This week on Text Me When You Get Home, Sophie, Craig and Shaun discuss the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. The case is said to be the first, and perhaps the most credible, reporting of an alien abduction.

Show notes and episode details available on the Textme.show website episode page.

So, this week, we’re taking a detour from last week’s excursion to the 1950s with Betty, Barney and their sausage dog Delsey, and journey to a small Lancashire town in the early 1600s and discuss one of the most infamous witch trials in British history, the Trial of the Pendle Witches. And we’ll see how paranoia, sectarianism, political ambition, rivalling neighbours and familial betrayal led to trials that saw 10 people executed by hanging for crimes of witchcraft, and in doing so, setting a precedent that would have drastic consequences nearly 80 years later across the pond in Salem, Massachusetts.

Read more on the website: https://textme.show/episodes/episode-2-the-pendle-witch-trials

This week, we discussed the life and death of John Allen Chau; the US missionary that made it his life’s mission to bring Christianity to the secluded and sheltered island of North Sentinel. The Sentinelese people are known to be hostile to outsiders and have killed people who have come close to the island in the past (even accidentally). John knew how dangerous the trip was but felt the gain outweighed the risk. Listen to the episode to find out the full story and visit the show notes at https://textme.show/episodes/episode-3-the-murder-of-john-allen-chau.

This week we’ll be telling the story of the Murder of Julia Martha Thomas. In 1879 a ghastly crime gripped England, a woman was murdered, mutilated, boiled and thrown in the Thames while her Irish maid assumed her identity and maybe even tried to sell her body fat as “Prime dripping”.

It’s a story that gripped the nation back in 1879 and was dubbed “The Richmond Murder” or “The Barnes Mystery” and which has surprising repercussions in the modern day.

Read more on the episode page.

So with the festive season firmly under way and Christmas just around the corner, I thought we’d have a bit of a change of pace this week, have a bit of fun and learn more about a darker, creepier side to Christmas. And as we’ll find out, it’s not all about the jolly bearded fatman, his army of rosy-cheeked elves in the toyshop and the bright nosed reindeer that pull’s his sleigh. We’ve got fork-tongued devils, creepy scarecrows, increasingly controversial pirate dwarves, and a porridge-loving witch to name but a few! So, you best be good, boys and girls – or you might get visited by one of this creepy Christmas contingent, who’ll do a bit more than just leave coal in ya stocking.

Full show notes available on the episode page.

Mary Ann Cotton was convicted and hanged for murdering her stepson Charles Edward Contton by way of arsenic but she may have murdered as many as 21 people, including 11 of her 13 children mostly to collect insurance policies.

This episode we’ll be discussing what took her from “a girl of innocent disposition and average intelligence” to one of the most notorious murderers of the 19th Century.

Read the full show notes on the episode page.

Listen to the story of the haunted Ham House and the spooky Woman in Black that watches over it. 

Read the full show notes on the episode page.

When Sidney Gottleib died at the age of 80 in August 1999, his obituaries tell us of a spiritual, family man who raised goats and held a long-standing passion for polka dancing. The New York Times described him as ‘… a kind of genius’. Another obituary, taking a slightly different angle, called him a ‘mad scientist’ while another labelled him as a ‘20th century Jekyll and Hyde’. For as well as his goats and his polkas, there was another side to Gottleib, one we were probably never meant to know. For Gottleib worked as a scientist and chemist for the CIA and would lead the ‘most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control’, MKULTRA

Full show notes available at https://textme.show/episodes/episode-8-sidney-gottlieb-and-mkultra