Episode One: The haunted pound stretcher transcript

Below you’ll find the transcript for episode One of Weird in the Wade: the haunted pound stretcher. Please see additional posts for photographs and images.

Any text in blue is additional material cut from the broadcast podcast purely for time saving reasons. Some of which will be reflected elsewhere in the podcast but in a more streamlined form.

Transcript

The haunted Poundstretcher

Dramatic intro

On today’s episode … staff at the pound stretcher shop in Biggleswade, got more than they bargained for, when strange phenomena started causing trouble at their place of work. I want you to imagine if you can, just for a moment, that you’re one of those members of staff. Put yourself in their shoes as I weave for you their tale of unexplained activity.

Our story begins with small things, that feeling you get that you’re not alone, even though you know you are. You know the feeling, like someone is watching you from that shadowy corner, behind you or through that open doorway. The hairs on the back of your neck prickle. You turn your head slowly, reluctantly. You don’t want to, but you have to look. And then when you do look there’s no one there.

Imagine this is happening to you again and again, day after day, in your place of work. This high street shop. You like working there, your colleagues are great, the customers, well there’s good and there’s bad. It’s work, it pays the bills. You enjoy it. But it’s not long until other things start happening. Strange, unsettling things. Whilst you’re alone in the shop you hear a voice calling out to you, so you check but there is no one there. [sound effect of voices calling] Another day you hear crying coming from another room, [sound of crying] when you get there, the room is unoccupied. These are things are, unnerving, baffling but they are things you can probably tell yourself are just your imagination. Right?

But it doesn’t stop there. Doors often close by themselves, [sound effect of creaking door] even trapping a colleague in the office. You arrive to work in the morning, opening up the shop to find stock all over the floor like a child has been playing in the shop over night, tossing toys here and there without a care in the world. Yet the shop was neat and tidy when you left the night before. And your colleagues swear they aren’t pranking you because they’re experiencing these things too. Some of them are really scared. What do you tell yourself then? What do you tell yourself when these things just keep getting stranger and stranger and harder to explain? When going into work feels like being in a Ghostbusters film? What would you do? Hand in your notice? Laugh it off? Have a stiff drink or three after work? Convince yourself that there’s always an explanation for these things, isn’t there?  Isn’t there?

General Intro

Today we’re following the twisty tale of Biggleswade’s haunted pound stretcher! I’m Nat Doig and I’m your host for today’s episode of Weird in the Wade: The Haunted Pound Stretcher. We’ll hear the testimony of 10 separate witnesses, half a dozen of whom worked in the shop. We’ll explore some theories about who or what is causing the strange phenomena. And we’ll dive deeper into the history of the building and the people who have lived and worked there. Trying to uncover what’s haunting Biggleswade’s pound stretcher. I’m not here to prove that ghosts exist or that they don’t. I’m interested in stories about people and how these encounters affect them. Why do we enjoy these stories so much? Why do we enjoy being frightened when telling them? I’m interested in why we have ghost stories and why people report them. The idea of ghosts exists in our culture and in many others, and why is that? Whether you believe in ghosts or you’re a sceptic searching for answers, or maybe you just like a good ghost story, I hope you’ll find something in today’s episode to enjoy. And I hope especially that today’s episode will make your pause and ponder.

If you thought my earlier introduction was scary, there’s much more to come, about what was seen and heard at the haunted pound stretcher of Biggleswade.

But we’ve got to address it haven’t we? It’s funny. It’s really funny isn’t it? Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the idea of a haunted pound stretcher is just funny. Like really daft. To the onlooker anyway. I’m not sure how funny it was to those who worked there.

I wouldn’t be recording this podcast for you now, if it wasn’t for the fact that the idea of a haunted pound stretcher or any pound or thrift shop is somehow intrinsically funny. It’s just not a location you’d associate with ghosts. It’s the least atmospheric setting for a haunting. It’s every day, it’s mundane. We associate hauntings with church yards, and old spooky mansions, abandoned buildings or lonely woods swirling with mist and mystery. We don’t expect ghosts to pop up whilst we’re shopping for garden wire or plastic storage boxes. We’ll come back to this, later in the show. Explore what makes a story spooky.

This unusually mundane setting is why when I blurted out at the Uncanny Convention to Danny Robins that we had a haunted pound stretcher in Biggleswade, he sent for a microphone for me, and I was asked to spill the beans in front of an audience of hundreds of people. And if you’ve not heard of Danny Robins and his bbc podcast Uncanny, I urge you, once you’ve listened to this episode of course, to look up Uncanny, The Battersea Poltergeist and the Witch Farm podcasts. They’re fantastic and Danny Robins is an unassuming but masterful storyteller of a very British kind. 

