Hi, everyone. And welcome back to 酒館.

Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, lulu. Hi, everyone.

All right, moving away from cemetery. Where is our next stop?

Well, let's go to a hotel.

I've heard many hotel haunting stories in the UK.

This one is a luxury five star hotel called the Langham hotel .

朗廷是吧? Langham, isn't that the one in London next to the BBC building?

That's the one.

I walked past that a few times.

It's actually got a few ghosts in it, including one being a German prince who jumped to his death from a window on the 4th floor.

So this hotel must have been there for a very long time then.

It's been there since the 19th century.

Oh, that's why, so a German prince actually stayed there. YES. and allegedly jumped to his death.

And guests staying on the 4th floor have said they've seen a ghostly figure in a military uniform, military attire who is believed to be the Prince.

安瀾, let me ask you, if you booked a hotel especially like a luxury hotel, before you go on your trip, you heard it from somewhere that this hotel is haunted. Would that make you want to stay in the hotel more or would you change your booking immediately?

I probably would change my booking. The thing is I don't really like hotels anyway. It's very rare that I can have a good night sleep in a hotel. So the idea of actually being in a hotel that is haunted probably would make it even worse.

It's such a whoops, maybe a ghost will come in and sing you a lullaby.

I very much doubt it, but the Langham does also have another ghost that of a doctor who murdered his wife and then killed himself while they were on their honeymoon.

I think I’ve heard of this story, I must have heard it somewhere. So this is the wife killer, so ladies watch out.

And ghost of the doctor can often be seen in the room and guest reported feeling sudden drops in temperature and was called an oppressive presence.

很有壓迫感的那種.

So I do believe in supernatural things. And I'm not sure if I believe in this sudden temperature drop, but I think that although people don't see them, but they can feel the sort of presence or some people they can feel the presence or they can feel the change in the energy field so to speak.

Yeah, I'm not sure whether or not that's because they expect it or not.

Could be, could also be that you are very self-suggestive.

It could be .

When you heard the ghost story and you stay in that room that's supposed to be haunted and then you would experience various things.

Yes, but now I want to finish off by telling you what has to be the most famous ghost story in the UK, it's so famous, it's been made into documentaries, films even, and it's called the Enfield Poltergeist.

Poltergeist, I don't know if our listeners understand that word, that word was originally a German word, we translated into like淘氣鬼, 什么吵鬧鬼. Poltergeist is not an actual ghost or a spirit, but people I mean English speaking countries or even just general European countries, they do believe in that or they do talk about it.

It's just like they pull your furniture around, they throw things and they make lots of noise. They make a chaos in your home or like a house.

You don't often see them, but you hear them and you see objects moving.

So this particular case is from 1977, it's the Hodgson family, who lived in a council house in Enfield, which is in North London.

It's in London again.

Yeah, Enfield is just a quiet part of North London. It's just one of these little towns that people who work in London they live in. Mhm. And they started reporting very strange occurrences and these quickly became terrifying.

Like furniture moving on its own, knocking sound, objects being thrown like that. I know that's you, 安瀾.

I know. But the interesting thing was that the focus of the activity seemed to be on the daughters, Janet and Margaret and they were kind of young girls kind of approaching teenage years.

And Janet was the center of all of the disturbances.

Maybe the Poltergeist just wants to or wanted to play with the girls.

Yes. But it was also much more chilling than that. One of the scariest things about the Enfield Poltergeist was a voice that seemed to come from Janet, which she said came from a man called Bill who died in that house years earlier.

In that case, it’s not Poltergeist. It sounds more like possession就是像附身一樣的感覺(jué).

Exactly. And this voice would speak in a very gravelly tone, you know that sort of voice if someone smokes lots of cigarettes, it's very gravelly like that.

氣泡音.

Yeah, and the voice would say some pretty horrible things and provide details about Bill life and death, which the girls wouldn't have known.

You said they made it into a documentary?

They made into a few documentaries and dramas.

Okay, after today's recording. I'm definitely gonna check them out, I like the sort of real life hauntings and the documentaries.

Now, why this case became so famous is because of the widespread media attention. And it was investigated by lots of paranormal researchers. So this was in the newspapers and some of the journalists also claimed that they saw strange things happening in this house.

安瀾, let me ask you, so when things like this happen, what's the opinion of the general public? Do you guys tend to believe in them or do you tend to be skeptics?

I would say it was half and half. So there were lots of skeptics, there were lots of supporters. The skeptics argued that the events were exaggerated.

Staged.

Or staged. They were fake. Some have said that it was Janet and her sisters and siblings that might be responsible for attention. But on the other hand, there were lots of evidence. There was also recordings. There weren't videos because it was a little bit too early for videos, but there were pictures, eyewitness accounts.

So this is what makes the case so interesting because to supporters, they believe the amount of evidence means that this is the strongest case that ghosts exist .

To be completely honest, once it reaches the media, people start to doubt it because obviously the makers of these stories they have something to gain, right? It's very similar in cross cultures. Really.

Well yeah, there was also the argument that some of the events might have been staged because if the girls were the focus of all this activity, and you had all of these people from newspapers, all of these adults showing interest, the natural reaction would be to try and make them happy by giving them what they wanted.

So there were some people who say, okay, lots of these events actually happen, but maybe a few of them were staged for the benefit of the researchers and also the media.

They just exaggerated it or they just put icing on top.

Now before we end today's episode of hauntings in the UK, 安瀾, what is your personal opinion or your personal take on these hauntings? I know that you have a sensitive soul. thank you should we put it that way that you do get scared by some of these horror stories?

Yeah, I don't like horror, and I would say that, to a certain extent, I do actually probably believe them whether or not it's to that extent, but I would say I do believe in ghosts. I do believe that there's something that we don't quite know about.

At least we don't really quite know at the moment

Exactly.

For me I think there are probably different sort of energy fields and different dimensions. But I do have another take on all of these hauntings and supernatural stories.

I think people sort of need that because as humans, I don't think anyone has really got life and death figured out to that extent. So to believe in a world where there is a possibility for something less than flesh and bones, yeah, it gives people the shudders, but also gives people a kind of hope.

Exactly. And if you think about it that the idea of a ghost is something universal, I think every single culture has had ghost stories or have ghost stories.

You know recently I've seen this quite beautiful concept in Chinese or on Chinese social media. It says the ghost that you are so scared of is the loved ones that other people have been missing.

I think that's really really nice and I think that is true.

So this is our special episode for the ghost month for 中元, now if you're interested in things like supernatural folklore as much as we do, let us know because if there isn't enough interest we might do like a mini segment so from time to time we're gonna talk about folklore around the world or even supernatural things around the world.

Yeah, I would love to do that. We've done our Greek myths and I would love to expand that. I would love to tell more stories from around the world.

Like Celtic myth.

Yeah, Norse myths as well.

Excellent. So leave us a comment if you're interested in that kind of things. Thank you, 安瀾for coming to the show.

Thanks, lulu. Thanks, everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Bye bye.