Mae'r gweld gennym ni, dyma gwybod i'n gweld i'n gweithio i gweithio i'r 2019 sy'n Gwg Williams. Mae'n gweld i'n gweld i'n gweld i Lady Sally Williams i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r Gwg Williams, ac i'r newid yn bwysig i'n gweithio i'r gwneud hynny. Mae gennym ni'n gweld i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i Lady Hale, vyny'n gweithio i'r gwneud yn llyfridd. Mae'r Gwg Williams i'n gweld i'n gweld i'n gweld i'n 2001 ar y llwyllfyn ysgrifennid ar y Fwrddol. Mae'n fydda i gael i'r byw ynchydigfaint ac ymddangosol gyda John Nolan a Michael Russ. Mae wedi gwrs wedi gweithio ar Walson Cymru o'r cymryddau Cymru, ac mae'r David William wedi fynd i'r ysgolwlad yn 1980-1992. Mae'n mynd i'r ysgolwlad John Nolan a Michael Russ i dda i gael i'r ysgolwlad yma. Over almost 20 years now, which has served as a testament to Sir David's extraordinary contributions both to his subject, to the faculty and the university, as a scholar and an intellectual and institutional leader. I also want to express my thanks on behalf of the faculty to all who have taken part in making this evening possible, to my colleague Daniel Bates, Claire Gordon, Felicity Eve Ray and Tanya Lanham, and most importantly to Alice Young, who has done so much to organise this evening's event. Let me turn then to Sir David. Sir David was born in Camarthen in Wales and as those who were fortunate enough to know him will attest, his passion for Wales stayed with him throughout his life. He was delighted in 2007 to be appointed the first Chancellor of Swansea University, having been the President of the former University of Wales Swansea since 2001. After national service in the Royal Air Force, Sir David achieved first in history and in law here at Emmanuel College in Cambridge. He went on to hold academic posts at Nottingham and at Oxford and then returned to Emmanuel where he served ultimately as senior tutor. During that period Sir David published many cutting edge pieces of work, perhaps most notably his books on not in the public interest and keeping the peace. He became a reader in the Faculty of Law in 1976 and President of Wilson College four years later. In 1989 he became the first head of a non-traditional college to be Vice-Chancellor of the University and subsequently he became the first full-time Vice-Chancellor serving until 1996. During his tenure he was knighted and appointed an honorary QC. On completing his term as Vice-Chancellor he reverted to a Professor of the Faculty of Law and retired officially in 1998. I say officially because thereafter Sir David remained a welcome and significant presence in the Faculty. When I joined the Faculty a couple of years after he retired I was fortunate to get to know him a little and to benefit from his advice and encouragement as I began my own academic career. In doing so I was just one of many many young scholars who benefited from David's generosity and wise counsel. Ever since the inaugural Sir David Williams lecture in 2001 delivered by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor we have been treated to a series of lectures by leading academics, practitioners and judges drawn from across the common law world including in Lord Bingham, the senior law lord, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and the Chief Justice of New Zealand, South Africa and last year Canada. We are delighted that this evening's lecture will be given for the first time by the Presidents of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Baroness Hale of Richmond studied law here in Cambridge graduating in 1966. She went on to be called to the bar and to teach for a number of years at Manchester University where she became a Professor of Law. In 1984 Lady Hale was appointed to the Law Commission, the Children Act being one of the many reforms that resulted from her time there. Her judicial career began in 1989, went to become a recorder and then a member of the High Court in 1994, the Court of Appeal in 1999 and the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords in 2004. In 2013 she was appointed Deputy President of the Supreme Court and four years later succeeded Lord Newburger as its President. Now it's commonplace for those who introduce Lady Hale to know that her career has been one of many thirsts as she has broken through glass ceiling after glass ceiling blazing a trail for others. But commonplace may it though be to point that out, it's nevertheless important, particularly this year as we marked the 100th anniversary of the Sex Disqualification Removal Act that paved the way for women to become lawyers for the first time in this country. Among the many notable thirsts that characterised Lady Hale's career are the fact that she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission, the first person to be appointed to the High Court bench from a career not as a barrister but as an academic and public servant, the first woman to be appointed to the UK Supreme Court and the first woman to serve as President of that Court. She is also, as far as I'm aware, the first and only judge to be the subject of a children's book and the first and only judge to be described most recently in a BBC interview as the Beyonce of the Law. Perhaps just as notably, when this comparison was first drawn to Lady Hale's attention it was clear from her reaction that she knew exactly who Beyonce was, another judicial thirst. Lady Hale is incredibly generous with her time in relation to this and many other universities. We were very fortunate that she, along with many others, including her Supreme Court colleague Lady Arden, joined us in Cambridge only two or three weeks ago to launch our Cambridge Women in Law initiative. We're delighted that she has returned to the faculty this evening to present the 19 Sir David Williams lecture on principle and pragmatism in public law. Lady Hale. Thank you very much indeed for the very kind introduction and of course for the invitation because I regard it as a great privilege to be giving a lecture in memory of Sir David Williams. He was a great academic, a great teacher, a great vice chancellor and university administrator, but above all he was a great person. I remember about 45 years ago when he was an external examiner at the University of Manchester. And we entertained the external examiners and universities law faculty staff for a informal meal in our home in Derbyshire and it was quite a lively noisy occasion and I became aware that David had disappeared. And what had happened was I found him sitting at the bottom of the stairs with our two-year-old daughter who had crept down the stairs because she was so interested in what was going on. She's always been interested in what's going on amongst the grown-ups and David of course was far more interested in entertaining her than he could be in entertaining the assembled staff of the university. I can see that his daughter is nodding this strike zone so it's lovely to see his children and the grandson here today as well. But what on earth to talk about? Well I'm not going to talk about that. But earlier this year I gave the Freshfields lecture here in this faculty on the subject of principle and pragmatism in private law. This was of course an echo of the Hamlin lectures given by the late great Patrick Atier in 1987 on pragmatism and theory in English law. He discussed the tendency of English lawyers by which he meant practitioners and judges rather than academics. Not only to be more inclined towards the pragmatic and hostile to the theoretical but positively to glory in this approach. He went on to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the pragmatic tradition. He deplored a more general tendency to decide cases ad hoc to try and settle disputes by wholly pragmatic means without regard to the principles of law and the broader purposes which those principles must have. And I found it easy earlier this year to consider examples where judicial pragmatism had indeed overcome principle in the law of contract, of tort and family law. So it seemed obvious when I was asked months ago to suggest that this lecture should be entitled principle and pragmatism in public law. But it hasn't turned out such an easy lecture to those. It's possible to craft pragmatic solutions to private disputes between individuals or businesses and in private law this can be dressed up under such concepts as fair, just and reasonable. Now that's pragmatism written on stilts or public policy even more so. But is there an equivalent in public law? Well I've picked out three topics. One which seems to me to be almost entirely pragmatic rather than principled and that is the practice sometimes known as deference. One which seems to me to be dressed up as a principle subject but is arguably more pragmatic and that is the doctrine of legitimate expectation. And one which seems to me to be soundly based in principle even though its results may sometimes seem very far from pragmatic and that is the principle of legality. So deference. Judicial deference is the process whereby courts differ or attach overwhelming weight to the judgments of parliament or the executive in certain matters. Of course the judges don't like the term deference. In the pro-life alliance case Lord Hoffman didn't think that its quote over tones of servility or perhaps gracious concession end quote were appropriate to describe what was happening. In a society based on the rule of law and the separation of powers it was necessary to decide which branch of government has the decision making power and what those powers are. In that case the question is whether parliament was entitled to make part of political broadcasts subject to the requirements of taste and decency to which all other broadcasts were subject. That in his view was a perfectly proper decision for parliament as representative of the people to make so he didn't even examine it for its consistency with human rights. I think we may have moved on a little bit since then. Then again in the Lord Carlisle case Lord Sumption suggested that academic criticism of the