Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?`
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- Опубликовано: 6 окт 2024
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Having watched the Casual Criminalist episode yesterday wherein he referred to a barn as a "horsery," when he asked where eggs come from, I said (out loud to no one in my kitchen) "An eggery." And then I giggled at myself.
I did that too 🥲
Heheh.
I saw that one as well and kept yelling at my screen it's a stable😅
😂
A stable for crows would be a "murdery"
If she had the tags cut off her clothing though, Simon would be 100% convinced she was a spy.
A spy AND a sex worker, at the same time. Clearly.
According to Simon I am a spy
(I'm autistic and can't stand the feeling of tags scratching me)
@@autumnautopsy I not autistic but I also cannot stand tags irritating my skin. So I also cut them out of all my clothes.
HAHAHA!
@@hilmaallen1302 Sounds like something a spy would say
Hi there! It’s me, your resident mortician viewer from across the Whistlerverse 👋
A few things to note/my personal thoughts here regarding the body and speculation as to how it got into the tree:
1. Yes rigor mortis happens, but not to EVERY SINGLE PERSON the same way. Things like renal disease and diabetes (other conditions too, these are just examples) often cause conditions that lead to little to no rigor happening.
2. Rigor can be “released.” I do it all the time at work. With some stretching/massaging/slight gentle pressure, the muscle contractions can be released. Anyone who works with the dead would know this, and people in wartimes gone past had a much more intimate relationship with death than we do now. It was not uncommon for the dead to be prepared in their home by the family, rather than being taken away to a mortuary.
3. Even 4 hours in, rigor has only just started. A newly dead body is still reasonably “warm” and has only just started to stiffen, not being fully set yet. Once again, all you would have to do is release that rigor with some stretches and you would be good to go.
4. The less muscle you have, the less rigor you have. Rigor mortis occurs within the proteins of the body, which are found in high concentrations in the muscles. Fatty tissue, skin, and bones do not “lock up.” If this woman was thin or frail (as would be quite common in war times…) then her rigor would have been easier to release and slower to onset.
5. Regarding the fabric in the mouth…. I have a theory. It is just a theory and speculation, but ill tell it here anyway. If we’re going by the 4-day timeline for examples sake, then fluid builds up in the body’s abdominal cavity. When you move a body around or apply pressure, that liquid comes up and out of the nose and mouth. We call that “purge” in my line of work, and its no fun. If the body was a few days old when they were moving it, then they may have placed the fabric down her throat and in her mouth in an attempt to stop this from happening. It is pretty yucky, ill tell you that for free…
Anyway, that’s just my two cents. Thanks as always, Simon and the writers! ❤😊
WOW! Thanks for explaining that! ❤
Thank you !
Fascinating and morbid
Thanks for the insight 🤘
Idk how much they teach you about the biology of these things or whether they just teach you practical application, but what’s going on there is.. well, muscle contraction is caused in life by (amongst other things) calcium release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum within the cell, and all the calcium is sucked up again after the muscle stops contracting.
After death, the SR is one of the first things to start to break down, flooding the cell with calcium, causing constant muscle contraction (I.e. rigor): however later, the muscle fibres themselves start to break down, causing rigor to end. When you describe massaging the muscles to release rigor, what you’re doing is basically just manually breaking down all the muscle fibres in an early stage of decomposition.
As you say, rigor doesn’t happen under some circumstances, one of the biggies being if a patient is especially emaciated, because there just isn’t the juice in their muscle cells to get them to contract.
Doing postmortems is technically in my job description, but frankly I hate doing them, and would rather avoid doing them at all costs lol
With all due respect - Aliens is more plausible 👽
For anyone wondering, "Bella" is one-and-little-bit Danny DeVitos tall (150cm to 147cm)
The real conversion we were all waiting for!
How many Shaqs is that? How many Simon head hair lengths is that? Those are the only units I can use.
so about a DeVito & a DeVito thumb tall...
@@alexchu3599we don't use weird measuring units here...
Wait, am I taller than Danny DeVito?! Yaaaay!
The idea of accidentally getting stuck and trapped inside a tree in the middle of the woods at night and dying there is arguably more terrifying to me than getting murdered there is
At least if they murder you its over and you don't have to suffer from thirst and hunger and die 1,000 times in your mind before your body gives up. I get it.
