The Skirrid Inn! With Poppy! Ep.150!

[00:00:11] Hello, your resident ghost girl here, Poppy, with the lovely, mischievous Liam over there in the corner from the Spooky Shed. Fucking sweating. We are both sweating. It's very, very hot in here. Hot isn't on the field. Today, we are talking about The Skirrid. Do you know anything about The Skirrid, Liam? Just that it's in Wales.

[00:00:41] Just in Wales, yeah. So, The Skirrid, let me put my drink down. This is going to get serious. So, The Skirrid is the mountain Skirrid, and it's actually got its own little bit of folklore. So, apparently, the crack down the middle happened when the crucifixion happened. Make of that what you will. But that is the folklore of The Skirrid.

[00:01:09] What, as in crucifixion? When you say crucifixion, as in Jesus? As in Jesus, yes. The Jesus. Which happened however many fucking thousand miles away. Yes. Yeah, bollocks. But fair enough. Well, that is the legend. That is the folklore. And so, The Skirrid is in a little place called Clang for Hagnall Cucorny. In where? That's not words.

[00:01:38] It's a little bit Welsh. I love saying it. It's such a happy word. That's not a word. That's just nonsense. Say it again. It's not really good rhythm. I can't, because I'm laughing now. Okay. It is Clang for Hagnall Cucorny. Bollocks. Why does this start with a double L? Because most places do in Wales. That's just stupid. Is that...

[00:02:06] So now you're dissing the Welsh language okay? It's because every single word has 17 L's in it. There's no need. And you don't pronounce any of them. Or if you do it. Yeah, you've basically got to have a frog in your throat. Yeah. It's all a shape. Stop it. Behave.

[00:02:33] Anyway, so it's in the shadow of The Skirrid in Clang for Hagnall Cucorny. And it is about probably a good, I want to say a good 400 years old. Nice. Maybe. I know that parts of it are much, much older. I think it goes back to the 1100s. Well, I've got it. It says it goes back 900 years.

[00:02:59] Yeah, parts of it, but not the actual building. So the inn itself is, you know, from the 1600s. Right, fair enough. Hi, Mum!

[00:03:17] Right. So 1600s is when The Skirrid was built initially, I want to say. And there are a lot of folklore-y stories and especially around Judge Jeffries. Now, do you know about like the first TV shows that went there for Ghost Hunting? It was Most Haunted. I believe Most Haunted. Stupid question.

[00:03:47] Most Haunted, I believe, was the first to go there and do their, you know, their ghost hunting. And I believe they were with Richard Felix. And I actually really like Richard Felix. He's quite, you know, a good historical kind of person. Quite level-headed. But of course, as we know, Most Haunted was quite often mostly faked. I did like Most Haunted, though.

[00:04:14] It was okay for back in the day, but then as more sort of ghost programs. Yeah. And then you watched, what's her name? Yvette Fielding, slobbering so much, you could always see snot up her nose and it was just horrific. Like a Blair Witch. Yeah, like a Blair Witch. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so... Are you got fucking Derek Acorah fucking speaking to fucking nobody? Say that again? Are you got Derek Acorah just speaking to fucking nobody?

[00:04:42] Wow, now he gets to speak to all the spirits because he too is a spirit, so... That's a very good point. There's only one good thing that he did on that program. Which was what, Yvette? No, Mary loves dick. What? Have you not seen it? Oh, fuck. Have you not seen that one? He gets possessed and then he just has to go, Mary loves dick. Mary loves dick.

[00:05:12] You're kidding me. I'll send you it. Oh my God. Right. Anyway. Anyway, this is not the Skirrid. I get sidetracked, I'm boss. Carry on. I'm going to shut up. No, what do you know about the Skirrid? Because I want to know your input. You told me that it's in Wales. And that is literally it. That's all you know. I know there was a lot of hangings happening there, wasn't there? No.

[00:05:42] All right. Well, I'm thinking of something else. Yes, but no. Right. So on that note, the main sort of figure that is supposedly present is Judge Jeffries. Right. Who was this supposedly, I believe he was born late 1600s.

[00:06:05] And he was supposedly like this really negative kind of tyrannical kind of judge. You know, he was very, very oppressive kind of person. Shit out. Known for his, yeah, known for shouting at everybody in the courtrooms, apparently. And he may have, there is no definitive figure, but I think it's something like 300 people were sentenced to hanging by him.

