[SPEAKER_00]: Not all of our mini-celled 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 this week's episode of Dark Realms.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once more, no video sadly, as we're still having issues syncing the video and the audio to make them sound, well, what you deserve if you're watching a video.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put it this way, what we've got so far I wouldn't watch.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I want you guys to have the best.

[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of the best, we are in a series of flux at the moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are several changes that have taken place this season as you may have noticed already so that them creeping in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by next season, we hope the whole landscape of the dark paranormal has changed for the better.

[SPEAKER_00]: and two certain things which I can't go into, but one of which I'm in a bit of a fight with my network at the moment, because it involves changing some adds around so that you guys get to the show quicker.

[SPEAKER_00]: But although that can't be done until our next quarter, I eat next year, it will be something I am looking into because I want you guys one to not be over fatigue with the amount of output we do, I eat quality of the quantity, and two, I don't want you to have to sit through three minutes worth of ad before you even hear my voice.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now like I say this time of year, we are helpless to that fact.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I will reiterate if you join our Patreon at the lowest level, you will gain an ad-free version of everything on the main feed for as long as you remember.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even if you sign up between now and the end of January, you get past that entire holiday season of a bombardment of adverts that can break up some excellent experiences.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, although you may have already noticed, some small changes creeping their way in from Season 23 onwards the dark paranormal will be overhauled in the best possible way.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will still 100% recognize the show, it's still your show, me and the network of basically sent out a series of polls about what it is that you like, you don't like etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: About the current format and believe me when I say it is not just a few tweaks, I'll leave it there.

[SPEAKER_00]: As ever for anyone wishing to try our Patreon at any tier, you can gain a full week's access for free by clicking the link in the show notes, or heading over to patreon.com forward slash the dark paranormal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course to reach out to us again, there's a link in the show note to submit your own experience for the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, let's step foot into this week's dark realm, Lancaster Castle.

[SPEAKER_00]: Luming large over the city of Lancaster, Lancaster castle stands as a medieval stronghold with almost a millennium of wood soaked history.

[SPEAKER_00]: First raised as a Norman fortress on the site of an old Roman fort, it soon became a seat of power, and a centre of justice, and induced this.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the late 12th century, it was functioning as a jail, holding those awaiting the grim [SPEAKER_00]: Over the centuries, its stone walls witnessed countless trials, punishments and executions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Between the 18th and early 20th centuries, nearly 300 people were executed there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in Lancaster, the grim nickname, the Hanging Tower.

[SPEAKER_00]: Public Hangings wants to took place on the more above the city.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later moving inside the castle's infamous Hanging Corner.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of England's most notorious witch trials unfolded right here in 1612.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Pendle Witches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Improverished villages accused of sorcery.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were imprisoned in the castle's dungeons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eight women and two men were condemned in a feverish three-day trial.

[SPEAKER_00]: While one elderly accused which died in a cell before the court convened, this was a time of paranoia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Catholic priests, Quaker preachers, and suspected traders all passed through these gates, many meeting brutal faiths.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the centuries progressed, the castle became [SPEAKER_00]: children, the mentally ill, debtors, thieves, all we can find together here, disease ravaged these overcrowded cells, way long before reforms offered a chance at humane treatment.

[SPEAKER_00]: The final execution took place in 1910.

[SPEAKER_00]: The prison closed, reopened and astonishingly remained as an active penitentiary until [SPEAKER_00]: Today, it's restored and open to the public, yet for those who walk its corridors at night, one truth remained undeniable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of its former inhabitants have never left, and firstly were going to take a look at the lost boy in the dungeon.

[SPEAKER_00]: cramped, airless, and heavy with the misery of centuries.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here one does a ghost many staff and visitors know simply as, Thomas.

[SPEAKER_00]: He appears as a thin Victorian era boy, should stain clothes, blonde hair, a flat cap slightly ascute.

[SPEAKER_00]: He darting an out of doorways, whipping around corners just fast enough to evade sight.

[SPEAKER_00]: No official records identify him, but in the 19th century children were jailed for petty theft, and many died of disease and neglect.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas may well have been one of them, one of the lost and lonely, clinging to the living for attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: One guide once led five people into a dungeon cell, but counted only four leaving moments later.

[SPEAKER_00]: The group insisted an unknown boy had entered with them and stood quietly at the back of the cell.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, when the cell was opened, he had completely vanished.

[SPEAKER_00]: The guy later discovered he had indeed sold five tickets.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that extra visitor never existed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses have felt cold, childlike fingers, brushed their hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've heard soft giggled in the dark, or watched a small bundle of rags, rise and take the shape of a child before dissolving.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the castle's suffocating gloom, Thomas is not malicious, but still encountering him [SPEAKER_00]: a pale boy peeking from a cell doorway, then gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or a tiny hand slipping into yours, you turn, and no one is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas seems to be forever searching for someone to lead him out of the darkness.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next as we're like to do, we build up to the most terrifying identity in a certain location.