@@HazyFace_ Plus me fucking up and falling into a tree is a lot more likely to happen than someone else deciding to fuck me up. I fuck up all the time and haven't been murdered even once (so far). Lmao
@@PoleTookeahahahagahagag
Thanks for this comment, luv. It really made my night. Wish you an amazing day, week, month, etc.
One love ❤
Fun fact regarding universities and bones: I'm currently studying archaeology and history at the University of Aberdeen and we have approximately 20 boxes of bones from a York archaeological site that haven't been opened yet because no one has the time. The dig wasn't done by the University of Aberdeen, the bones were donated. So they're currently just sitting in a storage room, waiting patiently for someone to have the time to open said boxes and look at what's inside.
I used to work at the school of archaeology in Oxford. We had a clear out of some storage cupboards one year and found several large boxes of pottery finds with no paperwork.
It was a lot of fun trying to find people to go through it and find out whose it was
5:10 A chicken battery makes it sound like either some 4th grader stuck wires into a chicken nugget to power a light bulb or that the chickens are preparing for war.
Chicken Run
This is the best comment! 😂
I thought the same thing!
WAR CHICKENS
What about a hatchery? It’s not called that?
My father got stuck in a hollow willow tree as a kid in almost an identical position. He was climbing it and one foot slipped, causing him to fall backwards with one leg down and his other leg folded up with his knee against his chest. He was stuck there until his family found him that night after searching for him for hours. Would have died there if they didnt find him.
(He didnt have cloth pushed down his throat though haha)
16:33 😂😂😂
About 2 years ago, I was walking through the land my parents own. It was late and I was having a midnight stroll through the woods. I suddenly heard the most chilling sound. Children laughing. I have to say that the land is situated adjacent to a swamp. I initially thought that it was weird that children would be playing in the swamp at this time of the night although I thought nothing of it as there’s a campground not far from the property. As I got back, I heard it again, and immediately looked it up. It was foxes playing and laughing as they did. Super creepy although kinda funny as well.
Simon, I can honestly say I've never heard anyone, British nor American, pronounce "taffeta" like that. I had to do a double take with context clues to figure out what you were talking about 😂
also beezlbub
I never heard it said out loud so I just assumed Simon was saying it correctly lol
His pronunciation of Halesowen was also quite amusing.
😂 same
Smiling
"the- ... Where do chickens come from? Well-wait-it's called something specific. I'm not- I'm not as dumb as you think I am right now," is a vibe that applies to a lot of moments in my life.
You and many of us
I saw the title of this and got so excited. I don't know what it is, but the phrase "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?" has always been so creepy to me.
It’s England in WW2; hens eggs were rationed, as you say. Most civilians were allowed one egg a week. Children and pregnant women were allowed two.
Or they could have egg powder.
This was partly to prioritise eggs for those in the military, and partly because they couldn’t rely on imported grain to feed commercially-raised hens.
And while some things - like veg- were not rationed, they weren’t always available. Poaching and egg hunting was used to supplement rations, especially as people had more physically demanding lives.
In 1943 most or all clothing would be of natural fibers, which I suspect would generally deteriorate considerably faster than the synthetic fibers we're more used to.
Absolutely. I once buried a cat in a blue cotton towel and only a year or so later my roommate accidentally dug her up. -She was completely skeletized and it was like there never was a towel; every fiber was just GONE.
@@audreymuzingo933 yup, but when most people wear clothes that are literally made of oil, we forget that.
Not all nature fiber decompose fast. Corinthian leather takes forever.😂😂😂
@@JamesAnderson-dp1dtyou realize cotton and wool clothing is still very popular, don’t you?
@@kendrickoyola4290 pure natural wool doesn't degrade quickly either
17:55 Simon’s at it again with the skellington 😂
I chuckle every time Simon pronounces taffeta 😅
Ta-feta
THAT’S what he’s trying to say!?
I was so confused.
I want to hear him say fajitas now.
He's from Britain. They can't speak the English language. Americar, Africar, high, privicy vihtamyn,...
It made my eye twitch.
