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S1 E21 - Dr Kate Cherrell who is a writer, researcher and Blogger
12 Plays3 days ago
This week I had the pleasure in speaking with Dr Kate Cherrell who is a writer, researcher and Blogger specialising in popular séance and 19th century spiritualism
Kate who is a self-confessed Yellow Belly and Cod head (Local expressions), explains that she loves to talk about the miserable side of the 19th Century
We discuss her Spiritual home of Whitby, North Yorkshire in England, and the fact that Dracula isn’t buried there.
We also talk about the Creery sisters, Trumpet mediums, Crap mediums, and Welsh mediums.
Other subjects include Lincolnshire Poltergeists, Handsy Spirits, the Weeping boy Picture, Boston (UK) Cemetery and much more
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Dr. Kate Shurell
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. Today I am delighted to have Dr. Kate Shurell.
00:00:24
Lee Hatfield
Kate is a writer, researcher and specializes in 19th century spiritualism. Kate, welcome!
00:00:32
Kate Cherrell
Hello, thank you for having me.
00:00:34
Lee Hatfield
but Okay, let's get the things on the table. You're from my home county, Lincolnshire, England, so we don't have to talk posh.
00:00:39
Kate Cherrell
ye Yeah, yeah.
00:00:43
Kate Cherrell
Oh, don't we? All right, thank God for that.
00:00:43
Lee Hatfield
what No, okay, we can. But I can call you a yellow belly because you are from Lincolnshire.
00:00:48
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, i'm I'm a proud yellow belly. Yeah, a proud yellow belly, proud Cod-Ed, the works.
00:00:51
Lee Hatfield
Yep.
00:00:54
Lee Hatfield
Codhead. I've not heard that expression for such a long time.
00:00:56
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:00:58
Lee Hatfield
So for card for people that are listening, Codhead is because she's from Grimsby and Cleethorpe's neck of the woods where I'm from, the from the ah posh end of the county, Boston, which some people will know and get confused with the American Boston.
00:01:03
Kate Cherrell
Yes.
00:01:09
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:01:13
Lee Hatfield
But let's not go there.
Kate's Work and Fascination with the Paranormal
00:01:15
Lee Hatfield
So, Kate, just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Dr. Kate Shuel.
00:01:21
Kate Cherrell
Okay, I'm Dr. Kate. I'm a writer, broadcaster, researcher. I write academically and commercially on the paranormal and all matters of supernatural and folklore.
00:01:36
Kate Cherrell
My academic specialty, if you will, is 19th century Gothic and 19th century spiritualism.
00:01:43
Lee Hatfield
Thank
00:01:43
Kate Cherrell
So I've got a lot of a lot of essays with obnoxiously long titles under my name. and Yeah, I've done a fair bit of telly over the last few years, mainly for Discovery, doing all manner of paranormal investigation and paranormal history.
00:01:59
Kate Cherrell
So day to day, I just say I work as a paranormal historian.
00:02:04
Lee Hatfield
Perfect. And yeah, i I know that I don't have to call you Kate because I'd like to think we're friends, but it's a doctor that does not prescribe drugs. So let's get that let's just get that out there.
00:02:16
Kate Cherrell
I mean, I'll have a go but chances are you're not going to feel too good afterwards.
00:02:16
Lee Hatfield
sir Yeah.
00:02:20
Lee Hatfield
But with it being a gothic PhD, then you can probably prescribe like black lipstick and
00:02:26
Kate Cherrell
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Clove, cigarettes, patoo.
00:02:28
Lee Hatfield
yeah yeah
00:02:29
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. If you need any of that, hit me up. I'll sort you right out.
00:02:32
Lee Hatfield
yeah you're You're the one. So details at the end of the podcast.
00:02:34
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
00:02:38
Lee Hatfield
So how did your Gothic and spiritualist like road take place like from a very young Kate to sort of now kind of thing?
00:02:50
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think like most of us, I've always been interested. i think we, especially if you end up being immersed in the paranormal, you generally have like a hook from when you're very young. And I certainly had that. My granddad was really aware of the paranormal. He'd had a few experiences and he was interested in in ghosts and UFOs. He was very into Roswell at the time.
00:03:14
Kate Cherrell
and And I got a lot of the the passion, certainly for the paranormal, from him And then obviously I had had later experiences that very much compounded that. But I suppose a lot of it came from spending a lot of time in cemeteries and and being aware of the Victorian era as this as this age of industrialisation, romanticism, creativity. And when i got when I really discovered Victorian sensational and victoria and Victorian Gothic literature, I just absolutely fell in love.
00:03:49
Kate Cherrell
And so every aspect, I broadly say the the the miserable side of the 19th century is what interests me. So it's your penny dreadfuls, your your vampire novels, your mourning fashions, your mourning traditions. I've done a lot of work to do with death traditions in the 19th century.
00:04:09
Kate Cherrell
So it all just sort naturally spiralled for me. And I'm fortunate enough now to say that it it's now my my full-time job. So it's so worked out well in the end, thank God. And I can still say it's not a phase.
00:04:24
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and it's like to have a job like that, is yeah you've got one of the cool jobs. so ah ah most Most people have like a nine-to-five. yeah I work for the government over here.
00:04:33
Kate Cherrell
Hmm.
00:04:35
Lee Hatfield
yeah But I was a paramedic and firefighter while I was in the UK.
00:04:39
Kate Cherrell
Hmm.
00:04:39
Lee Hatfield
But yeah what you do, you wouldn't do it if you didn't enjoy it, right? Yeah.
00:04:45
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah, it's it's a lot of a lot of my time is spent writing speculative work and a lot of work that you just have to hope works out. And then if I do get particular commissions and things, you've got hellish deadlines. So it's it's high stress.
00:05:03
Kate Cherrell
It sounds like I should just be wandering around graveyards all the time going, oh, I've got an idea for a magical new thing.
Life as a Paranormal Historian
00:05:09
Kate Cherrell
And I wish that was but was the reality. But most of the time I'm stuck behind a desk and and in my my library that's starting to compromise the structural integrity of my home.
00:05:21
Kate Cherrell
but But yeah, it's it's a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of graft.
00:05:22
Lee Hatfield
that
00:05:25
Kate Cherrell
And it takes a long time before it starts paying off. I'm i'm very fortunate. that that I don't have to go back to having a ah nine to five. But even then I had weird jobs beforehand. So I don't think I was ever going to be cut out for office work.
00:05:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and it's like say, I was a firefighter at Boston. I was a retained firefighter, and then I was a paramedic, and I i worked in London, i worked in Leicester, and my last location was Holbeach before i I came to to Canada.
00:05:42
Kate Cherrell
o
00:05:51
Kate Cherrell
Oh, right.
00:05:55
Lee Hatfield
And now that I'm actually in an office, there's a lot of sort like office problems that you don't get when you do a different job.
00:06:04
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:06:05
Lee Hatfield
And like all the memories of me being out on the road every day, driving ambulances and flying through the streets. yeah It's great to reminisce on that, but yeah you don't get any younger. you have to kind of realise how you're moving forward and you go from there.
00:06:18
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah.
00:06:19
Lee Hatfield
So being a goth girl... I would imagine that one of your favorite places at Halloween is Whitby because of the way that they absolutely
00:06:27
Kate Cherrell
I do. Yeah.
00:06:30
Lee Hatfield
yeah right take on the the goth nature. So have you been to Whitby a few times for Halloween?