concept quote arises from the word with its overtones of cringing abstention in the face of superior status. Well Lord Sumption has never been guilty of cringing abstention. There we go. So of course he doesn't like it either. He went on of course assigning weight to the decision makers judgment had nothing to do with deference in the ordinary sense of the term. It had two sources the constitutional principle of the separation of powers and the quote pragmatic view about the evidential value of certain judgments of the executive whose force will vary according to the subject matter end quote. That case was not about a decision of parliament but a decision taken by the Home Secretary that excluding a prominent Iranian dissident from the country was conducive to the public good. Deference is not the same as non justice ability. It doesn't apply automatically with reference to particular subject matters and it carries no presumption that the court will have inadequate expertise. Each case is judged in its own context. It's this variability that opens up the element of pragmatism as Professor Jowell has observed there is no magic legal or other formula to identify the discretionary area of judgment available to the reviewed body. Like Professor Jowell in his well-known 2003 article I don't think appeals to the separation of powers or to the greater democratic legitimacy of executive decision makers are a great deal of help in enabling us to decide in which cases to defer and in which cases not to do so. It is of course correct that parliament is accountable to the electorate and the executive is accountable to parliament but that is true of all legislative and executive decision makers. It cannot invariably be a reason for deferring to what parliament or the executive has decided. The whole purpose of giving legal recognition to individual human rights is to enable them to be asserted in the face of decisions made by democratically accountable actors. We have to ask ourselves very carefully which decisions we should respect and why. It's important I think to distinguish between the decisions of parliament as represented by acts of parliament and the decisions of the executive. Judicial views on deference to parliament differ widely. Lord Stain in his famous lecture, deference, a tangled story, endorses the statement of Madame Justice McLaughlin in the Supreme Court of Canada on the limits of the deference principle. She said, care must be taken not to extend the notion of deference too far. Parliament has its role to choose the appropriate response to social problems within the limiting framework of the constitution. But the courts also have a role to determine objectively and impartially whether parliament's choice falls within the limiting framework of the constitution. The courts are no more committed to abdicate their responsibility than is parliament. To carry judicial deference to the point of accepting parliament's view simply on the view that the problem is so serious and the solution so difficult will be to diminish the role of the courts in the constitutional process and to weaken the structure of rights upon which our constitution and nation is founded. We do not of course have a written constitution or a charter of fundamental rights as does Canada. But we do have a human rights act which expressly contemplates that the courts will consider the compatibility of provisions in acts of parliament with the convention rights. Why else do we have the duty of conforming interpretation in section 3 subsection 1? A duty which I employed only earlier this week and the power to make declarations of incompatibility in section 4. Furthermore, we have to have regard to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and other Council of Europe organs. So what part should deference play in those processes? Should the courts take a different view of the respect owed to the judgement of parliament according to whether the matter is A, one on which Strasberg has made its view clear or B, one on which Strasberg has not yet expressed a definitive view or C, one which Strasberg would regard as falling within the margin of appreciation which it allows to member states? Well, this last scene is the most difficult case. And in the case of Nicklinson, the Supreme Court expressed a range of views. Most of you will know the facts, but here's a brief recap. Mr Nicklinson had suffered a catastrophic stroke which left him almost completely paralysed, unable to speak or carry out any physical functions on his own except limited movements of his eyes and head. But he wasn't dependent on life support. He communicated through the use of an idling computer.  He didn't want to inflict upon his family the pain and suffering involved in watching him starve himself to death. He wanted a more humane and dignified exit from the world. The case began as an argument that having a doctor administer a lethal injection will be justified under the common law defence of necessity or duress of circumstances. But it turned into an argument about assisted suicide when it emerged that an Australian doctor had invented a machine which could be activated to deliver a lethal drug by means of the idling computer. So in the Supreme Court the focus was on whether the absolute ban on assisting suicide contained in Section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 was incompatible with Mr Nicklinson's article 8 rights. There was no doubt that his article 8 rights were engaged. This had been confirmed by the Strasberg Court in the cases of past, poor and gross. In Pretty and the United Kingdom however the court had also taken the view that a universal ban on assisting suicide, especially when coupled with a flexible prosecution policy was justified in order to protect vulnerable people. As a suprinational court they could fall back on the wide margin of appreciation according to member states in an area where there is as yet no European consensus in favour of committing assisted suicide quite the reverse. Now when the Strasberg Court accords a wide margin of appreciation to member states it is left to their own constitutional arrangements to decide what to do. So should the Supreme Court leave the question entirely to Parliament? In other words is Parliament the sole arbiter of what is and is not compatible with the Convention rights in the United Kingdom law? Or should the Supreme Court address the issues in proceedings brought under the Human Rights Act and reach conclusions on them? Of course leaving it to Parliament to decide whether the law should be changed. In Nicklinson the justices all I think took the view that there were occasions when the courts could decide upon the United Kingdom solution to an issue which Strasberg would leave to the member states. The House of Lords under no less than Lord Hoffman had done that with Northern Ireland's ban on joint adoptions by unmarried couples. But this was a ban contained, that was a ban contained in delegated not primary legislation. So four of the justices in Nicklinson thought that the whole issue should be left to Parliament and the court should not even express a view on what the answer was. Lord Sumtrin gave three reasons. First it involved a choice between two fundamental but mutually inconsistent moral values upon which there was no consensus in society. Second Parliament had made the choice. Third the parliamentary process was a better way of resolving issues involving controversial and complex issues of fact arising out of moral and social dilemmas. This is of course a view which Lord Sumtrin has elaborated very persuasively in his re-lectures. Lord Hughes took the simple view that this was very clearly a matter for Parliament. Lord Clark agreed that Parliament was the preferable forum and that imposing the personal opinions of professional judges would lack all constitutional legitimacy. Lord Reid accepted that the Human Rights Act has entailed some adjustment of the respective constitutional roles of the courts, the executive and the legislature but it didn't eliminate the difference between them. It didn't alter the fact that certain issues were by their very nature more suitable for determination by government or Parliament than by the courts. Now were the views of those four justices pragmatic or principled? I think I've summarised them fairly. Five of the justices thought that it would not be institutionally inappropriate for the court to address the issue. Rwilling it out would be an abdication of judicial responsibility. Lord Newberger observed that it was not possible precisely to identify the boundary between the area where it is legitimate for the courts to step in and the area where it is not. But he, along with Lord Mance and Lord Wilson, thought that the time was not yet ripe to do so. Those of you who have read Michael Cosmograph of Academica will know that in academic circles there is something called the doctrine of the unripe time which is used to justify any failure to do anything about anything in university politics. But I don't think that's what they would do. It was not for doctrinal but for largely pragmatic reasons and I have great sympathy with them because the case had started on quite a different footing and so the evidence was not addressed to the issue of assisted suicide as Lord Mance put it. This was an invitation to short cut potentially sensitive and difficult issues of fact and expertise by relying on secondary material and he was right about that. But my own view shared by Lord Kerr was that the question could be answered by reference to principle rather than evidence. It could confidently be concluded that the ban was overbraw. As the Canadian Supreme Court would later put it when deciding that their own ban was unconstitutional. Experience with comparable end of life decisions showed that a procedure could be devised for identifying those people who should exceptionally be allowed help to end their own lives. I too expressed the view that Parliament was much the preferable forum in which the issue should be decided indeed in a sense. It's