I am continually amazed by Simon's inability to pronounce English words and British placenames.
Doesn't surprise me any more.
You wouldn't think he was English at all 😂
Given how much trouble the English have with pronouncing some English place names I'm not surprised in the least. There's no rhyme or reason to a lot of them, so if you're not local you're gonna have a bad time.
@@michellejones5541 He’s basically American at this point.
@@LJ-mq9kc 😆😆😆
Collecting wild birds' eggs was quite a common hobby in the past - you took the eggs, put a hole in each end with a pin and blew out the content, and kept the intact shells in the same way that you'd collect stamps or coins.
The practice died out after it was banned in the 50s
Midsomer Murders did an episode about bird egg collectors, with the illegal angle as they often went after the eggs of endangered species.
We did that with chicken eggs to decorate for Easter
@@alphabetsoup6681I did that with my kids then we used a syringe to fill them with melted chocolate 😊
@@michellejones5541 You filled your children with melted chocolate? Weren't the authorities concerned?
@@archstanton6102 😂🤣😂
I think police should pursue witchcraft claims, not because I believe that witchcraft works but because it is possible the murder believes witchcraft works. But only if the evidence points in that direction of course.
There's no actual evidence pointing towards that. Also, probably not something that can be researched when people involved are long dead.
This 💯
No, Britons didn't starve during WW2, thanks to rationing and a massive uptick in farming, but that doesn't mean everyone got all the nutrients they needed. Protein, especially, was hard to come by because there was a cull at the beginning of the war -- the gov't (rightly) believed that feeding people with crops would be a better use of land than livestock reared for meat (milk was still considered very important, though). Better a nutritionly-deficient populace than a dead populace.
Brits got lots of spam from the USA. That's almost meat.
I starved.
The US shipped them pallets of Heinz Baked Beans bc they traveled well and a national obsession was born.
@@rachelp2468that explains it! My British friend wanted me to try beans on toast. He came over with cans of beans that were unrecognizable except for Heinz prominently displayed on it.
Another thing I think people don't know is that rationing carried on for several years *after* WW2 - into the 1950s.
IIRC it was a policy introduced in part because of how much hoarding and reselling of basic supplies had gone on in the *First* World War. It was less about shortages (although there definitely were shortages), and more about preventing anyone with a bit of money from exploiting them.
One part of my brain is charmed by Simon pronouncing words differently than I would, the other part is screaming " It's Tafff-ih-tah!". 😊😂
Cloaca was the word i was thinking of when you where wondering where eggs came from lmao........
Me too
Wow, call me an low-brow idiot, but my thought was "chicken."
that's what I yelled at the screen lol
Back ground music is a bit loud on some places. Still love the show!
The music is annoying as heck
Fun fact. The skeleton on 7.09 is displayed at Fremantle Museum in WA and is one of the victims from the Batavia mutiny; I recognise the sword cut on the skull. I don't know if Simon has done an episode of this.
The jingle in the background.. not in the background. It's a bit loud . Maybe I'm just daft.
It's a bit too loud.
When the Casual criminalist has too much mystery in it
I mean this channel was started to prevent Casual Criminalist going down woo woo route.
Got a real shiver reading the title this is casual criminalist type stuff
You're correct except all the spy stuff. That's probably why it's on this channel.
No,no it's not lol we don't even know who committed the crime,or what crime was committed lol
She could have been playing hide and seek, got stuck, and her "friends" left her there 🤷♂️
@@clayc8115 ...No...Way too old for hide and seek.Do you even have a brain?
16:00 You miss the opportunity for "what noise does the fox make' meme.
I Remember hearing that rationing actually helped some people who were near, at or below the poverty line and limited access to food. Rations weren't means tested so this group could now have access to more food and other resources than they had previously.
I thought you still had to pay for food you just also needed to have the ration stamp. Maybe that was different in the US vrs UK
Anna sent a letter "with a return address in Claverly" -- and the police had to make an appeal for her to come forward? I can imagine it was maybe a postmark from Claverly, but if there was a return address the first thing the police would do is go there, wartime 1940s or not.
