Transcript of Alma Fielding and the Thornton Heath Haunting

Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna.

I'm Aush. This is Morbid.

Yass. Yass!

Yass, it's Morbid. I don't know, that just came to me in the moment. I like that. I'm Aush. I'm Aush. I feel very silly today. I have been fucking up the Dunkin' drive-through lately.

You have?

I have been up in those streets of drive-through.

Hell yeah.

Their sign— this is not sponsored. Dunkin' does sponsor us, but this is just like apparently out of value. This is just real. I'm obsessed with— and it has to be the signature latte. Yeah, the signature pumpkin latte is my favorite pumpkin latte of all time. It's incredible.

I like their frozen coffees too. And again, not an ad.

No, I swear this is not an ad, but like, it's really— Hey, maybe You know, book some more spots, I guess.

Yeah, let's go, Dunkin'.

I love Dunkin'. But, um, but yeah, I'm, I'm fucking— I'm Ben Affleck in these streets.

I love that.

Yeah, which actually is like foreshadowing for a bonus episode that we're gonna be doing on Friday.

That's true. Ben Affleck is not on the episode.

No, that's—

I should say that right away.

Definitely. Hey, but Ben Affleck, come on the show, Boston boy.

Why haven't we thought of that?

What would we do with Ben Affleck?

No idea. But there's some— I'm sure there's things we could do.

Hey, that'd be fun.

You guys want Ben Affleck on the show? Let's get Ben Affleck.

Well, ever since we had Matthew Lillard on the show, we're like, this guy is the Lillard.

Yeah, like, let's get everyone cool.

And it was really fun. I, I do think just a, a true few that love us and are like defensive over us might think that like he was ribbing us too hard.

Like being too teasy.

But we loved it. Yeah, that's our love language.

And I think, and it was only a few people, but, and they were being super kind about it and were just like thinking like, oh, I, I don't want somebody hurting your feelings. I promise you it was all in good fun. And I think we all just recognized each other's energy and made fun of each other.

He has a New England way of communicating.

He does. And I think one of the best ways to see that is watch the visual.

If you watch the visual, you can see that we're all just lolling.

Yeah. Like, I promise you, you can see that it was all in good fun. So, yeah. But thank you so much for caring about us. The people who were like, are you— was that—

Did that hurt your feelings? He was mean to you. I was like, no, no, no.

Because I promise you there wasn't a mean bone in his body.

No, not at all.

We adored him.

And here's the thing, again, New Englanders, being mean is a love language. Yeah, it really is. If you're not mean to me, I don't think you like me.

Yeah. As soon as he started going hard at me, I was like, oh, we're best friends.

Yeah.

Like, I was like, this is— this is— we've cemented our relationship.

We all became best friends instantly.

So I felt It felt right.

We were dancing through life.

It's true.

Dancing through life. I was a theater kid right there.

Yeah, now we're trying to get more cool people on because you guys liked that one.

Yeah, so Ben Affleck, what the fuck is up? What the fuck is up, Ben? Let's get them all.

Let's do this.

That would be so perfectly random.

It would be very random.

I would love it.

We're gonna make it happen.

Is he a New Yorker?

Nah, he lives in LA.

Oh, he does?

Yeah. It makes sense.

All right. Well, because we went to the Sirius Studios in New York, so we're like, who can we get from New York? I feel like we can get a lot of people Yeah, people love New York. It's the— it's an apple.

It is. It's an apple.

An apple a day, you know, makes you get to New York.

Yep. That's the saying. It's super catchy.

I don't know. I have a lot of sugar in my system right now.

From Dunkin'.

Um, what?

From Dunkin'.

From Dunkin'. Not sponsored, but like kind of sponsored.

Yeah.

Um, I have a haunting for you today because it is October. Um, and also we're gonna— on Friday, our bonus episode is true crime. Just so you know.

Yeah, it is. So you're getting true crime. You get—

you got it all.

We're giving—

we'll give you it all. When you come to Morbid, you get it all and then some.

Hell yeah.

We're all that and a bag of chips.

That's right, because I do love chips.

I love that expression. I like that. Yeah, it's like, it's like my favorite fat kid expression as a fat kid. Anyways, here's a haunting for you.

Here's a haunting.

It's Alma Fielding and the Thornton Heath Haunting.

Let's go, Alma.

I'm taking it way back.

Take it back.

To 1938.

Oh damn.

I did that with 1838 and now I'm doing it with 1938. So in February 1938, 34-year-old Alma, uh, Fielding went to the press with an amazing story. Her London home was motherfucking haunted.

Hell yeah.

According to Alma, objects would fly off the shelves without anybody actually throwing them, and the family was under constant assault from unseen forces. And on multiple occasions, they found a 6-fingered handprint on a mirror.

A 6-figured— a 6-fingered?

Yeah, I think I might have said figured.

I, I think I did. But that is horrifying.

6 fingers.

6 fingers.

Typical.

And the reason that's horrifying— I'm not saying if you have 6 fingers you're horrifying. I'm saying if nobody in your house has 6 fingers and then you find a handprint with 6 fingers, that's horrifying.

And that's the case.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's scary.

But Alma knew that if she went to the police for help, they obviously weren't gonna believe a word of her story, and they'd probably toss her in some kind of establishment.

Asylum.

Establishment. So a week earlier, on February 13th, 1938, she'd been visiting a friend in Thornton Heath, the neighborhood where she lived, and she was struck by a sharp pain in her pelvis. Now she had suffered from kidney pain when she was younger, so she thought, you know, maybe this was related. And she was like, you know what? I'm gonna This was lovely having tea with you, but my pelvis hurts. I'm gonna leave now. So she went back home, and once she was there, she took some meds. She went to bed to lie down, just hoping it would pass. Now, she ended up staying in bed for the entire week, just like not really feeling much better.

Damn.

And about halfway through, she was joined by her husband, Leslie, who actually was having problems of his own. He had recently had a lot of his teeth pulled to make room for dentures, and his gums had started bleeding so badly that like he literally couldn't go out in public.

Oh my God.

And he was losing a lot of blood, so he was exhausted. And obviously that's also just very painful.

Oh no.

So he said, I will lie in bed and rot with you, doll.

Hell yeah.

Now, it was while the two were lying in bed that Alma first noticed that 6-fingered handprint on the mirror above the fireplace in their bedroom. At first, she didn't really think much of it because obviously it's pretty easy to smudge glass by accident. But the longer she stared at the glass, the more something about the handprint looked wrong. And that's when it hit her that it had 6 fingers.

It's like, ah.

So she noticed, like, a handprint.

Which is already a little spooky. Yeah.

I mean, if you have kids, you have handprints everywhere. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, if you have kids, you have handprints everywhere.

Hers were— she only had one who was older, but the 6th finger really fucked with her. So by the time she spotted the handprint on the mirror, though, she had been in bed for several days, and she had also been in and out of a fever, actually. So she kind of just chalked up the 6th finger to her being so sick and just tried to push it out of her mind. She was like, maybe I didn't see what I saw, or maybe I'm hallucinating.

Yeah, which is valid.

But later that night, as she and Les lie sleeping in bed, they were woken by the sound of a large crash in the room. And when Alma turned on the bedside light, she and Les just saw shards of broken glass on the floor.

Oof.

And it looked like the remnants of a tumbler, excuse me, that just seemed to have gotten knocked over somehow. So she turned the light off after they cleaned it up and went back to sleep. But as she turned off the light and like went to go lay back down again, another tumbler flew off the nightstand and nobody had thrown it and it smashed against the wall. What? Like right in front of them.

I wanna see something like this happen.

I wanna see something like this so badly.