But back to the Uncanny Convention and me telling this story, it got a laugh, all those people found it amusing, they also found it interesting. After Uncanny con, over on twitter a small group of dedicated Uncanny enthusiasts (shout out to the uncanny community you’re absolute stars!) Well they encouraged me to research into the haunting which I did, and I uncovered more intriguing stories not just about the pound stretcher but Biggleswade its self. And with their encouragement I decided to create this podcast and accompanying blog for Weird In the Wade. This series wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the fact that a haunted pound stretcher is a funny old setting for a ghost story. And of course, my first episode had to be about it.

I’ve also discovered how keen people are to tell their stories about ghosts and the unexplained but also where they draw the line on what they’ll share and what they won’t. What does it take to open up to a complete stranger or strangers about our own unexplained experiences? I think it takes an awful lot of courage.

Setting the scene

But let’s start at the beginning, and set the scene for this story, on Biggleswade High Street. Biggleswade is a market town in Bedfordshire. It’s known for growing onions and chillies. It’s halfway between London and Peterborough. It’s not a large town, but its growing. It’s a kind of nowhere place. It’s not part of the home counties, it’s not really in the midlands nor east Anglia. It’s not a tourist destination. It often feels like a town floating in a kind of limbo. For the last 500 years it’s been a place people travel through rather than to. It’s on the great north road and it has always catered for travellers. A stopping off point, rest your weary bones for the night and move on. A place you pass through on the train or road. Stick with this series and you’ll learn more about the town but today we’re on the High Street.

We’re at the west end of Biggleswade High Street where it starts. Behind us leads to the parish church, the conservative club, and an holistic healing and yoga centre housed in a beautiful white 17^th century building. To our right is a. boxy, modern block of shops with flats above, built where once stood the grand Swann Hotel, a coaching Inn with stables for horses and a good reputation in all the 19^th century guides. Now there’s Pizza place and a lovely art and framing shop. On our left is the old NatWest bank, a large red brick building, a wound in its side where an ATM once pumped out cash. Ahead of us there is a set of traffic lights. What you won’t see now is the Pound Stretcher. That closed down in 2017. But if we went back in time just 8 years to 2015 the NatWest bank would still be open, its ATM still pumping out money and next to it before you reached the hairdressers, you’d see the orange and yellow sign for the Pound stretchers. It was housed in a building lower than its neighbours. It’s sloping roof a warm brown, above the glass, shop front it was painted cream, with three evenly spaced small windows, except the furthest window was not what it seemed.  It was a scar, a ghost window boarded up and painted the same cream as its walls.

Outside the shop large plastic storage tubs were stacked ready to be bought and in the summer, these were often joined by oversized plastic plant pots filled with sparkly paper windmill, spinning lazily in the breeze.

And its inside this very ordinary shop that our story begins. I’ve only ever been in the public side of the shop, but I visited many times. It was a long thin space. An over stuffed treasure trove of bargains from gardening equipment, to toilet seats, towels and bedding, to toys and soft drinks, hobby supplies to party paraphernalia. Towards the end of this long thin shop it became darker, dim even, the flicker of artificial lighting keeping things just illuminated. At the far end was a doorway leading out into “the back.” I think I remember a heavy looking door. I was often down that end of the shop, browsing yarn or flower and vegetable seeds. Their bright colours cheering up the area. I did sometimes felt like I was being watched. But I put that down to the fact, I may well have been. Shop CCTV was possibly keeping an eye on me as I browsed. I did feel very conscious of that door leading out to the back. But I think that’s a natural response we have when faced with doorways we can’t go through and where we don’t know who might emerge from them. It was noticeably cooler down that end of the shop but it was far from the natural light shining through the windows. I can only say that as a customer I liked shopping there, the staff were helpful and friendly, but it did have a wee bit of an odd atmosphere around that back door, which can probably be explained.

What is harder to explain are the experiences of the staff who worked there.

The story

I first came across their experiences in a local Facebook page in 2015. In fact over the years when anyone has posted about paranormal experiences or stories on that group, the pound stretcher gets a shout out. So, I decided to reach out to these ex-employees by posting a request for information on the same group and boy did the information come! In the first 5 days the post received 65 comments. I also scoured previous posts from 2015, 16 and 17 for more information. In all I have found 9 witnesses to something ghostly or inexplicable at or around the pound stretcher. 6 are confirmed members of staff and one is a passer-by who witnessed something whilst the shop was closed. One witness doesn’t say what their relationship to the pound stretcher was and another worked next door. There is another poster who put forward a theory about the origin of the ghost but without identifying as a witness.

I have changed the names of the witnesses as although they have shared their stories publicly via social media this isn’t social media and I want to protect their identities. I would love for at least one of them to be brave enough to be interviewed for this podcast and by keeping their identities anonymous for now I hope that might make it easier for them to come forward to be interviewed in the future. So, any names I use are pseudonyms to protect their privacy. I have grouped together the phenomena reported to make it easier to narrate this story but until I can interview a witness I cannot confirm when exactly every incident took place.

