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SIPA Paranormal Chronicles S1 E16 - Eli Lewis-Lycett - independent writer and podcaster
9 Plays9 hours ago
Join us this week, when we speak to Eli Lewis-Lycett an independent writer and podcaster specialising in the history and folklore of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire UK.
In October 2020 he founded The Local Mythstorian, a multi-media project designed to promote the extraordinary local histories of the three-shires region. With fresh historical research and original content, the scope of the project has come to include essays, podcasts, live events and books.
Outside of the project, Eli has written extensively for the UK’s premier paranormal publication Haunted Magazine, is resident folklore columnist for Cheshire Life Magazine, official historian for the Inspector Paranormal Podcast and has recently acted as a consultant for Blaze TV’s Weird Britain series.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. Today I am delighted to be talking to Eli Lewis-Lasset and he's told me that I can call him Eli so I think I'm honoured.
00:00:26
Lee Hatfield
Eli is an independent writer and he also has his is i own podcast and his speciality is Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire in England. So Eli, welcome!
00:00:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Thank you for having me, Lee. It's ah ah an absolute pleasure to be with you.
00:00:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And unbeknown to the listeners, we have just been talking about football for the last 20 minutes.
00:00:47
Eli Lewis-Lycett
we done
00:00:47
Lee Hatfield
So
Eli's Background and Folklore Journey
00:00:48
Eli Lewis-Lycett
yeah
00:00:48
Lee Hatfield
let's not let's not go there.
00:00:51
Lee Hatfield
OK, so Eli, just tell us a little bit about yourself to start off with then, please.
00:00:55
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So I live in Cheshire, which is the green bit between Liverpool and Manchester, if you're looking on a map pretty much. But I was and born and raised in Staffordshire, which is an adjoining county.
00:01:10
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I've long been a history enthusiast, and I guess that through lockdown, really, all of the half-baked ideas and little plans and projects that I've been pursuing genuinely as a hobby for a long time, suddenly formulated together and kind of leapt out into the world.
00:01:34
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And that's why I'm talking to you today.
00:01:38
Lee Hatfield
And I appreciate that. yeah Five hours time difference. So it's midday here in Canada and just after 5 p.m. in Blighty.
00:01:46
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yep.
00:01:46
Lee Hatfield
For those that those people that don't know, Google it. but so Only us old folk know what Blighty means. Okay, so so you've been writing about the paranormal for ah ah quite a while.
Intersection of History and Paranormal
00:02:00
Lee Hatfield
But what piqued your interest in start to go down that route of your life?
00:02:07
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So i guess as as a history writer and a folklore writer, the paranormal has always kind of been just out of sight.
00:02:20
Eli Lewis-Lycett
You know, it's ever-present. Some of the old tales, are particularly in in the realm of folklore, you're only ever a couple of yarns away from a ghost appearing.
00:02:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
you know what I mean? So it's ever-present. Now, because I spend a lot of time in the kind of history arena, There's kind of two sides to it where a lot of people like to keep those two topics very distinct. But for me, I think that's a losing battle and not a battle anyone needs to fight, really, because the truth is, wherever there's history, if you look hard enough, there's some kind of paranormal, supernatural attachment there.
00:02:59
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And also, and if anything, if a ghost's involved, it gets the history remembered. So that's often often what actually brings it into light.
00:03:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And it's always been with me. As I grew up, my kind of first foray into... into understanding the connection between history and the paranormal. I used to have these kind of picture books when I was a kid of like Robin Hood and King Arthur and I'd kind of pull through them on rainy Sunday afternoons and learn the legends And of course, as soon as you're doing that, you're asking questions.
00:03:34
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Okay, so who are, were these people? Why did they do these things? And as soon as that starts branching out, that's where the paranormal starts coming in. You know, ghosts of monks and things like that. So on a really basic level, it was always there.
Cultural Ties in Regional Folklore
00:03:48
Eli Lewis-Lycett
As I've become more proficient doing that, I guess, actually <unk>s a the ghostly legends, especially in the local area, because my kind of area of expertise, if that's the right word, is this, the kind of three counties of Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire, is ever present in the historical legends of the region.
00:04:12
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And so it's just always been there. It's bedfellows, really.
00:04:17
Lee Hatfield
So you mentioned the three shires, so yeah Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire. You've already mentioned that you were brought up in Staffordshire and you now live in Cheshire. So where does Derbyshire come from? but where How does that that that join the trio?
00:04:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, absolutely. So that where I'm from in Staffordshire, I lived in the Staffordshire Moorlands, which is like enclave just north of Stoke-on-Trent that borders both Derbyshire and Cheshire.
00:04:44
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So when you're going about your daily life... You're forever crossing the borders of those counties. So you just as easily go out for a meal in Cheshire as you would to go and do your grocery shopping in Derbyshire. There's three kind of industrial towns.
00:05:04
Eli Lewis-Lycett
If you imagine them on a triangle, kind of on a map, you've got Macclesfield in Cheshire. Buxton in Derbyshire and Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
00:05:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And they're very close together. It is like a borderland region. And through, well, over the last thousand years, if you like, and particularly then boosted through the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 1700s,
00:05:28
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Those three population centres have been intertwined and reliant on one another in every aspect that you can think of. So it's quite a natural grouping. Those three counties, particularly in the border regions, anybody who lives there will consider those other areas of those counties home as much as they would where they actually live.
00:05:53
Lee Hatfield
Right, right. So funny story about Derbyshire. When I still lived in the UK, we're driving. ah I think we were going to Cumbria, me and the wife before we got married.
00:06:04
Lee Hatfield
And I threw the MacBook and I said, right, just find me the road that heads towards Derby. And she's like, I can't find it. doesn't exist. I said, what do you mean it doesn't exist? It's a big city.
00:06:16
Lee Hatfield
And she went, how do you spell it? I went, D-E-R-B-Y. Oh, you mean Derby. I found Derby, but I can but i can't find Derby.
00:06:20
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Derby.