And on "Landau" being mistaken for "London" -- actually that's perfectly plausible if the note was in handwritten script, as it presumably was. Lower-case a's and o's differ only in the height of the connecting lines following the letter (which different writers put at different heights), and u and n can also easily be confused if the two humps of an n are written a little bit pointy. Some script handwriting is blessedly clear, but much of it isn't.
It amuses me when Simon has literally never even heard of some of these famous stories. But I want to thank the author for bringing some lesser known stories to the forefront! I appreciate learning about ones I haven't previously heard, or more about obscure ones.
Don't blame him. Even with the stories I know I learn new things.
Yeah I have known about Bella for a good number of years now. And I have read about the witchcraft theory. Which is all a bit of foolishness because there would have been more gossip around 1941 about a secret coven. And besides modern witchcraft didn’t gain popularity until Gerald Gardner and the development of Wicca.
Today, Simon learns how humans came to eat eggs before egg farms 😂
Also this was during the Blitz so I imagine that eggs were in short supply and foraging was more common
@@Turbendido It was both a common hobby and a common source of protein for generations
Literally 5 minutes down the road from where I live, always good to see YTers cover it !
About half hour from me!
Same here I’m only 5 mins away
Curious how it is pronounced locally, as I know Simon gives up on proper pronunciation. Yes Hagley looks like (hag-lee) but i learned it as (Hay-glee)
Man, I got excited about this channel covering something about 40 minutes away from my house (Georgia Guidestones)! I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath for something as close to me as you are to these woods. Unless Simon and his basement of writers decide to decode why that delicious Mediterranean restaurant closed or who owns that bright pink Jeep that always parks along Whitehall Rd…
@@Shepard03_K64I live literally 2 minutes away, it is definitely pronounced hag lee, nice little village/ town
“War time would be a great time to be a serial killer” - there was actually a case of a serial killer active in Nazi Germany during WW II. However, in spite of it being wartime, he was tracked down and caught. It would probably be a good story for Cas Crim, if it hasn’t been covered already.
There was at least one in London - Gordon Cummins a RAF serviceman who became known as The Blackout Ripper
I know there was one in Vichy France too
@@SuzysRedStripesyeah if it's the one I think it's real serial killer madness. Is it the one with barrels of bodies in his garden who then disappeared with no idea what happened to him?
@@itarry4 I don't fully remember the details offhand, but that sounds about right.
I think he did a cas crim of that
Not sure how I got here so early. Excited for a new decoding the unknown video though.
Honestly almost mistook this for a new casual criminalist video.
Had to do a google search to make sure, but I used to walk my dog in Hagley woods as a teen. I have NEVER heard of this story before. Blimey!
I once heard a screaming fox. I ended up in tears. It really sounded like a woman in sheer terror, then ended abruptly. It was deeply unsettling.
If a rabbit is scared enough, they sound like a baby screaming. I totally get how they'd believe unknown screaming was an animal.
I think of Joshua Maddux in Colorado (2008) and Harley Dilly in Ohio (2020) both of whom were found deceased in chimneys they'd climbed into alone and gotten stuck. There are other cases. 'Bella' may be one such case. Horrible way to die.
This is right by where I live, it's so nice to hear the story being told by Simon! The woods are quite eerie and as a kid you always felt a bit on edge, that may have just been because of the story. I still find it weird how the graffiti on the obelisk is always there and seems to be ever present, kinda adds to the creepiness of the story.
For anyone wondering, Hagley is a nice place and considered a bit posh in the local area. Worcestershire is a lovely county too
Also it's Halesowen (pronounced Hails-owen), some crazy pronunciation from Simon there 😅
@@TheWithlings I had a good chuckle at Simon butchering that.
my dentist would absolutely recognize my teeth. ten years later and he’s still talking about how bad my bite used to be before braces and shows off the pictures at conferences. 😑
Collecting wild bird eggs was a very common hobby pre war especially until it was banned to protect endangered birds
I could have SWORN Simon had already done this??? Like as a CasCrim or something?
ETA: I think I may be physically incapable of telling DTU and Buzzfeed Unsolved apart 😂😂😂
No literally I thought the same, I think maybe on some other channel he has talked about it (or I also can't keep em apart)
Nope! You're fucking wrong.
I think he made a passing remark in a tangent or something. I have a vague memory of googling it while watching one of his videos.
