ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... Many people have claimed to see ghosts near the iconic Hollywood sign in California, but one particular ghost is seen more often than the others, and it comes with a sad story. Weirdo family member Andrew Horn tells of his ghostly experience in Gettysburg... Why did Nelly Bly intentionally check herself into an asylum for a harrowing 10 days? But first, statistically speaking, you will walk past a murderer 10.76 times in your life. But what if you didn't just walk past a murderer? What if they were a part of your family and you didn't know it? We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts.  These stories of the children of serial killers show just how well their parents hid their disturbing behavior. Some of these offspring of serial killers had an inkling that their parent was up to something, usually a general sense of something not being quite right. Others had no idea what was happening, sometimes under their own roof. May West, daughter of Fred and Rosemary West, have repeatedly spoken about the effects her parents' crimes had on her life. Between 1967 and 1987, Fred and Rosemary West murdered at least 12 young people, possibly up to 20, including Fred's ex-wife, Reno West, and two of their own children. The couple even buried several women beneath their shared home in Gloucestershire, England. Because of her parents' actions, May West feels that she can't work with children, explaining it's about self-protection as much as anything. Because if something happened to a child in my care, if they fell and hurt themselves, I'd be blamed because of my background. She's also discussed her problems starting a new life somewhere else after attempting to relocate to Australia. They wouldn't let me in the country because of what my parents did, she said. And the treatment even extends to her husband, who may claim applied to be a policeman, but he couldn't get in, and she said, I'm sure it's because he's married to me. May alleges that as a child, she was molested by her father, raped by her uncle.  Looking back on her childhood, May realized that she and her sister, like most young girls, play dress up with clothing they found in a house. They didn't know it, but the clothes belonged to their father's victims. She feels it's unfair that the police show concern about her family now when, in the past, we were overlooked by the authorities while our parents abused us sexually and physically as kids, and now as adults they say, you're from an abusive family, we'll have to keep an eye on you. May often visited her mother in prison, despite what she did, because she believed her father was the real culprit. But she thinks her mother manipulated her. She started to hug me and hold my hand when I visited her. She'd never shown me any affection before. She signed all of her letters, love as always, mom, yet she had never told me she loves me before. May soon realized that her mother was never going to answer any of her questions or take any responsibility. In fact, she had become quite high and mighty in prison, claiming my sister Louise wouldn't be a good parent, overlooking the fact that she and dad had been responsible for violently and sexually abusing her. Fortunately, May has been seeing a therapist and remains focused on the future. She is happily married with an adult daughter and a young son. She's moving on with her life, but she is still haunted by the past. I can't bear to be cornered in a corridor or a room. I'm alert to all the awful stuff that can happen. She also has trouble connecting to people emotionally, saying that she cut off her feelings when her uncle abused her. She did it to protect herself, she says. She says, I'm practical. I'm very good at helping if one of my sisters needs her washing machine fixed, but if she rings up crying, I don't know what to say or do. Keith Jesperson, a long-distance truck driver from British Columbia, also known as the Happy Face Killer, raped and murdered eight women during the 1990s. Jesperson spread out his killings to several states, including California, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Jesperson's daughter, Melissa Moore, revealed the strange relationship she had with her father. He never molested or beat any of us, she said. It was just a feeling that something was building, seething beneath the surface. I once tried to articulate it to a school counselor, but it didn't come out right. A lot of kids think their dad is weird. Moore revealed she also felt uncomfortable with her father's behavior around women. He would tell her details of his sexual exploits, leer at women in public, make lewd remarks about them and harass them. Moore felt at one point like her father wanted to tell her what he was doing, but ultimately said, I can't tell you, sweetie.  I'm not what you think I am, Melissa. Several months after that last meeting, Moore's mother told her that Jesperson was arrested for murder. Moore realized she had seen some signs of her father's deviant behavior, remembering a time when she found some kittens in a farmhouse and her father casually hung them up on the clothesline and began to torment them. I remembered his enjoyment as I screamed and pleaded with him to take them down. Later on, I found their little bodies in the back garden. She also remembered a time when her father told her he knew how to kill someone and get away with it. He started to tell how he would cut off the victim's buttons so there wouldn't be any fingerprints left, and he would wear cycling shoes that didn't leave a distinctive print in the mud. As an adult, she flashed back to that scene and realized they had been traveling through an area where he murdered a woman named Taja Bennett, and he was most likely talking about her. I think he wanted to relive it and enjoy the moment again, she said. The effects of her father's crimes took a toll on Melissa Moore. Reading the newspaper became too difficult, and she didn't want to hear what people were saying about her father, even though she realized he was a bad man. She was in a violent, abusive relationship with a boy, something I think my father primed me for, she said. She was even isolated at school. Parents were really shaken up by the thought that their children might have been in harm's way, so they kept them away from me, and I began to feel tremendous guilt and shame. Fortunately, Moore was eventually able to move on with her life and even get married and have children. She cut off contact with her father after her grandfather revealed that, during a visit, Jesperson admitted to having thoughts of killing Moore and her siblings. Unlike most of the other children on this list, Matthew Ridgway remembers his father Gary Ridgway as a very involved and gentle parent who never raised his voice. The two went camping often, and his father taught him to play baseball. Even when I was in fourth grade, when I was with soccer, he'd always, you know, be there for me. I don't think I ever remember him not being there. Gary Ridgway, better known as the Green River Killer, started his deviant career in the fall of 1982.  It seemed like the killer would never be caught until DNA technology allowed authorities to link him to a string of crime scenes in 2001. During the time of the murders, Gary converted his religion and preached Bible verses door to door. Ted Bundy later helped in the investigation by suggesting the police moved their search closer to one of the sites the killer liked to dump bodies. Matthew Ridgway never believed his father was the Green River Killer, thinking he's just one of the guys that happened to be one place and, you know, he's my dad, he didn't do it, you know? But Ridgway didn't know at the time, however, was that his father often used his son's photo as a tool to lure women and put them at ease before killing them. Gary also took Matthew to play near the Green River where he dumped the bodies of the women he killed. James Carson, a divorced father and alleged cannabis dealer from Phoenix and Suzanne Carson, a divorced woman with two teens who spent her time at the local country club, met at a Thanksgiving party. The deadly duo killed between three and 12 people from 1981 to 1983, claiming witches, homosexuality, and abortion were what instigated them. Jennifer Carson, James Carson's daughter from his first marriage, saw things change a lot over the years. Suzanne, for one, was living this posh country club lifestyle before she started using LSD and got involved with my father, Jennifer said. Her father was seemingly normal before meeting Susan as well. When my mom met my father, he was a nice Jewish boy. No one could have foreseen this, especially how weird it got.  Jennifer believed Suzanne had a lot of influence over her father who tended to be a follower. If they had fallen in love with a televangelist, he would become one. If she had joined ISIS, he would have. He was that much of a follower. He was drawn to extremists, people he found really exciting. The couple's behavior grew more frantic and less rational. It's absolutely nuts they were dropping acid daily, Jennifer said. She did not know the extent of their depraved lifestyle, but she did recall an incident where she asked her stepmother to rub her back before bed, and she scratched my back and said that she was going to get the demon out of me.  When Jennifer finally broke down and told her mother about Suzanne and her father and what they were doing, her mother packed up and the two left for Southern California. In 1983, following the third known murder by the duo, the Carson's were finally apprehended, tried and sentenced to 50 years in prison. In 2015, Suzanne was eligible for parole. Jennifer and others who opposed her release planned to testify at her hearing, stating, It's not vindictive, but it's for safety and accountability to the public. As long as Suzanne can lift a hand, she could harm somebody. In the end, Suzanne did not show up to her hearing and subsequently was not paroled. This was a relief for Jennifer who said, She'll pass away in prison. She'll spend the rest of her life in prison and that's what should happen. April Bellaschio always knew there was something off about her father, Edward Edwards. The family frequently moved, always in the middle of the night. He told us that we had to move in secret because he was protecting us because there were people who wanted to hurt him or us. April described him as hard to deal with at times, a Jekyll and Hyde persona. He could be very good with us kids. He was sociable, charming, but he could also be abusive when he was abusive.  