Like not in my house. Like I don't want it in my house.

I was just gonna say that.

Not in my house.

Wait, did I tell you what happened in my house? Did I say this on the pod yet?

I don't know if you did.

I don't think I did. I already told Alayna.

Yeah.

Really quick side haunting. I was setting up—

Side haunting.

Side haunting. I was setting up my Halloween decorations, which like, perfect.

Yeah.

But I was, I was standing somewhere and then in the dining room I saw like a head poke out and I was home alone.

So that was—

that fucked me up. I was immediately like, intruder. And I went to look in the dining room and there was nobody there. And then I told Drew this story and he goes, oh, and this was like a while back. He was like, when we were first moving in, I had like a weird experience that I didn't tell you about. And I was like, what the fuck? I was like, do you know if you're married? And he told me that he went in to like check on like work that was being done. And like, we again hadn't moved in yet. And, um, he heard somebody yell hello from upstairs.

That happened in Mom and Papa's house too.

That happens at Mom and Papa's house very frequently. Maybe they traveled with us.

Maybe.

But he went upstairs because he thought like, oh, maybe like a worker is here.

Yeah.

No one was at the house.

What the fuck?

Isn't that so weird?

I know. That's spooky.

And we'll be sitting very similarly. It, it like sounds like I'm copy pasting, but very similar to you and John. We'll be sitting in the living room and then that like back area, I'll swear I see something outta the corner of my eye. Yeah.

That happens to us almost every night.

Yeah. It's so weird.

We always think it's a child walking into the kitchen and it never is.

I don't have any children in my house. It's just me and Drew. So when we're both sitting on the couch, yeah. And like all our animals are always with us. Yeah. Like all the cats will sit with us. Dolores sits with us.

That's the thing. The dogs are always with us when it happens. So we're like, oh, it's a child.

Yeah.

And I'll be like, hey. And they'll like go in there and no, nobody's in there.

Everyone's in bed. See, we have no one else that it could be aside from a ghost, which is super fun.

Yeah.

I kind of love it.

I love our ghost.

I, if I have a ghost, I think I do. And I, I think they like us.

So, well, that's, I think Nicholas is in our house. Oh yeah, like he resides here.

I think so.

So I assume that's Nicholas.

I don't know who I have, but I want to know about yours. I know, because my house isn't even like super old.

We should bring the thing and ask the name.

Ghost Tube.

So it will tell us.

Yeah.

Imagine if it says Nicholas and he's like, I'm here too.

What if he's twins?

Maybe both Nicholas.

Nikolai.

Nicholas and Nicholas.

Nicholas squared. I don't know. I had to tell you guys about my side haunting though. I was really fucking excited about it.

I love your side haunting.

Thank you.

Also, another little side thing. What's that? suggested that the next time we have Matthew Lillard on, because we're definitely having him back.

Yeah, duh.

Is to have Nicholas in the background of the episode.

Yes.

And I think that's the most genius thing I've ever heard.

He'll either love that or he'll tell us the entire time that it's not real.

Yeah.

We'll see.

We'll see. Which is—

I think both would be funny.

I think it was a great idea.

We need, we need to put him in a place of haunted.

Yeah, for sure.

We didn't really get to ask him if he believes in ghosts.

I know we didn't, didn't we?

It was one of our questions.

It was. We just didn't get to ask.

All right, well, we'll put it on the docket for next time.

Yeah.

Matthew, talk soon. So anyway, back to Alma's haunting in 1938. So fucking glasses are just, you know, fucking glasses. Fucking glasses are just throwing everywhere, flying everywhere. And her and her husband wake up, they see this, and as the second glass smashes against the wall, they sat up in bed, obviously, and it seemed like a cold breeze crossed over the bed.

No.

So Alma went to turn the bedside light back on because I don't even think she had a chance to turn it back on yet. And when she hit the switch, nothing happened. So panicked, she just started screaming for help.

Yeah.

Now, hearing his mother's cries for help, their 16-year-old son Donald jumped out of bed and ran down the hall to his parents' room.

Those are good kids.

Yeah, honestly.

Taking care of their parents.

Good kid. Now, he crossed the threshold into the room and he quickly ducked so that he wouldn't be hit by the flying jar of his mother's cold cream.

What the fuck?

Now, he was woken— another, uh, person in the house, the family's lodger, was broke— was woken by all the noise. George Saunders. He ran into the room, and he wasn't as lucky as Donald to duck in time. He got struck in the head by 2 coins that had flown off the dresser.

Oh, that would hurt.

Yeah, yeah. The lights would not come on. The room was basically pitch black, so they couldn't see who or what was throwing these things, but whatever it was, it had a strong arm.

Apparently it was like a baseball pitcher.

Legit. So while George, Alma, and Les just sat stunned in the room, Don ran to the kitchen and grabbed a pack of matches. And when he returned to the room, he lit a match and found his way to the lamp by the bed. But when he went to check the bulb, he found that there was nothing there.

Huh.

Now remember, she had turned on the light and then turned it off earlier.

Yeah.

So with the match still lit, Don searched around the room for the light bulb and he just found it sitting on a nearby chair, completely unscathed and also still hot, like it had just been in use.

That's scary.

Weird. The family and George waited like another half hour, all just trying to explain what had happened, when finally it seemed like the activity was over for the night. So everybody kind of just went back to bed.

What the fuck?

Which personally I'd be like, Hello, Holiday Inn, I'd like to book a room.

That's the thing, whenever people are like, so I just went back to sleep, I mean, at the same time, it's like, what do you do? What do you do?

I'm coming to your house, FYI. If that shit goes down in my house, like if my cute haunting escalates—

You can come to our house.

I'll be skirting on over. I know your code, I won't even bother you.

Yeah, you can just come in.

So the next morning, Alma was feeling well enough to get out of bed finally. Maybe the adrenaline helped her sickness, and she decided to go down to the kitchen to make some breakfast. After setting out an egg on the counter, she turned to get a saucer from the cupboard, and as she did, the egg flew across the room and smashed against the wall.

What the fuck?

And now still holding the saucer, she whirled around to see what had happened, and the saucer in her hand snapped into 2 pieces.

What?

But she's literally just holding it.

That's also sort of dangerous.

Yeah, she— I mean, she got cut.

Yeah.

Not one to panic super easily though, she set the broken saucer down and she started thinking about what the fuck to do. Again, she could call the police, but the whole thing seemed so unbelievable that she was like, they're just gonna think I'm pranking them.

Yeah, like, what do I say to the police?

Hello, 911, I have a haunt emergency. Now, even if they did believe her, what were they gonna do about a ghost?

Or they can't arrest them.

Yeah. Now then, she remembered the newspaper. Earlier that week, a notice had appeared in the Sunday Pictorial, the Sunday edition of the Daily Mirror, asking readers to submit experiences to be included in this ongoing series that they were running on the supernatural. Alma didn't hesitate. She grabbed a note card and she simply wrote, come to my house. There are things going on here I cannot explain.

That's to the point.

She was one of more than 1,000 readers who replied to this request from the newspaper. But a few days later, on February 19th, Victor Thompson and Lionel Crane from the Sunday Pictorial knocked on the Fieldings' front door. She had the golden ticket. They had been sent on several other assignments for the series, so they knew to set their expectations low.

Yeah.

Because not everybody's telling the truth about they haunted.

No, of course not.

But as soon as they were inside the house, they knew they were on to something entirely different this time. Literally, as soon as Alma opened the door to invite them inside, an egg came flying down the hallway and out the door.

No.

And landed on the lawn.

No.

Yeah.

No.

They got egged immediately.

An egg? Just the—

A flying egg is hilarious.