The witnesses

It started with colleagues at Pound Stretcher finding the shop unusually cold. Helen a former employee said “it was always freezing cold in the shop.” Alongside this cold temperature was a sense of unease or of being watched, the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck prickling. You know the feeling. But there was also a gentler sensation reported, of just feeling like someone else was there. Not frightening, just unexplainable when you know you’re alone. I’ve felt both these sensations in the past in an old house I lived in and it is strange as sometimes that sense of not being alone slams you into survival mode and other times it makes you just feel a bit curious or even comforted.

There were places where these feelings of a presence were particularly strong, out the back of the shop, the office, the cellar. And especially the attic. Callie a former employee said “The attic was the worst area, I hated it. I only went up there once; it’s where the ghost was most active.”

But it wasn’t just cold spots, and the sensation of being watched. Mary who also worked there described “hearing voices” she described hearing someone call for her from the back storeroom, [Mary! Mary!] she thought it one of her colleagues but when she got to the top of the stairs to see what they wanted, there was no one there. No one had been calling her. [sound effect of footsteps on the stairs] I have also read reports that foot steps were often heard on these stairs when no one else was in the building when no one could be walking on them. And I can report, having sat upstairs in what was once this area of the shop, these stairs are exceptionally creaky. You’d hear if someone was walking on them. More about how I got to witness this later in the episode.

It wasn’t just voices and creaky stairs though. There were the reports of crying being heard coming from a back room. Imagine it, if you will. You’re in the shop, it’s closed for the day, you’re cashing up, tidying ready for tomorrow. Thinking about what you’re going to have for tea tonight when you get home, what you might watch on the TV? But just as you’re about to head out, you hear a sound, a strange keening noise. It’s like its coming from one of the storerooms. It sounds like crying. But how can it be when you’re alone? Maybe it’s a child crying as they pass by on the high street and the sound is just echoing, echoing strangely through the shop. Sound can do that right? You tell yourself that’s it. But the sound persists and doesn’t move away or stop like it would if it was a child passing by. You want to go home but you can’t lock up whilst you can hear that sound. Maybe it’s an animal trapped? Oh god you can’t lock it in overnight. You don’t want to but you walk closer to the store room and listen. The noise is getting louder. It’s definitely coming from that storeroom. You think of the horror movies when you groan at the girl who goes into the basement. Why do they do that? But this isn’t a film. What if it is an animal trapped? It doesn’t sound like an animal. But it must be, right? You’ll have to look. Maybe it’s a cat that’s snuck in. You like cats. Cats aren’t scary. You go a few more paces forward, stand on the cold stone floor and listen. It’s quiet for a moment, you breathe out. Maybe you imagined it or it was a child passing by on the high street. You’re about to turn and head back when you hear it again, louder. It’s definitely coming from the store room. You pad over to the door quietly, holding your breath, like you don’t want it to know that you’re there. All the while the sound is getting louder as you get closer. You stop outside the door and the sound stops. That’s almost as bad as when it was getting louder! You can’t hear the traffic from the high street now. It’s completely silent… Then, there it starts again your heart races. You put your fingers around the cold metal of the door handle. You calculate how quickly you can open the door and switch on the light. In one swift move you do it! And nothing. The noise stops. The room is full of boxes of unopened stock, stacked where you’d expect them to be, stretching back into the room. You don’t want to go in an investigate. But you do. Heart thumping you inspect the room but there’s nothing out of place. There’s no child or adult or animal in there. It is completely empty of life. How would you feel after that? Would you want to go back into work the next day?

And if hearing voices and feeling watched wasn’t enough there were the lights flickering on and off especially in the men’s toilets. Yet there were no men working there at the time, so no one would be in there switching the lights off and on.

Manipulating lights is one thing but our witnesses describe stock falling from the shelves. They’d arrive to open up in the morning to find things all over the floor, toys strewn along with bedding and cushions. Items secure the day before somehow over night could work themselves loose and throw themselves off the shelves. It seemed impossible. I imagine it was also bloody annoying.

Yet this messing about with stock wasn’t just happening over night! Callie says literally “Items would fly off the shelves” in front of her. In broad daylight and in front of other witnesses. Becky another worker says she saw “bags of sweets flying” [sound effect] Callie describes a jar of coffee that “flew off the shelf.” [sound effect] Related to these incidents when they occurred at night, was the burglar alarm being set off.  There is mention that after the alarm went off one night, for no apparent reason, there was some footage captured. I assume on CCTV. This footage is a mystery but was so frightening that it terrified the manager witless. I am yet to find out what was on this footage. If you know what this footage showed, please reach out to me at.

