Hannah's Ghosts - Unmasked

 

(Photo: Chris Floyd)

TheBigRetort pursues phantoms in the haunted mind of Journalist Hannah Betts, and comes up with a discovery about her ghosts.  

 

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Make what you will of Hannah Betts, the journalist. She claims that her former family home was haunted throughout much of the family's time there. Hannah has appeared in both print and tv or blog extolling the belief that her former home was regularly visited by these poltergeists, a ghost or other supernatural being supposedly responsible for physical disturbances. 

She writes a haunting tale:  “Teenage fears or a more sinister presence? Make up your own mind as our writer reveals her haunting Hallowe'en story.” The Telegraph headlined in 2013, adding some weight to a very spooky tale indeed.

THREE SPECTRES

Betts claimed that the house, boasted three spectres: a woman, who paced the ground floor, an aged doctor, forever racing up the stairs searching for a dying grandson, and the ghost of a victim of a confrontation that had ‘spilled over into murder’.

Twenty-six years after the first spooky events, Betts described for the reader and the listener that this all took place at an unnamed street in Moseley. When I first heard these tall tales online, Betts had retold the story so many times that it had become very real, to her at least. TheBigRetort takes a little peak through the keyhole... 

THE HOUSE ON SCHOOL ROAD

Surprisingly, the house is not that three-storeys Victorian building seen in the copy produced in certain publications. Betts herself is careful not to provide the actual address. In fact, like the house on haunted hill, TheBigRetort can reveal, it actually sits in School Road, Moseley.  

STREET VIEW ARCHIVES

Street View Archives capture the property down the years as a seemingly much-lived-in Victorian villa. However, during the time the Betts family spent there, if the photos are anything to go by at least, it seems unlikely much improvement was made to it over that time. This adds to the eerie feel of the place. 

Built over a century ago, it seems likely that one or two or more people may have died there. 

HERE BE DEMONS

As the Betts family placed that key in the rusty lock for the first time and pushed back the door on creaky hinges, had the dearly departed that previously died there refused to vacate?

It seems unlikely that the sales particulars ever stated ‘here be demons’. Although Hannah is convinced of them. She wrote on this: “Oh, how we scoffed. And, yet, doors would shut of their own volition, footsteps could be heard. Every night at 4am, someone — something — would tear up the stairs, rattling and then thrusting open the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and forcing), until it reached the master bedroom, entering in an all-mighty, door-slamming storm.” Betts informs.

MURDER SHE WROTE

In another other-worldly X-Files incident, Betts claimed that the chimney suddenly caved in, and a newspaper fell down into the fireplace. 

It told of a murder… in that very house.

Other things happened, as they do. A mirror flew (fell?) off the wall and on its back “Victorian” writing read: “Your mother sows socks in hell Karras!”

 No, sorry, that was the 1973 film The Exorcist. One of its fictional characters Father Damien Karras. His mother didn’t sow socks in hell. After which she ‘Regan’ vomits green bile over the priests who attempt to exorcise her demons.

Father Karras : I think it might be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, I'd say there seem to be three. She's convinced...

Father Merrin : There is only one.

 

THE GHOST TOLD HANNAH TO 'FUCK OFF'

However, like the little girl’s head in the film, Hannah’s head also does a compete 360. This ghost chillingly said: “Get out…” and other rude words.

Hannah elaborates: “We didn’t care. My parents had five children – me, 15-year-old Victoria, 12-year-old George, Flo, nine, and Tim, four – and we needed space; even space that everyone else was too afraid to occupy. Our new home was large, beautiful, surrounded by swaying greenery. However, there was something unsettling about it: a personality, almost, and sense that we were installing ourselves in a place already occupied. It never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own accord, footsteps echoed. It felt as if we were being watched, assessed.“

FOLLOWING EARTHLY LEADS

Hannah Betts herself does have an uncanny resemblance to Lucy Westenra, one of Count Dracula’s beautiful chalk-faced victims. "Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?"     

On a dark night, reflected in that old dusty candlelit mirror, Hannah could appear quite ghostly herself. Could Hannah have been playing tricks on her younger siblings?

Be that as it may. Whilst a trawl of old Victorian newspapers uncovered no deaths or even murders in the house, TheBigRetort started to wonder if the answer lies elsewhere. 