00:06:23
Lee Hatfield
It's like, oh, my God.
00:06:25
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It is strange, obviously.
00:06:25
Lee Hatfield
sorry
00:06:27
Eli Lewis-Lycett
If you weren't from from from England or from the UK, there's a few things like that that I think I'd be the same.
00:06:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yeah. So it's like that that's been a joke like for forever that we don't say things correctly. So yeah, that's it.
00:06:40
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Derbyshire.
00:06:42
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yeah.
From Writing to Podcasting and Magazine Contributions
00:06:43
Lee Hatfield
Let's not get started on Worcestershire though because that completely confuses people. So when you started your historical writing, like what made you start start focusing on that? Yeah, sort of like did you like history when you were growing up or what was the channeling that made you start your historical writing? and
00:07:02
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, absolutely. So and'd I'd always had an interest in history when i was when I was really young. I'd often, through my dad, through he would take me to castles and things like that, obviously quite kind blessed in this part of the world for medieval history.
00:07:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So it was always there. and And it's funny now, as I look back, I found some of old school reports a couple of years ago from when I was like eight or nine, and Knights and castles and stuff is mentioned constantly.
00:07:32
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So I must have been a really intense kid on this stuff. And then you grow up moved out the area, moved to Manchester, came back to Staffordshire, and it's still with me. But it was when I got to Leek, L-E-E-K,
00:07:51
Eli Lewis-Lycett
the spelling, Leek, in the Staffordshire Morelands, which is a really ancient market town. and I was living there for about a year, that I really got into the local folklore.
00:08:02
Eli Lewis-Lycett
this is 20 odd years ago. And there was aspects of the local folklore that brought together all the kind of strands of interest, I guess I wasn't even aware of, I wouldn't have been able to quantify what I was interested interested in prior.
00:08:19
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But the local folklore there brought everything together, not just the history, but the yeah the mystery of it, that supernatural element. And the land is thick in this kind of, yeah, in this base of folklore.
00:08:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And so there was a couple of things within it. And this is like just during my normal life, you know, that really started to grit me. A couple of legends in particular that I started to investigate because there was stuff in them that from a historical point of view really drew me in and asked a lot of questions.
00:08:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And from there, it kind of grew. But that was the basis, this kind of almost investigative element of these these legends and folklore and myths. and And that's what I kept under to my wing for another 15 years until lockdown.
00:09:13
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It was genuinely a hobby. still is. I've just been fortunate that it's gone the way it has.
00:09:19
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because obviously doing my research on you, so like it sounds like I'm stalking you, but I'm not, trust me. And yeah you've been writing for the for the Haunted magazine, which we'll speak about in a minute, and then you've got your own your own podcast and then you created the MythStory.
Twitter Discovery and Haunted Magazine
00:09:37
Lee Hatfield
So how did you get involved with, I know you're you you've already spoken about the the folklore and how you got involved with that, but how did Haunted magazine come about?
00:09:48
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So it was it was back when Twitter was usable.
00:09:54
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and So paul Paul Stevenson, the editor, he'd seen a few things that I'd posted from the Local My Historian project online, and he just approached me out of the blue.
00:10:00
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:10:07
Lee Hatfield
wow
00:10:08
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Literally that kind knock on the the door on Twitter saying, look, if you're if you know if you wanted to, we'd love to publish something that you've written. Never any kind of pressure or direction in the best way as well. It wasn't like, if it's about ghosts, we'll do it.
00:10:27
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It was like, we want you to write for us.
00:10:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And from that point in time forward, I suddenly had an outlet for the paranormal stuff that was... always on the shelf beside me, if you're with me, and during my normal writing.
00:10:42
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:10:44
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And I could really delve into that because I'd had a couple of experiences in my life prior where, well, I guess this will be a saying for a lot of listeners, and maybe for yourself, I don't know.
00:10:57
Eli Lewis-Lycett
If you have a paranormal experience, and you rationalise it completely. And I'm not someone who's obsessed with, oh, really want an experience, right? couple of things happened that have no other explanation. I know that they're kind of cast in stone.
00:11:13
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Suddenly i felt I was enabled to foster that stuff into my writing. So to answer your questions through Twitter, Paul got in touch, and I started submitting articles, and that's been three, three and a half years ago we started, I think.
00:11:22
Lee Hatfield
okay
00:11:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because it's like I started subscribing to the Haunted magazine 18 months ago, yeah between a year and two years ago anyway. And I've always been fascinated in the paranormal and folklore because like you said, it goes side by side.
00:11:47
Lee Hatfield
And like I'm flicking through some of these pages, and I hadn't really thought about doing the podcast at this point, but I'm thinking, yeah, some of these stories are really cool, and we're going to speak about some of those stories in a few minutes.
00:12:00
Lee Hatfield
But this is where I got my source for getting loads of guests for the podcast. because it's like So it's like, hold on, Eli Lissett, Lewis Lissett. Ooh, like Headless Horseman.
00:12:11
Lee Hatfield
that that'll be yeah And stuff like that. And it's sort of like, right, let's create a let's create a spread list. Let's write down all these articles that these people have done and then reach out to various people and invite them onto the show now that we were creating a podcast.
00:12:27
Lee Hatfield
But where did the Mysterion come from? So did you do did you start with a haunted magazine and then go to the Mysterion or was it the other way around?
00:12:38
Eli Lewis-Lycett
The other way around, so when during during lockdown, with which i've I've since learned, so many kind of passion projects kind took shape in the creative world during that period.
00:12:50
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So I was pulling together my writing, so and we'll probably touch on it. So for an example, The Legend of the Headless Horseman in in the Staffordshire Moorlands, I'd been investigating that for 10, 15 years privately.
00:13:02
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:13:02
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And suddenly i was in a situation where I could piece together, because had the time, all those bits and pieces. And before I knew it, I'd wrote a 10,000-word article.
00:13:14
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I was suddenly like, okay, well, that's nice. What do I do with it?