I don’t know if it was the same manager, but two witnesses speak of doors closing by themselves when there was no other person present nor breeze to close them. And on one occasion a door shut locking the manager alone in the office. [sound effect] Apparently, at first they thought it was a prank but Mary says no one was playing a joke on the manager, The door locked completely on its own.

One other report is of an upstairs window closing and opening by its self. And I wonder if this has anything to do with the window that was boarded up at the Pound Stretcher? From looking at Google Street View from 2008 until the pound stretcher is closed and the building sold, the window is boarded up. In 2008 the board looks new by 2009 it’s looking grubby and worn, and by 2012 it has been painted over the same cream colour as the walls. I sat next to this once boarded up window in late March 2023 and the fittings of it, the frame and catches are clearly very old. Images can be seen in the show notes and blog at weirdinthewade.blog more on my visit later.

Poltergeist?

So far, these statements have followed a pattern familiar to anyone interested in hauntings and in particular poltergeist activity. Whether you believe that ghosts exist or not, when people report strange experiences, they can be grouped together by the phenomena being reported. And a poltergeist (which in German means rumbling ghost or noisy spirit) is categorised as an experience or activity involving physical phenomena such as items moving, and sounds being heard. Poltergeist hauntings usually follow a trajectory of phenomena which is something like this:

• Cold spots or temperature changes
• the sensation of being watched or of not being alone,
• inexplicable sounds being heard, in this case footsteps, voices and crying,
• items moving when out of sight, which develop into items being thrown or flung whilst witnesses are present,
• doors being shut or locked, or heavy items being moved.
• then electrical systems being tampered with whether its lights or burglar alarms.

Often in these types of cases the activity is associated with an adolescent or with an older woman. As if the poltergeist has fixated on an individual person. In our story we don’t know if one person over another felt like they were being targeted but we do know that the shop employees who have shared their stories are all women and ranged in ages I’d estimate as from quite young 20s to slightly older in their 40s.

Often, the list I’ve just outlined is the only type of activity reported in a poltergeist case. And again, I’m making no judgement here on what a poltergeist is, but I am reporting what was witnessed and what researchers who are both believers and sceptics have categorised together as poltergeist phenomena. Less often in these types of cases there is more, even stranger, inexplicable phenomena, and in our case about the Pound Stretcher, there is more.

What could be stranger than what I’ve already told you? Well one of the rarest type of phenomena reported is actually seeing an apparition or a ghost. It’s really not as common as you’d think, especially in poltergeist type cases.

An apparition

Our, witnesses Becky, Jody and Milly all report having seen an apparition, or a ghost.

Our witness Jody is an interesting one as she claims to have seen someone, a female she says, moving about the shop when it was closed for Christmas. At the time she thought it was odd but had no idea that the shop was reportedly haunted. She came forward when she saw other people talking about it online.

Becky says that she saw the ghost of a young girl on the back stairs of the shop. And she’s not the only one in her family who claim to have seen an apparition there. Becky’s uncle who worked in the building years before, when it was a furniture shop, also saw the ghost of a young girl, just like she did. I think it was during the time of the furniture shop the ghost was given the name of Aggie.

Meanwhile our last witness Milly says she has seen the ghost of a young girl as well as feeling her presence in the pound stretcher, I am unsure if Milly worked in the shop or was a customer.

Jenny who took the time to contact me personally, not just through the facebook group, describes the ghost as being a young maid who died in the building, her name was Aggy. Importantly Jenny says “I felt her presence and also felt some one was watching me when I was working in the office but I was never scared.” It appears that not everyone was uncomfortable with Aggy’s presence in the shop. Becky and her uncle’s accounts don’t mention fear. Maybe this is because some of Aggy’s activities seem quite childlike, the sweets and toys being moved for example. Though flying jars of coffee are another matter.

One final thought on Aggy from back in 2015 was from someone who didn’t work at pound stretchers but had heard that the ghost was the victim of the Great Fire of Biggleswade. A comment I saw repeated on a different thread by a different person.

Summary

So what to make of these accounts? As I’ve already explained I am not a paranormal investigator, I don’t go out with ghost busting equipment trying to capture evidence. Neither am I here to disprove the existence of ghostly phenomena. I am neither team believer nor team skeptic. I am firmly team not sure. But I believe these women’s accounts. They felt something was out of the ordinary, they witnessed strange things and some of them saw things that they can’t explain. I don’t know if there’s a practical, psychological and or sociological explanation or a spiritual explanation for what happened to them. But I believe that they believe something profound was happening to them when they worked there. I can’t give them a definitive answer to what the phenomena was but I can investigate the history of the building and the town and try to see if there is anything useful lurking in the past to help us understand the present.

But first let’s break down what the witnesses have told us.

We have six confirmed members of staff, who all claim the shop is haunted, 5 tell very similar stories about what happened when they worked there, one just a gave a statement confirming that she had worked there and thought it was haunted.