Are you saying an egg went flying down the hallway and out the front door?

It's weird personification. I don't know why that's so funny. And then it comes from—

I just picture this egg just slowly flying down the hallway.

Oh, see, I don't. I picture it just whizzing through the hallway and out the front door. I picture it flying, like—

Flap, flap. Just flying.

It's just self-sacrificing.

And then just out the door it goes.

crack. Bye. I don't want to be eaten. But so they were like, okay, we'll come in, because that was wily. They walked down the hall to the kitchen. A pink china dog sitting on a shelf just started to rattle.

Whoa.

Then a can opener flew by them and almost hit both of them in the head. Fuck. And it's their house.

This is a poltergeist.

Yes, absolutely. So sitting in the living room, Alma told Thompson and Crane about how she and Les had seen the handprint appear on the mirror a few nights earlier.

A demon.

She was mid-sentence when her story was interrupted by the sound of a loud crash from the direction of the stairs. And when they ran upstairs to see what happened, the newspapermen were shocked to see that a, quote, heavy bronze fireplace fender from an upstairs bedroom had been hurled down the stairs.

Whoa.

So they ran upstairs to see who had thrown the heavy fender, but as far as they could tell, there was nobody there.

What the fuck?

So how did that happen?

Yeah.

Alma's just sitting right with them.

Yeah.

So they spent the rest of the day and well into that same evening at the Fielding home, just documenting all the strange happenings. According to the reporters, during their time in the house, they witnessed, quote, a saucer held in Mrs. Fielding's hands smashed into fragments, cutting her badly, a saucepan floating in the air, a wine glass apparently coming right through the door of a heavy oak sideboard.

What?

Yeah.

And it's like, this is the '30s.

It's 1938.

Like, it's not like this would be—

this isn't hard to achieve.

Yeah.

So when they asked her for comment, Alma said, I feel some terrible climax is approaching. We shall stay up all night to see it through. I hope it comes soon. Our nerves cannot stand such more.

She's like, can we please get to the crescendo, please?

I would also— I'd be like, can we at least want to get there? Oh, but I'd also be terrified for what the fuck the crescendo is.

That's the thing. This is already bad.

And it came out of like nowhere. So it's like, what do you want?

Yeah, you know?

But obviously it feels like whatever this is wants her attention.

Yeah.

Or somebody's attention.

Yeah.

So when the Fielding story of a supernatural intruder in their home made the papers, it actually surprisingly wasn't met with a ton of mockery, but instead with just more curiosity.

I mean, it is— it's almost too insane to mock, you know what I mean? Because you're like, that's crazy.

It's just for the times, it was shocked that people were like, Yeah, probably.

Yeah. That's weird.

A few days after the article appeared in the Sunday Pictorial, Alma and Les were contacted by a reporter from the Norwood Nudes. Uh, nudes, I just said. The Norwood Nudes. It was actually news. It was very reputable.

Good.

It was the local paper in Croydon where they lived. In a brief interview with the paper, Alma kind of elaborated on the story that had originally appeared in the pictorial, and she told the reporter, during the 7 years they have been living in the house, there have been frequently been strange happenings, which no one took very seriously. Which is funny that, like, they didn't really take it that serious, and now it's—

But all of a sudden it's like, huh.

According to Alma, she started to recognize a, quote, terribly cold feeling about the house right before one of the supernatural incidents occurred. And they even invited a, quote, psychic palmist to the house to find out how they could stop the activity, but the best he could offer was assurance that Spiritual influences were at work. He's like, they're like, yeah, yeah, we know. That's why we called you.

You got ghosts. Literally. He was like, bye. Bye. Got ghosts. Good luck.

So within a few weeks, the Fieldings had actually become so accustomed to the whatever this unseen thing in their house was that they just started referring to it as Jimmy.

That's so valid. That's so real of them.

That's Jimmy.

That's just Jimmy.

I'm obsessed with that.

I mean, we got one. We got a Nicholas. That's our house ghost, Jimmy. I get it. I know.

Uh, and his frequent appearances and tantrums kind of just lost their ability to shock them as much as they were in the past. I think it was still like surprising, but they were like, well, there's Jimmy again.

Here's Jimmy.

Alma-less Don and George had become so vigilant that a saucer flying across the room or a glass falling from a counter was just expected at that point.

They could just catch it midair and be like, whatever. Got him. Got it.

Now, they might have grown accustomed to the unseen presence in their home, even to the point of some Kind of like boredom, I guess. But the rest of London was still interested to see the phenomenon, especially paranormal researcher Nandor Fodor of the International Institute for Psychic, uh, Psychological Research. Or Cyclical?

Cyclical? No L's. I think you're right.

Psychical.

Psychical.

Yeah, that makes sense. Psychical Research.

I was thinking of a different word entirely.

Were you thinking of cyclical?

Cyclical. Yeah.

I think my mouth wanted to say cyclical.

It makes sense.

Anyway, he works there.

Anyway, he works there.

So he had grown up really fascinated by stories of the supernatural, much like ourselves. Unlike us, he studied law at the Royal Hungarian University and graduated with a doctorate, but he never forgot his first love, the paranormal. In 1929, he moved to the U.S. to work as a journalist and then traveled to England the following year, where he became a Uh, the American correspondent for the American Society of Psychical Research.

Hell yeah.

For several years, he researched and wrote about the supernatural, and he truly believed that humans contained far greater abilities than anyone realized and that they needed to be unlocked.

Let's go.

I kind of agree.

I, I can see that. What the fuck do we know? What do you really know? What do we know?

At the end of the day, we made it all up. It's It's all make-believe.

All make— made up. So we don't know shit. Yeah.

You don't know shit.

We don't know shit.

Now, after years, though, of deep research, he just hadn't found that, like, irrefutable proof he'd been looking for. And it was kind of starting to show in his work. In late 1937 and into early 1938, articles in the psychic press had accused him of, quote, being cynical about the supernatural and unkind to mediums, and suggested that he wasn't a real believer.

Damn.

So desperate to prove that he was still faithful to the cause, he was looking for a case that would, one, not only provide evidence of the supernatural, like cold hard evidence, but would also demonstrate his commitment. And when his friend showed him that article in the Sunday Pictorial in late February, he felt certain that he had found just what he was looking for.

Yeah.

Once he learned about the Fieldings and their— I guess we'll call it a poltergeist— Fodor knew that he needed to act quickly. He was definitely not the only researcher or ghost hunter in London who was interested in this case, uh, because poltergeist cases, at least— I mean, yeah, they're, they're pretty rare.

Yeah.

And at least back then they were much more rare.

Oh yeah, for sure.

So he quickly wrote to Hugh Cudlipp, the editor of the Sunday Pictorial, and asked if they would be willing to bring him on the case, and he promised to allow the Pictorial to publish his findings. A few days later, Cudlip replied to Fodor's letter, providing the address of the house and urging him to get there ASAP.

ASAP, if you will.

Look at you!

As soon as possible.

Look— oh my— oh my God!

I know.

Definitions McGee over here.

I know, that's why I'm here.

You're a genius.

The brains.

What, did you go to college or something?

Fuck.

So Fodor was shocked when he got the letter, being like, hell yeah. But there was a problem. He had several appointments that day.

Oh, shit.

And he could not get to the house ASAP.

He's booked and busy.

ASAP Rocky, as soon as possible.

He's booked and busy.

He is.

That's how you know he's good.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's got shit to do.

He couldn't get there until the next morning, but he's a smart guy.

Of course he is.

Went to law school.

Yeah, he's booked and busy.

Rather than miss the opportunity, he sent his assistant, Lawrence Evans, to the house, and he figured, You know what? Evans could hold it down until he got there.