00:06:34
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Oh, of course I have. oh I always say Whitby is my spiritual home. but and I adore Whitby and certainly from the ages.
00:06:44
Kate Cherrell
first started going as a child and then from my early teens, I used to go at least twice a year every year. for what was then the Whitby Goth Weekend festivals, which which were in April and October, November every year.
00:07:01
Kate Cherrell
So i I did that for years and years because i you know I love dressing fancy. I love Whitby. I love meeting up with my friends and seeing bands and and so forth. And obviously the big Victorian literary history, the Dracula connections in Whitby, the beautiful Abbey.
00:07:15
Kate Cherrell
There's just so much rich folklore in the North East Coast. And of course, the the history of jet jewellery. It's just everything is perfect. Everything's perfect about Whitby. But only over the last few years when them yeah the the festival things changed around a lot and work got in the way that I've only managed to go once a year. But I'm hoping, I'm hoping to start redressing that again.
00:07:38
Lee Hatfield
Oh, man. Because I remember going to Whitby and we didn't know about the goth weekend when we were there. And the yeah there was coffins in in bars with people so oh i just laid in there.
00:07:50
Kate Cherrell
Oh yeah, yeah.
00:07:51
Lee Hatfield
And i the last time I came to the UK was just before COVID and I bought my wife and we went to Whitby. And we did the yeah yeah went up the steps to the yeah to the church.
00:08:02
Lee Hatfield
And I love it how it's got on the sign like that people people think that Dracula is real and Dracula's grave is at whip.
00:08:08
Kate Cherrell
Oh, yes.
00:08:09
Lee Hatfield
And they have a sign to say Dracula is not real. There is no grave for Dracula.
00:08:14
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, please stop asking us to find Dracula's grave.
00:08:16
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:08:18
Kate Cherrell
ah It's fabulous. I love it because they've even laminated the little sign now, which I think suggests that they've been asked far too many times and someone in an office has gone, right, that's it
00:08:28
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:08:29
Kate Cherrell
But i love it. It would be so quirky and and beautiful and odd and so much of it doesn't make any sense. I think it's a wonderful place.
00:08:38
Lee Hatfield
That's it. And my wife's really big into Harry Potter. So we also went to, uh, to go to land as well.
00:08:41
Kate Cherrell
Mm-hmm.
00:08:44
Lee Hatfield
Sort like as we're back, because obviously yeah Harry Potter and heartbeat and, and all that kind of stuff.
00:08:44
Kate Cherrell
yes
00:08:49
Lee Hatfield
So you started your writing. So what kind of, what happened for you to get involved with haunted magazine?
Writing for Haunted Magazine and Personal Experiences
00:09:00
Kate Cherrell
haunted magazine well i started think that's i started writing for haunted when i was in the middle of my phd and i was writing a lot of articles around that were quite dry that were about Victorian death practices and a a lot of very quite grim historical stuff about grave decorations and and things like that.
00:09:21
Kate Cherrell
And I just thought, yeah, I need to be proactive. I liked haunted and I just messaged Paul, the editor, and said, I'd like to write these things. Would you be interested? And and hasn't been able to get rid of me ever since.
00:09:34
Kate Cherrell
So that was however many years ago now.
00:09:34
Lee Hatfield
so
00:09:37
Kate Cherrell
But yeah, yeah, it's it's been a lovely, lovely little community. And it's through Haunted that I've i've met so many weird and wonderful people. And I've found myself in some quite wonderful situation. So I'm incredibly grateful to Haunted magazine, to Paul and Andy.
00:09:54
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, they've been very, very kind and very supportive to me.
00:09:58
Lee Hatfield
And that's really weird because When i decided that I was going to do a podcast, I was already subscribing to Haunted Magazine, and it was literally like flicking through the pages. I like that article.
00:10:09
Lee Hatfield
like that person's name down.
00:10:09
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:10:10
Lee Hatfield
how do it how to And that's how met Charlie, and that's how met Kate.
00:10:13
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:10:14
Lee Hatfield
kate because like I always get confused between you and Kate Ray. it like
00:10:18
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. with One name between us.
00:10:20
Lee Hatfield
i Yeah, that makes it makes it easy. yeah
00:10:23
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:10:23
Lee Hatfield
I kept calling the Katie from the site. No, it's Kate. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. so what What can you remember what your very first article was for haunted magazine?
00:10:33
Kate Cherrell
Yes, it was. It was the the shrieking pits of Norfolk, where these two... God, this is a real test of my memory. This is.
00:10:44
Kate Cherrell
and there are There are two... and They look like ponds. They look like sort of quite grotty ponds. But I think they're old Iron Age like smelting. They used for industry, so they're like smelting pits.
00:10:57
Kate Cherrell
And over the years, they'd filled with water. And obviously when you get centuries of of time over a quite an interesting landscape, a lot of weird and wonderful folklore had sprung up around these shrieking pits, including your bog standard weeping grey lady and and all manner of banshees and and strange things, strange and abilities that were suddenly attached to these two shrieking pits.
00:11:24
Kate Cherrell
But to to write the article about them, i I went and visited the shrieking pits, took all my photos of me shrieking next to the pits. Sorry, it's like this this big like art project at the same time as well. So yeah, i've got I've managed to justify quite a lot of quite fun field trips while I've been writing.
00:11:42
Lee Hatfield
That see perfect job. It's like what I've said. It's great. oh yeah I want to come and do what do your job.
00:11:45
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:11:48
Lee Hatfield
And I know that you.
00:11:48
Kate Cherrell
You really wouldn't, you've got no social life.
00:11:50
Lee Hatfield
yeah yeah Well, I'm getting that age where I haven't got a social life, but I want was partying with your prime minister last night.
00:11:55
Kate Cherrell
All right. Oh, that case.
00:11:59
Lee Hatfield
I say partying. I went for a drink in my local bar and our prime minister and your prime minister turned up for a beer.
00:12:07
Kate Cherrell
Oh, really?
00:12:08
Lee Hatfield
It's like, I don't
00:12:08
Kate Cherrell
How weird.
00:12:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. but he didn't speak.
00:12:11
Kate Cherrell
right.
00:12:12
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:12:13
Lee Hatfield
Our prime minister had a selfie with me and my buddy. Like your prime minister sort of like, he left early.
00:12:17
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:12:19
Lee Hatfield
not quite sure why, but yeah, ill I know, right?
00:12:20
Kate Cherrell
It's letting the side down. And so God's sake here.
00:12:22
Lee Hatfield
Isn't it English party, party animal? Come on.
00:12:26
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:12:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So how do you decide what subject you're going to write for haunted magazine? Cause I, I've got a list of some of your articles in front of you. So I might test your knowledge in a little bit.
00:12:40
Kate Cherrell
Oh God. Yeah.
00:12:42
Lee Hatfield
It's a Sunday as well. Your brain's switched off.
00:12:43
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. yeah
00:12:45
Lee Hatfield
But how do you decide what you're going to write about?
00:12:48
Kate Cherrell
and I've always got a running list. I think i've I've always been someone who's very interested. And well, I say interested. I'm nosy. I'm very, very nosy of about the past.
00:13:00
Kate Cherrell
So I've always got a list of topics I want to cover. or something I want to look into more or something interesting I've seen. And I just, my whole house is covered in little lists and post-it notes and things like that. And then finally writing about one of them for wherever it ends up feels like a bit of ah a cathartic process because then it's written, it's done and it's out there. But it's generally...