Local Mythstorians Project
00:13:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and and no Because that's the leap, right? That's the leap. So you can enjoy your hobby privately for as long as you want, but there comes a moment, and maybe it's a British thing, where it's like,
00:13:19
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:13:30
Eli Lewis-Lycett
putting that out and into the world, surely no one will care. Like, why would I ever do that?
00:13:34
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough.
00:13:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, 100%.
00:13:38
Lee Hatfield
That's what it, yeah.
00:13:39
Eli Lewis-Lycett
100%. And I don't want attention on this, but I was compelled to share it. So it all started. and i was like, well, I'll do a website. Years ago, i was involved in music, so I kind of knew a little bit about how to pull a website together and and and stuff like that.
00:13:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
was like, right, I need a name. And i what do i do? Well, it's historical, but hopefully it's not kind of dry as history. Mythstorian. It's just like a word I invented, the local myth historian. Because my whole thing was, there's so many famous headlines of history in the media that are circulated ah ah to the point of boredom, right? So Henry VIII, Tudors and Stuarts, Queen Elizabeth I, 1066 is back again.
00:14:30
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Whereas I think local history... is where the real kind of strange and weird and wonderful tales exist that no one's ever going to write about. So the local myth storium.
00:14:41
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So that started and then Haunted Magazine probably came about quite quick, actually, maybe like six months later, because I was just spamming the internet with the first few articles that I did.
00:14:53
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:14:55
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And luckily that many people were off work and bored that they read them.
00:14:59
Lee Hatfield
Oh, bonus bonus.
00:14:59
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, yeahve absolutely.
00:15:00
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:15:01
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So yes, it was the Local Mythstorians project and the podcast, the Local Mythstorians podcast, Hautey Magazine then came into that.
00:15:10
Lee Hatfield
okay Yeah. And for those that are listening that don't know what the local myth historian is, it's I'm going to I'm going to flatter you now. It's a fantastic website of amazing stories of folklore and hauntings and podcast interviews.
00:15:26
Lee Hatfield
It's like it's the go to if you want to find out about Eli, it's the place to go to.
00:15:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
That's very kind of you, thank you.
00:15:33
Lee Hatfield
And it's true. It is true because it's it's it's so well organized and yeah you've got separate things for separate stories.
00:15:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Cheers, mate.
00:15:42
Lee Hatfield
like I wish that I could have a website half that good.
00:15:46
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Well, I wanted it to be a bit of a hub. I guess I had a kind of a thing whereby for this area, wouldn't it be wonderful if I could kind of become the guy for this area in this topic?
00:16:00
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And I think with writing for Cheshire Life magazine, so Cheshire Life is a kind of high-end magazine in Cheshire of about all the kind of local events and culture and history and lovely restaurants and and all this kind of stuff.
00:16:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And they give me a history column every month, and although a folklore column, which you would not put those two things together.
00:16:22
Lee Hatfield
Nice.
00:16:29
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So when that happened, I kind of thought, well, heaven forbid saying it out loud, but I might have achieved that
00:16:36
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:16:36
Eli Lewis-Lycett
that kind of goal, but thank you very much, you're very kind.
00:16:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And it it's definitely keeping you out of trouble because yeah if if you look at how many events that you've been to and you've got coming up, like you must be doing events like, yeah.
00:16:50
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:16:51
Lee Hatfield
at least weekly. It's keeping...
00:16:53
Eli Lewis-Lycett
There is stuff that can get that regular. It's it's basically all my spare time, because work a normal job, do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, I'm busy, as is everyone.
00:17:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But it's been all that spare time for the last five years, October 2020, it launched. And funnily enough, two nights ago, i was doing a talk at theatre here in Cheshire, like a homecoming, I guess, on the history of witchcraft in Cheshire, which is quite a broad topic.
Balancing Passion with Work
00:17:24
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And it kind of brought me full circle because I've got new plans and projects that have been germinating for perhaps 12 months that I really need to invest the time now in to bring them to fruition because I found some notes for one that I'm working on now from 12 months ago. And I'm like, I haven't done anything on it.
00:17:43
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Like I need to focus in that way. So yeah, so that's probably the last live event for a little while. But going out into... the kind of historical communities and talking about the folklore and history of that region with people who live there, which I've been really fortunate to do, is fantastic.
00:18:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And we've done some paranormal ones as well. We actually did Paracon last year because i do the Inspector Paranormal podcast. I'm the historian on that. So, yeah, it's it can be as busy as you want it to be.
00:18:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Sometimes you just have to kind of make sure everything's in its right box.
00:18:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:18:19
Lee Hatfield
Oh, yeah. And like yeah when I decided that I was going to do a podcast, I thought I had plenty of spare time.
00:18:24
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Ha ha!
00:18:26
Lee Hatfield
and And now, like to say, with the emails contacting you, like me and you have been in contact for a good six weeks. Yeah. And like reaching out to other people and planning the podcast in advance. like I've got ah I've got enough scheduled podcast to last me until September right now.
00:18:41
Eli Lewis-Lycett
That doesn't surprise me, because especially what you do, because you're reaching guests.
00:18:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:18:46
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Because I do everything, mine's more narrative-based, but that the project in general, it's kind of crazy. So you just just want to be a writer and maybe a podcast presenter, I guess. And then you have to be able to do social media, web design, you know sound editing.
00:19:04
Eli Lewis-Lycett
The list goes on. and So yeah, I totally get that. You thought you'd have plenty of time.
00:19:09
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and that's it.
00:19:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Well...
00:19:11
Lee Hatfield
i Like I say, I have a normal job as well. Plus, I do comic cons as well. So like i've got I've got a meeting tomorrow for the first big one of the year in Montreal.
00:19:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Wow.
00:19:19
Lee Hatfield
So we've got Lord of the Rings people coming and stuff like that.
00:19:22
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Oh, wow.
00:19:22
Lee Hatfield
So yeah, so that's going to be like start my time getting even more compact. So let's talk about some of your
Legend of the Moorland Rider
00:19:30
Lee Hatfield
stories that you've been written. The one that I want to speak about the most is the Moorland Rider.