We trust Evans.

And he was like, also, this kind of works out because you can tell me if this is worth my time.

And if it's not—

It sounds like it is, but like, go find out.

But I'm a busy guy.

So the next morning, Evans reported back to Fodor that in the handful of hours he had spent at the Fielding house, he had witnessed a shit ton of unbelievable things.

Hell yeah.

Including seeing a wine glass jump from Alma Fielding's hand. Shattering in midair and falling to the wooden floor.

Wow.

Just whoop!

Imagine you go there as the assistant and he's like, I don't know, just tell me if this is worth my time, and this is the shit you see.

Yeah.

Jackpot.

I'd be like, honey, you better get over here real soon.

I'd be like, thank you for sending me.

It reminds me— I don't know why, it just reminds me of the, um, what's her name in Casper? Carrington?

Oh yes.

Kerrigan?

Kerrigan, I think.

Kerrigan?

Isn't it Kerrigan?

I think it is Kerrigan.

Yeah.

And what's her like right-hand man's name? I don't know why I'm thinking of them, but I just am.

I'll find these for you.

I think that's such a cool name if that is her name.

Kerrigan?

Kerrigan.

It is, right?

Is it?

I'm looking.

Are you looking for it?

We're just sitting here questioning it while I'm looking. Kerrigan. Yeah.

Kerrigan. I thought her character, like, I know she was like a biatch, but I thought she was the most gorgeous lady.

She— I mean, it's Cathy Moriarty. Yeah, she is a gorgeous lady. Yeah, I don't know anything else about her, so—

I don't either.

Just don't come at us with a grain of salt.

But I love her character. Um, it just gives me that, like, because she has her right-hand man that like does everything for her. Yeah, I don't know why I just thought of it. Anyways, according to Evans, this happened several more times that night, all without any apparent cause. Like, he was like, I don't think she's throwing these things in the air, they're legit flying out of her hands.

Yeah.

And as for whether it could have been a hoax, he— again, he didn't think so. As far as he could tell, Alma was just as shocked by each occurrence and was shaking violently with her heart racing. He even put his fingers to her wrist at one point to check her pulse, and her pulse was really going.

Damn.

So she was scared.

Okay.

During that first visit, the family shared stories—

She's scared, or she— and I'm just gonna be an asshole here—

Do it.

She's scared, or she's nervous because she knows she's fraudulent.

Hey.

And I get— I'm just saying it from a point of view of a—

I wasn't saying hey like, hey, stop it. I was saying hey like, Hey, good point. Hey, hey, you could be right. Hey, or it could be the other thing, or it's really scary. Yeah, keep an open mind.

Yeah.

So during that first vision— visit, visit, visit, the family shared stories with Evans about their experiences with Jimmy. In one incident, a heavy wardrobe had been thrown onto Don's bed in the middle of the night. Oh, but fortunately he was at a friend's house that evening.

That's good.

No, and he was at a friend's house because the house was just like such a fucking ruckus that he was like, I gotta get out of here.

This is a lot. And also childproof those big pieces of furniture.

Yeah, you really have to actually arm those to the wall.

Yeah, make sure you do that.

Anchor them to the wall.

Yeah, anchor them to the wall.

Yeah, I've seen way too many videos of like— Yes. Fucking dressers falling on toddlers.

It's really dangerous, especially like dressers and bookshelves. That's my little PSA.

Anchor those to the wall. Yeah, smart. I remember when you had to babyproof your whole house. That was a lot.

Yeah.

You know you can like hire agencies to do that?

Yeah. There's no way I could have hired an agency.

No, I would need to do it all myself too. I get that.

Yeah, there's no— it was like I wouldn't be able to because I couldn't trust anyone and I couldn't have Yeah, I'm sure those are expensive.

Valid.

Yeah.

Now, while he was listening to them describe their experiences, they actually heard a loud smash come from the hall outside of Don's room. And when they went to check, Evans found pieces of a small china vase laying on the floor near a grandfather clock.

They're breaking so much shit.

A lot of shit is breaking. And he assured Fodor that nobody was on the second floor at the time, and the vase had very clearly been thrown from Don's bedroom. But no one was up there.

Yeah, like, what the fuck?

He told Fodor, I unhesitatingly label it supernatural.

Oh, unhesitatingly.

I love it. So Fodor got the— got to the Fielding house early on the morning of February 24th, eager to see for himself what his assistant had described. Given that the first place Alma went with their story was the newspaper, he obviously questioned whether they were just seeking attention.

Yeah, of course.

But from what he could tell, the family genuinely wanted the haunting to stop. They had already engaged a psychic and held a séance, but that did nothing to stop the incidents.

I feel like it usually doesn't.

Actually, the best the psychic could do was tell them that, quote— this is awful— there might be murdered babies in the well in their back garden, and they should plant marigolds over the site.

What?

He said, hey.

I just like— Hey, there might be murdered babies in the well.

Perhaps.

Maybe. I'm not—

Who am I to say?

Who can say?

As a psychic, not sure.

Here's the— there's always a possibility that there's murdered babies in a well.

Yeah.

That is a possibility.

Okay.

So I guess them saying that— I mean, you could say that about any well.

You could.

It is— might be small, But there's always the possibility. It's not usually zero.

Yeah.

Unless you check.

I like that the solution is just planting marigolds.

Well, that was— and then they were like, hey, instead of doing anything about that—

Well, you're doing something.

Let's not find those murder babies' bones or anything. Like, we don't want to do that. No.

Excavators are expensive.

No justice, no closure. Uh, let's just use that and plant a garden.

Yeah. It'll put their souls at rest.

I would love to have sat there and just been like, can you tell me the thought behind that? Like, can you just like give me— give me— talk to me like I am a child? Yeah.

Walk me through it. How'd you get from A to B there?

How did you get from murdered babies in a well to marigolds?

I don't know, but that's what he did.

Just tell me. I like that a lot. And I hate it as well.

I like it and I hate it too.

Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah.

It's a concept for sure.

Because I just like the broad stroke. That, that was. Because again, any well could have a murdered baby in it. So that is a very valid thing to just throw out. Like, that's like throwing spaghetti against a wall. It's like, might stick.

I just think about introducing that concept to a family. Like, well, I know this shit's been going down in your house.

I know it's been scary.

I think possibly it's the, the possible murdered baby in the well.

Yeah, I know you guys are really scared, and I'm here to try to help you out. Maybe Somebody murdered a bunch of babies here.

And put them in your backyard.

And put them in the well.

And what you can do—

Sleep tight.

Is plant.

Yeah. Good night, everybody. Yeah.

I love it.

Have fun gardening.

So they didn't really like that answer.

Good for them.

But then there was also— they were like, yeah, we feel like that's probably—

They said, that's weird.

They said, thank you so much for coming.

That's so fucking weird.

Please go. Then there were all the other people constantly coming by and peering into the windows now that the article had gone out, trying to get a look at anything going on. It was all extremely disruptive and intrusive, and Les particularly, Alma's husband, found it very overwhelming. Like, he did not like it.

Yeah.

So that was interesting. Like, it seemed like they weren't going out of their way for the attention.

Yeah.

At least Fodor thought so. As promised, he spent several days in the Fielding House, and by the end of the week, he submitted his final report— or excuse me, his first report— to Cudlipp for publication in the Pictorial. He told reporter Lionel Crane, my assistant, Mr. L.A. Evans, and I have spent most of the week at the house. There is certainly no fraud. We are satisfied there is something supernatural at work there, and we are going on with the investigations.

Damn, he just laid it— he said no fraud.

