Case Update: The Key
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What is the purpose of this special case update episode?
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Hello, I'm Danny Robbins, and this is a special Case Update episode. So, yeah, this is a chance for us to go into some aspects of the investigation in a little bit more detail and answer a few of your questions. Firstly, thanks for all the emails so far. So many brilliant questions and theories coming in.
Why didn't the Hitchings family move out of 63 Wycliffe Road?
Dan from Austin, Texas, asks... Why didn't the Hitchings move out of 63 Wycliffe Road after the furniture started moving about and Shirley levitated above her bed? That's a great question. And I think the answer is really, would you want to be forced out of your home? It's interesting how often in poltergeist cases, the family do stay there determined to stick it out. It becomes like a standoff. Um, he also asks, did Harold Chibbett use any audio or visual recording equipment? Um, Unfortunately not. This is 1956 and those kind of things just weren't easily or cheaply available back then. Later in the case, Chib does get hold of a camera and you can see some of the photographs that he took on the BBC website.
Now, quite a few of you are asking about the key that Shirley found in episode one. We heard Chib questioning the family.
So, where do you want to start? The best place, I find, is always the beginning. I've read the newspaper accounts, but they're very sensational. I'd like to hear in your own words when you first noticed something odd.
The key.
Shirley found it.
End of January.
27th.
It was on my bed, sitting on the pillow. I'd never seen it before.
As this is such a significant moment, I thought it'd be interesting for you to hear a bit more about this discovery from Shirley herself.
It was an ordinary day and I got up in the morning and went out to the kitchen to get my breakfast, went back to make my bed and on the pillow was this elaborate key. And it was ornate. It had sort of curly bits on it. And it looked old. It was silver. And what I can remember, it was about four inches long. And I'd never seen it before. So I picked it up, took it out to my father, who was doing things in the kitchen. I said, put it on the kitchen table. I said, look, Dad, I found this on the bed. Where's it come from?
So is the key's appearance just a coincidence, or could there really be a link between it and what happens later? Some people have even been asking if this is a gift from Donald, which is a really creepy thought. I've got our experts here, Evelyn Hollow and Kieran O'Keefe. Now, ideally, we'd be debating this in front of a roaring fire in a nice pub, but instead we're on Zoom. Kieran and Evelyn, what do you both make of the key?
I think it's fascinating. The feature of apports, which is this kind of random appearance of objects, that feature in poltergeist cases is not unusual.
The key is really an odd one for me. In some of these cases, there is a single strange event that triggers it, but it's often just with noises. It is a bit strange to have a single object. And as they describe the key, the key is very fancy. It doesn't belong in the house and it doesn't fit anything. And even to have acquired that key, it's not something that somebody would drop in the street or It's quite an ornamental thing. It obviously is paired with something quite decorative. So for an object that is that ornate to turn up and you don't know where it came from, that is really strange. And really right from that moment is when the events start happening. It's trying to work out the significance of that key is a real mystery.
I wonder if the most unsettling feature of it is because they don't know where it's from. there is an instant human reaction that somebody has invaded our home, in much the same way that you think about burglary. So the significance of a key that is from out of nowhere, that doesn't fit any locks, doesn't fit any doors, I mean, that is significant in itself because of this feature of somebody must have invaded our home to put that key there. And That alone becomes then a feature of the poltergeist case as it progresses.
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