00:19:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:19:36
Lee Hatfield
the headless horseman that you've already touched on already. So enlighten me about the Moorland Rider.
00:19:44
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So this this subject, the moorland rider, the headless horseman of the Staffish and moorlands, without this, I don't think I would have, but i don't think I'd be talking to you today. It was something that encapsulated everything that drew me into folklore and history and everything I wanted to kind of do through the local mystorians.
00:20:06
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So there is a legend in North Staffordshire, in the Staffordshire Moorlands, this borderland region between Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire,
00:20:16
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:20:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
of a headless horseman and the accounts were committed to record in the 1860s by a chap called John Slay who was one of these antiquarian writers who went out into the community and captured the myths and legends of an area before they were lost forever and and in the 1860s this is embedded in local culture so The headless horseman appears out on the trackways between the villages.
00:20:50
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:20:51
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Always when a farmer is coming back from market and would spring upon them, and take them atop his horse and bound away through the the local countryside at such a kind of pace and with such ferocity that inevitably the farmer would be injured or die.
00:21:12
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And there's several accounts recorded in the eighteen sixty s Well, that's fascinating enough in its own, but that's only the tip of the iceberg because this Headless Horseman character is still relatively recently reported in the area.
00:21:30
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So in the Staffordshire Moorlands, the most famous place is probably Alton Towers, which is the biggest theme park in Europe, like a British Disney World, that kind of works for people, and attracts a lot of tourists, millions of tourists.
00:21:48
Eli Lewis-Lycett
2011 a Japanese family are kind of doing the tour of the region going to the football stadiums and all this and end up going to Alton Towers they're returning from the Towers at night to their hotel and apparently the headless horseman is waiting on the road for them and they've got no no concept of this legend right so for them it's just a bizarre occurrence so that gets reported in the local press lots of local people i did a talk there still reporting a horseman sighting so you've got this stuff going on and you can view that purely as a ghost story if you like okay
00:22:21
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:22:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But when you poke that story a little bit, something incredible happens. So wherever we find Headless Horseman legends in the UK and further afield, there's typically, A, a load of same motifs in that legend. the The rider is carrying his head, or when he isn't, he's looking for his head.
00:22:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
There's always an origin story, right? Civil War battle, you know, kind of Jacobite rebellion or further back. There's all this stuff. There is nothing whatsoever.
00:23:07
Eli Lewis-Lycett
with the Headless Horseman of the Staffordshire Moorland. So you've got this ghost sighting. And let's you know touch on that. Those accounts were recorded, and it says so, actually, in in the recording of them, with such vigour that people believe this.
00:23:24
Eli Lewis-Lycett
so i mean So that's a question in itself, right?
00:23:25
Lee Hatfield
ahead. Yes.
00:23:25
Eli Lewis-Lycett
What are people seeing?
00:23:27
Lee Hatfield
yes
00:23:27
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Because it would appear. and As I say, since then, even in the, going back, I think it was in the nineteen ninety s there was a local woman in the village of Butterton, part of the Moorlands,
00:23:39
Eli Lewis-Lycett
who had seen the horseman twice, and everybody, people still living there now, because I've met some of them, believe this lady, her name was Hannah Wood, this story. So people are still believing it. It's very real.
00:23:53
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But the legend in general... There's no origin story. Now, the civil moors in the Moorlands, very easy to connect an origin story there. There isn't one. Bonnie Prince Charlie marched through the Moorlands as he was trying to take the the crown of England in 1745. Lots of stuff happened.
00:24:12
Eli Lewis-Lycett
No heless holder headless rider legend rose in its wake. So you go back in the history And a couple of of things happened. So we know the story must have embedded in the local population by at least 1600, right? For it to be that widespread of in folkloric terms come the 1800s, you've got at least 200 years of this being a local tale.
00:24:38
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But there's no origin. So what we find is...
00:24:43
Eli Lewis-Lycett
A moment in the 1300s where this fella who was like a local figurehead for the population of the Moorlands is in a feud with the abbot of a local abbey and he's decapitated, right? So things come to a head.
00:25:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
He's murdered. He's murdered on a market day. he's He's on a horse. And all these things start tying up. You have, and it's the seismic moment in Moreland's medieval history, is the story of a headless horseman.
00:25:20
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:25:21
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So it's like, right, so this is ah folk memory. But at the same time, what are people seeing? Because they wouldn't have known that.
00:25:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:25:29
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And then you have this other bizarre aspect where the the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, It's almost certain was written in the Staffordshire Moorlands. was written in a dialect the year after this chap, John Dewart, was beheaded, in a dialect that was only spoken within a kind of 30-mile radius of the Staffordshire Moorlands.
00:25:53
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And that is a story of a headless... Night, a headless rider, again. So so that that was, as you can imagine, I mean, I don't know if I've done it justice there, but there's so many facets at the top end.
00:26:06
Eli Lewis-Lycett
People are seeing a headless horseman haunting the trackways to this day of the Staffordshire Moorlands. And they know nothing of the legends, nothing of the history. So what is going on?
00:26:18
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, for sure. And it's weird because yeah there's two points that I want to mention.
00:26:19
Eli Lewis-Lycett
yeah
00:26:23
Lee Hatfield
yeah You mentioned about what are people seeing? And if I'm interviewing people yeah in an investigation or on a podcast, yeah if they're a medium or if they've seen yeah an apparition, I want to know exactly what you've seen.
00:26:40
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Right, yeah.
00:26:41
Lee Hatfield
because it helps me learn about what I'm doing. Yeah. And like, I've spoken to different mediums and it's like, right, when you see a spirit, what do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear?
00:26:54
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:26:55
Lee Hatfield
And yeah and i'm I'm trying to get of of a picture in my mind of exactly what's going through them, so so to speak, yeah while they're while they're seeing that apparition.
00:27:08
Lee Hatfield
And that's a really good point. and one And the other point I wanted to mention ah that find really amusing is whenever people talk about people on horses as being ghosts, nine times out of ten, they all seem to be headless.