the only forum in which it can be decided because only Parliament can change the law quite right too. But having reached the firm conclusion that the law was not compatible with the convention rights there was little to be gained and much to be lost by not making a declaration of incompatibility. It does seem to me that Section 4 of the Human Rights Act has introduced an important development in our constitutional arrangements by expecting courts to make the same sorts of judgement as are made by the courts in countries which do have a written constitution in which fundamental rights are entrenched and thereby creating a feedback mechanism from the courts to the sovereign legislature. We can accept, for the reasons given by Lord Sumtrin, that Parliament is the preferable place for such decisions to be made, but if Parliament fails to act in the face of clear incompatibility, it seems to me that it's our duty to say so. As Lord Newberger pointed out, difficult or unpopular decisions which need to be taken are on some occasions more easily grasped by judges than by the legislature. Perhaps indeed there is an element of pragmatism on the part of Parliament in its failure to act. Hence, deference is in my view principally relevant when it comes to making judgements about the justification or executive interferences with the convention rights. We are required to decide whether an interference is necessary in a democratic society or whether a fair balance has been struck between the rights of the individual and the interests of society or the community at large. In many contexts these are difficult things for judges to decide. The courts may well think that political actors are better qualified to decide them. Not so much because of their democratic legitimacy, but because of their practical competence. They know so much more about it than we can ever know. Two examples bring to mind. In the Belmarsh case, seven out of the eight judges in the majority, and I suspect also Lord Walker as the sole dissenter, were prepared to take the government's word for it that there was a public emergency threatening the life of the nation, which would justify derogating from the right to liberty from Article 5. I put it bluntly. Any sensible court, like any sensible person, recognises the limits of its expertise. Assessing the strength of a general threat to the life of the nation is, or should be, within the expertise of the government and its advisers. Protecting the life of the nation is one of the first tasks of a government in a world of nation states. Lord Hoffman famously dissented on this issue, but he did so not because he didn't accept that there was credible evidence of a threat of serious terrorist outrages, but on the basis that the government, and presumably also the other seven of us, had misunderstood what a threat to the life of the nation was. Terrorist groups did not threaten the life of the nation. Terrorism does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community. I think had he taken a different view of the law, he would have certainly taken the same view as we did with the facts. More difficult was the Lord Carlile case, in which we were asked to take the government's word for it, but to allow a prominent Iranian dissident into England in order to meet with parliamentarians in the Palace of Westminster would endanger our fragile but imperative relations with Iran. We all agreed that the court was the final arbiter of whether the undoubted interference in the free speech rights of Miserazavi and the parliamentarians was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. But we also agreed that on some parts of the analysis, the government was better placed than we were to make the judgment. Parts of it were essentially a question for fact. What were the risks and how strong were they? As Lord Suption put it, how is the court to determine where the balance lies if, one, it has no means of independently assessing the seriousness of the risks or the gravity of the consequences were they materialized? And two, the Secretary of State is not shown to have committed any error of principle in her own assessment of them. We're not, in point of law, bound to accept the factual assessment of the foreign office about the impact on our relations with Iran of admitting Mrs Rajavi to the United Kingdom. But if we reject it, we must have a proper basis for doing so. In this case, there is none. There is no challenge to the primary facts. We have absolutely no evidential basis and no expertise with which to substitute our assessment of the risks to national security, public safety and the rights of others for that of the foreign office. This was, as he himself had recognized, no more than a pragmatic view about the evidential value of certain judgments of the executive. Far more difficult are those cases which turn on the justification for decisions of the executive in matters of socio-economic policy. There is much to be said for Dworkin's dichotomy between principle involving moral rights against the state and policy involving utilitarian calculations of the public good and the allocation of public resources. But there are situations where that principle and that idea of policy overlap. We have had a torrid time with cases about the benefit cap, the so-called bedroom tax and the revised benefit cap. On the one hand, these were all complaints of discrimination. Indirect discrimination against women. Direct discrimination against disabled people. Plymonos discrimination that is failing to treat people in different positions differently against lone parents. The courts have tended to claim some expertise in recognising unjustified discrimination. The House of Lords did so in the adoption case of Regine, for example. One of the principle purposes of protecting fundamental rights is to safeguard what may be vulnerable or unpopular groups or individuals from the will of the majority. So discrimination is our job. On the other hand, the courts have tended to adopt the same approach as Strasberg in relation to measures of socio-economic policy, in particular when dealing with welfare benefits. The test is whether the measure is manifestly without reasonable justification. Even this has led to some sharp divergencies of view. Denying an extra bedroom where there is clearly a clearly demonstrable medical need for one was manifestly without reasonable justification. But depriving families with children of subsistence level benefits was not. There's obviously deference here by the majority, both to institutional competence and to democratic legitimacy. But is there not also an even greater element of pragmatism in it in the standard adopted not only here but also in Strasberg? So that's deference. What about legitimate expectation? This is another area where the courts might be accused of being guided by pragmatic rather than principled considerations. The Doctor of Legitimate Expectation is firmly presented as a principle. Essentially, a public authority which has, by a promise or practice, conferred upon person a legitimate expectation of a procedural or substantive benefit may not frustrate that expectation without justification. However, the underlying rationale for the concept is expressed rather broadly. The prevention of abuse of power and the promotion of good administration. And there's a powerful exposition by Lord Justice Laws in the Batmurphy case. The power of public authorities to change policy is constrained by the legal duty to be fair. A change of policy which would otherwise be legally unacceptable may be held unfair by reason of prior action or inaction by the authority. If it has distinctly promised to consult those affected or potentially affected, then ordinarily it must consult the paradigm case of procedural expectation. If it has distinctly promised to preserve existing policy for a specific personal group who would be substantially affected by the change, then ordinarily it must keep its promise, substantive expectation. If without any promise which has established a policy distinctly and substantially affecting a specific personal group who in the circumstances was in reason entitled to rely on its continuance and did so, then ordinarily it must consult before affecting any change. The second, the case of procedural expectation. To do other words in any of these instances would be to act so unfairly as to perpetrate an abuse of power. Now that all looked pretty precise doesn't it? Not quite the doctrine of a stopl but something very like it. But the analysis has a repeated theme of fairness. It's plainly scoped for pragmatism to play a part in the determination of what fairness requires in any particular context. When a court is testing whether there's been an abuse of power, it isn't confined to Wettonsbury review but has itself to weigh the impact of the frustration of the expectation on the individual or group against the wider public interest in failing to uphold it. Spring Court has recently looked at this area in the Finnecan case. The question was whether the government should be held to a promise made in 2004 to hold a public inquiry into the death of the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finnecan who'd been brutally murdered by loyalist terrorists in front of his wife and children in 1989. The requirements of good administration were again identified as underpinning the doctrine. Hence the court rejected the notion that public authorities could resolve from their commitments simply because the person or group to which such promises were made were unable to demonstrate a tangible disadvantage. However, when considering whether the frustration of this legitimate expectation was justified, the test adambrated was one of fairness. The court accepted that it should give great weight to macro-political issues and that the holding of a public inquiry in the circumstances is properly a matter for the Prime Minister's political judgment. Lord Kerr said this, where political issues overtake a promise are undertaken given by government and where contemporary considerations