In March 2009, she felt an urge to check out cold cases in the areas that she lived as a child. While reading about a few cases in Wisconsin, she recognized a place called the Concord House, a wedding venue in Wisconsin where her father had been a handyman when they lived in the area. She realized the case, dubbed the Sweetheart Murders after a young couple who attended a wedding reception at the Concord House were murdered directly after seemed very familiar. Bellaschio instantly knew her father was responsible. I was shaking. I was shaking because immediately I knew who it was that committed the murders, she said. Evidently, Edwards had taken the family to the park where the couple's bodies were found the day after their visit. The next day I knew there were ambulances and sirens everywhere. He had taken us to where their dead bodies were. Bellaschio shared her findings with the police and several months later Edwards was arrested and confessed to four murders. An FBI cold case detective believes Edwards might have been responsible for several infamous murders, including the Zodiac killings and that of Teresa Hallback, subject of Netflix's Making a Murder Docuseries. Edwards also allegedly killed his own son in 1996 to collect the life insurance. In 2001, Edwards received two life sentences and a death sentence. However, he died from complications of diabetes a month after his sentencing. Bellaschio knows that she made the right decision about her father, but she is still wracked with guilt. I live with two kinds of guilt, not reporting him sooner and possibly saving lives and the guilt of turning in my own father. They are both strong. Kirri Rawson, she has a bone to pick with Stephen King. In September 2014, Stephen King announced a novella-turned-movie he had written inspired by Kirri's father, Dennis Rader, aka BTK, in his family. Rawson claimed King was exploiting my father's 10 victims and their families. He is going to give my father a big head and he absolutely does not need that. BTK, by the way, stands for Bind Torture and Kill, which was Rader's method of killing his victims over a 31-year period starting in 1974. He was arrested in 2005 and received 10 life sentences. Rawson remembers when one of her father's victims, Marine Hedge, was murdered and how her father reacted. She knows he was not home the night Hedge disappeared. It was stormy and I didn't want to sleep by myself.  That's how I know that he was gone. After discovering who her father really was, she struggled emotionally. I've never hated him. I was extremely hurt by him. I love him after all. He was my dad, so I was extremely angry and hurt. While in prison, Rader became angry that none of his family visited him. Rawson responded, You've had these secrets, this double life for 30 years. We've only had knowledge of it for three months. We're trying to cope and survive. You lied to us, deceived us. Rawson eventually forgave her father and wrote him a letter. She told him about her life, her kids, and how she appreciated how he had raised her. She wrote, I don't know if I will ever be able to make it for a visit, but know that I love you and hope to see you in heaven someday. Rawson wrote a book about her experiences that will be released in January 2019. Merrick Kuklinski attended the 2012 film premiere of The Iceman starring Michael Shannon as her father Richard Kuklinski. After the film ended, she approached Winona Ryder who played Kuklinski's wife Barbara and remarked, If the character you played had been my mother, my life would have been very different. Good movie, not much reality. Richard, the Iceman Kuklinski, worked as a hitman for The Mob and was responsible for more than 200 murders. He earned his nickname from his habit of freezing the bodies to disguise the time they were murdered. He also killed others whenever he felt like it. Merrick remembers her father as a generous family man, often behind the camera making home movies. If dad was filming, he wanted everyone to smile, she said. We learned to take advantage of the happy moments. She describes him as a caring father, always there for his children no matter what. She spoke of an ideal childhood. He denied us nothing, she said. He wanted his life to be like it was on television, he just didn't know how to get there. But Richard Kuklinski had a bad temper and often would hit his wife and broke vast amounts of furniture in the home which he regularly replaced. Merrick recalled how he even killed several family pets. I was late at coming home once and he took princess and broke her neck. Princess was a Samoyed, not a small dog. He said I would never be late again and I wasn't. Merrick hated going over a particular bridge in the neighborhood as it seemed like an incident happened every time they passed over it. One Sunday we were on our way to church and another car cut us off at the bridge.  And then we went to church as if it never happened.  He gets back in the car and starts singing a song on the radio. I didn't say a word. When Merrick was about 10 years old, Kuklinski started to confide in his daughter telling her he had killed people. At one point he began to enlist her help. She never knew what was going on but she felt it was probably not ideal. There were times when he would tell me not to look in the back seat or in the trunk and I would drive him to some garage and pop the trunk looking straight forward as he told me to do while he would unload whatever it was. Kuklinski was arrested in 1986 and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2006. Merrick meanwhile still deals with complicated emotions. What haunts me most is the reality that my father was a very, very sick, demented man.  Maybe if he had gotten treatment, some or all of this could have been prevented. That thought haunts me every day. Many of the children of killers understand on some level that their parent committed murder. Katya, daughter of Mikhail Popkov, known as the werewolf and allegedly responsible for the deaths of 81 people, believes her father is innocent. Katya explained, Watch how a butcher works. He is covered in blood from head to toe. The women lay down meekly by themselves. I bet they would leave marks, bites or scratches. You cannot hide this, but my father did not have any suspicious marks on his body or face. Katya remembers an ideal childhood and feels the father she knew could not be responsible for so many murders. I do not believe any of this. I always felt myself as daddy's girl. For 25 years we were together hand in hand. We walked together, rode bikes, went to the shops and he met me from school. We both collect model cars, so we have the same hobby. She even cites her previous studies in criminology to vindicate her father. I wanted to be a criminologist, so I read a book with tips of how investigators catch serial killers and there were also basic classifications about murderers. Daddy doesn't fit any of these classifications. He doesn't look like some maniac. Though Katya claims she doesn't believe her father committed the violent crimes, she does admit to worrying her unborn son could inherit the maniacal inclination of his grandfather. Katya's mother, Elena on the other hand, seems not to be picking sides. We cannot even think about this. We are shocked and it causes us pain. There was no evidence in our family at all. We just want to know an answer if he did this or not. The Black Dahlia murder is one of the most famous cold cases in the United States. A beautiful young actress, Elizabeth Short, was found in a yard in Los Angeles. Her body cut in half with surgical precision, the two pieces lying side by side. The cases never been solved, but Steve Hodel believes his father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, was responsible for her death and the murders of several other young women in the area. After Dr. Hodel died, Steve found a small photograph in his father's belongings, a young, female nude with dark hair that very much resembled Short. Steve later learned the FBI kept a secret dossier detailing their suspicion that his father was the killer. A task force of 18 detectives was assigned to stake out and listen in on his personal conversations 24-7. The piece of evidence that pushed Hodel over the edge into truly believing his father was Short's killer was the handwriting. As he explained, it was done by a surgeon. Dad was a skilled surgeon. The next thing I find is handwriting and I look at that and I clearly identify it as my father's. No question about it. Steve also found evidence connecting his father to the cement bags the killer used to transport Short's body. He was able to trace and place them at a South and Franklin house, our home, 1947, through dated receipts during the victim's so-called missing week. He only wishes he could ask his father about the killings. I would want to hear the why of it from his own mouth. Why did you become a misogynist and misanthrope of the highest order? Why so many random killings? Why did you torture and brutalize young children? Tell me personally what were the triggers that caused you to hate your fellow man so much? In 2010, Adam Karns was framed for sending abusive text messages.  Karns was devastated. The hardest part was the fact no one believed me.  