They all mention that out the back of the shop, the cellar and the attic as being where they felt most uncomfortable or where they felt “a presence.”

Three of the five key witnesses say items fell from the shelves by themselves.

Three mention something to do with doors closing and doors locking, two specifically mention the manager being locked inside.

Two mention Aggie by name.

We also have three people who report witnessing something, who either weren’t employed at Pound Stretcher or we don’t know if they were.

One Denise, who I haven’t mentioned yet, worked next door, and reported feeling uncomfortable in the adjoining cellar and being able to smell “old fashioned cooking” when down there. We’ll come back to Denise later.

Then we have Jody who reported seeing a female figure moving about the shop when it was shut for Christmas.

I’m fascinated by the fact that only a couple of witnesses say they personally were scared, two mention the manager being terrified and one person specifically says they weren’t frightened at all. I don’t know about you but I think I might have been scared! They sound like a really close-knit team of women though, and I think that is probably the key to why they stayed working there and why they weren’t always frightened. I think they had each other’s backs, supported each other, joked about it, and generally looked after one another. It’s just a hunch, from the way they write about what went on.  Again, we’ll come back to this because I think it links into the every day setting of this ghost story.

It’s also worth noting that the case of the haunted pound stretcher was so well known in the town, that in 2015 when someone asked about it on Facebook one of the first replies from a member of staff was to tell them that they wouldn’t be able to investigate or do anything in her words spiritual because the company had been asked already and refused. I’m guessing its notoriety was partly due to an entry in a ghosts of Bedfordshire book by Damien O’Dell. The book has had numerous editions and titles – the first of which didn’t even include Biggleswade at all because in his own words the author “struggled to find any interesting ghost stories in Biggleswade” He rectified this in his 2003  edition with the haunted pound stretcher being covered. The book is now available under the title Paranormal Bedfordshire in both paper back and on kindle. So, I think it’s inclusion in this book and some local newspaper stories was what drew attention to the shop originally. In the mid 00s O’Dell claims that the haunting was well known in the town (although not to him originally) he says the reports go back some years to when it was the furniture shop. So it does seem that the haunting was an established one. That passed from one use of the building to another like our witness Becky told us. Did Becky’s uncle tell her about the ghost before she worked there? It’s possible some of the workers had heard all about Aggie and her antics before they started work at Pound stretchers? How did they feel knowing they were going to work in a haunted building? How did it affect the way they interpreted what happened in that building? But what is interesting is that some people sharing their stories had no idea that others thought the shop was haunted. The person who saw the ghostly figure in the closed shop just before Christmas was not aware of the stories until it was posted on Facebook.

As I have said earlier I am really keen to speak with any witnesses who are happy to share their story for this podcast. I am sure I am not alone in wanting to know more. I’d really like to know:

How did this make you feel?

Were you happy going into work?

If the employer knew about this did, they do anything to help?

What was on that footage that terrified the manager?

What did the ghost of the little girl look like?

Who named her Aggie? Was it a nick name to make it easier to be there in the shop with her or was it based on real knowledge of a person who died there? I do wonder if it’s a joke name, aggie for aggro – but it could be genuinely because they thought of the ghost as Agnes or Aggie.

Investigation

Whilst I’ve had no volunteers so far to be interviewed, something I hope will change after this podcast goes out, and I will record an update episode if that happens. I can still look into other aspects of the haunting. I can follow up the historical leads. Wouldn’t it be great if we could link Aggie to a real person, whether that’s a victim of the fire or a maid who worked in the building? So, I set about doing some research.

Firstly, I wondered if it was true that the building was exceptionally old. The high street is a real mix of buildings dating from the 1970s going back to over 200 years old. The Great Fire of Biggleswade in 1785 saw to it that we no longer have medieval or even many 17^th century buildings in the town. More on the fire later. The good news is I found a fantastic old map of Biggleswade High Street published in 1883, hand drawn but looking as detailed and accurate as a Google earth image. Even down to individual trees growing in the back gardens of the High Street premises! It shows our pound stretcher building and it’s associated out buildings behind it stretching to what is now Church Street but was then Brewery Lane. When comparing it to a modern Google Earth map very little has changed to our building, which was reassuring for the claim that it was one of the oldest on that end of the High Street. It has to be over 100 years old possibly 200.

The Fire

Next, I turned my attention to the fire. Remember someone on facebook said Aggie was the ghost of a girl who perished in the great fire of Biggleswade? It was a lead from someone who didn’t work at the shop, but it was worth looking into. The fire started only 3 or 4 doors away from the building. I wondered if I could find evidence of any victims of the fire associated with where our building now stands? Or even the name of Agnes or Aggie? Could there be evidence of a folk memory of a victim of the fire?