impel a different course provided a bona fide decision is taken on genuine policy grounds not to adhere to the original undertaking, it will be difficult for a person who holds a legitimate expectation to enforce compliance with it. Professor Mark Elliott has been critical of the reliance on the concept of good administration as the foundation for the doctrine of legitimate expectation. He describes good administration as a concept whose apparent capacity to support what is in reality a Catholic body of doctrine is a tribute of nothing more than its peculiarity. I like language, I do. We're not allowed to use it. He complains of an overarching problem that besets this area of administrative law, namely an unfortunate judicial tendency to seek to avoid difficult doctrinal and normative questions by sheltering behind superficially attractive but ultimately rather empty notions such as good administration and fairness. Such language may be intuitively appealing, but it is incapable of doing the sort of analytical heavy lifting that is required if the law in this area is to be placed on an intellectually cogent footing that lends itself to coherent doctrinal development, just so. That's why I am tempted to agree that this area of the law is more redolent of pragmatism than principle. So what about legality? Can we find something which is principle, more principle than pragmatic? Could the doctrine of legality be such an area? It is a rule of statutory construction. General words in an act of parliament will not be read so as to commit an intrusion into fundamental rights. Parliament can, of course, legislate to remove or restrict fundamental rights, but it has to do so in clear and express words so that the parliamentarians can understand what they are doing and be prepared to take political responsibility for doing it. A recent example is a case bought by the trade union Unison, challenging the Ordering Council imposing fees for bringing employment tribunal claims. The Supreme Court held that the general words in the act empowering the Lord Chancellor to prescribe tribunal fees were not clear enough to authorise setting fees at such a high rate as to make it impossible, impracticable or irrational to bring a claim. As the court explained, the purposes of the fees order were legitimate, making resources available to the justice system, thus securing access to justice, and deterring frivolous or vexatious claims, thus increasing the efficiency of the justice system. But that didn't permit the Lord Chancellor to prescribe whatever fees he chose if there was a real risk that people would be effectively prevented from having access to justice. The Supreme Court had the benefit of evidence about the impact of the fees which had not been available in the lower courts. Further, as Lord Reed explained, even where primary legislation authorises the imposition of an intrusion on the right of access to justice, it is presumed to be subject to an implied limitation. As it was put by Lord Bingham in daily, the degree of intrusion must not be greater than is justified by the objectives the measure is intended to serve. The same principle was invoked in the Supreme Court's decision in Evans, the case in which a Guardian journalist had made a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for disclosure of correspondence passing between the Prince of Wales and various government departments over a few months in 2004. The information tribunal, chaired by a High Court judge, heard evidence over several days, including the evidence of two professors of constitutional law, although neither of them from this university. Big puzzle, but one of them was from the University of Manchester, so that's all right. Anyway, they gave evidence about the conventions governing the relationship between the heir to the throne and the government. In a lengthy and carefully reasoned judgment, the tribunal concluded that the public interest in disclosure of many of the letters outweighed the various reasons given in the Act for refusing it. The tribunal had of course read the letters. The Act contains a power in Section 53 for ministers to override the decision of the tribunal and to veto disclosure if on reasonable grounds they consider it not to be in the public interest. Rather than exercising the right of appeal against the tribunal's decision, the Attorney General exercised this override power. Mr Evans then brought judicial review proceedings to challenge the decision of the Attorney General. He failed in the Divisional Court but succeeded in the Court of Appeal and by a majority of five to two in the Supreme Court. None of the judges hearing the judicial review proceedings had read the letters. I kept on being asked, you know, what do they say? Is it really all in spidery handwriting? No, no such thing. We had not seen the letters. That wasn't our point. We were simply ruling on the lawfulness of the Attorney General's decision. Lord Newburger, with whom Lord Perl and Lord Greed agree, said this. A statutory provision which entitles a member of the executive to overrule a decision of the judiciary merely because he doesn't agree with it would cut across two constitutional principles which are also fundamental components of the rule of law. First, a decision of a court is binding as between the parties and cannot be ignored or set aside by anyone. Secondly, decisions and actions of the executive are reviewable by the court but the suit of an interested citizen. Section 53, as interpreted by the Attorney General's argument in this case, flouts the first principle and stands the second principle on its head. In his recent reflectors, Lord Sumption has characterised this reasoning as saying that the government's power to override the judicial decisions of the information tribunal is such a bad idea that Parliament cannot have meant it. Well, I do think that the reasoning of those three is rather different from the reasoning of Lord Mans. He stated that any test must be context specific in the sense that it must depend upon the particular legislation and upon the basis on which the Attorney General was departing from the decision. It was clear that the Attorney General had to show that he had reasonable grounds for refusing disclosure, which was a higher test than mere rationality. In considering what is reasonable, one must consider the factual investigation by the tribunal and the extent to which the Attorney General can replicate that. Effectively, if a tribunal is better equipped to make a decision, then a minister or the attorney would need solidly reasoned grounds for issuing a certificate. I agree with Lord Mans. While our approach might be seen as a pragmatic compromise, I prefer to think of it as a principled interpretation of what section actually says in the light of the principle of legality, which mandates a minimal intrusion upon fundamental rights. Lord Sumption agrees with Lord Hughes, the dissenting justice, who said that the rule of law is not the same as the rule that the courts must always prevail no matter what the statute says, but I agree entirely with that. The point I am making is that in cases such as these, the courts have been prepared to construe acts of parliament in the light of the principle of legality without a hint of deference or pragmatism. Indeed, some might say quite the reverse. In the first substantive case to be heard by the Supreme Court, Armedd and Her Majesty's Treasury, the court held that the very general words in the United Nations Act 1946, allowing the making by orders in council of such provision as appeared necessary or expedient to carry out the decisions of the Security Council, did not permit the Treasury to make orders in council, permitting it to freeze the assets of people blacklisted by the Security Council without any sort of due process. This was a classic application of the principle of legality. Furthermore, the court refused the Treasury's application to suspend its order. Although it did have power to suspend the effect of any order, suspending an order declaring something to the ultravarys and caution it did not alter the fact that the something was void and of no effect. The court should not lend itself to something which might obfuscate the effect of its judgment, not a hint of pragmatism there. So have I a conclusion. I have convinced myself that, after all, there is a great deal of pragmatism in public law. Pragmatism, a pragmatic view about the evidential value of certain judgments of the executive, is a more convincing rationale for deference than democratic legitimacy. Essentially, pragmatic concepts of good administration and fairness are used to explain the workings out of the doctrine of legitimate expectation. And I expect that any competent academic public lawyer could even find pragmatic considerations creeping into our application of the principle of legality. The trouble is that real judges have to make judgments in real cases involving real people. And it is unrealistic to expect complete doctrinal coherence from them, or even analytical heavy lifting, though I suspect that many people do. Thank you.