After he got out of jail, Karns wanted his mother to pay for her crimes. Karns stressed that this wasn't a normal situation. No son would want to go out of their way to have their mother put in prison over something this serious. But any love he felt for his mother was taken away at trial. It was certainly made easier when, I mean, she looked at me in court and gave me this evil, sadistic grin. I don't consider her my mother anymore. Karns wants nothing to do with his mother, even if she does get out of jail. In his opinion, she needs to finish her time and either get out and live a proper life or, you know, in turn, die in there, which, yeah, is probably the best option to be honest for everyone. Later, Karns brought a civil case against his mother and Milder was ordered to pay him $55,000. Bobby Louise Belfield is the oldest child of Levi Belfield, a serial killer dubbed the Bus Stop Killer. He was responsible for murdering three women and attacking another in the London area between 2001 and 2004.  He beat Mom up quite a few times. I saw it happen. I felt scared and shocked. It was bad. It wasn't just a few slaps. It was more horrific than that. Levi Belfield's other daughters, Jessica, Hannah and Janie, also remember the abuse their father, who insisted on his daughters calling him Levi, inflicted on them. After he and his wife broke up, Levi stalked the family. Jessica recalled, one time Levi came and smashed our windows, and we all sat together in the bedroom trying to comfort each other. I remember the curtains of my sister's bedroom being set alight. Another time he threw paint at our door. He had tried to run away, but he had trod in the paint so we could see his footprints going down to the end of the road. Bobby Louise recalled the day 13-year-old schoolgirl Millie Dowler went missing, and her father began acting very odd. He would never shout at me, but that night he was shouting at me to get out of the room. He was on edge. I was scared, thinking, why would he do that? Later, when they were in Levi's girlfriend's apartment, he refused to let Bobby Louise in his bedroom. There was something in there he was hiding, you could tell. At the time, I didn't think he had Millie in there. Now I do think that. She also recalled her father's behavior around young women. He was always beeping at girls walking down the street. They were clearly in uniform. He would shout, oi, oi, and things like that. Jessica recalls the hard time the family endured when their father was arrested.  Hannah got beaten up at school by three boys who locked her in a cupboard and gave her black eyes and a swollen nose. Whenever we complained to the teachers, it was us who were taken out of class, not the people who had done it. For Bobby Louise, there is no love left for her father.  I know it sounds harsh but I really do, I don't ever want to see him again. Alicia Rose was four months old in 1984 when her father, Lindsay Robert Rose, who didn't live with the family, started his decade-long killing spree near Sydney, Australia. Rose went on to murder five people. She had no idea who her father truly was until she was nearly 13 years old and came home from school to see police there. I instinctively knew something was wrong, she said. Little did I know how irrevocably my life would change in the next few minutes. Alicia was horrified when she learned her father was accused of murder as I knelt on the mat in our lounge room watching the evening news. She and her mother were placed in witness protection. Her father's crimes had a lasting impact on Alicia. My father's actions have created horrific trauma, loss and grief to their families, and that will be intergenerational trauma for those families. Alicia went on to study law and criminal justice. Life continued despite the upheaval, she said, except that I carried a secret with me everywhere. My father killed five people. But Alicia often felt herself struggling. The harder I tried to understand my father's actions and to make sense of my life, the more complex and intricate the puzzle became. She has found fulfillment, however, by working with various charitable organizations. But her father's crimes have made an indelible mark on her life. Up next, many people have claimed to see ghosts near the iconic Hollywood sign in California. But one particular ghost is seen more often than the others, and it comes with a sad story. Weirdo family member Andrew Horn tells of his ghostly experience in Gettysburg, and why didn't Ellie Bly intentionally check herself into an asylum for a harrowing 10 days? These stories when Weird Darkness returns. Peg Entwistle was born in 1908 in a town named Port Talbot in South Wales. Unfortunately, her mother died when she was very young, and this resulted in her grieving father dragging the family to a new life in the States. Not long into their American adventure, Peg's father met a new love and had two sons with her, Robert and Milton. Unfortunately, tragedy was not finished with the Entwistle family, and Peg's father was struck and killed by a car on Park Avenue. The two young boys went to live with their uncle, but Peg turned down this offer because she wanted to find fame and fortune in New York. At the tender age of 17, she managed to make a breakthrough and landed a job with the Boston Repertory Company. She then went on to work in the prestigious Theatre Guild Productions of Broadway. Robert Keith stole Peg's heart in 1927 and within months they were married. Unfortunately, Keith was a lot older than Peg and she knew very little about his past life. Peg eventually found out that Keith had actually been married before and even had a six-year-old son. He never mentioned any of this before they tied the knot. Peg decided that the marriage was a sham and started divorce proceedings, but Keith managed to get into more trouble with the law. She put the divorce on hold when she bailed him out of prison, but started the divorce proceedings up again as soon as he was a free man. Peg managed to hit the stage in 1931 with Getting Married and Alice Sit by the Fire, two popular stage shows. Unfortunately, by 1932, the work had dried up and Peg started to sink into depression. She was forced to move in with her uncle to make ends meet and she then managed to pick up a stage part with Billy Burke in The Mad Hopes. Unfortunately, this stage show only lasted a matter of months before closing down. Peg's luck then seemed to change when she landed a part in 13 Women starring Irene Dunn. Unfortunately, the critics had a field day at the movie's screening and it ended up being re-edited. Peg slipped further into depression. On September 18, 1932, an alcohol-fueled Peg left her uncle's home and headed to Mount Lee. Once there, she climbed the slope to the famous Hollywood sign. She then left a suicide note with her coat and climbed up the ladder that led to the top of the H-board and threw herself off.  The spirit of Peg and Twistle has been spotted on numerous occasions since her tragic suicide. More often than not, she is witnessed by hikers and rangers in the Griffin Park area. The ghost resembles a young, attractive and blonde lady in white that walks sadly around the area in 1930s clothing. A famous encounter from 1990 came from a couple of young lovers taking their dog for a walk. Suddenly, the animal started barking at a wooded area and a sad-looking lady in white walked out. The couple decided to follow the lady for some distance before she disappeared into thin air. Griffith Park ranger John Arbogast has made numerous reports of encounters with the ghost lady in white, always around the time of midnight when he is on his shift. He believes that the scent of gardenias follows her around and indicates that she is about to make an appearance. Ever since I was young, I have loved ghost stories and American history. My parents loved it because it gave them the excuse to go to Gettysburg for family vacations. We ended up going twice. The first time I was 11 and the second time I was around 15. The first trip we went on ghost tours and wanted to have an experience but it was pretty uneventful. The second trip is when these stories take place. Our paranormal encounter was not necessarily terrifying or shocking in any way, instead it is several small experiences that made me a true believer in the paranormal. The second day we were there, my dad and I decided to take a tour of Ginny Wade's house. She is the only civilian to have died in the battle. It is not a particularly exciting tour but it was the late afternoon and we didn't have a lot planned. It was also right across the street from our hotel so convenience was definitely a factor. We got to the house at around 4.30 and asked the man in the shop if we could do the tour. He said they were closing soon but we could be the last tour of the day. The three of us went into the house and he began the tour. He quickly learned that we had been there before and decided that repeating the same tour he had done all day and we had done before was pointless. He asked if we minded if he went and closed up while we walked ourselves through the house. We didn't mind since we were just killing time. We noticed something this time that we hadn't noticed before. All the clocks are set to 8.30. We found out later that this was the time of her death. We went up to the second floor to look around and as we went back down the stairs I got very dizzy. It was like I was punched in the face by the smell of roses. I looked for incense or a plug in but found nothing. I asked my dad if he smelled it but he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. We finished up the tour and went back to the shop. The guy from before asked us if we were all done and we said yes. I decided to tell him about the rose smell. I asked do you use some type of scent upstairs or by the stairs? His eyes widened and he asked me what exactly did you smell? I explained the roses and he smiled a little almost like a I knew it type smile. He said that back in that time women made their perfume using crushed up rose petals and that scent is sometimes smelled upstairs. He said that people have also seen an apparition of an older woman when they smelled it. His guess was that it was Ginny's mother. We were both surprised and left both nervous and excited from the house. The story doesn't end there however. Fast forward to around 9.30 that same night and we were driving around the battlefield by Devil's Den. My mom was with us and she began to get nervous because they locked