Yeah. Wow. To him, the activity in the house obviously seemed genuine, but at the same time, it also wasn't like any other usual case that he'd investigated. Again, the family didn't seem to want the attention that the story brought them. They also hadn't brought up the subject of payment for the story at all. So it wasn't a matter of financial gain either. And others from outside the home had seen the activity firsthand and verified themselves what they saw. All right. All of that left Fodor to wonder what exactly was Jimmy after?

Yeah. Like what's going on here?

Yeah. Now at the time there wasn't really a universally understood, or I guess shared definition of a poltergeist, which is what Fodor thought was happening in the Fielding home. But the phenomenon was widely believed by paranormal researchers to result from like unbridled psychic energy typically originating from a teenager. We've talked about this before.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Alma and Les did have a teenage son, Donald, and some of the activities focused on or around him, but not that much more than Les or George or, like, either of the other guys. And actually, based on everything that he heard, Fodor concluded that if the poltergeist was actually really harnessing its energy on one particular member of the Fielding house, It seemed to be Alma, actually.

Yeah.

During his initial interviews with Alma, Fodor started cataloging the numerous injuries that she sustained since the activity had started. There were cuts on her hands from all the broken saucers and glasses, bruises on her head from a time she was pushed down the stairs.

Damn.

Various other bruises all over her body from all the times she'd been struck by flying objects. Just like, this poor woman was going through it.

Yeah.

But despite those injuries, Alma seemed at first unwilling or really unable to acknowledge that among the people living in the house, she was the one taking the brunt of everything. She said, I don't think these bruises were intentional. I think it just happened that we were in the way.

That's— I was like, a very nice way of looking at it.

That's very sweet.

Like, it's not that they're mean.

It's very like, I don't know, they lived here first.

Yeah.

Like, which is always my approach.

Yeah.

Since the majority of the activity did appear to focus on her though, Fodor actually started to come up with this theory or question, like he was wondering if Alma Fielding was psychic and, like, wasn't realizing it.

Yeah.

And perhaps because of that, maybe she was the cause of the activity in the house. Now, under normal circumstances, that question would seem absurd.

Yeah.

But to Alma, it actually seemed like something she might have already considered. She told Fodor, I am told I'm psychic because sometimes I tell people things that come to pass. And she went on to describe several dreams or visions that she'd had, like one where her son was in a bike accident that ended up happening a few days later.

Oh, shit.

And she's like—

That's like, real.

What's that?

That shit happens.

That is—

Kevin, you do that.

To me.

John does that, and my mom does that.

Yeah.

And it's happened like, several times.

I don't have any control over it.

No, none of them do.

And it happens like, sometimes, and then just like, won't happen for a long time.

And it's legit. Like, I'm— again, I'm like, I'm like a whimsical skeptic, where like, I want to prove things wrong just for my brain.

Yeah.

Because it's weird. But I am also a whimsical bitch and I want to believe in everything. So I'm like a weird straddling the line person.

I think it's because you're an earth sun and a water moon.

Maybe that is it.

I think it is.

That makes sense. So I'm like a whimsical skeptic. And so I would tell you if this was not— I'd be like, nah, like they don't really feel that way. Like this hasn't really happened. It's really happened that like all 3 of them in my life have told me something. Or been like, I had a dream or I have a feeling. Like you get feelings all the time that straight up happen. Like you'll be like, I don't know, I feel like something weird is going to happen.

And then it does.

And then something weird will happen. And Jon will do it where he'll like, he's like predicted a car accident before. The other day he was walking the dogs and he said he got a weird feeling like something bad was going to happen and it like overwhelmed him. Or like someone was going to get sick or something like that. And something did happen.

Yeah, it does happen a lot.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And I don't know how to explain like the feeling. And so honestly, sometimes they're wrong.

Like, I will say they're not always spot on, but a lot of times they're right.

Yeah, Ma is super witchy, so I think we get it from her. And then John had like an aunt, right?

Oh yeah.

Who was like psychic. Who, yeah, was like straight up psychic and like, like born with a veil, right?

Yeah, like that's supposed to be like the thing is they're born with like a veil over their face kind of thing. It's like Uh, and that's like the spooky version of it. But like, she used to like work with the police sometimes.

That's crazy.

Like find missing people.

I don't know a lot about my birth, but I don't think I was born with a veil.

Yeah.

I don't really have anybody to ask.

So yeah, I think that's like a mythical thing, but whatever.

Mythical?

Yeah.

I like it though.

I love it.

I wonder if Ma was—

It's just spooky as fuck.

I bet Ma was born with a veil. That bitch is so psychic. But anyways, so she insisted that she'd never really given the subject much thought because She said, there are things which we are not meant to know, which that answer will drive you crazy. I'm surprised you like that.

No, I like that. I like it in this story.

Okay. Okay.

I don't like that in life. Yeah. Because there is nothing I'm not meant to know.

It is true. I, I do agree with that sentiment though. I think there are just things that we, we don't know and we're not meant to.

And I'm like, I feel like we're gonna— maybe we're gonna know. Maybe.

I don't think we'll know all things.

Damn it.

Elena's like, let's fist fight, put them on.

Yeah.

So the more Fodor got to know Alma, the more convinced he became that whatever was happening in the house, it did have something to do with her. In fact, he soon learned that the night the glasses were thrown around the bedroom was actually not the first time something strange or disturbing had happened. Alma told him several months earlier she started hearing things in the house that she couldn't explain. There was an incident in late 1937 when she was home alone But she heard a voice in the dining room, which I said, same, sister. And the voice was whispering, hurry up, hurry up.

What?

Which would fuck me up.

I don't like that.

I saw something. I didn't hear shit. I don't like that. For some reason, seeing something ain't shit to me. Like, I'm just like, okay, that was freaky.

I know, because I feel like I see things all the time.

Hearing something?

That'll fuck me up.

That would fuck me up.

Yeah.

Because I've heard things at Ma and Papa's before and been like, anybody else hear that?

Yeah.

And it's—

that's—

it's a weird feeling for it to infiltrate that sense.

Yeah.

You know?

I don't like that.

No.

That happens to me a lot in that, and it might just be like mom paranoia that like, I'll be like, wait a minute. And I'll like make John turn down the TV and I'm like, did someone just say mama? Or like, did someone just say something? And nobody has, but I've heard it. Like, I know I've heard mama or something.

I don't like that.

Yeah.

Or I hate like when you'll wake up from a dream and you heard something in the dream that almost felt like it was the thing that woke you up?

That happens to me so often, and it fucks me up because then I don't know if it's actually a sound that I heard in the house.

Yeah.

And then I can't go back to sleep 'cause I think someone's in the house.

I think there's a lot about dreams that we don't know.

Oh, for sure.

I think dreams are almost like a parallel universe kind of thing. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think for sure there is. And that happens to me so fucking often that I will wake up to a— with the sound being half in a dream, half— I don't know if it's the sound that woke me up or not.

Yeah.

And then my heart's going like 1,000 miles an hour, so I feel like I'm having a heart attack in the middle of the night and I can't calm down. Hate that.

It's so weird.

Hate that.

Well, this wasn't the only thing for Alma that was weird because like, so she heard that voice, she went to look, nobody was there. Then a few days before Christmas, things escalated. She said one afternoon when she was out of the house, she was— or when everybody else was out of the house, sorry, so she was by herself. Alma was carrying some dishes down the stairs and she felt a large hand just firmly grip her shoulder.

No.

Which I would poop my pants.

No. Getting touched is not, not fun.

Getting touched is no bueno. The shock caused her to drop the dishes and she actually fainted. She was so scared.

Oh my God.

And when she came to, she was lying at the floor at the bottom of the stairs with broken dishes all around her.