[SPEAKER_00]: is the hanged monks revenge.

[SPEAKER_00]: When night settles on Lancaster Castle, the lower halls become the domain of a far darker presence, the black monk.

[SPEAKER_00]: A tall, hooded figure in ancient monastic robes, he's believed to be the spirit of a cleric, executed that the castle centuries ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the so many priests hung, tortured, or tried for treason.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether munk or merciless jailer, this entity radiates sheer hostility.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both visitors and former prison staff have reported footsteps following them, doors slamming shut, keys jangling down corridors, and the unmistakable sense of being watched.

[SPEAKER_00]: A security officer once felt too heavy hands, shoving hard in the chest, knocking him to the floor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Scrambleing up, expecting to confront an attacker, the corridor was empty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sel III said to be the monks preferred habitat, he is notorious for violent phenomena.

[SPEAKER_00]: unseen hands, tugging a clothes.

[SPEAKER_00]: One visitor screamed as she watched the rag pick itself up from the floor and then become full body into that other robed figure, before collapsing again to the floor.

[SPEAKER_00]: On certain nights, our half-body silhouette will glide across the courtyard.

[SPEAKER_00]: the upper torso of a monk floating above the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: As though walking on the level the floor once stood many centuries ago, in the prison years hardened inmate begged not to be housed near that cell block, after witnessing the cowled figure drifting past and standing next to their doors.

[SPEAKER_00]: The black monk is a spirit of fury.

[SPEAKER_00]: unjustly executed, perhaps, or bound to his duty in death.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing's for sure, where he walks, fear, follows.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now the most darkest tale of them all, and arguably, the most famous [SPEAKER_00]: In the castle's dreaded well-tower, the Vowitches tower, an elderly blind woman known as Old Demdike, died shackled in a damp cell in 1612, accused of witchcraft alongside her fellow Pendle Witches, she didn't live to stand trial.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Legend says that although she didn't leave the tower, she didn't death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Although she chooses to remain there still, [SPEAKER_00]: In her particular cell, the lights flick a violently, door swingers if seized by a furious hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Disembodied shrieks erupt from the tower without warning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Strange, mist, swirl into human shapes before dissolving.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many investigators believe that Demdeyke herself is responsible for the tower's violent [SPEAKER_00]: a withered woman in a black-hooded cloak, wandering the parapet or stalking the corridors, with a spectral young girl at her side.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps kin, perhaps a fellow lost soul adrawn to the witch's power.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the most chilling experiences comes from a young woman who believed her grandmother [SPEAKER_00]: They talked casually.

[SPEAKER_00]: She felt her grandmother gently take her hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And only when she stepped into the light, did she realize she was completely alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her grandmother had still been several minutes behind her, the entire time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The girl believes an unseen present imitated her relative [SPEAKER_00]: On another night, a security guard closing the castle was locked inside the gatehouse by a sudden unnaturally false.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was thrown into a chair and held there, pinned down by invisible hands for ten agonizing minutes before the door creaks slowly open.

[SPEAKER_00]: The man left pale, trembling, and absolutely convinced the witch, old damn dieck, had [SPEAKER_00]: Old Demtike suffered and died in darkness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the story says she has not forgiven the living that any of her treatment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lancaster Castle is not just a relic of medieval power, it is in fact a mausoleum of grief, rage and restless souls.

[SPEAKER_00]: Any visitors who think it wasn't a good day out or they didn't really enjoy it.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what they were looking for.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know what they missed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Arguably things that may have been in plain sight all along.

[SPEAKER_00]: For example, the tale of the lady who believed she was talking to her grandmother, imagine if she then just left to go to the toilet.

[SPEAKER_00]: She would return, find her grandmother, and the day would continue.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'd be completely oblivious that she'd had a run-in, with old themdike.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I have been fortunate enough to visit this dark realm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I defy anyone who is a fan or a believer in the paranormal to not feel a sense of the Macarb, or at least disturbed as you enter that castle.

[SPEAKER_00]: It truly is a bank of restless energy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas seeking companionship, the black monk seeking retribution, an old damnedike, the witch [SPEAKER_00]: Three ghosts, three tragedies, three warnings whispered across four centuries.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you get the chance to walk its corridors and please do try, pause, listen, breathe, and if a cold hand slips into yours, don't turn.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to thank Kathy, one of our patrons, for suggesting this wonderful dark realm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've really enjoyed looking into it having been there myself, so I can picture exactly what I'm saying when discussing this dark realm.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have your own suggestion for a dark realm, email it to me, contact at thedarkparanormal.com and until next time, stay safe and take care.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.