the gates at 10pm. She said we need to leave because we don't want to be stuck. My dad laughed and said why are you in such a hurry it's only 8.30. I turned around in shock and noticed he was looking at his watch not the clock in the car. The two of us quickly realized his watch had stopped at the same time as the clocks in that old house and we felt completely silent. We didn't talk about the Ginny Wade house for the rest of the night. The next morning I woke up and my parents were scrambling to pack. We had to be in New York City by a certain time and we were running late. When I asked what was wrong my mom said that she had set the hotel alarm to 7am but somehow the clock's time changed after we went to bed. I'll never know what time it was set to or by whom but I have a feeling I know what time it changed to. I know my story isn't particularly scary but it made me realize something. If you go to Gettysburg looking for an experience you may just find one. Nelly Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills near present-day Pittsburgh. She was a writer, journalist, inventor, industrialist and charity worker. One of her more famous undertakings was a record-setting 72-day trip around the world based on the Jules Verne character Philius Fogg from Around the World in 80 Days. What she is perhaps best known for, however, is pioneering an intensely committed form of investigative journalism by feigning insanity to get an inside look at a New York asylum. In 1887, after practicing deranged expressions in front of a mirror for a night, Bly checked herself into a boarding house under the name Nelly Moreno. That night she purposely caused a scene. Bly refused to go to bed, exclaiming that she was afraid of the other boarders and thought they were crazy. She would later write that it was the greatest night of my life. Eventually, the police were called. When she was taken to court, Bly claimed she couldn't remember the night's events. She was then examined by several doctors, all of whom pronounced her insane. I consider it a hopeless case, one of them was quoted as saying, while the head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital said that she was undoubtedly insane. Bly was committed to Black Wells Island where she stayed for 10 days as a patient. She was eventually released thanks to an attorney from the New York world, the paper that had centered there in the first place. 10 days, as it turned out, was plenty for Bly to write a scathing exposé about conditions in the asylum and the treatment of its inmates. The first installment of what would become 10 days in a madhouse ran two days after Bly's release under the title Behind Asylum Bars. In it, Bly described oblivious doctors and orderlies who choked, beat and harassed patients. She wrote of ice-cold baths, forced meals of rancid butter and cruel isolation. What, accepting torture would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Bly wrote of her experiences on Black Wells Island. In fact, from the moment she arrived at Black Wells Island, Bly dropped her insanity act. Yet she found that this exacerbated rather than helped her position. The more sanely I talked and acted, she wrote, the crazier I was thought to be. Nor was she alone. Bly observed that there were many women at Black Wells Island who were perfectly sane, but had difficulty making themselves understood because they were foreigners. Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, Bly wrote later, in her condemnation of Black Wells Island, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on straight back benches. Do not allow her to talk or move during these hours. Give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings. Give her bad food and harsh treatment and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck. Bly's expose made an immediate impression, greatly embarrassing the doctors and administrators of the asylum. It led to increased funding and sweeping reforms at the facility. Within a month, Bly returned to Black Wells Island, this time as part of a grand jury investigation. The investigation found that many of the conditions that Bly had reported had been improved on or corrected. Bly's story also led to more stringent examinations of potential patients to ensure that only those who were seriously ill were committed. At the time, some journalists dismissed Bly's stint at the asylum as stunt reporting. However, her bravery and determination in exposing the truth forever changed the face of mental health practices, as well as investigative journalism. Find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, and more merchandise. 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 the website, 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 at WeirdDarkness.com All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Children of Serial Killers was written by Stephanie Hammond for Ranker. The Hollywood Signs Lady in White was posted at realparanormalexperiences.com Ghosts in Gettysburg is by Weirdo family member Andrew Horn and was submitted directly to Weird Darkness. Nelly Bly's Living Nightmare is by Oren Gray for the lineup. Weird Darkness 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. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. In a final thought, you may think the grass is greener on the other side, but if you take the time to water your own grass, it'll be just as green. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.


What's good Joshua Ross back again with another video. So we're gonna check 10 greatest WWE Championship matches of all time by parts fun known we checked out some of the worst WWE Championship matches so it only makes sense to check out some of the best and they have been some fantastic WWE Championship matches just over the years man since I've been watching wrestling so this should be a good one we're gonna get right into it this one not even waste our time so go back down memory lane in a positive way let's do this thing we all got very cross alright I got very cross but I'm more important than you about terrible WWE Championship matches well it simply won't do to be cross all the time and we could cuz life is an endless snake eating your children sometimes you have to sprinkle some enforced optimism into your wrestling discourse for sure I'm here WWE intermittently treats the WWE Championship like a big deal depending on who's waist it's around it's very strange you think they would make more big stars they committed to main eventing it with every show raising wrestlers importance up to match the belt rather than lowering belts importance to match the champion but hey I don't run a wrestling company I never have to be clear I didn't run WCP W right now the title is a big deal so let's run through its true glory days it's time to be happy I can be happy sometimes I'm Adam Haling from parts fun known near our 10 greatest WWE Championship matches of all time alright stop me if you've heard this one before it's a late night Netflix hasn't got anything you fancy you've already watched raw smackdown in a bag clean since the start of Hulkamania seven years early in year six aka the first time that Hogan is pinned clean since the start of Hulkamania years earlier the first time in clean in seven yeah I mean that's one way to make a legend this is probably the last great match of Hulkamania despite Hogan limping on the company for three more years the first face versus face main event in WrestleMania history and possibly the greatest hype show that WWE have ever performed the opening video package to Mania six is glorious Hogan and warrior casters constellations gods in their firmament old versus new Aries versus Mars Titan for Titan as such the crowd are grab it helps because it's a basic match but it's a good one see as Hogan proved 12 years later at Mania 18 a simple framework is best when the hype is strong enough the book is simple they are evenly matched pound for pound move from move spots repeating over and over with each man trading advantage but the crowd adore every moment and it's hard not to be swept up in all the wrestling glory as it thunders to its deafening conclusion and warrior pins Hogan clean as a sheet number nine Kurt Angle versus Steve Austin SummerSlam 2001 from a clean finish to a screwy DQ that somehow some way actually really works most of the time WWE lazily pastes a DQ finish onto a match to avoid anyone having to lose either the satisfied ego or just keep the feuds plates spinning endlessly in this case though the DQ is part of a perfectly told story the rare dynamic of face Kurt Angle versus heel Steve Austin looking for Austin's WWE title is Elton's WrestleMania and as you might expect Angle plus Austin plus stakes equals great for the first year and a half is WWE career the company put Angle as being inferior to the big stars at the top of the car very talented sure but when compared to taker or rock or Austin a boy scout in a man scout's world not so at SummerSlam 2001 when powered by sheer f***ing America Kurt Angle would not die he takes everything Austin has is bloodied and batter takes multiple stunners but Austin cannot pin him and in his lunatic rage just starts murdering all other options aren't working it further Austin's descent into unhinged desperation and Angle's ascent to proper main event it is a f***ing wonderful match number eight Roman Reigns versus Drew McIntyre clash at the castle 2022 damn he put this in the top 10 this match was it was f***ing fantastic so I can't I can't be mad that that's in this top 10 this match was it was fantastic I love this match to bit not only is a dynamic bit of so good a perfect storm of expectation an invincible champion might actually be invincible but it's also the main event of one of the funnest days of work I've had for this company when we hosted the clash at the castle watch party in my god the fever in that room home town boy drew McIntyre walking into a stadium mere hundreds of miles from his hometown a stadium geographically close and it doesn't matter it was a big show with a big point to prove and that meant the title change