In all the interviews I've recorded for this show, nothing has quite matched what one member of staff at Tamworth Castle told me: a full, complete apparition, seen face to face inside the building. In this episode of the Haunted UK Podcast, I sit down with two of Tamworth Castle's own staff, Leigh and Hollie, to explore one of Staffordshire's most historic sites, and the ghost stories that have grown up around it.

Long before the Norman castle that still stands above the town, Tamworth was a seat of power in Anglo-Saxon Mercia. Leigh and Hollie gave me a personal tour of the castle before we sat down to record, then walked me back through it, room by room, once the microphones were on, along with the castle's long-running Black Lady and White Lady legends. Leigh saves the strangest of it for last: two separate sightings, the second a complete, unmistakable apparition unlike anything I've heard in any interview before it.

Hear Leigh and Hollie's full accounts in this episode.

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The most frightening face in horror is a $1.98 Captain Kirk mask from a magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, with the eye holes cut wider and the face sprayed white. In the very first episode of The Midnight Reel, Steve from the Haunted UK Podcast and Melissa from Haunted UK Fiction review John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the film that started the modern slasher.

Before the review, the episode goes behind the scenes of a horror classic made for around $300,000 in about three weeks. Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first feature film, bought Laurie Strode’s whole wardrobe at JC Penney for under $100. Donald Pleasence took the part of Dr Loomis after Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee both turned it down. Nick Castle got $25 a day to play The Shape. Paper autumn leaves were painted and reused in a South Pasadena spring, and Carpenter made one of the most famous theme tunes in film history on synthesisers, with hardly any money.

Then Steve and Melissa give their honest verdict on Michael Myers’ first night home in Haddonfield.

Watch or listen now, leave your own verdict in the comments, and vote in the poll for next month’s film.

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe, leave us a rating, and drop a review. It really helps the show reach more listeners. Here's where to find more:

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Produced by Pink Flamingo Sound Studio

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Frank Tate spent years in security operations, the military, and private contracting, but it's his time as Warden for Newborough and Llanddwyn on Anglesey that gives this account its setting.

His book, Factual Supernatural, is out now on Amazon, and this episode features one of its accounts exactly as he wrote it, unaltered.

No hole in the ceiling, no vibration, no explanation, just a metal bolt hitting the cabin floor two seconds after Tate dares whatever's out there to prove itself.

This is Bolt Drop.

Tate's years as Warden meant long nights alone in Newborough and Llanddwyn, working paths shaped more by animals than people, in a forest built over the sand-buried ruins of a medieval royal court.

Watching over film equipment overnight in an isolated welfare cabin deep in the forest, Tate and a friend fall into a conversation about ghosts. His friend believes; Tate doesn't, and says so flatly, then half-jokingly challenges whatever might be listening outside to "do something" if it's really there. The cabin goes unnaturally quiet for a couple of seconds. Then comes a sharp, sudden bang: a metal bolt has landed on the floorboards a few feet away. They check the ceiling above it. It's solid, panelled, with no holes and no loose fittings, and nothing nearby that could have shaken it loose. There's no way to explain how it got there, only the fact that it fell straight down, moments after the challenge was spoken aloud.

Hear the full account in this episode, and find Factual Supernatural by Jonathan Frank Tate now on Amazon.

Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe, leave us a rating, and drop a review. It really helps the show reach more listeners. Here's where to find more:

Support the show: Patreon (patreon.com/hauntedukpodcast) | Ko-fi (ko-fi.com/hauntedukpodcast)

Follow us: Instagram @hauntedukpodcast | TikTok @hauntedukpodcast | X @hauntedukpod

Website: https://hauntedukpodcast.com/

Produced by Pink Flamingo Sound Studio

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.