00:27:22
Lee Hatfield
It's like, why is that? Yeah.
00:27:24
Eli Lewis-Lycett
we Well, ah it's a great point. And and it is it is a ah ah ah trope of folklore, isn't it? A headless rider appears in this location and it mutates and migrates and appears in another location 100 miles away, headless rider again.
00:27:41
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But that was kind of the point with the Staffordshire Morelands rider. All those stories that spring up that are all broadly similar. this is not, no one's saying, that's the that's the ghost of such and such who, they're saying nothing, they're just going, there's a headless rider haunting the trackways of the Staffordshire Moorlands and loads of people have seen it.
00:27:50
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:27:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:28:02
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So, I like to think it's real, you know? but, so
00:28:06
Lee Hatfield
yeah yeah good Yeah. And I think yeah anybody that does that's involved with what both of us do, Yeah, our main objective is to experience what other people have seen, to see what other people have seen, and to experience it for yourself.
00:28:24
Lee Hatfield
Like, yeah, I've always been a little bit sceptic, but I've got an open mind. And last November, I was at a jail about an hour away, and I'm walking around with a camera helping somebody set up for a public event, and I got stroked down the side of the face.
Personal Paranormal Experiences
00:28:43
Lee Hatfield
And it was it was a sterile room. It had been recently decorated, so there was no spiders, no cobwebs, nothing hanging down from the ceiling. and And it just felt like I got a stroke down the side of my face. And it's like, I experienced that.
00:28:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:28:57
Lee Hatfield
Nobody else did. So I can tell people what I experienced, but they could go in there and experience nothing.
00:29:04
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, absolutely. absolutely and And
00:29:05
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:29:06
Eli Lewis-Lycett
ah the the power of these experiences. So many years ago, This story is really prosaic, but I think it might illustrate just how weird and wonderful the topic is, your topic is, right?
00:29:24
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So 20 odd years ago, I'm living in and Manchester. It's Salford, actually. For listeners, Manchester and Salford kind of intertwine with one another. So you can think of it as Manchester.
00:29:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And I'm living in an apartment building that overlooks the River Irwell. So if anyone wants to go on Google Maps, I can tell you exactly where this place is, right? It's called the Peninsular Building in Coorsal in Salford.
00:29:48
Lee Hatfield
I'm on it. I'm on it.
00:29:49
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, you you can see all. And what you what what you'll find is a bizarre kind of layout. So you've got these this apartment block, gated, lovely place, backing onto the river and the country park, surrounded by an estate that was...
00:30:05
Eli Lewis-Lycett
quite dangerous at night right shall we say anyway so we're living there and it's 2005 20 years ago now i smoked at the time right cigarettes right and obviously on the 10th floor in an apartment building it's a pain to get in the lift and go and crack for cigarette so we'd sneak along to the end of the corridor crack a window open and have a cigarette out the window.
00:30:28
Eli Lewis-Lycett
feel really like naughty saying this, right, it's the truth. Anyway, so it's a Sunday afternoon, nothing special about the day, middle of the afternoon, and I bop out my apartment, go to the end of the the corridor, crack the window, light up a cigarette, and the view is over the River Erwale.
00:30:47
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So, meandering river that leads into the city of Manchester, and greenery, okay? Beautiful view, actually, not what I would envisage when I first moved to Manchester. so having the cigarette, i'm looking out, and this this figure appears on the the pathway besides the river.
00:31:05
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I've got 10 stories up. And at first, i did it was so hard to kind of reconcile what I was seeing. It was a brown kind of cloth figure, which I suddenly realised, oh my God, that that looks like a monk, right? Like a medieval monk right there.
00:31:22
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:31:23
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and But it's too big, right? It must have been, I'm quite tall, I'm like six foot five, right? This thing must have been taller than me. It must have eight foot. It was too big on the, like had been superimposed.
00:31:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I shout through and call my partner at the time over. ah She comes to the window and I point out the window and I say, can you see that? And she's like, yeah. And she's like, oh my God, what is that? And as we're watching it, as we're watching it, it vanishes.
00:31:52
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:31:53
Eli Lewis-Lycett
right right in front of our eyes. Now, there are times when I'm careful about telling that story, because you can imagine a historical circles, it can kind of mark your card a bit, but it's the truth, whatever that was.
00:32:08
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:32:10
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and when i And that kind of really changed my perception on these issues to the point whereby, as we discussed before we started recording,
00:32:22
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It cements a belief, and it's not like you're a ah ah crusader for the cause. But I know what I saw, as Uncanny says. i like I know what i saw.
00:32:32
Lee Hatfield
like Exactly, yeah. You know what you saw. I know what I felt.
00:32:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:32:37
Lee Hatfield
Nobody can take that away from you. Yeah, and it's it's personal to you and to me. Other people see other things and feel other things, and it's personal to them.
00:32:48
Lee Hatfield
You can't take that away from that individual because it's what they've experienced. yeah You don't know what's going in my mind. i don't know what's going on in your mind, and it's the same kind of principle.
00:32:59
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Definitely. And I think, and that was, do you know what? I think as I've looked back over the years, because that's the other thing, I think you look back and say, did that really happen? Because someone else saw it as well.
00:33:11
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I think that's really spurred it on for me that it's never left me because it was completely verified.
00:33:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:33:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and Oh, and there's another part the story which is even better. So the next day i go into work, right? I worked at across the other side of Manchester. And again, you can look this up. And at the time, this was shocking to took to me.
00:33:32
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And I'm talking to a work colleague at the time. And I said, yeah, you know what? I saw really weird thing last night. I think I saw a monk walking beside the River Irwell. Now, and my colleague's from Manchester, right? He's actually from Salford.
00:33:47
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And she turns to me and she said, oh, that'll be Cursal Sal. was like, what do you mean?
00:33:55
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:33:58
Eli Lewis-Lycett
There was I forget which house it was, it might have been Benedictines. There was a grange for the monastery there. And I did not know that at all.