00:13:23
Kate Cherrell
related to spirit, spiritualism and and British folklore. But yeah, it varies a lot. I say that you look at the list and go, no, it's very samey.
00:13:34
Kate Cherrell
but
00:13:36
Lee Hatfield
OK, so like let's put you to the test then. Keeping telepathy in the family, the career assistance.
00:13:43
Kate Cherrell
Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. They, the query family, They were, they became incredibly famous in a short space of time because they, the sisters claimed to have, they were young, they were like in, I think like in 10, 11, and they all claimed to have these telepathic abilities.
00:14:03
Kate Cherrell
And there were about seven sisters. It was quite a big family. And it became a bit of a news story for a while that these, think they were vicars, daughters and had these amazing abilities and were put through all manner of testing. And one was in run one room, one was in the other. Could they transmit to the same the same message?
00:14:25
Kate Cherrell
And it was very, very convincing. And they became quite famous for a while until it was sort of revealed that it was most probably a hoax and they were all in it together. But I like the idea of the mind reading Brady Bunch, whicht is which is what I try and try and push forward with that one.
00:14:40
Lee Hatfield
yeah And and it's it's really interesting by your last comment, not the Brady Bunch, the one before, that you say that yeah it may have been a hoax.
00:14:47
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:14:51
Lee Hatfield
Because I've done a few online courses with regard to the paranormal poltergeist and ghosts and demonology and all that sort stuff. And I had to write a paper on Borley Victory.
00:15:03
Kate Cherrell
Oh, lovely.
00:15:03
Lee Hatfield
And never said ever since I was a kid, like I loved all the stories about Borley Rectory, which for people that don't know, one of the most haunted locations in the UK until it burnt down in the 1940s.
00:15:08
Kate Cherrell
Yes.
00:15:16
Lee Hatfield
But then I found out that the investigator from ah the the Society of Paranormal Research actually was walking around that location with pebbles in his jacket.
00:15:27
Lee Hatfield
And that he was kind of launching them to to to make it sound like it was more active than one it actually was.
00:15:27
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:15:33
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:15:34
Lee Hatfield
And I was so deflated to find out that some of this was fake.
00:15:37
Kate Cherrell
I know. i think when you start looking at historical hauntings, it's it's like you're going through a transitional process of becoming like becoming an adult and having to leave Santa behind.
00:15:50
Kate Cherrell
Certainly with Borley Rectory, I completely get it with Borley Rectory because I grew up with the the images of the the writing on the walls where it says, I i still cannot understand Marianne, please tell me more.
00:15:57
Lee Hatfield
yeah. yeah.
00:16:00
Kate Cherrell
I love those images. And then when i was old enough to actually read about about Borley Rectory and what happened on what happened with the the foisters and and the lodger it's like oh god it behind every dramatic haunting there's just people being deceptive and grotty there's never this you know amazing ancient haunting it's just people that can't keep their trousers on and then people that want to just keep the interest of tabloids
00:16:26
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:16:31
Kate Cherrell
by by whatever whatever means. So it's a shame, but I love i love the idea of Borley and i very much romanticise Borley myself.
00:16:34
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:16:36
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Me too. Like say, I actually grew up with it. And it's like it was a place that I'd always wanted to visit, even though it went down in the 40s.
00:16:43
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:45
Lee Hatfield
I'm not that old, by the way. sir
00:16:46
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, I got it.
00:16:49
Lee Hatfield
But it's, yeah, and like you said, it was the the pastor's wife was having an affair, so she was making up ah instances to hide her affair.
00:16:54
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:16:58
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:00
Lee Hatfield
And it's like, oh, man. And, like, I was so disappointed. Like, okay.
00:17:05
Kate Cherrell
I know. i know. I suppose there's there's still a lot of arguments though, that there was something and then she used that to cover up.
00:17:08
Lee Hatfield
Yes.
00:17:12
Lee Hatfield
Yes.
00:17:14
Kate Cherrell
So we've still got little threads of hope with Borley.
00:17:17
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. But obviously, because the places no longer exist, it's going to be very hard to that to test that.
00:17:21
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sadly.
00:17:24
Lee Hatfield
Okay, so it's Sunday afternoon. Let's test your memory even more. Frederick Tansley Munnings.
00:17:33
Kate Cherrell
Frederick Tansley Munnings was a medium. Was Frederick Tansley Munnings?
00:17:41
Lee Hatfield
Don't Google it. Come on.
00:17:42
Kate Cherrell
Frederick Tansley Munnings.
00:17:44
Lee Hatfield
Let me give you a clue. Medium burglar fake.
00:17:48
Kate Cherrell
Oh, he was the, he was a trumpet medium. So he, He god he was lodging with a boardinghouse was lodging at a boarding house and robbed his landlady.
00:18:04
Kate Cherrell
But he was it was a really crap medium, and I love the crap ones the most. But he was a trumpet medium, and it's not like a brass band. It's not like a colliery band runs into the seance room. he Most people held these trumpets like m listening horns.
00:18:23
Kate Cherrell
and voices would come out of the end, seemingly without the the medium's intervention. Frederick Tansley Munnings was a direct voice medium, so voices appeared around him without his m without his he' doing, essentially.
00:18:40
Kate Cherrell
But he did produce a lot of ectoplasm as well, from the end of trumpets and and from himself. And by all accounts, if I remember correctly, he wasn't very good at it.
00:18:50
Kate Cherrell
And not only was he robbing people, but he was doing a very poor job of hiding his ectoplasm.
00:18:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. i I'm not even going to go down that road. But it's funny how you mentioned about crap mediums because Kate Ray describes herself as a crap medium.
00:19:05
Kate Cherrell
See, and I love Kate Ray.
00:19:05
Lee Hatfield
She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, she does.
00:19:07
Kate Cherrell
but
00:19:09
Lee Hatfield
I'm like, I just lost it when she went, yeah, I describe myself as the most shittiest medium. It's like, I i don't know what to say to that, Kate.
00:19:17
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:19:17
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, Kate's incredibly talented. So I think she's allowed to be crap at mediumship if she wants to be.
00:19:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. hi yeah Yeah, absolutely. i released her podcast this Friday, just gone. And like the we've got into a habit now where on Fridays, the wife and I will go to McDonald's.
00:19:35
Lee Hatfield
It's like Friday ritual. So because i but I launched the podcast at 5 p.m. local time here, 10 p.m. your time, as we drive to to McDonald's, I put it on the in the car.
00:19:45
Lee Hatfield
So we listen to it and on the on the way to the car.
00:19:45
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:19:48
Lee Hatfield
And then we listen to it on the way back. And then if we haven't finished this, we stick it on TV and watch the last 15, 20 minutes.
00:19:54
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah.
00:19:55
Lee Hatfield
And that's become a ritual now just to make sure.
00:19:57
Kate Cherrell
That's lovely.
00:19:58
Lee Hatfield
you Yeah. Yeah. So you will be in my car very soon.
00:20:01
Kate Cherrell
good.
00:20:01
Lee Hatfield
to Just letting you know.
00:20:03
Kate Cherrell
Thank you. I look forward to my tour of Canada.
00:20:04
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. ill I'll have to show you around.
00:20:08
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, I do.
00:20:08
Lee Hatfield
Okay. So back to testing you. See how good you are today.
00:20:12
Kate Cherrell
in Okay.