The great fire of Biggleswade was started on Thursday 16^th June 1785 and remarkably we have a number of contemporary newspaper articles that tell us lots about it. This one is from the Northampton Mercury published four days after the fire, on Monday 20th June 1785

“Thursday Morning last, about eleven o’clock, a most terrible fire broke out at Mr. Griggs’s, the Crown Inn, at Biggleswade, Bedfordshire; occasioned by a servant throwing some hot ashes into the yard, which communicating to a crate full of Straw, immediately set fire to the premises. The wind being very high, the flames with amazing rapidity spread to different parts of the town, and consumed near 200 dwellings, together with barns, stables, etc. a very considerable quantity of corn, hay, etc. with a number of hogs, and fat calves. The fire was not got under till near Six in the evening. Loss must be very great as many of the principal houses and inns were burnt down.”

Loss was indeed very great with over 330 people losing their homes. In all the reports I have read, contemporary and otherwise, I’ve found no mention of human casualties. Nor in the appeal which was launched for the people of Biggleswade shortly after the tragedy. The appeal mentions loss of property and the insurance shortfall but does not mention loss of life, or orphaned children, which surely if there had been, would only have helped the appeal if mentioned. The newspaper fire reports of the time, and they gave over whole sections to just fire reports because they were that frequent and that terrible, usually do mention when there has been loss of life. In fact many will mention the number of deaths, those injured and whether they are expected to survive. So, I can only say that the evidence is pointing towards there being no immediate casualties of the fire.

But to double check I went through the burial records for St Andrews Church Biggleswade for the year of 1785. There were about 63 deaths. Only one was in June and that was almost a week before the fire. One death may seem low, but July only had two deaths. The vast majority of deaths occur in the winter months which is understandable for it’s the case even now, that heatwaves withstanding, many older people die in the winter months of flu and of course most recently covid. Back then with no modern medicine, winter was a treacherous time.

Obviously, people may have died later because of the fire, if they were injured or because of disease related to the stresses of being made homeless. But thankfully it is looking likely that no one actually died in the fire. When you think that there were only 6 recorded deaths in the Great Fire of London, a century before, it becomes more believable that there were no human casualties in Biggleswade. Especially as the fire started in the middle of the day when people were awake and many maybe away from home, working in the fields for example.

This does mean that if you believe in ghosts, and that they’re the spirits or apparitions of people who died, then this theory that a victim of the fire is haunting the pound stretcher, looks to be off the cards. This doesn’t help us get to the bottom of what was going on but its nice to put that rumour aside. And its not surprising that this was a theory. Every child in Biggleswade is taught about the fire. There’s a plaque commemorating it at the rebuilt Crown Inn. It’s impact on the town was terrible so much so that even after 200 years it is remembered by the townsfolk and would spring to mind as the kind of tragedy that could cause strange and unexplained phenomena centuries later.

Maid Aggie

But there was another theory, at least two people who worked at the shop, claim that the ghost is called Aggie and that she is the spirit of a young girl who was a maid. And this lead seemed also possible to research. Well on the surface it did. If I could find an Agnes or Aggie or a young maid who worked and maybe died at the building then could she be the ghost? Or could she be the folk memory that gave a name and a shape to the strange experiences?

I got to work on the genealogy websites, looking first for any Agnes’s or Aggie’s who lived on the High Street in Biggleswade. Obviously, this is an inexact science. I only have census’ records really to work with and the 1939 record. (this was a kind of census carried out when war broke out.) These are the main resources that not only include addresses but the names of all present in that address, not just the head of the household. But they are just once a decade snapshot.

To make matters even more complicated the numbering of Biggleswade’s High street changed in the first decades of the 20^th Century. In fact there still seems to be some dispute about numbering or mistakes made. Remember that book by Damian O’Dell written back in the 2000s. Well he adds a one hundred in front of the Pound Stretcher building number calling it 115. But all of this numbering confusion did throw out an interesting and spooky fact.

When the High Street was re numbered, when ever it happened, it swapped the direction of numbers completely. Nowadays number 1 the high street is at the west end of the town. Previously this was where the high numbers ended. Today there is no number 13 on the High Street. The old Natwest bank is number 11 and the Pound Stretcher building next door is number 15. If whoever designed the numbering hadn’t been superstitious Pound Stretcher would have been number 13 the High Street.

But back in the 19^th Century Pound Stretcher’s building was possibly 81 or 83 High Street. It’s hard to tell. Some census records don’t even give street numbers and others seem to provide numbers that don’t match to locations. There is a chemist next to our Pound Stretcher building throughout the 19^th century. And by the early 20^th a predecessor to the NatWest bank is in place along with a bank manager and his family. These help narrow down where our building is. The chemist is an interesting establishment. The Spong family ran it for over 100 years, Possibly nearer 200 and I believe by the 1960s Spong’s chemist had become a Boots. (I’m not sure when Boots in the town moved to its current location which incidentally is where the Catherine Wheel pub once stood, and that notorious establishment will feature in a future episode about body snatchers!) Although Spongs chemist and other buildings like the Crown Hotel help identify the right end of the High Street it gets more and more confusing the further you go back as numbering changes yet again.

