawn attention to the room, there was now a living woman alone in the place where the dead footman was said to linger.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she had no taps, she had no sounds, she fell asleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then after she'd fallen asleep, she was woken violently.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others focus on the hands, invisible hands, cold hands, cold hands around her throat.
[SPEAKER_00]: One retelling preserves the phrase, strong, cold, icy hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Haunted Britain describes icy though invisible fingers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either way, the image is horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: just pressure on your neck, from someone that cannot be seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: She fought, she escaped, and according to the legend she refused to enter the house again after dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the point where Sanford Orcas becomes more than picturesque chewed a folklore.
[SPEAKER_00]: The
[SPEAKER_00]: A rumor of old violence repeating itself in this private room, and the most terrifying part is not simply that she was attacked, it's that the room already had a reputation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tapping came first, as though something in the dark was knocking for attention, as
[SPEAKER_00]: It smiled with glee from the shadows of the room that a victim had finally arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sanford Orchestra's Manor may be history.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may be exaggeration and it may be folklore, or it may be a mix of all three.
[SPEAKER_00]: It skeptics do have good reason to doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though if we've learned anything, it's halted houses do not survive only through proof.
[SPEAKER_00]: They survive through atmosphere, fear, and repetition.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Sanford Orcas has all three.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman who crosses the lawn before melting away, a ruined farmer returning in his
[SPEAKER_00]: something unseen and unfathomably evil reaches for your throat, and let us not forget that the nickname the house the collect ghosts was not put on this place by me.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are literally a plethora of spirits that we haven't discussed on this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just what is it about that area?
[SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, that manner, that seems to draw the dead from eternal rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, perhaps they were never granted that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they decided to stay at the one place they knew best, Sanford Ork's Manor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a huge thank you to my amazing cousin for telling me about this amazing place.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Sanford Orchestra's mansion is a place definitely worth looking into.
[SPEAKER_00]: The spirits we did not cover are themselves enough to fill a book, and so if anyone is looking for a jump-off point, that's one for you to go and search out.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, I'd like to thank all of you for joining me here for our Penultimate Dark Rounds of Season 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait to speak to you all again for our finale of Dark Rounds in two weeks' time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And until then, stay safe and take care.