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But of all of the ships in history, none has a more haunting reputation than the infamous Mary Celeste, a vessel from which the entire crew inexplicably vanished and was never seen again. Discovered floundering in the waters of the North Atlantic in December 1872, the ship soon became an enigma, a much talked about puzzle that still intrigues historians and sailors well over a century later. Most consider it the greatest nautical mystery of all time, one that will never be solved. On the chilly afternoon of December 4, 1872, the British Brigantine Digracia cut through the waters of the North Atlantic. She was on a course from New York to Gibraltar and the weather promised smooth sailing with sunny skies and a good wind. Suddenly, a two-masted square rigor appeared over the horizon. The ship's course was unsteady and as the wind veered, the vessel shifted aimlessly. The strained ship was under short canvas in the brisk wind, yawing heavily while lurching along at only two knots. Two of her sails were missing and the lower four top sails hung slackly at the corners. The captain of the Digracia, David Reed Morehouse, could see no one at the helm. He ran up a signal, but there was no reply. Captain Morehouse, along with his first mate Oliver Duvaux, raised their telescopes for a look. He recognized the ship as the Mary Celeste, but could see no one on board. Morehouse was stunned. He knew the captain of this ship, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, and in fact had a passing friendship with him. The two men had dined together less than a month before when their ships had been loading cargo at neighboring piers in New York. The Mary Celeste had set sail for Genoa, Italy on November 5, eight days before the Digracia had left port. Duvaux pointed out that there had seemed to be no distress signal. As the two ships approached within healing range, Captain Morehouse broke out his speaking trumpet. Celeste ahoy, he called out. Can you hear me? There was no reply from the other ship, only the creaking and flapping of plank and canvas. Morehouse called again, but nothing stirred on the ship. The captain could see that the Mary Celeste was on a starboard tack, but the jib sail was set to port. To the experienced seaman, he knew this meant only one thing. The ship was out of control, and the crew was either incapacitated or dead. He ordered his first mate to take two men with him and board the ship. Find out what's amiss, he instructed Duvaux. A boat was lowered, and the first mate and the two crewmen cast off toward the silent ship. The dinghy was tied up to the Mary Celeste, and the three men climbed aboard. What they found has remained a mystery ever since. The deck was empty. No crew member came forward to meet them. They shouted, but no one answered. The wheel stood unattended, spinning idly as the waves slapped the rudder. The only sound was the groan of wood and rope. The silence was uncanny. They searched the ship from stem to stern, but there was no one on board. The vessel was absolutely deserted, but if the crew had abandoned her, they had left everything behind. The hull, masts, and remaining sails of the Mary Celeste were all sound. The cargo, which consisted of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol, was all intact, except for one barrel which had been opened. There was a six-month supply of food and water. Sea chests and clothing lay dry and undisturbed. In the galley, a meal was being prepared and still hung over a dead fire. The bed was unmade in the captain's quarters and the table had been set for breakfast and then abandoned. There was porridge on one of the plates and the remains of eggs on another. Next to one plate was an open bottle of cough medicine with its cork and spoon lying beside it. In the deck, the skylight stood wide open and rain and seawater had soaked the bedding and clothing, forming large pools on the floor. The ship itself was sea-worthy and most things were in their proper place. It looked as though the entire crew had suddenly winked out of existence. Whatever had occurred, the searchers realized had taken place a short time before. None of the food had rotted and none of the metal surfaces had rusted in the sea air. Everything on the ship, including money and valuables, was intact. The only things that seemed to be missing were the ship's chronometer and the lifeboat. Duvaux knew that the Maryselast had carried a boat lashed to the main hatch and now that spot was empty. A piece of railing parallel to it had been removed apparently in order to launch the craft. The crew had seemed to managed to leave the ship in a single lifeboat and they must have done so in a feverish hurry. Not only had they left behind their personal belongings including their pipes and tobacco, which most sailors did not abandon unless in fear of death, but the ship had a disturbed look about it that suggested possible violence. Rope and canvas was scattered about on the deck. The ship's compass had been smashed to pieces. In one cabin, they found a cutlass that was smeared with what could have been blood. They found similar stains on the starboard deck rail near a cut that looked as though it had been made with an axe. On each side of the bow were strips of wood that had been cut from the deck. The strips were six feet long but why had they been cut was anyone's guess. The windows in the captain's cabin had been boarded up with canvas and heavy planks. Had the crew abandoned ship in fear of an attack or some other calamity? If so, how had they escaped? It was unlikely that everyone on board could have fit into the single lifeboat. There had been a crew of seven on the ship along with 37-year-old Captain Briggs, his 30-year-old wife and first cousin, the former Sarah Elizabeth Cobb and their two-year-old daughter Sophia Matilda. The Briggs other child, 7-year-old Arthur, had been left at home with his grandmother so he could attend school. Duvall checked the ship's log and found that the last entry was dated for November 24, 10 days before. At that point, the Mary Celeste was passing north of St. Mary's Island in the Azores, which was more than 700 miles away. If she had been abandoned after the entry, then the ship had sailed itself unmanned and unsteered for more than a week and a half. Such a feat seemed impossible. Duvall believed that someone had to have been on the ship for at least several days after the final log entry. But who had it been? And where had everyone gone? Were they stricken with disease, madness, or had something far more sinister happened? Duvall returned to the Adiagracia and made his report to Captain Morehouse. Although saddened by the disappearance of his acquaintance and his family, Morehouse saw an opportunity and money to be made. He ordered Duvall to return to the Mary Celeste with two crewmen and then follow the Adiagracia to Gibraltar. He would claim the ship as salvage, which would bring him a sizable reward. Both of the ships arrived in the Gibraltar harbor one week later. Instead of salvage money, though, Morehouse was met with an official order from the British Admiralty's office to seize the Mary Celeste for an immediate investigation. The Mary Celeste had always been known as an unlucky ship. Originally called the Amazon, her first captain died just 48 hours after his appointment. On her maiden voyage, she collided with a fishing boat off the coast of Maine and damaged her hull. During the repairs, a fire broke out below decks. Her third captain managed to run into another ship off the Straits of Dover. Her fourth captain ran the ship ground on Cape Breton Island and she was wrecked nearly beyond repair. After all that, the Amazon was salvaged and repaired. She was given a new name and an experienced captain in Benjamin Briggs and was put back into service. At that point, the ship not only had a reputation for being accident-prone and therefore unlucky, it was probably considered to be even more unlucky due to the name change. Among sailors who tend to be a superstitious lot, changing a ship's name is thought to bring bad luck. The investigation in Gibraltar uncovered little more than theories as to what had become of the Mary Celeste's crew. They considered mutiny, or perhaps some plot by the American crew, to steal the ship's cargo or to sink the ship and collect the insurance. Finally, mutiny was thought to be the solution. The Admiralty believed that the crew had murdered the captain and his family and then had escaped in the single lifeboat. There was no explanation as to why valuables, including jewelry and an expensive Italian sword, were left behind on the ship. The American merchant navy was angry over the finding of mutiny. Captain Briggs was not only a fair and decent man, he was well liked by all of the men who served with him. He also ran a dry ship. The only alcohol that was aboard the Mary Celeste was the cargo and it was crude alcohol and impossible to drink. To do so would cause severe cramps and possibly even blindness. Finally, in March 1873 the British Admiralty admitted that they had no solution to the mystery. It was the first time in history that the court had failed to come to a definite conclusion over maritime law. The owners of the Diagracia were awarded one-fifth of the value of the Mary Celeste as a salvage fee and the ship was returned to her owner. He wasted no time in selling the cursed ship. Over the next decade no new evidence was unearthed about the abandonment of the ship. No one from the crew was ever seen again and finally interest in the story began to fade. However, in 1882 the strange story of the Mary Celeste took an unusual turn. A seemingly unrelated event occurred in England in the small town of Southsea. This event was the moment that a newly licensed doctor named Arthur Conan Doyle put up a name plate on the wall outside of his office where he hoped to specialize in ophthalmology. Doyle would then spend days and weeks waiting for patience and prosperity only to find neither one. Instead, he would discover a love of writing and would chase away the boredom of his lackluster medical practice by penning stories. Doyle would go on to become a prolific writer of mystery and horror novels, the creator of the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, and an outspoken proponent of the spiritualist movement. In those days, however, he was simply a penniless doctor with a strange taste for strange tales. In the fall of 1882, he would pen one of these strange stories and it would go on to not only create a sensation, but would also earn a unique place in history. In fact, Doyle's harmless story would jumble the facts of the Mary Celeste mystery so badly that many believe that the blame for the case never being solved rests squarely on Conan Doyle's shoulders. The story, titled J. Habakkuk Jeffson's Statement, appeared in the Cornhill magazine of January 1884. The tale was not only one of Doyle's best early tales, but he used a fictional setting to create a theory about what happened to the crew of the real-life Mary Celeste. To do this, he created an entirely different scenario. In the first sentence alone, he changed the location of where the ship was found, the circumstances behind her discovery, and even the name of the ship itself from Mary Celeste to Marie Celeste. The public and the popular press immediately seized upon the story.  