Same. I thought I was experiencing déjà vu.
@LacieWhy Good thing you're just wrong lol! Why is everyone so quick to admit things they don't know
I used to live right by Wychbury Hill (don't live too far away now) and would often head up there as a teen and recall seeing the graffiti on the obelisk and learning of the local legend.
In fact, my wife and were considering writing a script for you on the matter as we very much enjoy your channels. Whilst it may have been nice to have a local take on the legend we'd struggle to match Elsa's standard of writing.
Really enjoyed the video :)
17:54 a skellington dressed in ta-feta 12:41😂😂😂
Thank you, you have done a good deed with this 😂😂😂 I missed them first time, and kept reading the comments wondering if it's worth finding them ..... I have had my curiosity satisfied
2:45 - Mid roll ads
3:50 - Back to the video
4:00 - Chapter 1 - A body is found in hagley wood
20:05 - Chapter 2 - The graffiti adds to the mystery
22:30 - Chapter 3 - Theories
42:15 - Chapter 4 - The witches did it
47:35 - Chapter 5 - More realistic theories
50:20 - Chapter 6 - A new clue
52:25 - Conclusion
So true about men just disappearing in the past. There's a story that my greatgrand father and his brother went to go get cigarettes but just so happened to spend the rest of the weekend in vegas
The whole set up of the Hagley Hall and the village and land at the beginning sounds like the beginning of an M.R. James story. Heck, the whole thing does.
There is an excellent book written by Tana French loosely based on this story called The Wych Elm. I enjoyed reading it a few years ago.
Having caught up on different episodes over last few days, some of the questions Simon asks and his general British knowledge makes me wonder what he actually did in that private religious school of his, and one can guess he enjoyed the party element of University.
My husband remembers when he was a kid, his dad went out to get pizza on a Friday night. He didn’t come back until Monday night, but he did have the pizza. His mother took the kids, and went to her parents, along with the pizza lol
😱😱😱
Gone are the days you can blame it on a time slip caused by fairies. Now if you disappear for a weekend you have to come up with more convincing lies. The difficulties facing modern men.
Oh I vaguely remember hearing about this briefly like a week ago! Excited to find out the whole story! Thank you writers!
Hearing of hagley park reminded me of the 'heavenly creatures' murder - would love a cas crim on that! Cause all i can think of is the movie and know the writers would make it way more real
Isn’t Jager in German pronounced like “Yeager”?
In some language ya
Watch pacific rim 😂
Simon, the police need to explore the witchcraft angle, not because witchcraft is scientifically based, it's not, but because people believe in its authenticity.
Just because the rituals don't work doesn't mean they weren't tried and used. Delusions are the most common reasons people murder each other, so it's not far fetched that cults did shady shit, including murder. The police investigating this angle is a good thing, so long as they're not asking mystics to talk to the dead but rather they ground themselves with common sense and follow evidence.
People with a sound understanding of reality/common sense rarely commit murder.
Holy shit an episode about somewhere close to where I live! I grew up in the next town over (Halesowen) and I first heard about this story as a kid!
I still pass through Hagley, the woods and the obelisk on my way into work.
I'm curious about who was living on Hagley Estate at the time. I think Hagley Woods was part of the estate; maybe a servant or one of the family knew something.
I literally listen to you all day while I’m at work and I’m so happy to have found this other channel. I’ve listen to almost all your casual criminalist channnel so i was so excited to find this one!
I know I've heard this story. I remember someone, somewhere, at sometime telling me that a bunch of witches killed a woman in a sacrifice and put her in a Wych Elm in the UK during WW2.
I know I've heard it, and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thumbnail. But I can't remember who told me or when. This is going to drive me nuts for at least the next couple hours.
thought i was pressing on a casual criminalist episode…i didn’t know he had more channels…now i have more the listen too!! heck yeah!!!
Simon as dentist edit was incredible.
I've stood on top of Hagley monument. Well, I stood on the blocks that fell off the top in the eighties ! It's been rebuilt now. There's an iron age hill fort next to it. Plenty magic mushrooms there too ! Happy days.
My father was a kid around this time (born in 1932) he and his brothers would do exactly what throes kids were doing. They collected eggs, mushrooms and fished to supplement the rations.