00:34:10
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So, and you can Google that.
00:34:10
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:34:11
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So, Kersal, Kersal, K-E-R-S-A-L, so Region Salford, Sal, C-E-L-L. It's on Wikipedia, right? We didn't have Wikipedia. Well, I didn't, 20 years ago.
00:34:21
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and So, what does that do to your mind, right? That's like, boom.
00:34:25
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. Yeah. Well,
00:34:27
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Like, it couldn't have been better, verifiable experience.
00:34:32
Lee Hatfield
yeah.
00:34:33
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Like, so, crazy.
00:34:33
Lee Hatfield
well Yeah. yeah Rather than saying, Eli, I think you need to go and speak to a doctor.
00:34:39
Eli Lewis-Lycett
yeah yeah he just like oh well that was where that was Curse or Sal
00:34:39
Lee Hatfield
yeah Yeah. That, yeah, that's crazy. So you've got so many different stories to talk about, but I do want to speak about the Eagle Center poltergeist.
Poltergeist Activity at Eagle Center
00:34:52
Eli Lewis-Lycett
wow okay yeah indeed
00:34:52
Lee Hatfield
but out butre changing We're changing complete rhythms now, and we're going to a shopping mall that experienced a poltergeist. So let's go.
00:35:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, so this is in the city you mentioned earlier and in our conversation, the city of Derby. Derby's a very ancient city, obviously like everywhere it's been modernised.
00:35:14
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:35:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
If people are familiar with York and and Chester and places like that, there's parts of Derby that could be that way. you know But anyway, so there's a shopping centre, a market, a shopping mall, you know as you say, that's set up there.
00:35:29
Eli Lewis-Lycett
think it was in the early 80s from memory. and all the the businesses come in and you've got shoe shops you know clothing outlets and all these kind of places and they start having a problem which is in all of these independent outlets within that that that building they start experiencing poltergeist activity things flying off the shelves and figures kind of being spotted after hours by security men walking through the corridors and the hallways of the shopping center and it gets so serious that the local authority the local council but don't know what your version will be over there but yeah the local kind of ah ah jurisdiction call the meeting and
00:36:20
Eli Lewis-Lycett
decide two things. The first thing, they're going to issue an official pamphlet, like a guide book, to all of the local shop owners that declares that poltergeists are a natural phenomena and if you ignore it, they will go away on their own because people are leaving.
00:36:38
Eli Lewis-Lycett
They've invested all this money in the shopping centre, attracted all these new businesses into the city and people are going, do you know what, we're moving out, man.
00:36:40
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:46
Eli Lewis-Lycett
We're moving out. we're not We're not dealing with this. so So that's fascinating i myself, isn't it? Because the local authority have to say, i guess be like City Hall or something on your side of the pond,
00:37:01
Eli Lewis-Lycett
have to get involved because it's costing the city money. So the issue this leaflet and the old exorcism with the, I think it was the Bishop of Derby or the Archdeacon, literally in the basement of this shoe shop where things are flying around, boxes of stock are flying around, they're all seeing this, old exorcism, it gets worse because so then they even they're pulling out now and things are getting really really dire they hold a second exorcism and things tend to chill out but there's so many stories over this period where it was happening there and it's of those things where it kind of permeates through every level of an organization so you've got council officials
00:37:47
Eli Lewis-Lycett
mean, God knows what their meeting must have been like the day they decided they were going to have to deal with this, right?
00:37:53
Lee Hatfield
but percent
00:37:54
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Someone would have got the job of typing up the pamphlet. That's... see So you've got that. You've got the security guards and local police, because one of the stories was two security guards saw what they thought was a young girl in one of the shops after hours. So their natural thought, right, is, oh, my God, some kid is still, we're locking up, we're shutting down for the night, and some kid's roaming around in there.
00:38:19
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So that becomes ah ah very kind of meat and potatoes issue, I like to call It's very practical.
00:38:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:38:26
Eli Lewis-Lycett
There's a kid lost. We're going to be locking him. We've got no kid found. Police are called in. While the police are there, a box of stock apparently flies across the the room of the of of the the shop that they're in and just misses this this this copper, this policeman.
00:38:44
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So his testimony is then used to to kind of beef up the need for the shop owners going to the council saying, look, even the police have come, right? And this place that you've told us to invest in and we've moved from another area of the city and we've redesigned the storefront and where we've spent this money and look at our fantastic shop is now haunted and we can't get any customers.
00:39:08
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But en masse, I think there's like 12
00:39:08
Lee Hatfield
That's fantastic.
00:39:11
Eli Lewis-Lycett
retail outlets that were involved in this.
00:39:14
Lee Hatfield
That's crazy.
00:39:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
In it. And, you know, it's you hear them stories about, oh, you know, this this legal case proved that Ghost must to exist because it was passed out and there's never anything behind it. but That happened.
00:39:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:39:28
Eli Lewis-Lycett
That actually happened. Yeah, crazy.
00:39:30
Lee Hatfield
So it's is anything still happening there or did it just stop what's happening?
00:39:34
Eli Lewis-Lycett
it's It's gone. It's gone. So they and the the Eagle Centre as it was, it's no longer there. It's now part of a much bigger shopping centre. I think it's an into. So we've got some of these kind of regional...
00:39:50
Eli Lewis-Lycett
super malls if you like in the in the uk trafford center manchester blue water it's uh it's not quite on that level but it's much bigger and grander it's a great place to go shopping actually if you live around here because it's got all the top names and half of the people you know i mean um so that's still there but there's an interesting thing apparently that area of the city many moons ago
00:39:53
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, i know what you mean. Yeah.
00:40:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:40:13
Eli Lewis-Lycett
there was It was a kind of front line between Danelaw, so the Vikings, who were, people forget, for hundreds of years controlling a big swathe of England, and the Saxons.
00:40:26
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And this really bloody kind of battle took place there. that was so And that might be reaching a bit into the archives for what could have caused that, but that was the thing that came out of it.