00:20:13
Lee Hatfield
the mac The magnificent Thomas Brothers. Okay.
00:20:16
Kate Cherrell
Or they were Welsh mediums who... So they were working class Welsh mediums who were in a ah ah mining community.
00:20:28
Kate Cherrell
And they they professed to be this amazingly talented... brotherly duo who could do could do mediumship. And they most of these mediums' images have kind of been lost to time, certainly of that era, but they posed with spirit photographers. I think they posed with, I want to say William Hope, that's wrong.
00:20:49
Kate Cherrell
Well, they posed with a a spirit photographer at the time. So we have images of the brothers with the the spirit photographers. ever of a deceased person with them.
00:21:00
Kate Cherrell
But they were, ah ah again, not the greatest mediums, but I think they're particularly interesting as representations of how spiritualism really took hold in working class communities, especially in working class Welsh communities, because a lot of them were able to marry their pre-existing Christian or Anglican beliefs with this new shiny spiritualism. And so they went on to do a lot of a lot of demonstrations as well.
00:21:25
Kate Cherrell
But like the Thomas brothers. There we go. i remember them.
00:21:28
Lee Hatfield
Great. See? And if you knew that you were going to go to get quizzed on all your previous articles, I bet you'd have done some research before.
00:21:36
Kate Cherrell
Well, I've got such a crap memory at the best of times.
00:21:36
Lee Hatfield
Just so... the
00:21:38
Kate Cherrell
I need about five minutes to warm up on each topic.
00:21:38
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:21:42
Lee Hatfield
one One of my most favourites, you'll know why, it's probably your most recent one, I believe, that you did with Kate Ray,
Lincolnshire's Paranormal Scene and Challenges
00:21:51
Kate Cherrell
Oh yes.
00:21:52
Lee Hatfield
because it's is so our home county, Lincolnshire.
00:21:55
Lee Hatfield
So, specters in the Shire, Boggarts, Bogg, Hests, and Bouncing Heads.
00:21:55
Kate Cherrell
Yes.
00:22:01
Kate Cherrell
Yes. So, well, I was co-hosting a one-day festival in in Lincolnshire, in Louth in Lincolnshire.
00:22:02
Lee Hatfield
How did that come about?
00:22:10
Kate Cherrell
that was and It was called Not of This Wald. And it was a celebration of everything weird and creative about Lincolnshire. So it was a full day event that Kate spoke at kate did Kate soldiered on amazingly. As she was loading her stall in, she managed to almost break her nose.
00:22:29
Kate Cherrell
ah She was loading up because one of the bungee cords snapped. And then she went on to do a talk about the Woolerton gnomes, which is a gnome sighting and in Nottinghamshire. But we had this full day of markets and that we had...
00:22:43
Kate Cherrell
stallholders that did tarot and Reiki and made all manner of weird things. We had a secondhand book stall that specialised in paranormal and occult books. And I can tell you for one thing, they did very well out of the footfall.
00:22:57
Lee Hatfield
Oh, nice.
00:22:58
Kate Cherrell
but Even from me, they did very well. we had that, we had music performances, we had a screening of Pender's Fen, which is a folk horror classic. And had lots of talks throughout the day, including Kate's and and mine was about a a li wealth several Lincolnshire hauntings, because I think, as I'm sure you'll know, Lincolnshire is a very often overlooked county. It's the second biggest county in the UK, has this amazing folkloric tradition, this amazing haunted tradition.
00:23:27
Kate Cherrell
And it's just skimmed over. People only ever know Lincoln. And Lincoln has got some great, great, weird folklore-y things.
00:23:31
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:23:34
Kate Cherrell
It's got the Lincoln Imp, and it's got the steps where the severed head of St Hugh is said to bounce down late at night and knock people off balance, even though there's a lot of pubs nearby, so I think they might be more.
00:23:47
Lee Hatfield
I was going to say that's got nothing to do with drinking.
00:23:50
Kate Cherrell
Oh, no, not at all. No, there's not like six pubs in the vicinity.
00:23:51
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:23:54
Kate Cherrell
But yeah, it's it's a really amazing county. So Recently, certainly over the last year or two, I've become far more invested in my in my landscape and where I'm from.
00:24:07
Kate Cherrell
And I'm trying to put more stuff out there about Lincolnshire and celebrate Lincolnshire. And i'm I'm speaking at a festival in in August as well, where I'm exclusively talking about Lincolnshire poltergeists.
00:24:21
Kate Cherrell
So it's quite nice to finally give all these hauntings and weird things a second wind and to be part of that movement. So that haunted article was kind of linked into Not Of This Wald because both Kate and I were so busy with everything at the time.
00:24:36
Kate Cherrell
We sort of decided to join forces and put this joint piece together. And yeah. yeah And so we did sort of a ah top of the pop style countdown of ah ah various witches, boggart species that we liked from Lincolnshire.
00:24:51
Kate Cherrell
So it was it was wonderful. It was really nice to work with her as well. Yeah.
00:24:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And it's really strange because I've been over in Canada for 12 years now, but I spent most of my life in Lincolnshire.
00:25:03
Kate Cherrell
Yes.
00:25:04
Lee Hatfield
And since I've been involved with the paranormal, I've tried to find paranormal teams in Lincolnshire, and there doesn't seem to be any. And it's really weird.
00:25:14
Kate Cherrell
that There are... Yeah, there are there are very, very few. I personally think I would have been... lot of my first paranormal investigative efforts were solo. because, like you say, it's it's so hard to connect with people that could could possibly be interested in doing investigations.
00:25:32
Kate Cherrell
But there are a couple of groups, but it really does feel like the the heyday of Lincolnshire and ghost hunting, if we call it that, was kind of in the 90s. There was quite an established group called Ghostbusters UK.
00:25:47
Kate Cherrell
ah you know I think yeah i think ah copyright claims weren't so popular in the ninety s
00:25:48
Lee Hatfield
I'll see what you Yeah, okay.
00:25:54
Kate Cherrell
But they weren' they were a very prominent group in Grimsby in the 90s. They had a book written about them. and Yeah, they they were an amazing group of of academics and really impassioned paranormal investigators that I've got slightly obsessed with of late. I only found their book a couple of months ago.
00:26:12
Kate Cherrell
And a few of them, from what I understand, still live locally. So, I mean, God help them. They're going to have a letter put through their letterbox sometime soon, aren't they?
00:26:18
Lee Hatfield
pull yeah Yeah, because it's really weird because being from Boston, you've got the Boston stump.
00:26:25
Kate Cherrell
Yes.
00:26:26
Lee Hatfield
So you've got the story of the Grey Lady that seemed to be around in the 60s, the 70s and the 80s, but nobody seems to have seen ah experienced it recently.
00:26:28
Kate Cherrell
he
00:26:38
Lee Hatfield
And then you've got the Guild Hall, you've got Shodfriars. got yeah ah yeah And you've got some really interesting locations. Yeah. But people just don't don't seem...
00:26:49
Lee Hatfield
I i know there's a good friend of mine that does historical walks around Boston and she goes to all these locations, but there doesn't seem to be, like i say, a solid group that could go, oh, yeah, we've investigated this and we've investigated that.
00:26:53
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:27:00
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's partially perhaps because Lincolnshire is so big and certainly from where where I am, which is into the Walds and into East Lindsay, there's huge spaces of just fields and fields and fields between little villages.