They need to start taking up decoupage. Is that what it is, where you like put pieces of glass and make a decoupage? Yeah, I think it is. They need to do that because they— you got to do something with all this broken glass. Yeah.

Okay, everybody, to say decoupage. It's also like, damn, back then, yeah, it was expensive to replace.

Seriously, so decoupage and start selling it.

Yeah, but it was like Jimmy, quote unquote, wanted Alma's attention specifically, and he was willing to do anything to get it.

Jimmy, you're being pushy as fuck.

He's literally pushing.

Literally, yeah.

Given everything that he was learning about Alma and the activity in the house, Fodor wanted to kind of do an experiment. He wanted to remove her from the home environment and test her in a more neutral space, which I actually find really fascinating.

I think that is smart.

So on February 26th, he traveled with Alma to the International Institute for Psychical Research in Kensington, where she was to be tested for psychic abilities. Just before the test started, she was led down a hallway by a female member of the research team. Who asked her to undress for a thorough search, during which all loose items were taken from her. And after the search, they walked down, uh, or they walked towards a small room. But before they made it to the door, a brass-bound hairbrush came flying at Alma, Okay. quote, apparently from nowhere, and hit her in the head. She reached down and she picked up the brush, and to everybody's shock and horror, it was her own hairbrush that she had left behind at home that morning.

What the fuck?

And she did get thorough searched.

Yeah.

Yeah. For Fodor, the discovery of Alma was akin to finding a gold mine, and his enthusiasm could barely be contained. But for Alma and everybody in the house, the entire experience was really overwhelming for them, and it was starting to prevent them from living a normal day-to-day life.

Yeah.

But soon the investigation was taking place more outside of the home than in, and that's when his focus shifted from the Fielding family to Alma alone. At that point, she was making regular visits to the institute to be tested. During one of those meetings, she sat with a psychic medium, Countess Nora Weidenbrück, one of the mediums who Fodor had been working with for years. Countess.

Countess. Of course.

Uh, Alma was asked to sit inside the medium's cabinet with the curtains drawn behind her back so that she could still be seen by those sitting in front of her. As she sat idly in the cabinet, the researchers watched the fabric of the curtains swaying lightly as she was breathing, which is interesting because she's not facing them.

Oh yeah.

Then after a few minutes, she spoke and said, something is moving behind me underneath the chair. They all sat still for a moment listening for noises until Alma spoke again and said, something is still there. I feel as if I were sitting on it. I think it's something solid.

Ew.

Something about the situation made the medium feel a sense of sick dread.

I think everything about it should.

Fodor went over the cabinet— went over to the cabinet and reached inside. And he reached to the small space behind the chair, and his hand hit something solid. When he pulled the object out, it was a glass dome about 2 inches in diameter, and Alma recognized the object immediately. It was an ornamental dust cover from her son's room.

The fuck did it get there?

Because that's the thing, remember, she was not at home.

Yeah.

How the fuck did that happen? Same thing as the hairbrush. By March, Fodor started reporting his results uh, to not just the Sunday Pictorial but also to various spiritualist magazines and newspapers, which were huge at the time. We just talked about it. Especially those who criticized him publicly and questioned his beliefs. Yeah, he's like, bitch, I'm a believer.

Look what I—

look what I found. He told the Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research, there has not been greater or truer ghost story than this one for many years. I always wanted to meet a poltergeist. Now I have met one, a poltergeist which is certainly destructive yet not malevolent. In fact, to a certain degree, amendable to experimental suggestions.

Huh.

Interesting, right?

Yeah.

So within a few weeks, when there was nothing new or compelling to report, the public's interest in the Thornton Heath poltergeist did start to fade. Meanwhile, though, Fodor's interest in— it sounded like I said Hodor. Fodor's interest in Alma couldn't have been stronger. For decades, he had been searching for this irrefutable proof of the supernatural, and now it felt like he had finally find it after all those years.

Yeah.

Found it.

Find it too.

He find it, he found it, he finded it, all of the above. But if Alma was psychic and she was the cause of the disturbances in the family home, then where was her power coming from? And why all of a sudden? Like, why had it just emerged now?

Yeah.

Now, when asked by Fodor to think back to her first experience with the supernatural, Alma described a pretty strange incident that had occurred in 1930. She and Les had been playing cards with some friends when she started to not feel well, and she excused herself to lie down on the sofa. Now, this seems to be a running thing— I was gonna say theme, and then I said thing, so I just said thing. Uh, but it seems to be a running theme. Like, she doesn't feel well right before these really strange things happen.

Yeah. Hmm.

So she went to go lay down, and a short time later, her friends started to worry about her, and they tried to wake her up. And as she came to, she said she was deeply confused by what was happening. On one side of her was her husband, Les, tugging at her arm, but on the other side was her father, who had died from tuberculosis a few years earlier.

Oh, that's weird.

And she said, my father, uh, leant across and drew a cross with his fingers on my left breast, which is pretty disturbing.

I took a sip of my drink during that.

Yeah, wrong timing, babe. A few seconds later though, when she was finally awake, her father was gone and everything was back to normal.

All right.

The next morning, she looked at herself in the mirror and there was a large cross-shaped bruise where her father had made the sign.

Ooh.

The following day, the bruise was gone and in its place was a thick scar.

Oh.

So she was concerned because obviously that's not the natural progression of how a bruise heals.

No. So she made him confirm.

Yeah, I can confirm, you should definitely call someone.

Yeah.

So she called her doctor and was referred to a specialist, and after conducting a few tests, they discovered a cancerous mass under the exact same spot.

Whoa!

Isn't that bananas?

That's weird.

Now luckily, they detected the problem early enough and they were able to remove the mass.

Damn.

A few years later, she experienced yet another health crisis. One day, without warning, she fucking lost her sight completely.

Huh.

Hysterical blindness.

Oh, shit.

She said, I told nobody because— I think it's actually called something else now. She said, I told nobody because I could walk about, ride my bicycle, and carry on. When asked by Fodor how it was she was able to navigate the world without her sight, She was kind of vague. She said, I cannot explain. It seemed to me as if it were a sense given to me. I knew everything that— I knew everything that was coming near me. I knew by the sound of the train whether it was from London or from Thornton Heath. I could get on the right one.

What the fuck?

So she just lost her sight for a little while.

But could still just go everywhere.

But was, like, not really affected by it.

It's like she gained another sense.

Yeah, which does happen, but it's usually Like, it takes some time to harness that other sense, I think.

That's wild.

So with all this new information, Fodor started putting the pieces together. Her first experience occurred the night that she had the vision of her father, it seemed, and subsequently found out that she had the cancerous mass. Then she obtained what she kind of described as like a second sight when she temporarily lost her vision. And then most recently, the poltergeist activity in the house, don't forget, started when Alma started having those really bad pelvic pains. and was confined to bed for over a week.

Ah.

Each burst of paranormal activity seemed to coincide with the onset of a mild to serious illness.

Damn.

And Alma had been struggling with mild to severe illness since she was a young girl.

Yeah.

So, Fordor concluded Alma's bodily failings seemed to trigger a special capacity, as if she were trading physical for psychic power.

Oh, so—

Isn't that fascinating? Yeah.

That is— I've never heard of something like this.

Neither have I.

Very interesting.

So by the end of March, as Alma became more engaged with the research at the institute, the activity in the Fielding House actually started to slow down until it eventually stopped altogether. But the deeper Alma, Fodor, and the rest of the researchers dug into Alma's supposed supernatural abilities, the more serious of a toll it started to take on her. Things at home were calm, but she was still going through it.

Yeah.

She started having really strange experiences, like, like sudden chunks of time were missing. Or she felt like she was experiencing the future while her body was still in the present.