00:40:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:40:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So just like so many things, I think poltergeists are... so fascinating for me from a historical point of view. The one thing that gets my go is when these interviews about poltergeist cases and it's all, oh, it's a teen girl throwing things around.
00:40:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
The same phenomena in the same structure has been reported for literally 2,000 years all over the world in those cases. If there is one area of paranormal study that really is the base point for us going, right, okay, something is going on.
00:41:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It's surely poltergeist.
00:41:18
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:20
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Because there's no fakery, as in how does, like the the the case at Hempton Antwerp in the 1760s, I think it was, has got the same phenomena as the Battersea poltergeist or something.
00:41:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
like nearly 300 years apart.
00:41:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:38
Eli Lewis-Lycett
no And don't forget this before the internet. I find that fascinating. Polargeist cases that were happening, say, and that opened up until the 90s or the early noughties. It isn't like there was a culture of, right, if we find something on the internet, we can say that's happening here.
00:41:52
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Didn't ex exist.
00:41:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:54
Eli Lewis-Lycett
so So the sceptical answer is all these people across all these literally hundreds and hundreds of years in different locations have all decided to make up the exact same stuff without talking to one another.
00:42:09
Lee Hatfield
I know.
00:42:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Like, come on, man.
00:42:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, it's crazy.
00:42:10
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Come on.
00:42:11
Lee Hatfield
And I've actually done some online courses and I've done about ghosts and hauntings and i'm done about poltergeists.
Historical Consistency of Poltergeist Phenomena
00:42:17
Lee Hatfield
And, know, Borley Rectory, I had to do a small paper on it. And then when you dig into Borley Rectory, you find out that, yes, some of the activity was real, but then the investigator was found to have pebbles in his jacket pocket.
00:42:31
Lee Hatfield
yeah So he was kind of like encouraging people the investigation and yeah the Enfield haunting. There's been TV shows about it made into a movie. the yeah
00:42:43
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, yeah.
00:42:43
Lee Hatfield
And again, same kind of thing. A couple of pieces of this were real and then there was a little bit of fakery involved. But like say, it is.
00:42:51
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It's a shame, isn't it?
00:42:52
Lee Hatfield
But going back to like hundreds of years, different locations and they're reporting unnatural yeah incidents that are happening. yeah There's got to be something going on.
00:43:05
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and taking the same path. So, you know, eerie feeling, noises around the house, scratching in the walls, banging in the walls, things start moving.
00:43:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
00:43:17
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I find it really... i mean there's no money in If there was money ah ah in it from a academic standpoint, there'd be university grants handed out and people would do the research. That's what it all comes down to with this stuff.
00:43:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So it's the kind of purveyance of private investigators to to look at this stuff.
00:43:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:43:37
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But you've just got to take a snapshot of it and you're going, whatever this is, and do you know what? It may not be... Spirits it may be or I'm open to all that stuff and
00:43:47
Lee Hatfield
hundred percent.
00:43:48
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But it's happening.
00:43:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:43:49
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It is happening. And it is not, by and large, of course there's fakery involved in some cases. You can imagine, can't you, you were a paranormal investigator in the middle mid 20th century and you've loved this stuff all your life and finally you get this case and then people are coming, can kind of see how you would take steps to make sure it performed on cue, right?
00:44:17
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. Exactly.
00:44:18
Eli Lewis-Lycett
is that it's it's It spoils it, yeah.
00:44:18
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:21
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But you can see people are just people. You can see how it would happen. And it's such a shame that that then goes, the whole thing is rubbish.
00:44:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:44:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. they yeah Yeah. They get tarred with the same brush.
00:44:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:44:32
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:44:33
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:44:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So I know that we've been talking for a while, but there's two more things I want to mention, but guess what?
00:44:38
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Sure.
00:44:39
Lee Hatfield
You're coming back onto this because there's so many stories I want to ask you about.
00:44:42
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I'd love i'd love to come back, mate.
00:44:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah,
Favorite Folklore: Headless Horseman
00:44:44
Lee Hatfield
awesome. So one of the things I want to ask you is you've written so many different stories on folklore and about ghosts and the paranormal. Pick your favourite.
00:44:55
Eli Lewis-Lycett
the headless horseman of the Staffordshire Mormons.
00:44:57
Lee Hatfield
Okay. I was going to say, apart from The Headless Horseman, because you just mentioned it.
00:44:58
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:45:03
Lee Hatfield
But okay, let so yeah, so un understandably The Headless Horseman, because yeah, and they i think they fascinate a lot of people as well.
00:45:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
but
00:45:07
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Okay. and
00:45:11
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, 100%. I mean, another one would be and the Bakewell Witches. So the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire again.
00:45:20
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:45:21
Eli Lewis-Lycett
During the witch craze in the 1600s, the It's a unique tale from that period. so During that time, 500 witches, supposedly witches, were were brought to trial. 112 of them executed with hangings.
00:45:36
Eli Lewis-Lycett
These two are tailors. They're in their tailor's shop in the dark hours of the morning. The lodger is in this the upper room above them. and He spies them through the cracks in the floorboards,
00:45:53
Eli Lewis-Lycett
reciting an incantation and apparently they vaporize into thin air he then repeats the incantation gets it slightly wrong and instead of instead of the incantation is over thick over thin to the cellar in london right he's then sucked out of the window of it of of his room and has flown down to London in an instant, smashing against all the rooftops on his way, wakes up in a cellar, a night watchman, this is where the perhaps the truth comes in, wakes up in a cellar, drunk, the night watchman in a tailor's in London, says, what are you doing here, how have you got here?
00:46:35
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And he says, well officer, What it was, you see, was I lived with two witches and i over I overheard them with this magical incantation.
00:46:49
Eli Lewis-Lycett
and Anyway, but the thing is, they end up getting executed for it.
00:46:53
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:46:54
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So that, I mean, we can talk about another time.