[00:06:35] Nice. And he sent away, I don't know what the term is called now, but basically had to go to West Indies. So a lot of people were sentenced to go and. Banished. Live out the, yeah, banished to the West Indies. But yeah, he was known. That's a bit random. Well, he was known for being this like tyrannical, like really oppressive. All places though. Yeah, I know.

[00:07:05] They could have gone to Australia or something. That would have been better, surely. Was it even discovered by then? Well, yeah. We probably already filled it up ourselves by then, so. Anyway. So Judge Jeffries, supposedly the most oppressive judge at the time. There was some kind of Monmouthshire uprising that he was responsible for dealing with the people, you know, that caused the uprising. Hi.

[00:07:33] Are you doing some Googling right now? No, I've got a little bit on my phone here. You can go, oh my God, Poppy's so wrong right now. Anyway. So Mr. Judge Jeffries is allegedly one of the most renowned figures or shadow figures, ghosts, apparitions that is in the Skirid.

[00:08:02] However, however, he was never actually linked to working in the Skirid. So why the hell would he be there then? Again, is this a little bit of folklore, a little bit of myth, a little bit of tales that have got wrangled in over time? And he's allegedly there, but is he there? And this is where, like, the historical context comes into play.

[00:08:31] And I always say, before you go into an investigation, really look into the facts, really look into the information. Go backwards. Always go backwards before you can go forwards. Fair enough. That's my take on that one. But another one is the supposed apparition of Fanny Price, who died at the age of 30. Don't, you're smirking.

[00:09:03] He's such a child. He is such a child. No, because there's a genuine reason to why I can laugh at that. Why are you laughing? Because Billy's last name is Price and he's a bit of a fanny. So from now on, that's what I'm going to call him. Fanny Price. Exactly. Carry on. Long live Fanny Price. But she is, she is,

[00:09:31] one of the landladies from back in the Victorian times. And she died of TB, as a lot of people did back in the times. And then her body is in the cemetery, which is really close to the Skirrid. Now, again, she's linked to being at the Skirrid. But there's not really a lot of information on her. Yeah.

[00:09:56] So there's a lot of sort of folklore-y stories and whatnot about her. But, you know, the whole thing about her smelling like lavender and I don't know, God knows what other stories there are. But I think it's a lot of people over time have just put their stories in, have put their inputs in. And I will talk about my own personal experiences that I've had there.

[00:10:25] Because, no pun intended, but it really was one of my old haunts back in my 20s. Fair enough. So I do know, I do know that place pretty dang well. And then the other sort of little bit of folklore. Now, people know the story of the Devil's Cup. Do you know about the Devil's Cup? I've heard of the Devil's Chair. Yeah, this is a little bit different. This is a little bit different.

[00:10:52] So the Devil's Cup is supposedly filled with ale by the landlord. Now, people get this wrong all the time. And they say it's to keep the devil at bay or it's, you know, the devil himself walked into the skirrid and all that kind of jazz. It's not.

[00:11:12] It's basically an old custom by landlords and landladies to keep away bad luck and to sort of suppress any bad juju, negative energy, anything like that. They would fill up a tankard of ale and leave it on the fireplace or wherever their desired place was, you know. Like keeping a dead cat in the walls. Yeah, basically.

[00:11:41] See, I've told loads of people that and people think I'm mental. I'm glad you know about that. Yeah, yeah. So there are so many superstition customs that go out throughout Wales and Britain. And this is just one of them. It does not mean that the Devil himself walked into the skirrid. Although they do a fantastic, you know, steak and ale pie. So no wonder he would want to go there. But, you know, at the same time, it didn't happen.

[00:12:10] It did not happen. It might have done. You don't know that. It didn't happen. How do you know? It's bollocks, as you say. It is bollocks. All right, fair enough. I'm being Liam. It's bollocks. Fair enough. So there's a lot of these, like, folklore, myths, legends around the skirrid.

[00:12:36] So I, myself, I had a few weird experiences that are actually quite synonymous with the place. And I didn't know at the time. I did not know. I was very young. I was about 22, 23 maybe. And one of the very first things that happened. Now, I did know about the locks on the women's toilets. So apparently, you just get locked in for no reason.

[00:13:06] Now, these are very, like, yeah, yeah. These are very, like, loose-fitting, old metal kind of, like, latches, you know, that you can just, like, flick up. Right. So I remember I went to the toilet and I was very aware of this. So I jiggled, I jiggled the latch. And I was like, it doesn't stick. It's, you know, there's no reason for it to stick or whatever or get stuck.