Ooh.

On one occasion, when they were taking the tram from Kensington back to Croydon, she felt like something cold was touching her neck. And she said it wasn't anything unpleasant, and within a few moments the sensation was gone. But when she got home, she wasn't feeling well. So she said hi to her husband, and she was like, listen, I'm gonna go upstairs and lay down for a little bit. As she undressed to get into the bed, A cold feeling of metal touching her skin came back, and this time it was much stronger, and she actually lost consciousness.

What?

A short time later, her husband found her lying on the floor at the top of the stairs, and as he helped her to her feet, he noticed a heavy silver chain necklace around her neck that she wasn't wearing earlier.

What the fuck?

When asked where it came from, she was still in a daze, and she said, the Asian man gave it to me. It's a present, a sort of souvenir. It's very old. I don't think I like it, but I didn't want to offend him.

What the fuck?

So Les was, uh, confused.

Concerned.

To say the least. Alma had only gone to see Fodor and the others at the Institute, and there was no Asian man there as far as he knew. So he pressed Alma for more information, but her reply did little to clarify anything. She said, I was at West Croydon Railway Station. I remember being there. I saw this bleached stone arch. I went through it. There was a man at my side, and he told me I was in Asia. It was very hot and dry. I don't remember to have been there before, but he said I used to live there.

What?

I'm like, did you go through Platform 9 and different quarters?

I was gonna say, is this like another realm?

Like, hello?

You've crossed over into a different plane of existence?

Yeah, but things just kept getting weirder. Just a few days after the silver chain incident, Alma was out with Fodor and his assistant Lawrence Evans, and Fodor noticed Alma admiring a display of a hand-carved marble animal in, like, the— a store window. And he told her he wanted to buy her a present to thank her for all of her cooperation in this ongoing research.

Well, that was nice.

It was. So he, uh, she picked out the small hand-carved elephant, but before they could buy the item, the assistant Evans pointed out that the lowered trunk on the animal was a sign of bad luck, so they shouldn't buy it.

Interesting.

To which I say, fuck you, don't come for elephants.

Yeah, what the hell is that?

But the mention of bad luck seemed to really kind of mess with Alma, and by the time they were back in the car and on the road, she put the incident behind her, like, but she was very clearly, like, frazzled while they were still at the store. Then as they drove, she reached into her purse for a handkerchief And Fodor all of a sudden heard, like, this pronounced gasp, like, oh my God, what was that? And as he looked over, he saw in Alma's hand the small marble elephant that they had not purchased.

She stole the elephant.

Probably.

This one I can explain.

This one I can also explain.

She shoplifted.

Listen, this is where it starts to get— starts to get interesting. I'm like, okay. But the thing was, he had never seen her pick it up in the store. But here it was in her purse. And she looked up at him and said, take it away, please.

Wow.

He was like— because remember, obviously his go-to is not like, she stole it.

No.

His go-to is like, all these weird things are happening around this woman.

A lot of weird shit has been happening.

And now this? Like, what? So now this— this is the other thing. This is where it gets fucking ludicrous. And I love that word. Luda.

Luda.

The objects that Alma seemed capable of producing were not always inanimate objects. There were also times that living creatures would appear around her too.

No.

When I tell you Luda, Luda, baby.

What?

During one car ride, she was sitting with Fyodor and the others, like his assistant and whoever else, when she suddenly realized, oh, there's something on my lap. And when she looked down, she found a motherfucking live turtle on her lap.

What?

It's like a terrapin. It's a kind of turtle.

What?

Just chilling. On her lap.

What? Like, how does that— and that's on a car ride?

On a car ride. All of a sudden there's an—

Also, what's the meaning of this? That would be my thing. I'd be like, why did you— why, why, what do— why is there a live turtle on my lap?

Represent—

let's see. When they appear on your lap.

Longevity, protect him, uh, protect him, protection, wisdom, and patience.

Protect them and love them and keep them.

Yeah, keep the turtles. That's what you do with the baby turtles. But like, no one had seen her pick it up or put it there, and there was no obvious explanation for how a living animal such as a turtle just appeared inside the moving car on this woman's lap.

I mean, that one's crazy.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

And it was bizarre enough on its own. Like you just said, that's fucking crazy. But the turtle was only one of several living things that seemed to materialize around Alma. Other times, beetles appeared from underneath her gloves. Like, beetles would just crawl out from her gloves.

Stop, Alma!

And white mice and birds appeared out of nowhere, like, inside space— like, in inside spaces. They would just materialize.

That's insane.

Yeah.

I'd be like, someone needs to post up at the local pet store.

For real.

And see if Alma is sneaking on in there.

How do you sneak a turtle into a car though, and then produce it on your lap without, like, everyone seeing that you've reached somewhere to get said turtle and put it on your lap.

I have no idea, 'cause I myself have never tried to sneak a turtle into a car.

No?

I— that would fuck me up.

How do you explain that?

And the beetles and just—

Yeah. Just coming out from her gloves, like— I mean, I guess that one's pretty simple. You could just put gloves on the beetles. But who the fuck would willingly do that?

Yeah, you're— oof.

Homegirl's just on Fear Factor.

Yeah.

So the more extraordinary the manifestations became, the harder it was for Fodor to simply accept everything as evidence of a psychic unknown force. And he was starting to wonder if there was something much more earthly going on.

Uh-oh.

At first, he wondered if Alma had simply found a way to outsmart the researchers. And eventually, he did suspect that she was concealing objects, and apparently turtles, on or inside her body somehow.

That's wild.

He— so here's the thing. She had demonstrated that she was remarkably agile at certain points throughout this, and he couldn't help but wonder, much like Carrie Bradshaw, if she was using that ability to hide small objects and then retrieve them once, like, a séance or investigation was underway.

Damn. Yeah.

So in an attempt to finally catch her in the act, he arranged for her to be X-rayed before one of their sessions.

Poor Noor.

And he told her the X-ray was simply another way of investigating her supposed psychic abilities.

Yeah.

And she was hesitant at first. She kind of said, like, it reminded her of being sick. She didn't like it. She would have to talk to her husband about it.

Yeah.

But then she finally agreed. Unfortunately, when the images came back, he saw exactly what he had been looking for. There were 2 small objects visible against her body, including a heart-shaped object and another that was like a small pin or brooch kind of thing that she later ...produced during séances or investigations.

Oh, Alma.

True crime. So, it proved that at least some of her supernatural, quote-unquote, manifestations were being accomplished through deception.

Yeah.

But rather than simply expose her as a fraud and end the investigation, he actually became even more fascinated by the question of why she was going to all this trouble...

Yeah.

...and if she herself even fully understood what she was doing.

And was it all a fraud?

That's the thing. Was it all a fraud?

Yeah.

By this point, it was becoming clear that whatever was happening to Alma, the investigation was having a serious toll on her mental and physical health. And when he first met Alma, he was thrilled to find a case so rich with evidence of the supernatural. But now, after months of working with her and mounting evidence that at least some of the phenomena might have been deliberately staged, he was starting to wonder if doing this investigation continuing on was doing more harm than good for both of them. 'Cause, like, she's not doing any better, and he took this on to kind of, like, prove to everybody that he was a believer, but now he's found evidence that, you know, makes him rightfully skeptical.

Yeah.

So he's unsure how to move forward. So he contacted his friend Elizabeth Severn, who was a psychoanalyst he had worked with in the US. After hearing about Alma's experiences, Severn suggested that these strange occurrences might be connected to unresolved psychological trauma from Alma's past. And rather than being haunted by an outside force, maybe she was struggling with something deep buried inside of her psyche.

Oh.