This is surprisingly similar to the modern Harley Dilly case where some are still crying “murder”. He died of compression suffocation in a chimney. The police moved his discarded jacket and bam, murder and conspiracy.
My theory is because the land is owned by the hall what if Bella worked at the hall or knew a staff member and was having an affair or along those lines.
But I strongly believe someone at the hall did it as it’s part of the property and anyone who worked at the hall or was familiar with the grounds would know about the tree
Roma/Romani is the preferred term for traveller's rather than the derogatory word starting with a g. Not everyone knows this, so I just want to spread the word💜
Romani are totally different people from what was once called new age travellers now just travellers or gyπ$¢$.
Every (UK) gypsy I know prefers gypsy. Also, not all travelling people are gypsy and not all gypsies are Romany, for example there are also many Sinti in the UK.
@@woofbarkyap Sinti are a subgroup of Romani, so that would still be a proper umbrella term. While I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who do not mind being called a slur or are trying to reclaim it, it is still beneficial to be conscious of the words we use and the harm it causes people. If your individual friends do not want to be called Romani, don't call them Romani. When you're speaking to a large audience and do not know preferences, it is better to play it safe and not use slurs as a general rule💜
Simon, i absolutely love all of your shows and I'm a Surfshark user for about two years now. I love it. Seamless internet connection and safe from online scumbags.
So I have a theory. I think Bella heard the air raid sirens and had nowhere to hide. She climbed into the hollow tree trunk. She maybe then realized that she could not climb out because the opening was too high for her to reach and she probably didn’t have enough room to shimmy out. Maybe after being stuck in the hollow trunk for a long time - hunger may have set in and she chewed on her taffeta skirt for sustenance.
I like your theory, she also may have been hiding from someone pursuing her and then got stuck unable to climb out.
Both theories would explain the reports of someone calling out from the forest.
That is a very plausible idea; whether the thing that frightened her was air raid sirens, another person or something else. It's also one of the ones that I find utterly horrifying. I would much prefer that she was dead when she went into the tree.
I was thinking more that it may have been an accident. She may have, like the boys who found her, have been scavenging the woods for bird eggs, climbed the tree, then slipped or fell into the hollow trunk and got wedged stuck.
That is a terrifying thought. What an awful way to die. It is better in the sense it means no one committed murder, but a murder might have been a quicker way to go.
I was thinking maybe she was climbing the tree looking for eggs and slipped into the space and got stuck. She could have died from compression asphyxia. I'm not putting too much weight on the fabric in her mouth since the scene had been so disrupted. It could have even been an animal decided to use some of the fabric and build a nest there...
First time I heard a fox scream I thought OMG banshees are REAL
Possibly we need to keep in mind that with the bombings so close she may not have been local. There were many people displaced and moving around. There were also many paranoid spy scares, a few of which were true. Bella does not inevitably refer to belladonna, since it also means good or beautiful.
Thinking of my neices, Annabella & Isabella.
Exactly. She may have been a refugee from the mainland who sought safety in Britain away from the Nazis. That’s always been my theory regarding Bella’s identity.
Simon just casually giving serial killers tips 😂
I'm running a Slasher-heavy Hunter campaign in the World of Darkness, and there's a Ghostface in the circle of friends the player characters have, who watches CasCrim regularly, and prioritizes Simon's Rules over the Scream franchise's "Rules".
Finally, been looking forward to seeing Simon and his basement crew give their take on this one.
Spying on behalf of the enemies of one's own nation is absolutely treason, and still does carry the death-penalty in most countries. Spying on a country, on behalf of one's own nation, is not treason. And being caught doing so usually only carries a penalty of deportation, after the conflict ends. But I suppose that depends on who you get caught spying on.
Did Simon just say skellington, Again?! 😂
Hush! It's adorable when he says it!