00:27:19
Kate Cherrell
So it's quite hard to build specialist communities like that. But yeah, you there's certainly a lot of and witch based and Wiccan communities. along the coast.
00:27:30
Kate Cherrell
I know there's a lot of witches in Skegness, so if anyone's interested, of all places, of course they're in Skegness.
00:27:35
Lee Hatfield
yeah Yeah.
00:27:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:27:37
Kate Cherrell
But yeah, yeah it's it's a very, I think because everything's so geographically sparse, we've carried on that that reticence to build communities, which is a shame.
00:27:46
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:27:48
Kate Cherrell
Like said, there are some groups, but they're not as as prominent online ah ah as all the as all the counties are, really.
00:27:53
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:27:55
Kate Cherrell
Mm-hmm.
00:27:55
Lee Hatfield
You know I live in Canada, right? yeah Sparse locations. Come on.
00:27:58
Kate Cherrell
Well, it's all relative.
00:27:59
Lee Hatfield
It's like England. Okay. Okay. That's
Teenage Paranormal Experiences in Grimsby
00:28:03
Lee Hatfield
just fair. So you mentioned at the start of the podcast about some of your personal experiences that we haven't actually touched on yet.
00:28:08
Kate Cherrell
Mm.
00:28:09
Lee Hatfield
So from paranormal point of view, can you like talk to us about a few of your personal experiences?
00:28:16
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. OK, well, I'd say my most enduring and most impactful experiences were when I was a teenager. This is long before I was a an investigator or fully entrenched in the paranormal.
00:28:32
Kate Cherrell
And my sister moved house and she'd moved into a a perfectly ordinary society. a post-war semi-detached house in Grimsby and was spending a lot of time there and as we started, this is a very condensed version of what happened, but as we started redecorating things started going wrong in the house.
00:28:55
Kate Cherrell
So we'd start seeing these huge flashes of light. And I mean flashes in a, like if you put a slash in and a bit of fabric, it's like a long, a long line.
00:29:07
Kate Cherrell
These huge slashes of light moving around the house and just as if they were people and moving up and down the stairs. We started hearing footsteps for all hours of the day.
00:29:18
Kate Cherrell
doing this route across the landing and and down the stairs. And then eventually it was all over the house. And as the year, as the first year went on, we eventually started seeing this sort of like a bit of someone walking into rooms.
00:29:35
Kate Cherrell
So we'd see like the bit of someone's arm, but it was all like a black static. going into some you know going into a room and eventually we we started seeing this this figure, this man in different rooms in the house and he would just stand there, he'd walk up and down the stairs and across the landing all day and sometimes he'd be stood in my bedroom just looking at me.
00:29:58
Kate Cherrell
Sometimes he he threw things a few times in my sister's bedroom and couple of times he would just hover above the bath when you went into the bathroom and it sounds completely unhinged and full Hollywood stuff, but it it was very real and it was very, very frightening. And it was more extreme than anything I've ever encountered in an active paranormal investigation. And part of me is all right about that because it was so scary and it was so intense and it happened over the space of about three years.
00:30:34
Kate Cherrell
to the point where we were just used to it and we would go to the toilet in pairs. We would stay downstairs during the day, completely dehydrate ourselves and then yeah go up in pairs at night.
00:30:38
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:30:44
Kate Cherrell
I was ending up sleeping on a mattress on my in my sister's bedroom and then I moved out and they ended up sleeping in a mattress down on a mattress downstairs while they were trying to sell it. It was a full, horrible, horrible experience.
00:30:59
Kate Cherrell
But since then, i think doing paranormal investigation has given me a very different understanding of what the paranormal can be and certainly what paranormal communities can be as well.
00:31:11
Kate Cherrell
And so with investigations, just the other week, I was at Tudor World in Stratford, which is a really lovely like living history museum.
00:31:23
Kate Cherrell
And I was calling out upstairs, trying to communicate with the spirit of a little girl. And I felt a tugging on my sleeve, which apparently this little girl's meant to do to signify that she's there. So I felt tugging on my sleeve. And I said, oh, amazing.
00:31:39
Kate Cherrell
If that's you, so-and-so, could you do it again, please? And it happened again. and I thought, oh, this is amazing. Because I could see the fabric move as well. And then we started to say, you know, we're saying it's a little girl, but there's also been this male spirit associated with this space. Could it possibly be we be him?
00:32:01
Kate Cherrell
And he's lying. And it was as if like clockwork, I felt this big hand on my backside from behind me and I shot up like no one's business.
00:32:15
Kate Cherrell
And that was like, okay. Oh great. There's creeps in the afterlife as well. This is excellent. That's like the two extremes.
00:32:23
Kate Cherrell
You've got the terrifying poltergeist and then the handsy little git in the afterlife.
00:32:24
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:32:27
Lee Hatfield
You're getting touched up by... Yeah. And it's like it's it's really funny that you say that because last weekend we went to the US to this absolutely beautiful old Scottish-style hotel for poster beds. And there was...
00:32:45
Lee Hatfield
reports that these two rooms were particularly haunted. So me and my buddies, the three of us, rented these two but these two rooms for the weekend. i We call ourselves sceptics with open minds until things are proven.
00:32:58
Lee Hatfield
And we will try to, a it obviously, you try to debunk as much as you can.
00:32:58
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:33:03
Lee Hatfield
Sunday night, Monday morning, 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm just climbing into bed after finishing the investigation. And it's got the old heavy blankets on, so you're settling into bed, and you feel the blankets settle, which that happened. didn't think anything of it.
00:33:19
Lee Hatfield
And then, no word of a lie, 30 seconds later, this heavy weight sat on the bed.
00:33:23
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:33:25
Lee Hatfield
And I thought, well, that's not the blanket settling. It's too heavy. opened my eyes, and I just saw this white... think, go past for like a split second.
00:33:33
Kate Cherrell
Oh gosh.
00:33:34
Lee Hatfield
And it's like, and I knew that I wasn't asleep because i't I'd only been in bed literally minutes.
00:33:35
Kate Cherrell
Mm.
00:33:41
Kate Cherrell
Mm.
00:33:42
Lee Hatfield
I wasn't that tired. I felt something first, and then when I opened my eyes, I saw this thing. But that was only my personal experience. There was no cameras running or anything like that.
00:33:52
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:33:52
Lee Hatfield
So only can talk about that. And it's like it's really weird that I experienced that in one of the most haunted rooms in this location.
00:33:57
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:34:02
Lee Hatfield
And it's like it's really strange.
00:34:04
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:34:04
Lee Hatfield
but um'm But I'm pleased it happened, because i could I've now got another story in my paranormal collection to add to the previous story.
00:34:04
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:34:12
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's always a bonus as well. if I think so many of us, whenever we go to hotels or investigations, you're always sort of strong-armed into booking the haunted room.
00:34:25
Kate Cherrell
And the amount of times I've stayed in the most haunted room in the hotel and there's just been nothing. It's a real relief when there is something.
00:34:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:34:33
Kate Cherrell
You feel like, OK, I've got my money's worth now.
00:34:34
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:34:35
Kate Cherrell
At least there's something. Yeah.
00:34:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because but because we experienced an orb. And I know most people in the profession think that orbs are dust or bugs. But we've had three or four people looking at this video, and it just looked like two things that are spiraling down.