A SUSPECT EMERGES 

Following the deaths of her parents, Hannah wrote that she refused to attend both funerals. ‘You’ll regret it,’ everyone warned me. But I never have, and am convinced I never will.” [I Refused To Go To My Parents' Funerals WOMAN - UK| June 26, 2017.]

Fortunately, though her dad’s obituary, available online, may solve the mystery of Hannah’s It relates mostly to a very special, kind man that his kids called “afro” due to his very bushy hair.sts.

 Photo: The Times

Tim Betts obituary reads…

“They lived in Moseley in a house also shared by six cats, five dogs and sundry other animals." 

So, a pretty busy house both day and night..? 

THE FINDINGS

Dad was an eminent “epilepsy” psychiatrist. As a result, he was also seemingly somewhat unsurprisingly overworked. In fact, a few things of relevance stand out. “Betts was a workaholic who often finished at 10pm, fell asleep on the sofa, then rose at 4am before heading back to his patients or students… “

Betts senior, the workaholic...? Who often finished at 10pm...? Who fell asleep on the sofa…?  Then arose… at 4am…?

Hannah's ghost: “Every night at 4am, someone — something — would tear up the stairs, rattling and then thrusting open the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and forcing), until it reached the master bedroom, entering in an all-mighty, door-slamming storm.”

Make of Hannah's ghost story what you will. She may simply be a teller of tall tales, a fantasist, or simply mistaken. But she certainly isn’t much of a paranormal investigator.

TheBigRetort

Andrew: the prince who turned into a frog - exclusive - His face WAS running with sweat

Virginia Giuffre, nee Roberts, claimed that she had been sex-trafficked across the Atlantic in 2001, to dance and later sexually pleasure a prince. The teen partied long into the night in a London nightclub with this handsome prince - “sweating profusely all over me”.  Decades later, the handsome prince turned into an ugly frog and denied sweating.  TheBigRetort... uncovers the truth.

In a now infamous interview with Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew was probed. Did he or didn’t he sweat? 

Andrew retorted: "There’s a slight problem with the sweating, because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was…was it…yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at and I simply…it was almost impossible for me to sweat… So, I’m afraid to say that there’s a medical condition that says that I didn’t do it, so therefore…”

The prince left the rest limply hanging. However, in the written reporting that followed this was represented by three dots after the “so therefore”. The ellipsis meant that it’s obvious to those reading (or viewers) what is not being said but could be said in the ensuing silence. 

In other words, therefore… she’s delusional, or lying.  

Sweating then became the rock on which the royal defence rested. 

But the interview left many British subjects doffing caps through niggling doubt. Was the monarch’s son seemingly clinging to sweaty discomfort as a defence against Giuffre’s further claims of wrongdoing? 

And, sweat or not, is it really relevant?

” Andrew was said to look pale and his face was running with sweat.”  

TheBigRetort reveals... the Sunday World is the second most popular newspaper in the Republic of Ireland. In November 2000, reporter Esther McCarthy wrote on page 50 of the World that whilst visiting New York’s trendiest bars, according to other party goers:” Andrew was said to look pale and his face was running with sweat.”  [Emphasis added.] #

The finding that the playboy prince regularly broke out into a sweat was not unearthed in any British newspaper. Make of that what you will. But the revelation revealed here upholds at least one part of Giuffre’s claim. Four months before the 2001 alleged non-sweating incident, Andrew was seen sweating in another nightclub.  

So, a once handsome prince kissed the Blarney Stone and turned into an ugly sweaty frog. And it’s the Blarney Stone that American lawyers may now throw at the former playboy prince during any cross-examination.

 For, as Paddy McGuinness once said: “I think blokes definitely sweat on most things when it comes to being questioned by women.”

UK GOVERNMENT "LOCKGATE" GROOMING SCANDAL

Photo: Mark Harrison

The United Kingdom is in tight lockdown. However, whilst the nation inches towards struggle street, are the Queen's ministers secretly being 'groomed' in the sacred salons of Westminster'? 

 

TheBigRetort...

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised against all “non-essential” travel.  The pub, the clubs, and even - God forbid - the hairdresser came under BoJo's it's a no-no 'thingy me bob'. 

A week later the whole country was ordered into a lockdown described as  so ‘hair' tight it even covered hairdressers.  

It seemed to many that hairdressers should not have been placed out of bounds. If the country were to die from a thousand cuts economically... this was a cut too deep. 

Yes there was anger. Confusion even... Why were some among the flock allowed to work and others not?