No one seemed to notice the obvious changes that Doyle had written into the story. It was taken very seriously and debated by people as the true story of the real Mary Celeste. The adventures of Jeffson created a storm of controversy for the British Admiralty. The chief investigator in Gibraltar, Frederick Sully Flood, in his role as Queen's Council was so outraged by the story that he sent a flurry of public telegrams denouncing Jeffson's true account as an outrageous lie. He followed these rather embarrassing telegrams with an official report to the Admiralty, pinpointing each of the mistakes in the account. Needless to say, when the real details of the fictional story were learned, the press was delighted, as was Conan Doyle. The story would go on to launch his literary career. In addition, the story turned out to be a catalyst for a new wave of interest in the mystery of the Mary Celeste. In the years that followed, a number of other hoax accounts for the last days of the ship, none as successful as the first, emerged. Nothing was ever heard from any known member of the ship's crew again, and there was a steady surfacing of Mary Celeste's survivors, whose names, somehow, had been left off the ship's register. They popped up all over the world with stories that ranged from the impossible to the ridiculous. Charles Fort, an avid collector of newspaper accounts, of odd occurrences, and the author of several books on anomalous phenomena, suggested that the missing passengers and crew could have been whisked off the ship by what he called a selective force, which left the ship itself untouched. In 1926, Adam Bushey claimed that the Mary Celeste had been dematerialized and routed, but when it returned to solid form, the crew did not return with it. Other weird stories emerged of strange accidents, giant squids, crackens, time warps, and abduction by aliens. Countless serious theories were also expressed as to the fate of the ship's crew. James Briggs, the brother of the ship's captain, was convinced that the solution to the mystery lay in the ship's last log entry. It stated that the wind had dropped after a night of heavy ocean squalls. If this is correct, it could have meant that the ship lost speed and drifted toward the rocks of Santa Maria Island. The ship's hull may have been breached, explaining the pools of water that the Egracia First mate Duvaux found below decks. The crew may have believed that Mary Celeste was sinking and abandoned ship. Another explanation claimed that the ship was struck by a waterspout. This would explain the water below decks and the damage done to the sails. Or the crew may have panicked in the storm and abandoned ship. There is one feasible explanation for what happened that takes into account everything that was discovered by the Egracia crew. There was no structural damage to the ship, and yet it had apparently been abandoned in great haste. For this reason, it seems that the evacuation was not carried out because of something that had already happened, but because of something they were afraid was going to happen. The only potential for danger on board the Mary Celeste was her cargo. Captain Briggs had never carried crude alcohol before and was likely unfamiliar with its chemical reactions. He had come from the cold weather of New York to the much warmer region of the Azores, and the barrels shaken by stormy weather may have started to leak fumes into the hold. It is possible that Briggs feared that the vapors could either poison the crew or that the barrels might explode. One of the barrels, it will be remembered, was opened, probably during an inspection. If the inspection had taken place by candlelight, the open flame could have caused the fumes to burst into flame, which may have convinced the captain that the entire ship was in danger of exploding. Terrified for the safety of his men, not to mention his wife and daughter, he may have ordered everyone into the lifeboat. In all likelihood, Briggs intended to stick close to the ship so that they could get back on if no further explosion occurred, but it would not have taken much wind to send the Mary Celeste sailing away from the lifeboat, abandoning the crew at sea. The crew almost certainly would have tried to catch up with the ship, but rough seas may have prevented them from doing so, and the crew and passengers of the Mary Celeste were lost forever. This theory was first offered by James Winchester, the ship's owner, and it has since been considered by several authors. Somehow, it has never been generally accepted, perhaps because pirates, sea monsters and time warps are much more exciting than an ordinary yet fatal accident. So what became of the Mary Celeste after the court of inquiry was finished with her? Her owner sold the ship as soon as he arrived back in New York, some say at a great loss, but perhaps the most unlucky person in the deal was the man who bought her. The Mary Celeste was rumored to be jinxed from the beginning, and the events that followed the vanishing of her crew continued her run of terrible luck. The new owner loaded the ship with a cargo of lumber and sent her to Montevideo. During a storm that occurred while en route, the deck, cargo and a good amount of the ship's rigging was lost.  On the return trip carrying a load of horses and mules, most of the animals died in the hold, and a few days later the new owner followed suit. From that point on, the Mary Celeste changed hands so quickly and so frequently that it became almost impossible to keep track of who owned her and when. She continued to sail up and down the American coastline, slowly falling apart. Then in 1884 she was purchased by an old seaman from Massachusetts named Gilman C. Parker. For most of his 61 years, Parker had dabbled in almost every kind of illegal activity on the sea, except for outright piracy. He and some of his friends concocted a scheme to make some money off the notoriously unprofitable Mary Celeste. They loaded her with a cargo of junk, worth less than a few hundred dollars, but ensured the cargo as being worth nearly 27,000. After that, Captain Parker took the ship on her death voyage to the Caribbean. In Haiti's Gulf of Genève is a coral reef called Rochelois Bank, which had proven fatal to scores of ships over the years. Parker set a course for the reef and the brigantine was grounded on the razor-like coral. With the waves crashing around her, the ship began to settle. There was no immediate danger and the crew had plenty of time to row the cargo ashore. When everything worthwhile had been salvaged, Parker ordered kerosene poured onto the decks and then he lit a torch. The Mary Celeste burst into flames. By evening, she was nothing but a charred skeleton. Back in Boston, Parker and his associates filed their insurance claim. The company was suspicious and dispatched detectives to question the crew. The sailors, who were not getting a share of the money, freely talked about what they had seen. Soon after, Parker and his partners were in federal court, facing a charge of baritry, an act of gross misconduct committed by a master or crew of a vessel which damages the vessel or its cargo. In those days, this was a hanging offense. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, however, and Parker and the other conspirators were set free. They never collected their claim and the notoriety of the case killed their reputations. Eight months later, Parker died in disrepute and poverty. One of his friends was confined to an insane asylum and another committed suicide. Even after she was destroyed, the Mary Celeste, the most famous cursed ship in history, was still bringing bad luck to anyone connected to her. Weird Darkness continues in just a moment. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house and watching your local TV stations horror host presenting a terrible B-movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves and all other kinds of crazy creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? That's what the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer all day every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Watch Party right after listening to this episode and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie, or should I say horror-ribble movie. And not only can you watch the B-movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com.  December 5, which is St. Nicholas Eve, is also known as Krampus Snot in some parts of Europe. Krampus is a sort of demon who accompanies St. Nicholas on the eve of December 6. On that night, St. Nicholas visits the homes of good children and leaves small gifts in their shoes. Those who have misbehaved in the past year, however, get punished by his helper, Krampus. He might take back the gifts that St. Nicholas left for the children and leave them a lump of coal instead. He might give them a birching with the switch he carries with him.  