[00:13:32] So I went to the toilet, did my thing, did my business, let myself out, went to let myself out. Do you think I could get out? Yeah. No. I could, I could not get out of that bathroom. And I'm just like, ah, shit, it's happened. But nothing, there was no, like, temperature drops. There was no, like, weirdness. It was just, like, the door would not open. Yeah, that's weird.

[00:14:03] It is weird. And I did check. I checked because, obviously, I knew, I sort of knew this little story. So I did my little checks beforehand and it happened. It did happen. Very bizarre. And then I had a few instances and it was usually around where the old dartboard is or was. I don't know if it's still there now. I haven't been to the Skirid in many, many years. I would just suddenly start choking.

[00:14:32] I know, I know, right. I know this sounds ridiculous. I know. It was almost like an external force. I was not having an anaphylaxis attack. I was not just choking on my drink. It wasn't like, you know, you take something down the wrong hole. Do not say anything rude. But you know what I mean? Like, when you have a drink and it just goes down the wrong hole. Yes. It wasn't like that.

[00:15:01] It was like an external kind of constriction. Or was it like when you just choke on air? Or is that just me? I think that's just you. Have you ever just, like, choked on nothing? I have, yeah. But I like to think I've just choked on a flight or something. I never say it's nothing. Fair enough. But it wasn't like that. It was like a very external force. Right.

[00:15:31] And this happened to me a couple of times. And then gradually over time, I got to know Jeff. And Jeff was the landlord. He isn't anymore. He's since recently sold it on to a lady. I think she was one of the bar staff or something. So I've been told. But, yeah, so I got to know Jeff a little bit. And because I used to go there most weekends and whatever. And I said to him, you know, I do pick up on spiritual things.

[00:15:58] You know, as I've grown older, I want to say it's more of a mediumship. But at the time, I would have said I was more like spiritual sensitive. Right. And I talked to him about that. And he said, OK, go upstairs. Go up into the bedrooms. Have a little look. But don't go into, I can't remember which one it was. It might be number three. Because somebody was in there. And I was like, OK, yeah, fair enough. So went up to one and two. Now, I can't remember the numbers on the door. But I do remember the door that had the mirror.

[00:16:27] So you open up the door. And you're just like literally met by a mirror. That room opened it up ominous as fuck. Just like completely. It's like what came out. The energy was just so negative, heavy, oppressive. I did not want to go into that room. And I don't think I did, to be honest. I didn't. It was just really ominous and horrible. And I just didn't like the feel of it.

[00:16:57] Fair enough. The next one over. Again, I don't know the room numbers. But the next one over. I went into. And all I could feel was like this really lighthearted kind of energy. Like, and in my mind's eye, I could see children just moving jewelry around. So I feel like things were often moved in that bedroom. But that's all I really picked up on.

[00:17:24] And when I went downstairs and I told Jeff what I'd, you know, thought, felt, seen in my mind. He was just sort of like, yeah, that's, that is how it is. I've lived here long enough. And yeah, that's it. He said, people do get it wrong. But I've lived here. And, you know, that's, that is it, you know. So I was like, oh, okay, fair enough. And then a few years later, or months, whatever, don't know, don't know, whatever, whatever time period. Spent so much time there.

[00:17:55] Would be out in the garden, in the beer garden. And I felt like there was somebody buried in the garden. Because I used to walk around, like, the little perimeter. And I felt like somebody was buried there. And... That must be a weird feeling. I know, it is. It's just like, I just knew somebody was buried there. Now, there's no specific evidence. That just sounds very sus.

[00:18:25] Yeah, but then again, mediumship again is like, it's different, isn't it? It's like... It makes you sound guilty, is what it does. I'm saying nothing. I do have a composter. My garden is very concreted over. I agree. So there's someone that would be a fucking patio there. It's like fucking Brookside now. Yeah, I don't have, I don't have a patio though. It's just completely, completely concrete. That's even worse.

[00:18:54] Don't have a basement, sadly. Might have a few barrels. Might have a few barrels. Hey, we're going from fucking Brookside to fucking Jeffrey Yama now. What the fuck is going on? Anyway, so I did a little bit of research years later. And allegedly, other people have said that there may be bodies within the grounds of the Skirid.