Nevertheless barbers were on "the list".  And weary citizens, frightened out of their liberties, somewhat greying at the sides, surrendered freedoms and slavishly followed the pied-piping mantra: "STAY HOME" "PROTECT THE NHS" "SAVE LIVES"

Only not everyone did... Rule breakers were hassled by school monitors, in the form of thought police. Whilst others, nuanced in their phrasing, in that public-school way, were... "economical" with the, err, "truth".

TheBigRetort 'razors' concerns.

Why is it - after months of lockdown - that this cabal of the 'heads' of the UK government have a perfect short-back-and-sides? Whilst the PM remains his characteristically shambolic self.

The following list includes those ministers I suspect have been touched by the scissors... during lockdown. 

 

The Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP

23 March 2020: Lockdown begins.

Did the secretary of state's hairdresser use surgical scissors on those sideburns? 

15 May...nearly two months later? Borderline.

The Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP

18 March 2020

 Did the foreign secretary avoid non-essential travel 
to a hair salon'? Note the neat sideburns.

Nearly two months later, 7 May 2020

The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP

30 March 2020

 Did the minister for housing stay indoors, 
or travel 40 miles... for a haircut?

Recent snap. Or should that be 'snip'?



The Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP

28 March 2020

Did the business secretary trade his honour for that neat cut?

Today

One rule for them, another for us?

"It brings a whole new meaning to 'lock' down. But the 

modelling used is rigorous; and is based on the assumption 

that these may not be quite so 'right honourable' persons after all." [Professor Neil Ferguson.]  

"It may come as a surprise that social distancing may not  hold true for some members of my cabinet - outed by the quite splendid The Big Retort. But whilst I was   hospitalised they  have apparently brazenly Big Brotherhooded the nation - with fear and uncertainty and thinly-disguised glee - into self-imprisonment; into snitching on neighbours, and who appear themselves to have broken the ban.  Leaving the rest of the flock, not only with locks down to their ankles but chained to their homes. It's quite Stasi-like... and seems  less west more 'East' minster." 

[Prime Minister Boris Johnson.]

"I blame China."
[Donald J Trump, President of Trump Towers.]


A WORD OF WARNING FROM THE EDITOR. Whilst some may claim that the above represents proof that ministers have been breaking the law. After all they have regularly presented themselves on television and in the print media without a hair out of place. I'm not so sure. Trump-like, I'm just asking. It 's just a small sample with hair growth over only two months. Perhaps the ministers have been cutting their own hair. Perhaps they married hairdressers - who knows? I'm just asking.

However, if not...?

In a scandal known as "Lockgate"; you the people are invited to point the finger at the Groomed of Westminster: 

Do you know who's been shearing all the prime minister’s sheeple?

Do you know who has been doing the grooming inside the heart of Parliament?

If you do know the Demon Barber of Westminster, or have others to add to the snip list, then please leave a comment... TheBigRetort.

Covid Patient One

The search for the identity of the first person to come into contact with Covid-19 is fruitless... at least for journalists with a "patient zero" in mind.  TheBigRetort

A Canadian who died in 1984 was believed to be the first person to introduce AIDS into America and the wider world. But it later transpired that he was not patient zero. Earlier cases dated back to the '70s - by which time the victim's reputation was tarnished beyond the grave.

Similarly the search to find the Covid-19 patient zero lies in that same world. It's in this tiny devastating domain - where the occupants speak a language few can interpret - where another patient zero will be found. And whilst it seems possible that the outbreak of Covid-19 may have silently taken place before it made its appearance in a seafood market in Wuhan, it will not be any journalist who tracks down patient zero.

That's because any person deemed to be misidentified 'the first' should actually be labeled "Patient One".

Skripal Assassins and Street View blocking

[Image from Daily Mail.]

Could a blocked 2016 Google Street View of the Skripal home lead to doorstep assassins? TheBigRetort

A click on Google Street View records a picture of the Sergei Skripal home captured in April 2009. 

But when you use the Google viewer and turn around to leave the house - and proceed down the street - the image capture flashes forward... to 2016.

The property can only be viewed in the 2016 capture at a distance... before jumping back to 2009 as the viewer approaches the house, and a closer view of the property.

Attempts to reverse the process and turn back towards the house jump from 2016 back... to 2009. So it isn't actually possible to get that close to the property at the time Skripal was living there.