Krampus is actually a pagan fertility god. Another great example of how the church managed to co-opt the pagan holidays, who has a long tail, fur, rattling chains, a birch branch, and a big black bag. He was worshipped by the pagans and turned into St. Nicholas's cohort when the area became Christian, subtly turning a god into the lackey of a Christian saint. On Krampus Day, children and adults traditionally go to the village square and throw snowballs at him to scare him off during a parade in his honor. Some people dress up as Krampus and a special cookie is even baked for the day, and bread is baked in the shape of St. Nicholas or Krampus. On St. Nicholas Eve, children place their shoes on the window sill or outside their bedroom door to be filled with fruits, nuts, and sweets. Sure makes that creepy elf on the shelf seem tame by comparison, doesn't it? This is the story of a ghost-hunting trip to the old abandoned Elgin Mental Hospital Cemetery. I first heard about it online where I read stories of the former groundskeeper hearing chilling sounds and heard it said that there may be three bodies in every grave. For over 100 years, the hospital operated as the Illinois State Institution for the Insane. The unwanted were sent there to die and many horrific experiments were performed during the early years of treating mental diseases. Over a thousand people are said to be buried in the cemetery and it has a long-held reputation of being haunted. We initially had a hard time finding the place and we were about to give up when suddenly we found it. Immediately we could feel the sadness, intense sadness. Some of these people were apparently buried with others and they were mental patients. Being sensitive to the paranormal, I could feel their pain and suffering. The following night we performed our first investigation. Mind you, it is private property and I do not recommend going there after dark. When we went back for the first investigation, it was night and the atmosphere had changed from lost and sad to pain and anger. We immediately felt watched as if something was staring right at us or many things were staring at us. So we stood outside the car, took some pictures and left. We caught orbs and a face in the pictures. We returned a week later and finally went into the cemetery. We recorded an EVP in which, clear as day, my wife's name was said, truly haunting. After about 15 minutes, we started to hear sirens, thinking it was the police we ran back to our car but no cops ever showed up. When we played back the EVP however, we realized that it was an old ghostly ambulance sound that we had heard. When we arrived back at headquarters and had the time to review the EVP further, we also found that we had caught a demonic sounding dog barking and its chains rattling. Based on this, we then planned another investigation and two weeks later my team and I returned. We left an EVP recorder in the middle of the cemetery and we all walked to the other side of the site where we found an old rotten wooden hearse. As I and my fellow investigator headed back to pick up my EVP recorder, we saw a white light start to hover in the distance. We took photographs and continued to walk towards the light. It turned out to be a police officer. Luckily for us, the officer is very cool and allows us to stay in extra 10 minutes or so. The EVP again contained dog barks and also breathing sounds. That night we also saw shadows that seemed to run back and forth across the cemetery. Funny, I felt welcome there as if the spirits were pleased to be visited as opposed to being forgotten. I've been back many times during the day and have even taken flowers because those folks deserve to be remembered. It is undoubtedly haunted but the worst thing that ever happened to me there was a few scratches which I put down to a ghostly guard dog doing his job. Good dog. My apartment is a duplex that has the living room and the kitchen on the first floor, the two bedrooms on the second floor and an internal staircase to go from the first to second floor. I returned from my office around 8pm, cooked dinner for my pop and myself which we enjoyed. Then we watched TV and went to bed around 11.30pm. I sleep heavily but that night, around midnight, I heard the doorbell and I woke up. My bedroom's door was locked and when I checked, I saw my pop was in his room sleeping. Wondering who would visit us so late, I rushed downstairs to open the door. While running down the staircase, I banged into something and instead of tumbling down, I was pushed backwards. Instead of falling, I landed in a sitting position on my stairs where I saw a bright white smoking figure. I guess it was the thing I heard ringing the doorbell. It was there standing in front of me for about five minutes and then it vanished into thin air. The experience can't be explained in words. I still haven't understood what it was. Could I have been visited by a ghost or spirit and putting this horrible event into words? Until now. I've lived in the same house for a long time. From time to time, we hear someone walking upstairs, even when I know that no one is awake or even home.  No, it's whoever or whatever is in my house. Actually, there is more than one entity in my home. I've created a nickname for the one that I think is a younger spirit, maybe a teen. His name is Phil, or at least that's what I call him. He'll mess with my mom as she hears bangs and walking. I always tell her to ignore it and it'll stop, which it does. But as soon as you speak of him or my mother freaks out or I'm on my phone listening to things like weird darkness, the activity just skyrockets. Mostly I think he just messes with me. Recently I was walking up the stairs and I heard my name called. It was right in my ear as if someone whispered to me. Another time I really did get freaked out is I had to use the bathroom so bad and he was so active that I really didn't want to move. I stayed in the same spot until I couldn't hold it anymore and then I ran to the bathroom, did my business and ran back to bed. Phil is also a prankster and he moves things around. I've just started a new job and had been provided with an ID badge. For the life of me, I swear I put it down, went to wash up and when I came back, it wasn't there. I searched for it for ages and eventually gave up. Later when I came back, I find the ID badge sitting right on the bed. It's not the first time I've been pranked and it won't be the last. The nice spirit really doesn't bother me, but whatever else is in my house. The dark man I call him, the darker entity, that is what scares me. It scared me so badly that I blocked the experience out until now. I haven't thought about the darker spirit in a long time. I had it stored away in my head, far, far away. But then I've been listening to weird darkness and that has started it back up. The reason I forgot about the dark spirit is because I had blocked out an entire, horrific and terrifying paranormal experience. The cold spots in this house come and go, but with this spirit, it's not just a cold spot. It is a terrible feeling that the walls are closing in on you like hundreds of eyes are looking at you as if you are about to be attacked. I was about 13 or 14, I'm now 25. I was living upstairs at the time. I can remember it so vividly now. It was very late. I can remember feeling a strange feeling as if something was watching me. I look up and see a shadowed out man, not a shadow person, nor a man. It was a dark figure, but I could see his eyes and his face. The way it looked was not natural and I'd never experienced so much fear in my life. When it noticed that I had seen him, he turned and looked at me.  The worst part was I felt that this spirit could really hurt me and it wanted to. I pulled the covers over my head. It took what felt like hours for me to even gather enough energy to pull that blanket over me and even longer to lay down. Finally, I lay there, afraid to move, finding it hard to breathe, just praying and hoping that it would leave. Now, I feel the spirit getting closer, like that feeling you get when you can see a spider slowly sliding down its web towards you. I felt the dark spirit right by my face, with only the blanket separating us. I could hear it breathing right in my ear. He was breathing like he wanted to get me, as if he wanted me to be afraid. It felt like hours listening to that breathing right in my ear. I was so scared and so afraid I couldn't even produce a scream. I was too afraid to yell for help, as if this dark spirit was preventing me from doing so. I couldn't move. Apparently, I must have finally fallen asleep, and that was it. I had not remembered this experience until just a few days ago. It was so horrific that I had blocked it out of my memory. Whatever that dark spirit was, it was not the same spirit that pranks my mom and I. I don't know who or what it was. Now, I wait to see if he comes back. Luckily now, I'm not afraid. I guess Phil has kept the dark spirit away, maybe protecting me. I'm just waiting for the dark man to come back, and I'll be ready. More stories still to come when Weird Darkness returns No matter the time of day or season, sometimes you need to find a way to rid yourself of those ghostly chills that bring raised hairs and goosebumps to your skin. Other times, you're looking for those ghostly chills. Either way, it sounds like you need a mug of Weird Dark Roast coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness that will send shivers down your taste buds. This is an exclusive coffee that I selected specifically for you, my Weirdo family. Weird Dark Roast is not available in stores, coffee houses, mad scientist labs, or even the dark web, but you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee, fresh roasted to order so it's as fresh as it can be when it lands on your doorstep and knocks three times. Grab yours now at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee, it's not actually a knock on your door because it doesn't have arms or hands, so if you hear knocks at the door and no one answers when you ask who it is, it's probably paranormal, and you should just leave the door shut and locked. The Ancient Ram Inn is a Grade II listed building and a former pub located in Watton Underech, a market town within the Stroud district of Gloucestershire, England. It is believed to be one of the most haunted hotels in the country. This famous inn is owned by, and the home to, John Humphries. It has been owned by many people since 1145 to present date. Many people lived here either as tenants or overnight guests. This inn was said to have also been owned by the local St. Mary's Church when first built. The paranormal phenomenon reported to have manifested in the inn included spectral shadows, strange footsteps, inexplicable drops in temperature, mysterious tapping sounds, strange orbs of light floating around the inn after dark, furniture