So far, and my search is not exhausted yet, but so far I have found no evidence of any Agnes’ or Aggies living at that end of the High Street or the other for that matter. I did follow up on three young maids who were listed living in or near to our building. But I found evidence that each of them, had got married and moved away. Again, this search is not finished I will keep digging.

I even searched for death and burial records for anyone called Agnes’ from 1840 -1900 in Biggleswade. And sad reading it was. The vast majority of Agnes’ died before their 7^th birthday. There were many, dozens of little girls who died in infancy, all called Agnes. Of the half a dozen who died between the ages of 10 – 25 ( an age span that I thought most realistic for anyone who was working as a maid and would be described as young.) none seemed to be linked to Biggleswade town centre. I cross referenced their names with the census records before their deaths and found them living in places far from the High Street.

But there are huge swathes of years where I cannot search. Data isn’t available for between 1921 and 39 for example as well as after 39. Anything that occurs in the years between each census is also lost to me. Unlike the constant Spongs the inhabitants of our pound stretcher building seemed to change with every census.

I have attempted to search through the newspaper archives for deaths of maids but it is like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Nothing has leapt out yet, but I will continue my search. And I will update this story later in the series, hopefully with more witness testimony.

Conclusion

At the start of the show, I mentioned how funny a haunted pound stretcher seems. How everyday settings like this are amusing when it comes to hauntings. We expect ghost to be found in decidedly more elevated settings. I think this is largely due to the storytellers who made tales of ghosts popular. Writers like M R James set their tales in old, crumbling academic buildings, churches, lonely hotels, country houses and libraries. Yet, these were commonplace, every day, even work settings for the academic M R James but to many of his readers especially now they appear rarefied and romantic. I think class does come into it, as it does for most things in the UK. The spinners of those classic spooky tales set their stories in the gothic houses of their peers who were peers of the realm. Working class tales of the unexplained are often called urban myths. They’re portrayed as grittier, less romantic. And I think that’s a shame.

Also, time has woven its magic over many classic ghost stories. Take Charles Dicken’s ghost story The Signal Man, to us it’s classic age of steam setting works beautifully in a romantic way. But at the time, it was an incredibly modern setting. It would be like setting a ghost story on the new Elizabeth Line in London or on a Japanese bullet train.

And I think these literary ghost stories do influence which real life accounts become popular. There are countless settings of vicarages and rectories, abandoned churches and dilapidated country piles for every council house that’s haunted. And I think that’s also shame. The places I have been most frightened have actually been in normal, houses or workplaces, offices and schools at night when they’re empty and lonely. Made uncanny and other, by the lack of people, not their romantic setting.

It’s also interesting to think about who is at the centre of ghost stories, the literary ones are often stuffy old men, the sort not prone to flights of fancy. It’s a literary device to take the reader whether sceptic or believer along with you. If a tough no nonsense man is seeing this stuff it must be believable right? It does sound a little sexist to me. There are some superb ghost stories with women at their heart. The Haunting on Hill House for example. But they’re often unreliable narrators. I could start a completely separate podcast looking at gender and ghost stories and sightings but I don’t have time!

When it comes to actual real life reported phenomena a 2015 US study[1] showed that slightly more women than men said they had seen or been in the presence of a ghost. 16% of men said they had, contrasted with 20% of women. Women are often thought to be at the centre of sightings, especially poltergeists. And here we have a team of all women caught up in some really unusual phenomena. I wonder how the dynamic of that team both helped them through the ordeal and affected the way their story was reported in the wider world?

Hopefully what this story will have shown is that nothing is ever what it seems. The pound stretcher on one hand was an Aladdin’s cave of bargains with modern lighting, a grubby carpet and fairly drab décor but it was also in an old building, with history dating back at least 150 possibly 200 years. Built on top of an even older building that was burnt to the ground in a terrible fire. Even the mundane can sit within a rich historical context. The ghost might not be that of a Queen or a colourful lady. She’s thought to be a young woman, a maid. Someone who likes to mess with the toys and the sweets, and to play pranks on the living. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, as a concept she seems fitting for this place. We know that in Britain’s past the frequency of child deaths was far higher than today. We still live with that knowledge. That we have the privileges our great grandparents and their grandparents didn’t. So when strange things happen in a bargain shop in Biggleswade it seems fitting that the story woven around it is that of a humble young serving woman who died too soon.

And I am not giving up. I am sure that the story of the Pound Stretcher has more to give. There is more to find out.

I am hopeful that a former employee will agree to be interviewed. You don’t have to be recorded but it would be great if someone was willing to do that. It would be so valuable to hear from you.