But why did Street View not film that portion of the street in 2016 – whilst filming the rest? Instead, the driver seems to have done a quick U-turn.

Apparently some sensitive areas are removed from Street View by the authorities. And Street View does knit together various footage over the years. But are we expected to believe that the Skripal section of road has not been filmed again... in nine years?

Or... is the 2016 close-up of the house being blocked?

Does something in the capture contain evidence that may record the assassins in action - at the door?

Only time - and further nearby CCTV footage perhaps? - may tell.

TheBigRetort

See https://tinyurl.com/y7lb6py4 to view the 2009 image. Before Skripal lived at the property. And which jumps forward to 2016... But only when you are a distance away from it. And after Skripal moved into the house.

 

Lewisham Homes: fire safety scandal

Leaseholders and taxpayers in London have been hoodwinked into paying thousands of pounds for fire-safety measures that are 'not to the necessary standard'. According to details contained in board minutes of Lewisham Homes at least. A discovery that may see the arms-length management organisation in the dock...again. TheBigRetort exclusive.

In my last post I reported that Andrew Potter CEO of Lewisham Homes was due to decamp to greener pastures at Hastoe Housing Association. Meanwhile... back in concrete city, board papers dated August 2017 reveal that six thousand two hundred composite fire-safety doors recently installed into properties managed by his former south-east London Almo may not be up to the necessary fire safety standard.

The shock finding, unearthed by TheBigRetort, follows threats by Lewisham Homes to prosecute leaseholders if they do not change their own flat entrance doors - which the managing agent has “deemed” unsafe. 

Potter himself was "uncertain" about the legality of this. However, according to board minutes, Lewisham Homes' own fire-safety door debacle assessment is to take 'over a year to complete'.  

So homeowners may be forgiven for not forking out thousands of pounds in pursuit of the Lewisham Homes Standard so readily. A standard the ALMO itself has failed to achieve with its new safety doors. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent under Lewisham Homes' thinly disguised vanity venture, many leaseholders are asking if the "improvements" are actually necessary. 

Time alone will tell... but the move may have led to tens of millions of pounds of frivolous overspending of public cash. 

Many of the doors to Lewisham Homes' street property conversions were introduced under the old building control pre-1991 regulations. Then, flat entrance doors were rated between twenty to thirty minutes fire resistance. (FD20 to FD30 in the trade.) Which is still acceptable.

Leaseholders may be surprised to learn that this has been withheld because building control records have been mislaid for many of these former conversions.

Homeowners are encouraged, under the threat of legal sanction, to simply replace doors; whatever the cost... Or else. It “may”. You never know - serve a nasty injunction.

If all of the six thousand two hundred new doors are actually proven to be deficient, the cost of replacement to the taxpayer may end up reaching... over twelve million pounds.

So, what the hell, pass the cost to leaseholders. 

In order to subsidise another mistake, Lewisham Homes, having spent taxpayer funding via its decent homes scheme - somewhere in the hundreds of millions, and counting - will no doubt employ its usual open-palmed approach, and target leaseholders. It is leaseholders who will be forced to pay directly for this largesse. Many are already straining under bloated service charge requests for so-called “repairs”. In the Lewisham Homes lexicon interchangeable with "improvements". 

Some leases allow for improvements: some don't.

Before contacting elected representatives, leaseholders should study the lease. Whilst older leases may not actually allow for improvements to be charged back, others do. Lewisham Homes seems to be unaware of this. Whatever... any lease should ensure that such charges are always "reasonable". The reason why perhaps Lewisham Homes now claims that many of its improvement works are not “repairs” - having presented them under its Decent Homes programme for years, as... improvements. 

Lewisham Homes refuses to respond to requests for further details on its front door debacle. Councillors and MPs have been alerted... but they seem content playing a game of  ping-pong with TheBigRetort.  But the May election is fast approaching....

The Big Retort on doors... Guidance from the Building Control Alliance allows for the retention of FD20 doors. This is widely accepted practice throughout England. Providing a sufficient level of protection to escape routes within dwellings are present. It is also accepted - without objection - from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The government department which oversees Building Regulations. Indeed this has been the case for many years; allowing the use of such doors 'unsupported by fire tests or independent certification'. 

In short: 'reasonable compliance' is all that is required.

That comes in the form of a reasonably robust door. And not necessarily a fire door. 

But it isn't just a gentle tap on that dodgy door you may have to watch out for...  it's smokescreens. 

COMING NEXT...