was possible possible yeah he's felt unbeatable and while honestly most of his title defenses have been really good the great ones the truly great ones are the ones where there's a wind of change in the air closing sequence before solo runs in the whole stretch of the match is some of the most invested so good for watching a wrestling match in the last decade again good done without the same song number seven triple h versus cactus jack royal rumble 2000 remember when triple h was this a snooty kinetica blue blood remember when he was this Shawn Michaels him bow friend or the yuck yuck leader of a group of penis indicating ne'er do well as shade goofy going into 1999 eight time when wwe was both dedicated to getting him over as a new main event heel and also dedicated to dicking him around with six back challenges or silly bollocks like having his first wwe title reign end after 22 days by losing it to vince mcman point is by the time 2000 rolled around there was time to get serious about big trips he needed an air quotes proper match on pay-per-view to cement him as a top star step right up mcfo leaves in the business of killing himself to make star sense of the rock edge randy orton you get the idea the two men at a street fight in madison square garden and bloody hell though it's gruesome sadistic vile all the words wwe like to play over operatic music but it's also fantastic both in instance and in legacy triple h walked into msg as a man and emerged as a monster oh god give our flowers to fucking make foley make foley he knew how to get you over as someone that can legit go like you may not like him but you gotta respect what he can do in the ring like he he got that edge to him make foley can do that he's done that for so many wrestlers gotten them over as someone that can hang someone that can go past their limits gotta give them his flowers number six daniel brian versus randy orton versus batista wrestleman as long as this was on the list i was good i'm good i don't even have to see the rest of the list this match right here what are we talking about now has to be one more that's on this list you know you know i'm not gonna say anything about it but you know me it has to be one more that needs to be on this list but this as long as this was on the action there's two more that need to be on this list and i think there will be this on here i'm good though i'm good this give us what we want and we'll be happy i simply don't know how much clearer we can be about this how is wrestling this hard is not want to daniel brian to be wwe champion for a number of reasons is really good historical dissatisfaction with being told into like it felt like the culmination of a story that for some reason they weren't interested in telling anymore and sure the capricious hand of fate robbed us of an actual title run for deep brian but hey at least we got this a simple joyful wrestling moment at the end of a really great match as much as brian winning felt like the easy call and the right call you can't trust wwe to be that simple when batista chuck daniel brian out of the ring to try and steal his pinfall that kind of instant fear instant relief is a rush unique to this very silly sport the rest of the match is great brian fighting from underneath lots of overbooking but worth it to have the authority strings tied off for the night and at final five minutes which contains some of the most joy a modern fan can have at the end of a wrestlemania a joy that we got on night one this year just not night two night two number five john siena versus seth rollins versus brock lesnar roya rumbled this was really good too it's not the one i was talking about but i think he's gonna have a morning this is really really good 2015 this one's silly looking back 2015 was such a strange year for wwe the roman reigns backlash reaching itself with the rumble undertaker turning into a strange teleporting dick kicking angry old man john stewart deciding who won the winner take all match at summer slam league of nation shame as being world champion odd year but my god the first wwe title match of 2015 was one of the best of all time the main event of mania a few months later that was stellar too but this probably pips it's not just the best wwe title match of 2015 but arguably the best wwe match of the year as a whole siena brock and rollins go hell for leather in a wonderfully stupid match full of seth bouncing around like he's made of rubber j and j security getting killed repeatedly and philly hating on john siena to a fabulous degree as weird as is to think about now brock's finished spammer shtick was crazy over back then yeah it was killer no filler mindset permeates this match crowd popping big spot after crowd popping big spot number four john siena versus aj styles raw rumble 2017 absolutely bold of john siena to wait until the final three years of his full-time career to get really good at wrestling but he will take it from 2015 onwards a switch flipped in the mind of johnny boy he just decided to have the best match on almost every card he was on go yeah now he was i i don't know what happened i don't know if he knew he was going to hollywood i guess he had some type of indication so those last few years where he was regularly there he was putting on fucking great matches some could say oh he's being carried but he was putting on some good matches may not like him john siena's had some fucking great matches bro it is going forward putting on a series of stormers with kevin owens rusev seth rollins but by far and away his best dance partner was the hairdo with the can do the christian that leaves them blistering these soccer marmanal aj styles siena and stars have had a number of classics their matches some of them are also bloody brilliant but their best is their clash for aj's wwe championship in the 2017 raw rumble everything works here styles is still just about the best in the world bring the best out of siena as a dominant force rather than his miscast underdog shtick the work rate is crazy high for two men in their 40s the fluidity of aj's work is still a marvel and they give the match all the time it needs to act to an absolute boiling point it's hilarious that siena would win here then drop the title two weeks later in isolation this is his second best match number three the rock versus steve austin rest we know what his his best matches and like i said rock versus steve austin at russumanias 17 man i that's why i rock with alon bro this was one of the matches i said that had to be on this list and it's on here we'll be talking about you know what the other one is too the best match of both men's career and the main event of the best wrestlemania makes sense that this was something special man is a hard hitting barnstorm are called by the best announced team in wrestling don't have me but it's more than just a vanilla face versus face contest as well the arc of this match is deceptively great austin's a heal from the moment the bell rings takes a while to realize a cheap shotting rock from the off is insane drive to be champ already in place the soul has already been sold it's wonderful what follows is a precursor to austin an angle the rattled snake perhaps in some ways rattled by the problem is no one cared because people love stone cold it didn't matter people loved the rock too but it didn't matter because it was stone cold he could have did whatever the fans were going to cheer year on the shelf coming up against an immovable object and responding by blowing up everything he believed in and everyone who believed in him the crowd are into every single second every drop of blood almost to a fault because the crowd really don't sell the heel turn when it happens but yeah they did as long buster as wrestling can get speaking of crowds number two john sena versus cm punk money i just said it he got all three of my favorite matches in one video i'm good i said this the others there's two other matches we just seen it with uh the rock versus stone cold russ man 17 and of course john sena's greatest match honestly honestly it's if i had to really think cm punk has had some great matches in wwe but i think this honestly in his wwe run i think this may be his best match i'm just being honest and he had some really good ones but there's this was lightning in the bottle the feud that brought me back to watch and wrestling on a regular basis the lead up to this they definitely botched it you know afterwards they could have really really ramped this up but this match right here was fantastic the atmosphere fantastic just bro this was i go back and watch cm punk's entrance periodically at money in the bank 2011 bro this in my opinion had felt like a wrestle mania match there was so much on the line this was fantastic this was great that's my personal opinion best john sena match of all time best cm punk wwe match for sure me in the bank 2011 the match that got the man who got you back into wrestling back into wrestling hahaha he said it himself he said he i haven't seen this video by the way so the fact that he just said that i without cm punk's infamous promo segment i don't know if i would be watching wrestling like it is like i am today even after all the cm punk stuff went sour not only in 2011 not only in 2014 not only in 2022 yeah giddie looking back on this match still rewatch every year or so because it's an event a feature showcase of all the things i love about professional wrestling five star classic intriguing stakes a white hot crowd that actually fully care and i'm just going through the main event motions of waiting to see in a slash hogan to power back up and win the kind of crowd with a cause a f*** you cause who nobody's business if they get what they want that kind of context and framework is the reason why this matches five stars an island of childlike excitement great the years of ww being so very tepid when was the last time you saw a crowd pop for every single move like yeah well sammy saying versus yeah yeah yeah admittedly while that match ended in a fuzzy combination of intended heartbreak and unintended disappointment the final moments