It was a possibility that he hadn't really considered when the investigation started, but the more he did start to learn about Alma's life, the more interested Fodor got in that idea. It kind of felt like that was the path to go down. In time— in the time that he got to know her, he did learn that Alma had experienced considerable grief throughout her life. Like I said, she had struggled with a lot of illnesses and personal hardships.

Yeah.

So he wondered if those experiences were somehow connected to the strange things happening now.

Valid.

Hoping to understand that connection, Fodor and his colleague, uh, Henry Freyworth decided to attempt hypnosis one more time. So they arrived at the Fielding home.

Still holding their shot.

And Alma was actually unusually calm and relaxed when they got there. Les was at work, Don was visiting a friend, and for once the house was quiet. So it was really perfect timing to go into this, like, regressive state with her.

Yeah.

Which was something that they had done throughout their investigation.

She must have been, like, kind of fucked up.

What's that?

That must have felt fucked up, you know, to, like, hypnotize her. Yeah. Yeah, I would imagine.

And to, like, you're, you're pressing to kind of get somebody's trauma.

Something like that. I feel like that's scary.

Yeah, it would freak me out.

Yeah.

Now, well, as he guided her into a hypnotic state, he asked whether she could hear his voice, and she said yes. but there are others as well. Many voices. And later, she described hearing a mixture of voices, some belonging to children, some belonging to adults. She said that some whispered while others shouted or screamed, and none of it made sense. Oh, it reminds me of the episode that we just watched of True Blood where they get into Marnie's head and there's just like a shit ton of voices.

Shenanigans. When she's saying like some were shouting or screaming, like that's Yeah. I hate that.

Some were whispering, some were shouting. It's weird.

No.

As the session continued, she recalled some of her earliest experiences with the supernatural, though. She talked about a terrifying figure that she had once seen emerging from a locked cupboard in their old home. And she also described strange occurrences from her childhood, and a lot of them, uh, connected back to men. And that led Fodor to believe that whatever was happening to Alma maybe didn't necessarily start in their Thornton Heath home.

Okay.

By the end of the investigation, he had developed a theory. He believed that her experiences might be connected to past traumas, like the illnesses and losses that she'd gone through in her life. And he suspected that some of the incidents she reported could have actually been produced unconsciously without her fully understanding why.

Yeah.

Like, she might have been doing things like, you know, like getting the hairbrush in, smuggling the hairbrush in, and not even realizing that she did it or why she did it.

Yeah.

You know?

That makes sense.

But the issue was that while he continued searching for answers, his colleagues at the institute were actually becoming increasingly concerned about the effect that the investigation was having on Alma. And they're not trying to get sued out here in these streets.

Yeah.

So they gave him an ultimatum. He could end his work with Alma or he could leave his job.

Ooh.

Like, full-blown ultimatum.

Damn. A gnarly ultimatum.

Yeah. So he chose wisely and decided to end the investigation.

That's valid.

Now, in February 1939, he sent Alma and Les a copy of his final report. But rather than finding answers or reassuring— any kind of reassurance on its pages, Alma was very deeply upset by what she read because he was basically saying, like, yeah, I don't think you mean to be a fraud, but you're a little bit of a fraud. From her experience, though, she was struggling with terrifying experiences that she couldn't explain. And now the one man that she trusted to investigate those experiences was portraying her as somebody responsible for creating them, one way or the other, like, consciously or unconsciously. Which sucks.

That does suck.

So they actually, Alma and Les, went to the Institute to protest Fodor's plans to publish the report as a book, because he was planning to do that. The Institute couldn't prevent him from publishing it, but a friend eventually did persuade him to abandon the project.

He was like, this is a fucking mess that you don't want anything to do with. Yeah, this is not gonna be good.

Now meanwhile, his investigation really also didn't do much to improve his standing among fellow psychical researchers.

Yeah.

Many spiritualists were disappointed and actually pissed off by his reliance on these psychological explanations, and his professional disputes only continued from then on.

Oh, man.

One of those disputes actually brought him to court in a libel case involving the Psychic News.

Oh, no.

Which is not good.

Oh, no.

And it was during those proceedings that Fodor and Alma would see each other one final time.

Damn.

Alma never testified in the case, but she and Les did attend the trial. And at the end of it, while leaving the courthouse, she walked over to him and told him, you'll never publish that book.

Like, whoa. I don't know if it was, like, threatening or angry or— Bitter.

But she was like, you're not gonna fucking do it.

Eek.

And that was the last time they ever saw each other.

Wow.

So it ended on a—

What a sour note to end on.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

2 days later, he boarded a steamship with his wife and daughter and returned to New York City.

Whoa.

Straight up left.

He just said bye.

Because he— remember, he went to London.

Yeah.

For that. Now, as for Alma, life went on. Uh, during World War II, she volunteered as a nurse while Les served as a constable with the Royal Marine Police. After the war, they retired to Devon. where Alma continued to take interest in the paranormal and occasionally hosted séances in their home.

Interesting.

Which is interesting.

Yeah.

Uh, she passed away in 1976, and that's kind of where her story leaves us.

Wow.

After months of investigations, countless witnesses, all these extraordinary claims, nobody ever really managed to explain everything that happened.

Yeah.

Some of the phenomena, obviously, she was exposed for.

For sure. But some of the other stuff, you're like, how'd you make that happen?

Well, that's the thing. Other parts of the story baffled even the people who were standing right there witnessing them. So here we sit, 90 years later almost, still left with the same question that brought investigators to her doorstep in the first place. What exactly happened to Alma Fielding?

Wow.

And I don't think we'll ever know.

I don't think we will either. It's in the '30s.

It makes— I, I almost wonder if, like, because I believe in the paranormal, so I think she had some, some paranormal experiences to start with.

Yeah.

And then I don't know if it was, like, an attention thing or— or what was the motivation, but I— I think she liked the experiences, and that's why maybe she continued trying to—

To up the ante every time. Up the ante.

Yeah.

And I think maybe that was what it was. It was like maybe some of the less compelling stuff was real.

Mm-hmm.

And then the more it got crazier and crazier, the more attention and, like, spotlight got put on it, and she got— brought into the institute, and people were like, you know, impressed by her abilities. So she just kept pushing the envelope.

Yeah.

Because she knew those other things weren't going to keep the attention.

Exactly. And obviously she enjoyed the paranormal. So I do wonder if— because that was Fodor's thing. I don't— he didn't really think that she was like a fraud necessarily.

Yeah.

I think he was like, some of this she's obviously staging, but why is she doing it?

And does she even realize To the extent that she's going— Psychologically what's going on here.

That's the thing.

So I don't know. That's fascinating.

It is interesting, but I do think some of it was real.

Yeah.

Because some of it—

How do you explain away all of it?

How do you produce a turtle?

That one. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't get that.

And just the stuff like in the house, like flying in front of people and stuff. Yeah.

Like the egg flying down the hallway. Yeah.

Like how did that happen?

She's at the front door.

Yeah.

No, I don't know if anybody else was home at that point.

Yeah.

And you would think that like if Don was in on it, he'd be like, yeah, I threw the egg down.

Yeah.

Like I threw that eventually.

So I don't know.

I, I, I like to think that some of it was supernatural and that it just kind of snowballed and she couldn't get a handle on it. Yeah. Very interesting story.

Very interesting.

So with that, we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that You— I don't know, I kind of want to tell you to keep it so weird that a turtle just fucking materializes on your lap.

But don't like, fraud people.

Yeah, don't fraud anyone with a turtle.

Yeah, specifically don't do that.

Fraud them with eggs.

Fraud them with eggs all you want, but not a turtle.

Not live animals.

Yeah.

Bye.

Bye.