I think he may have read too many Terry Pratchett's books 😂
1. Maybe it's possible the skull could be found? It's probably still at the university, just got separated from the label and one day somebody could identify it if they went through the archive. Not sure how likely that is tho, they probably have thousands and not everybody has access and the ones who do probably have bigger fish to fry
2. I don't think anyone should build their opinion on the expertise of the archaeologist/egyptologist/folklorist. In those days these fields of study were not at their most reliable and the methods were not very exact and scientific. I'm saying this as an archaeology student, but in the past the experts would often interpret their finds any way they fancied, especially the ancient rituals which they had no way to actually verify
3. Someone would definitely notice a bunch of people doing weird witch rituals in the local woods, I doubt you can do those in complete darkness and silence :-D
Exactly. As a practicing Celtic Wiccan and amateur historian I can confirm that back in the 1940s there was a lot of misinterpretation of ancient sites and artifacts, especially if there was no written record to clarify what they were meant for. In fact there is still a bit of misinterpretation going on with artifacts even in archaeology to this day. And yes someone might have noticed something related to practicing witchcraft if there were people hunting for mushrooms or picking berries. Gods know there would have been a fair bit of panic in that community which would have led to ostracism.
So here’s my theory on Bella: I think she was a refugee who had traveled to Britain in order to escape the Nazis and the Blitz in the major cities of Britain. She probably kept to herself or else she had a controlling husband who made sure she couldn’t go out alone and make friends which is why no one could identify her. Perhaps she tried to find sanctuary in the surrounding forest but her abusive husband figured out her plans and out of tremendous jealousy and anger he took her life. Panicking he stuffed her body into the tree trunk and possibly moved away as soon as he could so he wouldn’t be connected. Over time animals tore pieces of her clothes in order to make nests which would explain the state of her clothes when she was finally found. As to her skull I hope what you are suggesting is the case. Because if so then forensic scientists could theoretically extract DNA from her bones for DNA analysis as well as do an isotope analysis in order to pinpoint her birthplace and see if she has any living descendants. She is stated to have been found with a gold wedding band so she might have been married and, theoretically, she would have kids who in turn would have kids of their own who probably have wonder what happened to grandmum all these years.
GodDAMN I was hanging on every word for this one, the twists and turns! Awesome work Simon and Ilsa
Green Lung has a cool song about this called "The Ritual Tree."
Had to laugh when I finally clicked what the fabric that had been torn from the dress was. TahFEHta was throwing me til I realised the word Simon's trying to say is TAFFeta. Omds I mean tbf it's not really a word I'd expect Simon to know but I understand why his writers include so many pronunciation guides 😅 but then as my mum would say "you knew what I meant though, didn't ya!"
"Where do eggs come from? It's called something specific..."
The cloaca, Simon
"A battery farm!"
Oh
Rigor mortis makes moving a body easier not harder. With a limp body only the part you are holding goes where you want it to go. Have a friend limply lay on the ground and try to move them 2 feet to the side, then have them lay on a board and move them and the board. With a board it's move the head end over then repeat with the foot end, no board and its head end, foot end, and then middle and you may have to move the ends once again.
Yhea but bending the body small enough to fit the tree was the issue not carrying it.
The point about her having to be killed near the tree or being moved to the tree days later due to rigor mortis is because her body would have to be fairly pliable to get her stuffed inside the tree, so rigor either hadn’t set in yet or it had passed (or she went in alive).
@@Kimmie9553 I get that but he said rigor makes moving a body harder which is factually wrong. It does also make dumping one down a hole that's wider than the corpse easier.
Stuffing into a hole is a completely different story and one my comment has nothing to with since it was about moving alone. If you want easier with that I suggest a good heavy hammer to break long bones for even more flexibility if you want to make getting rid of a body more difficult and easier to find.
Best choice is a shovel and some random bit of woods. Dig a grave and fill it then cover with leaves or whatever crud covers the forest floor to look like it wasn't touched. Floppy or rigor it doesn't matter here and less chance of discovery.
As a german, the prononciation was right, J in German sounds like the Y in Yoghourt
Wait, she was killed on someone’s land, right? And the boys were afraid of getting in trouble for trespassing?
Didn’t the police follow up with the land owner? Surely they would be best acquainted with the trees in the area
I remember when I was in college doing music performance we did a gig in Halesowen and I saw a graffiti on something saying “who put Bella in the wych elm” and up until that point even though I’ve lived in Birmingham almost my entire life I had never heard it before and then not long after I found a different video from one of the usual channels I watch and I was fascinated!