[00:19:25] So is that what I was picking up on? I don't know. Possibly. You'd imagine so then. Maybe we need to go and dig up the Skirid Garden. I'm not doing that. I've done my years of manual labour. I don't know. Perfect man for the job. All that experience. Definitely not. But yeah, so... Bad foot and everything now, so... It's all right. I've got bad back. I'm not doing none of the hard work.

[00:19:54] We'll have to find someone else to do it then. We'll just supervise. Yeah, we'll just supervise. We'll get the sniffer dogs in. The cadaver dogs. That's what we need is the cadaver dogs. You went all fucking Welsh then. I do live in Wales. That was ridiculous. Oh! Now, anyway... Anyway, sorry, I'm just drinking. Yeah, so there's a lot of folklore.

[00:20:24] There's a lot of, like, mystery. There's a lot of history. A lot of unexplained. These are my three trigger words, by the way. History, mystery, and the unexplained. I love these words because they are just fantastic. They sum up so much in the paranormal community. But if you do your history, do your research, then you will find that a lot of what is synonymous with the folklore didn't happen.

[00:20:54] Fair enough. There is obviously going to be some kind of spectral, spiritual experiences because this building has been there from the 1600s. Millions, millions and millions of people have walked through those doors. And again, it's this kind of, what's it called, sensationalism

[00:21:20] for ghost tourism because ghost tourism is a massive thing. Massive thing. And Skirid has done remarkably well as a pub and as a venue for ghost tourism. Do you think that affects stuff like that, though? Yes. Massively. In a good way or a bad way?

[00:21:47] Good for business, bad for paranormal community. Because the amount of people that are going to go there expecting all these paranormal occurrences and whatever that don't happen, that then get sensationalized, that then snowballs into this kind of, it just adds into the myth and the folklore, doesn't it? Yeah.

[00:22:12] But then it leads them future investigators, like what's true, what's not true. And again, as I keep saying, just go back in history. That is your friend. History will always be your friend because history is facts. Well, at least we think it is. If you can find the records, if you have got a paranormal historian, like I do. People can't lie, can they?

[00:22:42] And you can find the records and you can find, you know, all the relative details and information, then that's not going to lie. That is going to be your best friend. Not necessarily. Please don't do this. I mean, I'll admit I'm being a dick, but, you know, people are dicks. I understand that people can lie. I understand that.

[00:23:11] But when you've got things like land censuses and, you know, the details of the people that owned it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, those are the things that don't lie. It's the personal details that are the ones that you have to be sort of like wary of. Yeah, yeah. I was just being a dick. Yeah. What changes? Not a lot. Exactly.

[00:23:40] But yeah, so I think go back, go back in history, find the details, do the deep dives, actually separate the folklore from the truth. And realise that actually, you know, these TV shows and these ghost tourism talks and ghost nights and all that kind of stuff isn't always going to be truthful.

[00:24:07] Yeah, because it's like any haunted place. I mean, in theory, everywhere should be haunted. Yes, of course. But you're not going to get the same amount of activity every single day of the week. Like you might get days where, you know, tables and chairs are being flung across the room and stuff like that. You might get, then the next night, nothing will happen. Like I say, it does happen.

[00:24:38] I've investigated, like, locations multiple times. Times when stuff has happened, times when stuff hasn't happened. And to me, that's one of the things that makes it more believable for me. Because I'd question it if I'm to a place and the same stuff happened all the time. Yeah. As Gethin from my group has said, and you know, you've had Gethin on your podcast. He's quite a credible kind of person. He has always said,

[00:25:05] there are places that you will not get a single thing from. And you're lucky if you walk away with one EVP. Yeah. You're, it's sometimes unheard of going to a place and having all this photographic evidence and, you know, EVPs and, I don't know, SLS and whatever else, you know, whatever it is that you're using. You don't always get this, you know, huge bundle of, of evidence.

[00:25:35] But again, I, I just think this whole sensationalism, and I'm not bashing like the medium community at all, because mediumship is very, it's one of those things that, like I've said before, it's very internalized. It's very personal. It's very like third person kind of, you know, it's, it's not a solid evidence. You can count it as part of,

[00:26:03] and if it does actually correlate to the facts, then fantastic. And you, you get that correlation, but the amount of mediums that have been there, and they just say the same thing over and over and over again, Fannie Price, Judge Jeffries, da, da, da, da, da. It's the same thing. It's like, tell us something new. Tell us something new that's credible. You know? And it's. Yeah, but when it's, when it's that well-known and it's that old, and they're the main,

[00:26:33] they're the main ones connected to it. But they're not. That's, that's the thing as well. It's like, I don't understand why Judge Jeffries is the one that is allegedly there when he wasn't there. Yeah. You know, like, why? Why, why is he there? Did he, you know, throughout his career, he wasn't necessarily at the Skirrid. Hmm.