00:34:53
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:34:54
Lee Hatfield
So we ruled out bugs because there was no bugs in the entire building for the entire weekend. It wasn't dust. It was far too big. It wasn't particles of paint or anything falling down from the ceiling.
00:35:08
Lee Hatfield
And we've zoomed in and it just looks like it's two two things that are just spotting a sort like, we can't explain what that is. It's not your typical like dust or bug because it was far too big.
00:35:14
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:35:18
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah.
00:35:19
Lee Hatfield
And it was like, I'm like three or four different people like are looking into this to try and figure out what it is.
00:35:19
Kate Cherrell
you know
00:35:25
Lee Hatfield
And nobody's got any answers yet.
00:35:27
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. It's always good to have something that you leave unanswered.
00:35:32
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I've noticed with talking to you is you've got a picture of the weeping boy behind you.
00:35:41
Kate Cherrell
I do. i have, i have two variations of the crying boy but behind me.
00:35:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:35:44
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:35:44
Lee Hatfield
So do you believe in the and the story of the weeping boy picture?
00:35:45
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:35:50
Kate Cherrell
and Personally, I believe in the hysteria of it, but I also know that I've had, and these are the, they're not reprints. These are original ah ah like 60s, 60s, 70s crime boy prints that once again came from Skegness.
00:36:09
Kate Cherrell
Can you believe it? I'll pick these up from Skegness.
00:36:11
Lee Hatfield
It's going to be a hot spot.
00:36:13
Kate Cherrell
It is, it's Skegness, paranormal hotspot of Lincolnshire. Who would have thought it?
00:36:16
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:36:17
Kate Cherrell
ah ah But yeah, no, I don't, I think there's some interesting discourse around them because I don't think it's as simple as it was hysteria and we can debunk it all by saying that there was a special kind of varnish or that they were all hung up with string and so that when these when they were in house fires the the picture landed face first. I think that's quite neat but I've heard some very interesting arguments to the contrary, especially when they look into different places that produce these prints, because they weren't from one source.
00:36:52
Kate Cherrell
You'd get them from BHS or Woolworths, you know, various different different places.
00:36:58
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:59
Kate Cherrell
So i think this I think there's a nice bit of... To keep a bit of the mystery alive offers a bit of frisson to the story of The Crying Boy. But I've had these two prints with me in three different houses.
00:37:15
Kate Cherrell
And I haven't touched wood. so you up I've had no and no problems so far with with house fires. But also when these were hung up everywhere, people had chip pans.
00:37:27
Kate Cherrell
i one
00:37:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
00:37:28
Kate Cherrell
and I think we have very quickly forgotten the fears of chip pan fires that certainly I grew up with.
00:37:28
Lee Hatfield
And b
00:37:36
Kate Cherrell
I thought chip pan fires would be a very prominent part of my adult life.
00:37:36
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:37:41
Kate Cherrell
And thus far, they haven't been. So, you know.
00:37:43
Lee Hatfield
and being a firefighter at the time in the yeah late 80s, early 90s, we used to get them all the time.
00:37:46
Kate Cherrell
Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. yeah
00:37:50
Lee Hatfield
So it's like, do you have a picture of the Weeping Boy in your house? Yeah.
00:37:54
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Yeah, they should have made graphs that were relating the boy versus Chitpan present. And just say see how it weights everything.
00:38:03
Kate Cherrell
Oh,
00:38:04
Lee Hatfield
right You never thought we'd be talking about chip pan fries on today's podcast, that's for sure.
00:38:08
Kate Cherrell
you see? All sources covered.
00:38:09
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. So you we've spoken quite intensely about your writing career. How did you get involved with
Transition to TV and Gothic Novel Release
00:38:18
Lee Hatfield
TV? Because we've got, I think, Unexplained caught on camera.
00:38:23
Kate Cherrell
isn it
00:38:24
Lee Hatfield
And when they show the commercial, there's you going, no, no, no. I just thought, ah so like yeah, I'm interviewing her in a few weeks' time.
00:38:29
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:38:33
Lee Hatfield
So how did you get involved from being writing into yeah meeting Jack Osborne and working with Jack, unexplained caught on camera, and your most latest, Weird Britain with Andy, Andy McRae.
00:38:45
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah.
00:38:46
Lee Hatfield
Andy McGrath, sorry.
00:38:47
Kate Cherrell
and Yeah, no, I've, it it started off again. i think my name was put forward with a few other people. I think the the production company was putting feelers out for for new talent, as they call it.
00:39:01
Kate Cherrell
And i I had been running a blog for several years before that. And I put a lot of stuff online about the work I've been doing and and so forth. and yeah Eventually i I ended up having interviews and met production staff, did investigations that that they came along to see how ah know my investigative style and to see that I wasn't a fully dyed-in-the-wool nutter.
00:39:26
Kate Cherrell
And then after that, i i but my first proper telly job was working with Jack Osborne on the first series of Haunted Homecoming. which was wonderful. I i think it was really nice to have such a really great production team behind that who were fully invested in it.
00:39:45
Kate Cherrell
And obviously working with Jack and and his family as well was just, was really lovely. They were all in it and quite, yeah, really committed to making the best possible project we could.
00:39:59
Lee Hatfield
That's quite surreal. So like yeah growing up with the Osbournes, like Ozzy Osbourne being in Black Sabbath and such and Sharon being on like Britain's Got Talent and all that stuff.
00:40:11
Lee Hatfield
And then you working with Jack, that must be must have been quite surreal.
00:40:11
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:40:15
Kate Cherrell
I think it was more the whole process was was quite surreal, but I'm not one to get starstruck, sadly. But I think a lot of it one of the greatest things with with people that have a very large presence or big celebrities is as soon as you realise that they're just ordinary people, you have a much better interaction with people and you make a much better end product. And so that I think that again helped helped us to produce something that was quite authentic and and yeah perfectly enjoyable. So that that series was 22 with Jack and then we did the second series of Haunted Homecoming with Jonathan Ross last December.
00:41:03
Kate Cherrell
who was absolutely lovely, one of the nicest people I've ever worked with, really supportive, really interested and very open to everything.
00:41:13
Kate Cherrell
And I think that's the trick with any newcomer coming into the paranormal field is if they're interested, if they don't know really what's going on, what they want to learn, that's brilliant. That's half the battle over with when you're getting someone involved.
00:41:25
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:27
Kate Cherrell
immersed in that and i've I've just of you can't rely on telly you can't rely on regular telly but it's a nice thing to to scatter in amongst the the rest of the work you're doing and so I think whenever anything comes along that I i feel I'd like to do I've been fortunate in that everyone i've worked with has been very lovely.
00:41:51
Kate Cherrell
Then i I went on to to do like say, Unexplained Caught on Camera, which was fabulous because I just had to sit and say it's probably not a mermaid mate for a couple of hours, which was brilliant.
00:42:03
Kate Cherrell
So that was fun. I really really enjoyed that. And that was all filmed in a crypt as well. So I felt like I got more goth points. and for that one.
00:42:12
Lee Hatfield
Definitely, definitely.
00:42:12
Kate Cherrell
yeah And then I did The Yorkshire Exorcist 2 with Ian Lawman, who was also really, really lovely. And Paul Goddard, the past life regressionist, was involved in that as well. And he is just absolute consummate professional. Fantastic, fantastic man.
00:42:30
Kate Cherrell
And then, yeah, then Weird Britain. I've been doing bits and bobs for Weird Britain with the and yeah with Andy and Matt. And it's been it's been wonderful. I've sort of zipped all over the place with them.