This is absolutely crazy I’ve been listening to this podcast for years, while I was driving back from work I put this episode on and I realised Simon was talking about somewhere 10-15 from my house!
It’s crazy because I’ve never even heard about this story and I live so close to Hagley 😂
Also it’s pronounced (hails-Owen)
Love the videos
I’d rather watch this than the news. So sick of election year nonsense.
Simons gut instinct here wasn’t all that far off. Missing details, but pretty much spot on
Thanks for the article from my area.
Simon, pronunciation of Claverley (kla-vu-lee) & Halesowen (hayl-zoe-uhn) needs improvement
Still great, 👍
WOOOHOOOO I CAN NOW STOP ASKING SIMON "WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM" 😂😂
Anna’s story of the woman dying on Mucklows Hill (Halesowen, pronounced Hails-Owen) is so weird to me, I’m local to this area and there’s another big woodland called Leasowes Park right off Mucklows Hill, I reckon that’d be a good place to hide a body (in my opinion)
I love your channel. If I saw this subject on any other channel, by the end, I would be thinking that it was a spy witch alien that came from Atlantis.
I feel like I'm getting dajavu. I swear I've listened to Simon talking about the girl in the witches elm tree before 🤔
The Hollow Tree by James Brogden is a horror/fantasy book based on this case and it’s incredible!
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out.
the new glasses stood out today lol. They had that Will.i.am effect when they reflected your blinds. Consider blackout curtains or some kind of coating?
"Donated the Skelington"
Just the other day I listened to the video where Simon said that all his life until he was like 25 years old, he thought it was skellington. Crept back in on him! 😂
I thought he said skellington!😂
You can eat fertilised eggs. It takes time and incubation for them to develop from yolk into anything you'd be able to tell was a bird. The poor would raid wild birds nests for eggs to eat and also because you could/can sell rare eggs to collectors.
MI5 roughly equivalent to FBI. MI6 roughly equivalent to CIA.
Sounds like a game of "hide and seek" gone horribly wrong. Right??
What about the cloth in her mouth?
Her hand was cut off, much bigger problem lol
I would say the story with the two men who said she just passed out dead in the backseat sounds the most true, the one where the wife of one of them told about it, I also wonder if the reason they stuffed her in a tree, rather then reported it, was maybe because she actually just passed out and they both sexually assaulted her, maybe she woke up, one of them killed her and they THEN decided to stuff her in that tree. Like maybe one or both knew of the tree somehow, and so they thought no one would find her, which they were right. They didn't mention how the hands were cut off, was there evidence of them being cut off or did they assume they were because the bits of her hands were tossed around the tree? Reason I ask is, what if wild animals took the bits, like raccoons, even rats, they are both known to eat anything, and hands would be easy pickings, literally! The skellingtonized hands and fingers might mean they were just left there about they were chewed on for a while. I mean not sure they would have looked at them to see if there were teeth marks or not.
Now if the hands or at least fingers, hadn't still been there I might have though it was to further hide her identity, by the two men who may have killed her after assaulting her, this way no fingerprints, which they did check even back then, but of course after all that time, 12 years, there were no flesh left anymore, so no fingerprints!
Of course my other thought was, who owned this private property? Maybe they did it, and that's why the killer knew about the hollow tree!
This is the third video on here I have watched about a mysterious death of a woman, with no name, and like the other 3 she too was thought by some to be either a spy or a sex worker, it's like I said with the one in the hotel in Norway, people always assume sex worker when the mysterious dead body of a woman is found, but never a man, though again I understand it's less like with a man, but people don't seem to just think the women are anything normal, like just a single woman or even a married woman, and always go for spy too! Weird! At least the British cops even in the 1940s, during a war, tried to investigate, the cops in Norway did do anything!
Thanks Ilsa for the great script, I've loved this mystery but figured she was a spy
I'm actually all for the police following leads from "psychics" if they've exhausted all others. Mainly because, just because psychics aren't real doesn't mean that's not being used as an excuse for someone having knowledge of a crime. Just because they aren't psychic doesn't mean their information can't be accurate. And if it turns out to lead somewhere, you've got someone else to keep an eye on as a possible suspect.