have seen a punk are an explosion of f*** yeah goodwill i'd like to punch yeah with joy when i watch my wrestling what can i say which is why number one the rock versus triple h backlash 2000 one of the longest single pops in wrestling history yeah it's just enough time for the mic man helmsley numbness game dominating the rock for the match to become just on the cusp of boring the glass shanty's austin swagger's down to the ring tracks paterson briscoe dango shea dango spins the texas rathasnay returns wrecks everyone and leaves allowing rock to finally smash back the wwe tile in a match and moment that impossibly didn't happen at wrestle mania the month earlier wwe has always had its best when a keeps things simple and b gives the people what they want this story couldn't be simple the new super authority stacks the deck five on one on the rock spends the entire pay-per-view saying that austin isn't here and he won't be here the match goes just long enough and is filled with enough bullsh** shenanigans for the fans to forget about austin smash a brilliant end to a brilliant show and honestly except maybe for mik foley or all which would have made the list but the match itself isn't that memorable fight me i can't think for better received title switch in all of the time i've watched wwe now this is legendary bro f***ing legend that pop was f***ing insane bro whoa this was a great list comment down below let me know what is your greatest wwe championship match you've ever seen if it was on this list if it wasn't on this list let me know down below man i want to see what y'all what y'all opinion on some of our greatest wwe championship matches uh you've ever seen because some of you guys are younger so some of you guys haven't seen some of these matches or we're able to experience it live so it may be some of the recent ones and i'm not here to tell you it's not good because it's your opinion so let me know down below but i appreciate all the love and support road to 150k and i'm still here to speed the youtube championship but we'll appreciate y'all game we see you next one


I'm talking about, again, the coming of the Bermans and basically contentious claims perhaps a little bit, slightly different angle on claims about Mon cultural hegemony. So, what I'm saying is, as well as invoking the Pagani era, as what one of Lucy's May names is, the apiosis of past glory and the inspiration on which to build with modern nation. Lucy considered it's very important to discover, as Patrick told us, where the Bermans, how the Bermans players came to make it. to doedd ymlaenol yn y tîm ap y Burmyr.   Llywodraethwn i'n mynd i'ch cael ei ddweud i'r rhan o'r cyflwytaeth yn eu cyffredinol sy'n sicrhau bod ysgolodau hynny'n ymddangos ar y ffordd. I'm good by the achievements of the past, and his lifelong colleague and friend, John Fernval, who was a very blatant socialist nationalist, was very political in some of what he said, but I've never come across anything particularly overtly political that Luceva wrote, but I do myself, in my heart, certainly in the 30s, meaning that Luce himself, for perhaps altruistic reasons, was also very much on the side of Burmese nationalism, without necessarily rying a political flag about it. So, however, Luce also began working, as we know, at the time when there was little attention was paid to Burmese history. Even after the foundation of the Burma Research Society, which I kindly parted, kindly point out, had written on, they were found in 1910, when British scholar officials and Burmese professional elites came together to share their ideas about the country's history and cultural heritage. That was the portal through which Luce began to develop his ideas, interacting with Burmese people in a scholarly society. However, he was an outsider, and as I told you about his personal life, I think you were perhaps gained that impression. He was noted for non-conformity, not only in his personal life, but also in his approach to scholarship. I think his inclination was contrary to statist versions of Burmese history, as Patrick Oganus mentioned, the chronicles. They were the annals of ancient Burmese kingship, and he was prepared to take risks in his own history writing by rejecting former dependence on the chronicles as sources, as reliable sources. He was happy to make assumptions based on what could often be limited epigraphic sources, particularly for the pre-Pagan period, when he advanced new theories about how the Bermans came to Burma. He was, in his own words, prepared to stick his neck out, which in his view meant rejecting the chronicles as unreliable, gerry-built structures. That was what Luce said. In his estimation, history, as Patrick Oganus said, as in the way the British concept, he followed that idea as a base. It was very much about facts, not myths and legends, and he describes these dynastic myths of old Burma as largely tissues of legend. It's chronology, wild, and even the origin of the Bermans is quite mistaken. Fairly bold, rash statements. He's differed markedly from accounts in the chronicles, obviously, and it's quite interesting to note that, notwithstanding, he and Peymontin actually translated the Glass Palace Chronicle in 1923. This approach, naturally not unexpectedly, led him to make uncorroborated assumptions that created intellectual and methodological problems. But that was notwithstanding, his ideas set the tone for a new dynamic engagement with Burma's past that did not rely only on the chronicles. He was one of the first historians to attempt to reconstruct the country's history from sources other than the chronicles. He did not subscribe to the fact that Burma's history proper, if you will, began with the colonial occupation, nor was his scholarship steeped in British imperial tradition as people have accused people like Arthur Fair, Edward Parker and Albert Fitch. Because colonial historians, as Patrick Oganus said, believed that there were continuities with Burma's ancient past, so that if you spoke the same language, you belonged to the same tribe or fixed identity. So Patrick and I obviously have some sort of telepathy because I too read Robin's Berlin, where did my tribe come from. However, by assigning a causal role to race, or as it's referred to today, ethnicity, these earlier colonial historians continued to influence the intellectual environment that Lewis was working in, right throughout the early decades, so you must keep that in mind, I think, when scientific and rational ideas of race, nation, national histories were predominating factors in colonial classification of various groups. Anyway, we have now got, I'll just go a little bit muddled here, so I'm just... So Lewis, although rather, we might actually think that Lewis is dismissal in largely of the chronicles, a little bit ironic, since he was prepared to stick his neck out and make things up a bit, if you like to put it in the knuckle, whereas the old chronicleers, or the monks that wrote them, predominantly wanted to valorise, or bigger, a king's reign. They wanted their monarch, the reigning monarch, to look as if he fought great battles and done great things. So we also sort of might like to see Lewis perhaps trying to do a similar thing on the other side of the coin. But anyway, Lewis viewed, nevertheless, he was a professional in that sense. He viewed writing history as a professional endeavour to which the standards, the rational standards of the day should be applied. And he believed that this could be achieved by collecting all available evidence that would enable him to write the history of Berlin, because I think that was how he did see it, or not he might not have written it himself, but he thought that that was what needed to be done from his earliest times. So in order to accomplish this task, he made many excursions throughout Burma over the course of more than half a century. When he was still working before independence, he would use holidays and leave time. But after, when he came back, he was doing it much more under the auspices of the Historical Research Commission. He studied the inscriptions and to record its ancient languages. And he was assisted on his field trips by Colonel Bar-Shin, and this man, from my understanding, did a lot of the translation and transliteration work. There's still a little bit of a misconception, unsure, uncertainty, I would say, as to what depth Lewis was pretty good at interpreting, but how his understanding of language and the ancient dialect may not have been perhaps all his own. I can't verify that. But he did say that it was very important that the most urgent and valuable and the least expensive way of writing Burma's history was to accomplish this task, and it was to record Burma's ancient languages, which are now on the point of dying out. So we've got another slide here, and here he is, with the members. I don't know that they're all Burma army, but they have a fairly dilapidated vehicle. I don't know how they got about, but it did seem to go all right, and here they helped him, I suppose. But what he did say, so although languages like Old Mon, Old Firmies and Pew were no longer spoken, many of the minorities, perhaps, had had their own language or dialect, and Burma-Shin undertook, as I said, many of the transcriptions and translations that they discovered on monuments or other effigies. And he also admitted, interestingly enough, that the personnel that he worked with, who assisted them, had never or hardly ever heard of the existence of what he called, Loose Code, small and important tribes whose languages we are at such a pains to record, and they had no idea that they were important, perhaps that's the view of the ordinary people who weren't field assistants, if you like, with Burma. So then we also know that when we come to migration, which Patrick has told us a lot about, he based a lot of his hand written notes, his work on Chinese sources, and I've got similar information here, where he believed that much of his evidence for the Burma migrations of the 9th century upon Chinese sources, but a lot of his work was using sources in translation. They were