00:42:44
Kate Cherrell
And they're a fantastic team. I really like Weird Britain because they it's a real celebration of of this country. And it's it's folklore. it's weird It's weird things. It's weird people.
00:42:58
Kate Cherrell
And... i've I've certainly, when I've watched it, the episodes that I haven't been in, I've ended up with these lists of places to visit. Like, oh, I need to do this.
00:43:08
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:43:08
Kate Cherrell
I need to reach out to this person. I need to do this. I think they're just wonderful. i I really, really like it. A few people have, have said that it's the spiritual successor to for t and TB. And if anyone remembers that from ah ah early 2000s, I think it was late nineties, early two thousand and
00:43:24
Lee Hatfield
Showing your age.
00:43:26
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, sorry. sorry so But it's it's it's great. I really like Weird Britain. And I'm on a couple of episodes this series and a couple of the forthcoming one as well.
00:43:37
Kate Cherrell
So...
00:43:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because the one that I saw a few weeks ago and was the cemetery one that you were talking about. and
00:43:47
Kate Cherrell
I was... what was it? It was the
00:43:49
Lee Hatfield
Where was that?
00:43:52
Kate Cherrell
I think I did three in one few weeks ago. It was the Kidsgrove Boggart, which is a ah ah tunnel, the Harecastle tunnel, that's haunted by the spirit of a murdered woman. The Four Crosses Inn at Cannock, which is a very, very popular paranormal haunt.
00:44:07
Lee Hatfield
it'
00:44:09
Kate Cherrell
That's got an odd place, an odd feeling about it. And then the Molly, no, not Molly Lee, was it Molly Lee? Margaret Lee? The Staffordshire witch, who was ah ah a visibly different woman who was clearly a little bit cantankerous and a bit awkward and was vilified by her community and believed to be a witch. And then when she died,
00:44:32
Kate Cherrell
her pet black bird of some variety started harassing the local villagers and the local publican. They believed that the bird was the source of all their problems and had it woman sealed up with her.
00:44:43
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:44:46
Kate Cherrell
I mean, that's a horrific story, but her grave is still there.
00:44:46
Lee Hatfield
That's crazy. Yeah.
00:44:49
Kate Cherrell
And it's a very poignant story, but a very beautiful piece of folklore and certainly in women's history as well.
00:44:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:44:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Because I think if I remember rightly, I actually took a picture of while I was watching it on TV and put it onto your Facebook page.
00:45:04
Kate Cherrell
Oh, right.
00:45:04
Lee Hatfield
And so I was watching it from Canada.
00:45:05
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah.
00:45:08
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:45:09
Lee Hatfield
OK, so.
00:45:10
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:45:10
Lee Hatfield
We are coming towards the end. However, there are a couple more things that I want to talk about before we do. I know recently you've been in my hometown and you did a talk on Boston Cemetery.
00:45:22
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yes.
00:45:23
Lee Hatfield
So what was that all about?
00:45:25
Kate Cherrell
and Well, I love Boston Cemetery. um I've done quite a few talks for the Friends of Boston Cemetery over the years on mourning and and death traditions. And this time, oh, it was glorious weather.
00:45:38
Kate Cherrell
I think when you've got such beautiful weather, the best way to spend it is to be wandering around a cemetery. And Boston Cemetery is just fabulous. and But I was doing a talk on how to read a cemetery. So sort of the the history of a cemetery, why we have cemeteries in the UK, because I think a lot of people conflate the terms cemetery and graveyard and think they're talking about the same thing. It's like the coffin casket.
00:46:02
Kate Cherrell
They're very, very separate, very, very separate terminologies. So why we have cemeteries and how the Victorians revolutionised what we see as ah ah burial traditions and having such a big cemetery as Boston It has this amazing older part of the cemetery, a lot of which is overgrown and is is meant to be a like ah ah a conservation area.
00:46:29
Kate Cherrell
But it certainly adds to thee to the feeling of the place. But it's it's stunning. I think it's a wonderful example of a mid to late Victorian cemetery. It's really beautiful.
00:46:40
Kate Cherrell
And more people need to celebrate it. More people need to support it. But they're having a heritage day soon, so they they can't get rid of me.
00:46:44
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:46:46
Kate Cherrell
I'll be back again. to prod around Boston's dead.
00:46:48
Lee Hatfield
you Yeah, because i I'm very good friends with, well, I was when the UK, Martin, the guy that basically isn't is the manager there.
00:46:55
Kate Cherrell
Oh yes. Yeah.
00:46:57
Lee Hatfield
And I've known Martin for like years and years and years. And when I've been doing my family tree, I've been trying to find locations of various relatives that have passed and are buried there.
00:47:07
Kate Cherrell
Mm-hmm.
00:47:09
Lee Hatfield
So I've always reached out to him to find.
00:47:10
Kate Cherrell
Oh.
00:47:12
Lee Hatfield
Because like my mother's there, my grandfather's there, some of my uncles and aunties are there.
00:47:16
Kate Cherrell
Mm-hmm.
00:47:17
Lee Hatfield
But like you say, it's absolutely fascinating that you can you can come through the gates in Robin Hood's Walk and you see the the modern side of it. with the crematorium. But if you go straight down to the bottom and turn right, and then you get into the Victoria, and it's a completely different location.
00:47:35
Kate Cherrell
Oh, yeah, it's like a different world, isn't it?
00:47:35
Lee Hatfield
It's completely different graveyard. Yeah, it is.
00:47:37
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:47:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And the fact that you get some some of the deer coming through every now and then, deer is bouncing around the cemetery.
00:47:42
Kate Cherrell
Oh, it's lovely.
00:47:46
Lee Hatfield
It's crazy. But yeah, like you say, it is a fascinating place to go to. And I do love every time I go to the UK.
00:47:50
Kate Cherrell
It is.
00:47:52
Lee Hatfield
yeah Apart from the fact to go and visit my mum. yeah it I always go and have a walk through there just to experience what that cemetery is all about, really.
00:48:04
Kate Cherrell
Yeah, yeah, I think it's very important, personally for me, I mean, it obviously varies from person to person, but I find it very important too to ground myself a lot. And I think visiting cemeteries can be a nice opportunity to have some quiet time, for starters. I think so many of us are so overstimulated all the time.
00:48:25
Kate Cherrell
You sort of need that self-enforced oasis of calm, in the middle of a city, but to be there, especially if you've got family there to make it a sort of pilgrimage of sorts and to, to connect with that stillness and and with that sense of remembrance, I think is really rather lovely and very powerful as well.
00:48:45
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:48:45
Kate Cherrell
So I, I always try and encourage anyone. to to visit their local cemetery. But then again, whenever I go on holiday anywhere, I encourage whoever's with me to go and visit the local cemetery because that's what I insist upon doing wherever I go.
00:48:59
Kate Cherrell
Only this morning, I was in a different cemetery and I've raced back ah ah to speak with you.
00:48:59
Lee Hatfield
and
00:49:06
Lee Hatfield
I've got no words for that. But just final touching on Boston Cemetery, when I started doing my family history, um I know that my grandfather had a sister who had a yeah who was married.
00:49:20
Lee Hatfield
And he died in World War II when a lone German bomber dropped a bomb on the factory in Grantham where he worked and killed him.
00:49:31
Lee Hatfield
And he's actually on that war memorial. That's this down there.