A new use for an old building

The building may no longer be a pound stretcher but it is a gym and a café and maybe the current staff have tales they can tell. And with that thought at the end of March 2023 I visited the café. I’ve only supped coffee downstairs or outside Jones coffee bar before, but there’s a newly opened upstairs lounge. So on a very rainy morning I made my way up those creaky stairs and had my breakfast in what must have been either an old store room or office in the pound stretcher. I sat by the window that had once been boarded up. For much of my time there I was sitting alone. There are photos of this upstairs lounge on the weird in the wade blog at weirdinthewade.blog.

It was the perfect morning to hang out there cosy opposite an old fire place, watching the rain and listening to the traffic hiss past on sodden streets. The lounge like many old buildings has different levels, you could imagine how the rooms had been divided previously by these leves and odd angled walls. There were two sets of stairs including one leading up to the attic space. These were very creaky. The floorboards in the attic above also creaked a lot. There was someone up there, I think, no there was I promise you. The atmosphere was cosy, warm actually really lovely.

I’d been there the afternoon before, downstairs to grab a drink and ask the two girls working there whether they’d experienced anything. I felt a bit nervous but I’ve asked complete strangers worse questions. I started by saying:

“This is going to sound a bit odd and please if you don’t want to answer then please do just tell me its none of my business but has anything odd or unexplained ever happened here whilst you’ve been working here?”

And both women said “Oh you mean Aggie!”

Sadly I didn’t get a lot of information out of the staff that day. One was keen tot talk, the other looked nervous. I tried to be reassuring and pointed out that many of the witnesses from the pound stretcher days said they weren’t scared or didn’t talk about being scared. The last thing I wanted was to make anyone feel afraid in their work place. They told me that odd things do happen, though mainly reported by other staff (there’s a whole gym and studio type rooms spread out across the whole building including all the old out buildings and maybe even in the attic spaces) so there are a lot of different staff. All they could say was that yes, everyone working there was aware of Aggie though they were both genuinely surprised when I mentioned how far back mention of her went to the old furniture store. Apparently, any mishap or strange thing is put down to her. The coffee machine breaking, bags of coffee falling that kind of thing. There is definitely more to explore here. Though sitting in the beautiful lounge, eating a fresh from the oven croissant and hearing the distant calls of a work out instructor I really wasn’t picking up on any unpleasant vibes. But it is a fantastic place to grab a coffee and have a bite to eat, and who knows maybe Aggie will be curious and keep and eye on you. I will definitely be back.

Tunnels

And finally, there is one other aspect of this story that I have yet to explore with you today it’s something we’ll have to come back to because it’s huge. You’ll remember that one of the places mentioned in our pound stretcher that was considered to be particularly spooky, was the basement. Well it’s not just any old basement. Because the basements below the shops in Biggleswade’s town centre hold a secret.

A secret that gets argued about even more often that the haunted pound stretcher when anyone asks about paranormal experiences.

Underneath Biggleswade town centre, below the market square, the shops on the high street, the church and even leading down to the river, there are a series of tunnels.

The reason for these tunnels, their uses, are shrouded in myth and urban legend. There are tales of monks, smugglers, of highway men, and even convicted body snatchers.

Most of the entrances to this network of tunnels are now bricked up, but there are reports of children back in the 60s and 70s running through them and exploring before they were closed.

Those who work in the buildings that have these bricked up entrances to the tunnels often describe them as creepy, and frightening, and as a source of general strangeness. Remember Denise working in the building next door? She said the cellar there also had a bricked up tunnel, and it was at that tunnel entrance that she would feel uncomfortable by and where she would smell what she described as old fashioned cooking.

Could these tunnels hold a clue to some of the strange phenomena experienced in Biggleswade including at the Pound Stretcher? Throughout this season of Weird in the Wade we will come back and examine the stories associated with these tunnels as well as trying to get to the bottom of what it was really like to work in the haunted pound stretcher. This certainly is only the beginning stay tuned to each episode to find out more.

Next time

But next time we’ll be tackling something a little different… UFOs! Or as they were known at the time flying saucers! Why was it, that for a short while in 1957 and 58 Biggleswade was the flying saucer capital of the world! Next time on Weird in the Wade.

Credits

Thank you for listening to episode one of Weird in the Wade: the haunted pound stretcher.

I’d also like to thank the witnesses who shared their stories with me on social media. If you have a story you want to share please contact me through social media or the blog just search weird in the wade on twitter and Instagram or go to weird in the wade.blog

A special thank you to the Uncanny Community for their support online over the last few months. This podcast wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the Uncanny convention back in March.

This episode was researched, written and presented by me, Natalie Doig, I also created some of the sound effects.

Theme music is by Tess Savigear

Additional music and sound effects by Epidemic Sound

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[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/30/18-of-americans-say-theyve-seen-a-ghost/