[00:27:03] Might have liked it there. Maybe. I mean, I hope that one day when, when I'm a ghost, I get to haunt at the Skirrid. I put that down on my to-do list as a ghost. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Because I, I always, I always wonder like, like with, with the rules when you're a ghost, because like there's some that can go all over the place and then there's some that are like trapped in places and stuff like that. And I'm just like, how does it all work?

[00:27:33] I've wondered this also. Like, what is the parameters? Because I don't know. I don't know if you remember, um, was it being human? I think it was being human where it was a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Bristol. But then it was like, didn't she, the ghost end up being able to travel around with them because they moved? I can't remember. Again, very fictional, but you know, whatever. And then there's other,

[00:28:02] there's other TV shows like, um, I forgot what it's called now. I love having my own blanks. We're going to blame the heat. We always blame the heat. Exactly. Um, but there was another show that was like about ghosts and it's in like, um, one of these old style houses, like the big mansion houses. And they just stay put, they stay put in their, in their area. And, um, but yeah, I,

[00:28:32] I've been curious for a long time. How does it work? Cause I sincerely hope that when I die, I'm not stuck in cum. Like I don't want to be stuck here forever. I don't want to be here forever. I want to end up like in, I don't know, the skirrid. Uh, I want to go back to my happy times. So that like the happier places that I've been, take me back to Florida, please. That's too hot.

[00:29:02] At least they've got air conditioning. And when you're a ghost, you don't really feel temperature. I mean like can go sweat. There's a big question. Well, no, because that's a human bodily function. When you're spirit, you don't have a body. So no, I'd assume not. All right. We're getting all scientific and boring about it. Fine. It's ruining it. Didn't you? I'm too logical. Autism.

[00:29:36] Okay. No, well, I've, I, I've got something down here about some Welsh rebel leader or something. Do you know about that? Um, that would probably be, I would assume, Owen Glyndor. Yeah, we'll go with that. I think I could be very wrong. Not a historian, just somebody that picks up. That's what it looks like to me, but obviously it's in, it's in weird Welsh language.

[00:30:07] Allegedly, I think he met with the rebel forces outside of the Skirrid. Yeah, that's, that's what it says here during his rebellion against Henry VIII in the early 1400s. Yeah. Yeah. It says there's no firm evidence confirming it happened there. So that's helpful. History and folklore. Exactly. Sometimes they merge and they make a weird, wonderful baby. Yeah.

[00:30:38] Well, oh. So that's the Skirrid. There's going to be so many different spookies there because over the years, there have been thousands, millions of people and souls walk through those doors. And as we know, with a lot of publican kind of houses and taverns and inns and that kind of thing, there will always be hauntings because of the human imprint. I have a rule.

[00:31:07] If a pub claims to not be haunted, then it's not a pub. It's not allowed to be. It's not allowed to be. No. I mean, unless they've literally just started up and they've built a brand new fresh pub, that's the only time we can go, yeah, all right, fine, whatever. What about the land that it's on? Yeah. But again, you could pick a spot that's not had any historical imprint. Yeah. Cause there's loads of them, isn't there? You could build it in a fucking forest.

[00:31:36] I don't know. Build it up in the sky. I don't fucking know. Plane crash. Floating pub. Floating pub. Yeah. Plane crash up there. Aliens. Exactly. Yeah. Right. I think we need to call it a day because my eyes are burning because I've literally got sweat running in. You're not allowed to sweat.

[00:32:07] Oh, thank God it's fucking choice. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine. I've got my eyes packed. I've got my fans. I am so cool. No, well, all right for some. Right. Let's end it. Okay. So stay tuned for more history, mystery, and the unexplained. Fair enough. I was going to leave it there. I'm just going to end it now.

[00:32:40] The Spooky Shed Podcast is a Podshed production. This podcast is part of Podomity, the UK's podcast comedy network. Why not laugh at what else we've got? Visit Podomity.com.