being moved around and people being pushed to the ground by an unseen force. The owner, John Humphries, even claims to have been a victim of an incubus assault, and the inn is said to have not one ghost, but several, including a phantom cavalier, a witch, a man and a monk. There have also been sightings of a mysterious black cat. The fact that the inn was built on an ancient pagan burial ground may have something to do with all the ghostly activity that has occurred there over the years. What is particularly scary about the hauntings at the inn is the fact that most visitors feel the spirits are profoundly malevolent. The atmosphere has often been described as brooding, oppressive and even evil. One room called the bishops room has the most notorious reputation. One night two men stayed there in the hope of witnessing some ghostly activity, and they had such a terrible night that they had to summon a vicar to exercise them. If you keep driving past New York City away from the blaring lights and sounds, you will eventually drive past the small town of Nyak, New York. There, at the end of a listless cul-de-sac, there stands a two-story rambling affair at the edge of the Hudson River. Inside, a dark history hides within the walls. The house on one LaVetta place has been a boarding house and a private residence since it was built in the early 1900s. When a couple named George and Helen Ackley moved into the house in the early 1960s, stories began to circulate around the town of strange goings-on inside the house, other worldly stories from Ackleys themselves. The Ackleys shared the house with their children and grandchildren and had been reporting to their neighbors phantom footsteps, knockings, doors opening and slamming, and beds shaking violently with no possible explanation. A decade later, the family decided to write about their experiences. Their article appeared in the May 1977 edition of Reader's Digest. In an article titled, Our Haunted House on the Hudson, the family described their decade-long life amongst the three benevolent spirits they claimed resided on one LaVetta place. He was sitting in mid-air, watching me paint the ceiling in the living room rocking back and forth. She said, I was on an eight-foot step ladder. I asked if he approved of what we were doing to the house, if the colors were his liking. He smiled and nodded his head. Mrs. Ackley said one of the other ghosts would waltz into her daughter's bedroom. We don't know whether or not she was the one who woke the children up by shaking the bed, she said. Ghost number three was a Navy Lieutenant during the American Revolution. My son saw him eyeball to eyeball outside the basement door, Mrs. Ackley said. Source, New York Times. The Ackleys claimed that these spirits would often give them strange items that would spontaneously appear throughout the house. A man who married into the Ackley family wrote about his knowledge of the paranormal activity in an article titled, Ghost of Nyak, Background About the House. This story deals with the house that my wife, Cynthia, spent her teen years in. The house is situated on the Hudson River at the bottom of a dead-end street. It was a 5,000-square-foot Victorian house with three levels plus a full basement and attic. Cynthia's parents, Helen and George Ackley, bought the house in the late 1960s. At the time, the big Victorian sat vacant and was in disrepair. Neighbor kids told them as they moved in that the house was haunted. It wasn't until later that the Ackleys found the truth. The ghosts and the Ackleys live at peace with each other. There was never an intentional scare to any of the Ackleys or their visitors. Nyak sits approximately 20 miles north of New York City on the west bank of the Hudson. Many people of the area know about the haunting of this house. As a matter of fact, the Hudson Valley is known for many haunted places, just straight across the river lays Territown. Just outside of Territown is the legendary Sleepy Hollow. This was made famous by Washington Irving's Halloween tale of the legend of Sleepy Hollow. Many of Irving's tales are based on legends of the lower Hudson Valley. The legend of the Nyak house made print in the Reader's Digest by an article submitted by Helen Ackley herself in May 1977. She told of various instances about the ghosts making their presence known to the family. Here are a few tales. One ghost would wake my wife up every morning for school by shaking her bed. When spring break came, my wife made a loud announcement before going to sleep that it was spring break, there was no school and she wanted to sleep in. Her bed did not shake the next morning. A few of the grandchildren received gifts from the ghost in the form of baby rings. All of a sudden they just appeared. My wife received a gift of a small silver sugar tongue. My wife's older brother's wife received coins. While painting the living room, Helen saw one of the ghosts looking in approval of the color. She always got the feeling that the ghost liked the renovation they had done on the house. I had two personal experiences with the ghosts. They both happened soon after I moved in with my future wife Cynthia and occurred about one month apart. The first happened on Christmas Eve. I was home alone due to various activities. I was playing Christmas Elf in the living room, putting gifts together. It was totally quiet in the house. After a while I kept hearing a muffled conversation coming from the dining room around the wall. I would get up and walk over and nobody was there. I felt like I was being watched. I had purposely turned on every light in the surrounding rooms. I was getting nervous. Then my future brother-in-law suddenly pounded on the door making me jump out of my skin and the talking stopped. The second incident happened in our bedroom on the third floor. It was a clear dark night. San had already fallen asleep and I was drifting. Then I heard the bedroom door creak and the floorboards squeak. My back was to the edge of the bed. Suddenly the edge of the bed by my midsection depressed down and I felt something lean against me. I went literally stone stiff. I was speechless and could hardly move. I was able to twist my neck around enough to see a womanly figure in a soft dress through the moonlight from the bay windows. I felt like she was looking straight at me. After about a minute the presence got up and walked back out of the room.  Source ktransit.com Whatever you want to believe about the haunted house on the Hudson, know this. The story is mostly famous for sparking the infamous Ghostbusters ruling from the appellate court in New York. In the trial of Stambovsky v. Ackley the court held where as here the seller not only takes unfair advantage of the buyer's ignorance but has created and perpetuated a condition about which he is unlikely to even inquire enforcement of the contract in whole or in part is offensive to the court's sense of equity. Application of the remedy of resuscitation within the bounds of the narrow exception to the doctrine of caveat emptor set forth herein is entirely appropriate to relieve the unwitting purchaser from the consequences of a most unnatural bargain. When the house was put on the market, the Stambovsky's fought to keep their $32,500 deposit after they learned about the house's paranormal history a bit too late. The Ackleys and Realtor were found to be at fault for not disclosing the ghoulish details about the unwanted amenities. Built in 1840, the Sorrell Weed House in Savannah, Georgia is famous for its history and infamous for its ghosts. But is the legend surrounding the historic home true or is it near folklore? The Sorrell Weed House first belonged to wealthy shipping merchant Francis Sorrell. Though Francis was married, legend has it that a beautiful slave named Molly caught his eye. In fact, Sorrell was so enamored by the slave that he arranged for her to live in private quarters above the carriage house. There the two romped until Sorrell's wife Matilda discovered the sordid affair. Devastated by her husband's betrayal, Matilda leaped from a second-story balcony and died in the courtyard below. A few days after Matilda's death, servants discovered Molly hanging from a noose in the carriage house. Now the tragic women reportedly haunt the Sorrell Weed mansion. In 2005, the Ghost Hunters crew recorded an EVP which some believe is Sorrell's slave screaming in pain for pleasure. Here is a recording of that EVP. Other eerie events at the 175-year-old site include odd thuds and bangs, disembodied voices and shadowy forms. Many visitors also report feeling violently ill. Our investigation of the Sorrell Weed House in Savannah, Georgia, gave me a three-alarm hangover. Ghost adventurers star Zach Bagan writes in his new book, I Am Haunted. It was very similar to a real one, headache, nausea, dizziness, throbbing, memory loss, but weirder. I can usually gauge how bad my hangover is going to be by the interactions I have with spirits during a lockdown, but this one threw me for a loop. If the Sorrell Weed House is truly haunted, it's unlikely that Molly or Matilda are to blame. Census records show no proof of a slave named Molly ever living in the home, and there's no evidence of a Sorrell slave affair. And though Matilda Sorrell did leap to her death, records show that she did so next door, not at the home she allegedly haunts. Is the Sorrell Weed House truly haunted, or has the legend of Molly and Matilda led people astray? You decide. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at weirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weirddarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on Weirddarkness.com, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more on the website. All stories in Weirddarkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Weirddarkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Romans 5, verses 6-8. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And a final thought. For every dream that you have, your week needs to match that dream. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.