00:46:56
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:46:57
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Incredible. What is wow. but
00:46:59
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:47:00
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But what really happened, not them teleporting to London, although who knows, but the event took place.
00:47:03
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. It's like, yeah. ah okay, son, come with me.
00:47:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Well, the worst thing is, okay, son, point them out to me because we all believe in witchcraft.
00:47:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:47:15
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So, yeah.
00:47:15
Lee Hatfield
and but yeah we can kind of relate over here because we had the Salem witch trials yeah just down the road.
00:47:19
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Of course, yeah.
00:47:22
Lee Hatfield
So definitely relate.
Collaboration on Weird Britain TV Show
00:47:24
Lee Hatfield
So one of the final things I want to talk to you about today before we have to go, and we'll talk about football again offline. ah Last night I released my latest episode and I was talking to somebody who you've got now involved with, Andy McGrath from Weird Britain.
00:47:40
Eli Lewis-Lycett
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. so that came about. So Weird Britain is what a TV show kind of about the the strange customs and the weird and wonderful folklore, all this kind of stuff. It's on on on a ah ah channel called Blaze TV.
00:47:57
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So unfortunately, i couldn't appear on the show because the filming schedule was just, and I get why, it so short notice, right? I couldn't. It was like the next day of the b blue. But I did actually,
00:48:07
Lee Hatfield
Go sick. Go sick. It's fine. Take a sick day.
00:48:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Well, that yeah, I suppose. and But yeah, we had a really good chat about some of the legends from Staffordshire. And I think they're kind of including bits and bobs of them in the second series. I don't know.
00:48:22
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But yeah, yeah, it was good. i hope to speak to him again because i'd love to I'd love to do it. But here's the thing. You must come across this as well, right? So you've got this amazing project that you look after.
00:48:31
Lee Hatfield
you
00:48:32
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah. But you've got real life alongside it as well. And so unfortunately, the truth is, if someone at a day's notice says, can you be 80 miles away? I'm like, with all the will in the world, like, no.
00:48:49
Lee Hatfield
yeah Yeah, for sure.
00:48:50
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It's like, and so, and I think that's something people perhaps don't realise. Unless you're fortunate enough to be in that stratosphere where it is your full-time kind of job, which are very few people, right?
00:49:03
Eli Lewis-Lycett
You are always battling with the realities life all the time. But yeah, yeah, great great chat with him.
00:49:07
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:49:09
Eli Lewis-Lycett
I wish him very well.
00:49:09
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And it's like I say, it was quite quite relevant, the fact that I was going to talk to you about that today, and I released his podcast last night. And he's he's another great guy. He really is. And it's you mentioned about like having a day's notice. I've spoken to three or four people that have either been on TV here or in the UK.
00:49:29
Lee Hatfield
like I spoke to Barry Guy a couple of weeks ago.
00:49:31
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah, I listened to that episode.
00:49:32
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:33
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:49:34
Lee Hatfield
And like, you because of their film schedules, you're kind of apprehensive right up to the time that you see them on the screen yeah are they going to be able to make it?
00:49:46
Lee Hatfield
Because we do a lot, like, say, I mentioned earlier about the comic cons. We get guests cancelling at the last minute because they've been offered a new film project.
00:49:51
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:49:54
Lee Hatfield
yeah And that's a lot more money than turning up to a small convention signing autographs.
00:49:58
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Of course.
00:49:58
Lee Hatfield
people get People get a bit pissed about that, but it's like, at the end of the day, their career comes first, and that's what you have to realise.
00:50:05
Eli Lewis-Lycett
yeah Yeah, it's the practical reality, isn't it?
00:50:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. and yeah Exactly. And I'm absolutely fine with that because I know that people have real lives. yeah But I'm a firm believer in communication. Don't just say, oh, yeah, I got called out after the event.
00:50:21
Lee Hatfield
yeah if you If you think you can't make it, Lee, I might be late or I don't think I can make it because of A, B, C and D. And I'll go, great, let's reschedule. so And it's sorted.
00:50:30
Eli Lewis-Lycett
it's it it's definitely true. Something I've come across, not for a while, thank thankfully, is obviously I get invited to talk quite a lot at people's events and stuff like that. And sometimes it might be a really kind of worthy cause, like ah ah a charity event or something.
00:50:45
Eli Lewis-Lycett
And, I will still charge normal expenses. And the reason is, I mean, to be honest, I'll give it im back at the end of the night, right? Because I'll probably sell load of books there. So if I do want it, fine.
00:50:56
Eli Lewis-Lycett
But the reason is that investment. So if and I just go, oh, no fee for this, that's fine. Are you going to actually make sure the event goes ahead? Or am i going to turn up three months later on a Thursday night and the doors are locked?
00:51:11
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:51:11
Eli Lewis-Lycett
So it's all this stuff that goes around. And think that would be an interesting topic, really, someone's podcast about the realities of having a project like yours a project like mine, et cetera, and just going, it ain't easy, mate.
00:51:26
Eli Lewis-Lycett
It ain't easy at all.
00:51:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:28
Eli Lewis-Lycett
oh
00:51:29
Lee Hatfield
And like I could say, and that's one of the reasons why people in the UK, I will kind of stick to the weekends to book them. And then people in North America, right, you know, weekday nights, because it's yeah there's less chance of screw ups in the scheduling.
00:51:39
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:51:44
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Yeah.
00:51:45
Lee Hatfield
Eli, thank you very much. You've been an absolutely amazing.
00:51:47
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Pleasure.
00:51:49
Lee Hatfield
And yeah there will be a part two, maybe a part part three, who knows. But yeah, I'd love to have you back on and we'll talk about all the other things that I've got across the top my screen that we've not been able to talk about. There's witches and there's demons and the boy that was buried alive. There's loads more that we could talk about.
00:52:07
Lee Hatfield
But for now, I thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure and I definitely look forward to speaking to you next time. Thanks very much.
00:52:14
Eli Lewis-Lycett
Thanks very much, Lee. Take care.
00:52:16
Lee Hatfield
Bye-bye.