00:49:34
Kate Cherrell
Oh, really?
00:49:35
Lee Hatfield
But I didn't know this at the time while I was in England because he's got a different name. So it just didn't trick.
00:49:41
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:49:41
Lee Hatfield
but what What makes it even more interesting is that the German bomber that dropped the bomb got hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed just outside Boston Cemetery.
00:49:54
Kate Cherrell
Oh, really?
00:49:55
Lee Hatfield
and So I've actually got a picture of he that died, the location where he died, a picture of the aircraft, the picture of the crashed aircraft, and all the crew survived.
00:49:59
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:50:07
Kate Cherrell
Oh my gosh.
00:50:08
Lee Hatfield
So I've got that full story of that individual.
00:50:10
Kate Cherrell
Yeah. Oh, that's so powerful, isn't it?
00:50:12
Lee Hatfield
But the fact that, yeah, exactly. And I was like, jaw-dropping for that.
00:50:17
Kate Cherrell
Yeah.
00:50:17
Lee Hatfield
was like, wow. And you could put all these connections together, and it was absolutely fascinating.
00:50:22
Kate Cherrell
Oh, it really is. It, it, yeah, that's some incredibly sad, but very humanizing as well, isn't it?
00:50:23
Lee Hatfield
That was real awesome.
00:50:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. So I know for a fact that you've got a new book coming out.
00:50:35
Kate Cherrell
Yes, well, it's out now.
00:50:36
Lee Hatfield
Maybe.
00:50:38
Kate Cherrell
It is out.
00:50:38
Lee Hatfield
Is it?
00:50:38
Kate Cherrell
It is released in the world. Begotten, my gothic novel, is out. It is free. It has been birthed from my mind. It's yeah a gothic novel written in Victorian ghost story traditions.
00:50:54
Kate Cherrell
And it's kind of a reworking of the haunted house trope. And I think a lot of paranormal investigators would would be very interested to see how i've have oh I've incorporated modern ghost traditions with Victorian spiritualist traditions within it.
00:51:13
Kate Cherrell
But it's yeah it's a story about lies, money and seance and if you can ever trust your own senses. And it's all that wrapped up in a big isolated house in the middle of nowhere with people trying to figure out if anything that they're seeing is real and if they can ever escape.
00:51:35
Kate Cherrell
So it's some yeah it's a bit it's been described as incredibly intense. I've had some amazing reviews so far of people that have finished it in like two sittings.
00:51:42
Lee Hatfield
Awesome.
00:51:46
Kate Cherrell
and have said that they've had to have a break because they were having palpitations towards the end. So i I see that as the only sort of review I could ever really want.
00:51:53
Lee Hatfield
no
00:51:57
Kate Cherrell
I thought that was wonderful. But it's, yeah, I think it would appeal to a lot of a lot of different people, even if they're not regular readers. It's a good, solid story of of deception and ghosts.
00:52:10
Lee Hatfield
And is that in hard copy as well as electronic or just online? not
00:52:13
Kate Cherrell
It's no, it's paperback and it's an ebook and you can get it from all your normal outlets. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble in some local shops, probably not in Canada, but so you can order it online in Canada.
00:52:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:30
Kate Cherrell
But yeah, yeah, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And it's out, out now.
00:52:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. I'll have to get it for my ghost collection of books.
00:52:36
Kate Cherrell
Oh, you must.
00:52:38
Lee Hatfield
But this book here, I actually bought from a an old store. I didn't look inside it. I just said, oh, it's book on ghosts. It's really thick. It looks cool. So I'm going to buy it.
00:52:46
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:52:47
Lee Hatfield
So I just bought it. But actually, Big Gotham was actually not the one I was i was referring to.
00:52:53
Kate Cherrell
Oh, oh, oh, but yes, I've been the grave based one.
00:52:55
Lee Hatfield
The one that's coming out in 2026. Can we speak about that?
00:53:02
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, Buried England.
00:53:03
Kate Cherrell
Yes. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. The first person I've spoken to about this. I'm handing in, I'm handing in the manuscript in a matter of weeks.
00:53:06
Lee Hatfield
Ha-ha!
00:53:12
Kate Cherrell
which is is terrifying. It's very, very real. But that is, well, as you'll know now, i've I've spent a lot of my life going round churchyards, graveyards, weird little spots in the back, backwoods of nowhere, and trying to find unusual graves and unusual grave stories. And I've been documenting these graves photographically and I've been noting down bits about them.
00:53:37
Kate Cherrell
So Buried England, is it's a photographic journey through England's most unusual burials. So I've visited hundreds of graves across the country, picked the weirdest and most obscure places and have documented them all and I'm trying to tell the story of of Britain's strangest dead inhabitants and that's buried England and and that should be out should be out next year but yeah I'm handing in the manuscript soon and then it's becoming horribly real
00:54:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, see, and this proves I've done my research.
00:54:14
Kate Cherrell
you have you absolutely have done your research thank you
00:54:15
Lee Hatfield
but
00:54:18
Lee Hatfield
You're welcome. So apart from Buried England, what's what's next on the agenda for Kate Schuyl?
00:54:24
Kate Cherrell
more long form nonfiction, even bigger nonfiction projects. So I've got that. I've got several academic chapters that are still waiting to be published. The the joys of academic publishing. You hand something in three years ago.
00:54:40
Kate Cherrell
seven years down the line, it'll probably come out. So I've got a lot of that where I'm just sort of twiddling my thumbs. So when it's not even relevant to anymore, that's when it will be published.
00:54:46
Lee Hatfield
Uh,
00:54:49
Kate Cherrell
and So i've I've got a lot of academic stuff that's in and publishing limbo at the minute with them various publishers. And then, yeah, I've got some some long form, quite scary, hefty nonfiction research projects that I'm working on that should We'll see. We're aiming for, say we, royal we, I'm aiming for late 26 to be done with them.
00:55:14
Kate Cherrell
That's what I've said anyway. we'll We'll see. We'll see what happens.
00:55:17
Lee Hatfield
But at least you still got time to go go with Charlie to get some ice cream at Cleethorpe. So that's the main thing, right?
00:55:21
Kate Cherrell
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And long may that continue.
00:55:26
Lee Hatfield
that's I think she's up for it, definitely.
00:55:28
Kate Cherrell
yeah
00:55:30
Lee Hatfield
Okay, Kate, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I know that we've had a complete blast. We talk about some really wonderful things that I've especially wanted to talk to you about. so I hope you've enjoyed it as well.
00:55:42
Kate Cherrell
Oh, of course, yeah.
00:55:43
Lee Hatfield
But I'm glad that we finally managed to get together after six six months or whatever it was.
00:55:46
Kate Cherrell
I know, it took us long enough, didn't it? Oh, I know, I know. always's been it's bit it's been a year. It's been a year.
00:55:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, long may continue because if you're not busy, get bored and yeah, whatever.
00:56:00
Kate Cherrell
Oh, yeah.
00:56:00
Lee Hatfield
But yeah.
00:56:01
Kate Cherrell
when When I'm settled, I'm usually up for a natter, and I'm not running around like a like a headless chicken.
00:56:05
Lee Hatfield
Awesome. Yeah. But again, thank you for your time. It's been an absolute blast talking to you and you have a great rest of the day. Thank you very much.
00:56:13
Kate Cherrell
and june Thank you.
00:56:15
Lee Hatfield
Bye-bye now.