translated by his former teacher, Paul Peleau, of the École Française Exprimovion, and he was the one, I think, to whom Loose owed a lot of his ideas, because he paid tribute, and Loose is very generous in paying tribute, his former professor's famous article, Deus etineraire de Chine, where Peleau wrote that article. He traced the overland routes from China, from Tonking to India that were compiled, this is Peleau's work, by the Tang Court Minister, Shia Tang, so there's a kind of layering of how Loose achieved his ideas. He considered that Peleau had laid a firm foundation for future Chinese studies related to Burma by determining that prior to 1050, most written sources about Burma were Chinese, and from then on, they remained a priceless secondary source of uniformly high quality. Loose wrote that in a century of progress in Burma's history and archaeology in the Journal of Burma Research Society in 1948. So it's again quite a daring but definite way. Anyway, he used linguistic evidence together with the translation once again, exactly as Patrick has said, of the Chinese source Manchu, written by Fan Zhu, which again, Peleau used. So we do have a number of people, if you like, coming into this mix, not least of them, Peleau and Fan Zhu. Loose then described, or extrapolated from this, that from the 7th century onwards, several groups, this is how he's calling them, dwelt along the border from north-west China to south-west Burma, who'd been conquered into servitude by the Manchu, and they were known to Fan Zhu as the pew. These frontier peoples, whom, as Patrick has told us, were regarded as proto-Burmans, who escaped their captors the Manchu, and this is what looses things, whether you think he's made it up to his article, Faces of Pre-Pegan Burma. They escaped to the hot, malaria plains of central Burma, where Manchu armies, used to the cold plateau of Nunan, do us not follow them, except in the cold weather. So where the climate came into migration, it appears to be the case in Loose's view. Anyway, after over 20 years of study, in 1939, Loose published a seminal article, Burma Down to the Fall of Pegan. He wrote that joint, he was paying on tin, and they described the Burman migrations, and they were quite elegiac and glorified them as the supreme moment in the history of the Burmans when they descended on mass upon the plains of Calxay, is it Patrick Calxay? They produced evidence, the two of them, pointing to the region between my car and the River Selwyn as Burmas, as the Burmans principal line of entry, this is in this article, and they eventually inhabited the Calxay district, where Patrick has shown you on the map, of Upper Burma as their first home on the plains. So they did a quick shuttle across to that bit outside of Pegan. So it's a little bit difficult to understand if this is how we can verify this. I don't think we can. Anyway, he did suggest that the arrival of the Burmans in other places in Calxay, Mimbu, Pegan, and Townbion was completed, he thought it was over by the middle of the 9th century. However, his theories were not without criticism, because his own former pupil, Professor Tantun, criticised Lucis' reliance when using 12th and 13th century lythic inscriptions to explain how the Burmans had subsisted 13 for 300 years earlier during the Pegan period. Tantun maintained that if the Lucis claimed the Burmans had speedily spread out from the small fertile area around Calxay to create further settlements, it was impossible to know from the inscription how they managed to survive in the semi desert of the central plains. And he also dismissed Lucis' theories as conjectured and disputed his claims that Chinese sources move uniformly high quality. And I think that's probably a fair assertion, a fair criticism. And he also pointed out that often things written were not eyewitness accounts, but it doesn't undermine Lucis' work. But I do think you need a caveat here, because they've been copied many times, as you say, by monks and other people. So errors are bound in, and there were errors in translation. However, if we're on slide 17, Lewis considered that, anyway, whatever, how they'd got there, he thought that the Burman migrants gained great benefit from their escape to the Calxay plains, conjecturing that they had found room for individual growth and national expansion. I'm quite interested in the use of the word national in that context, but that might echo something else about, he's not political, but he used that word anyway. And he claimed that successive ethnic groups like the Mon, and before them pew, had influenced, that is fair to fair common, Burma's cultural heritage. But most controversially, he asserted that those remnants of monks who were residing in the Calxay district when the Burmans arrived had taught them letters and Buddhism. And he stated in Calxay, the first home of the Burmans on the plains, the victors, that is the Burmans, the free to the vanquished, that is the Mon's, as the Burmans learnt letters and Buddhism from Mon's. According to Lluwst, Burman is, of course, he's been talking about the ethnic Burmans, the ethnicity, all the ones who turned up the proto-Burmans who he named as soon as they got here, Burmans, arrived in Upper Burmans, had caused the Mon's living in the area to flee southward. And as he noted in his work, I mentioned earlier, Old Burma and early Burgan, that Mon's were clearly numerous in this northwest corner of the district and in doubtless at Calxay itself. His hypothesis was based on the evidence of a Mon, one evidence, of a Mon inscription in the area that had been identified by his former teacher Charles Otto Blagdon in epigraphica Bermelica. So implicit in Lluwst's statement is the idea that Mon culture and religion had acted as a powerful civilised in force upon Burma and conquerors in a similar way that perhaps military superior Romans had civilised the weaker and more cultured literate Greeks. So he's still having much more the underlying, the foundational idea of Lluwst the historian as very much still influenced by the Victorian background that he had been educated in as a historian of history. These claims however did prove to be somewhat contentious politically because among people living in Burma at the time, by the time he published his book that's towards the end of the 70s, not only because his ideas were based largely upon his own interpretive work, but also because they contradicted or refuted the evidence of the chronicles.  That is a very concept that is certainly worth respecting, but they have to be seen for what they are. That's what I'm talking about. And they challenged the notion of Burman cultures and these particular people challenged the notion of Burman cultural supremacy a nation, an idea that was particularly prevalent among educated elites in the country before and after independence. And it came to a head in 1971 when he received a public rebuke in a series of letters from a correspondent in the Rangun times who disputed his story that the Burmans had descended upon the plains of Minbu and Coutre in the mid-19th century. And he accused Lluws of the wild imagination born of prejudice. So he accused him also of humiliating the Burmans by saying they learned Buddhism from the monks. So what we learn from this, what we can gather from this is that the ideas of how we label people's culture even aside from language when respect to their ethnicity is a very sensitive issue is what I'm saying. And so many years later Lluws continued with this line and he in 1959, as Patrick mentioned is all Coutre in the coming of the Burmans. He still wanted to pin down this idea by showing that Coutre was not it was Coutre and not Tagal that was the first home when the Burmans after they escaped. And he actually it's replete the article with his suppositions about Franchew's ninth 9th century account of 12th and 12th century inscriptions which we remember just dismissed as conjecture by Cantun. So according to Lluws Franchewn distinguished the various groups of proto-Burmans by the names of their chiefs but after these so-called tribal groups had migrated to Burma across the border into the border Lluws assumed immediately a fully formed ethnic group whom he named the Burmans. However, despite Lluws' categorisation of them as Burmans he gave them that label, he labored them it's unlikely that various tribal groups who fled would have identified themselves in this way as part of an ethnically distinct group with common features of language, customs and culture so I think that's quite a Lluws has stuck his neck out there definitely big time. In the absence of written records basically we simply do not know whether or not people recognise a common ethnicity in pre-colonial times and group themselves together under a single name I suspect not. Clearly over time migrants and their predecessors had to come to some accommodation with one another through intermarriage as they moved to new locations humans mixed with their genes and their customs so that every culture and every human population has in my view a Robin Berling he believes they have multiple ethnicities so once again we see that colonialism fostered an intellectual environment where classification according to ethnicity was a linguistic and cultural assumptions which authorised these ideas about its subjects and in the pre-pegan period it is more than likely that cultural and linguistic borrowings occurred frequently among as Patrick has mentioned loanwords and things like that but it doesn't make them ethnically cohesive among coexisting ethnicities so that any traits or influences cannot definitely be attributed to any one particular ethnic group now it's very difficult to read this but an interesting turn of events perhaps in loose as a historian and it shows perhaps a little bit more of loose the man than loose the historian because as we've seen from what I've said and perhaps Patrick as well from the 1930s he had a firm view of history in respect of their historiography and their political hegemony by urging future he actually wrote he urged future politicians to look to pegan as the model for cultural and religious innovation in the modern world that was how he felt and kept those ideas for a long time but the civil war and independence which followed independence and his own exile from Burma in 64 modified his views particularly when history writing became an important element in helping Burma's minorities to establish their indigenous identity and rights within the new union of Burma in 1947 the constitution of the union of Burma continued the colonial practice of dividing country on ethnic racial basis by maintaining the distinction between those who inhabited the peripheral regions or the uplands of Burma and the people of central Burma who are predominantly Burma or as I've been using the term Burma it is a fluid term but that is whom I mean and who are mostly Burma Buddhists and the constitution segregated the upland peoples by describing them as Tain Yintza meaning some close to the territory whereas those in the centre were Yangon Tsar or Mandalay Tsar so in order to claim their rights as had already been designated peripheral anyway to be considered of Tain Yintza peripheral ethnic groups had to prove that their ancestors were present in Burma prior to the British annexation of the territory in 1824 however as Patrick has quite rightly pointed out the paucity of written records and the absence of a clear and consistent oral history made this pretty much impossible for many minorities including those so-called small and important tribes whom Lluws had been keen to record their languages and there were one group in 1963 the rhaidja whom Lluws they from our Khan district Lluws encountered these people on his tours in our Khan, I don't know what particular occasion but he must have been well known enough to have drawn their attention to him and they understood the needs of written evidence so they could say that they could attest to their long-term presence in the country therefore they viewed Lluws' visit to Mongdor he went up to Mongdor in 1963 as a golden opportunity they actually write that in the text there that would help them improve their life and provide them with a means of legitimising their status so in 1963 the elders of the united rhaidja organisation of the mayor district presented Lluws with this formal address and they requested him to record their history embodying it in the history of Burma and since 1960 their homeland had actually been placed under the frontier district administration by Nae Winn and their racial status had been recognised by the government so they wanted it formalised to have their history so in their address they asked Lluws to help them record that as they say rhaidja had existed and inhabited the union of Burma it was interesting that they used the phrase union of Burma which it was at that time more than 1200 years and they believed that this act if Lluws could help them it would legitimate their right to self represent their own identity in relation to their past and present historical practice and reinforce their claims to ingenuity so they held Lluws a distinguished scholar a genuine philanthropist nationalist and all things and they expressed the hope that their recent recognition as part of the frontier administration would inaugurate a new era for them and alleviate their many sufferings eradicate insurgency and suppress smuggling all of which were very noble aims but rather damned by future events the rhaidja hoped that Lluws would act as their interlocutor integrating their autonomous history within his generic history which they believed he was writing of Burma in order to authorise their status as part of the union now there's no evidence that I have found that Lluws ever actually did at anything but I think it's still quite telling or interesting that Lluws was approached and that he was seen in that capacity so I think we can see that Lluws the man has a lot if I could say I don't mean to answer for but a lot perhaps to put more than perhaps Lluws the historian because he was seen by these people as a man of great sympathy and love for the people and they therefore approached him so just to conclude with a few remarks I say that Lluws the rhaidja's approach to Gordon Lluws confirms his involvement, his ongoing involvement with existing indigenous research network as well as with sources beyond the Burmese borders although how reliable you want to estimate these sources or his reliance on them himself maybe a matter for your conjecture his concern to trace the origins of the Burmans strongly suggests the existence of a basic continuity between the pre-colonial and colonial patterns of political dominance his lifelong study of Burma's old languages and epigraphy demonstrates I believe his willingness to engage with the technical problems of using indigenous sources and although he dismissed the chronicles which perhaps that's again a contentious thing he was still very interested in the work that he did with lithic inscriptions shows a leading edge in engaging his Pellegrinations around Burma use his reliance or his engaging with the indigenous sources which I think is absolutely the only vital way for people to move Burma's history forward today and rather than retreating for them complexity and relying on surrogates although I have to say I think in the matter of Fantu and things like that and Paul Pellegr I think Lluws did have some tendency towards that but he certainly wasn't in the same league as Arthur Fair the Victorian who relied completely on surrogates and so he did distance himself from the chogonistic perspective of historiographies that viewed Britain's conquest of Burma simply in light of three wars throughout the 19th century and he demonstrated that colonialism was created as much by events and interests in the non-European world as by the driving force of industrialisation and the national conflict in Europe itself Now, as I said Lluws by Tantun and others I think it was Metri or one of the Anthuens who accused him of making too ready to make assumptions even changing the fact to suit historians however this is no more really than any writers of history such as the chronicles have done and perhaps we all do although we try not to we are influenced by our background and where we come from and he embellished as well and Lluws was a modest man John O'Cullough's left had told me some time ago in an email that he had met Lluws and found him to be a man of unassuming modesty and that was John as a young student's impression Can I just finish and then you can ask a question? and he readily acknowledged that history writing involved taking risks and on occasion sticking one's neck out because it said rather modestly someone has to do it so as long historians are able to emulate Lluws's modesty in accepting that assumptions can be misplaced or just simply plain wrong then the whole process I think of writing history assumes the excitement of discovery which is Lluws in my view and perhaps your true gift as history so finally how might we reconcile Lluws the man and Lluws the scholar as his very pro-Burman views of history in the 30s developed a much more ecumenical approach after 1948 the ensuing civil war and his own exile from the country where he spent most of his adult life and those things were influential factors in his life and I think perhaps when we are talking of migrants we must remember that Lluws himself was a migrant and subject always he was a migrant to Burma if you stretch it and subject to the uncertainties inherent in this status and also the associated anxieties of belonging he too had to integrate and belong as he married into a Burmese family and his personal life experience influenced and modified his views about his adopted country but like all migrants traces of his ancestral genealogical relationships remained in his DNA because although he had little contact with his family after he went to Burma and he returned to Jersey the island from which his family heritage had originated and because Patrick finished his talk with what does migration mean does it transcend the physical location or as he told us is migration is complicated and I want to finish on a personal note if I may and I don't claim that this anecdote has any historical value but I believe that however that was more his time in Burma is probably more about loose the man or at least equally weighted because far as we might travel physically or migrate we never stray far from our origins in January 2016 whilst in Canterbury I was going through loose's extensive correspondence with letters and I found surprisingly very little of a person's nature there were no letters from parents or anyone else except lots quite a lot of correspondence with a sister Ethel who lived in America but there was one afternoon a short handwritten note caught my eye the date was the 14th December 1944 and there was a one word address on the top of the letter rangway W-R-A-N-G-W-A-Y and the writer was an M snow and the writer thanked loose for his sympathy regarding so obviously somebody close to her and said how much he whoever the visitor had enjoyed the evening with you and your letter gave him real joy at a very bleak time I presumed that the M snow was writing after the individual had died now that seems of nothing but I would doubt that anybody sitting where I was in the lightning camera would have known where rangway was I wouldn't argue that there might be other places in the world called rangway but evidence I found out later I spent the early few first years of my childhood in a hamlet called rangway underneath the black land hills near Wellington in some sense and there was an old lady who lived in a cottage at the hill called a miss snow she was a Sunday school teacher a funny old woman I didn't know I was only a toddler but I remember passing her cottage and I think that was whom loose visited and I made some enquiries and I found out that miss snow and her relatives had all come from Jersey and they were a Jersey family so I thought myself I discovered that later so that despite his migration, his estrangement from his family loose was a Jersey man and he never forgot his roots thank you